Should Pastors Use Greek and Hebrew?

The original languages the Bible was written in, Hebrew and Greek, have fallen on hard times in the Church. The percentage of pastors who use the Greek and Hebrew in their sermon preparation is very low. One pastor asked several other pastors who had been in ministry more than ten years if they still used Hebrew in preparing sermons. Not a single one did. Greek is probably more used than Hebrew, but no doubt there is only a small minority of ministers who use it regularly.

John Currid's book, Calvin and the Biblical Languages, addresses this particular problem in the church by taking us back to the Reformation. He shows how the Reformation leaders were men who knew the original languages and used them in their exegesis and preaching. Going back to Greek and Hebrew was an essential part in planting the seeds of the reformation and subsequent spread of it across Europe. The book is short and worthy of your time.

Currid says, "First and foremost the neglect of the original languages is a movement away from the centrality of the Scriptures in our churches and away from the pastor's main duty to teach the Scriptures."

At the end of the book, Currid lists six reasons a pastor should learn and use the original languages in his ministry.

1. "The Holy Scriptures were revealed by God through his prophets in Greek and Hebrew (and Aramaic). Why would the pastor as interpreter not want to study God's Word in its original linguistic revelation and form?"

2. "There is an abundance of English translations of the Bible. Some of them are solid and good, but as Waltke points out with an Italian proveb, "Traduttore traditorre," "translations are treacherous." How does a pastor know which is the best translation of a text without knowing how to translate?"

3. "There are many excellent commentaries on the market today. The pastor often thinks that because there are so many that the labor has been done, and he need not go over well-furrowed ground. Hafeman discerningly responds: "It is precisely because there are so many excellent commentaries available today that the use of the biblical languages in preaching becomes more important, not less." The proliferation of commentaries means a proliferation of opinions, views, and interpretations of the text. Without the languages the pastor's abililty to examine commentaries and to discern what is good and true is severly hampered."

4. "Ability in the biblical languages aids in refuting false teaching...the biblical languages are a sword to be unsheathed against heresy and false teaching."

5. "It can not be proven that there is no difference between a prepared, studious sermon based on the biblical languages and one that is not...the reality is that when one wrestles with the text and has direct contact with the Word of God in the languages in which it was revealed, a certain depth and richness pervades the study, one that would not have been there otherwise."

6. "It is true that the maintaining of and the use of the biblical languages throughout time and ministry requires diligence and discipline. It may be difficult to do, but the rewards can be immense. For these labors foster discipline, depth of character, commitment and conviction in ministry. The work leads to solid, accurate and fresh preaching and teaching. Pastors have been called to guard the sacred deposit and stand against any misuse: this may be hard and strenuous work. The biblical languages are one of the weapons that we have been supplied with to make such a stand."

The last point by Currid is probably the main reason pastors do not use the original languages more. It is very hard work and we often think our time would be better spent doing other things, such as planning. But in the end we will be judged based on our fidelity to God's Word and thus knowing Greek and Hebrew is really not optional.

George Grant on Reading the Bible

George Grant is a pastor in Franklin, TN. He is one of my favorite thinkers, especially on issues like abortion and social justice. He is also a prolific writer and speaker. He has several blogs, but one of my favorite is his Eleventary Blog. There he makes lists of eleven things that vary in subject matter. Recently he listed eleven things he tries to remember while studying the Scriptures. I found it very helpful, even printing it out to read as I study God's Word. You can find the list here.

Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence

Let all mortal flesh keep silence

And with fear and trembling stand

Ponder nothing earthly minded

For with blessing in His hand

Christ our God to earth descendeth

Our full homage to demand.

King of kings yet born of Mary

As of old on earth He stood

Lord of lords in human vesture

In the body and the blood

He will give to all the faithful

His own self for heavenly food.

Rank on rank the host of heaven

Spreads its vanguard on the way

As the Light of light descendeth

From the realms of endless day,

That the pow'rs of hell may vanish

As the darkness clears away.

At His feet the six-winged seraph

Cherubim with sleepless eye

Veil their faces to the presence

As with ceaseless voice they cry

Alleluia, Alleluia,

Alleluia Lord Most High

From the Liturgy of St. James (2nd Century)

Where to Begin

I have read several longer books on John Calvin's life over the last few years. Every time I am convicted of gaps in my pastoral ministry, not my theology. In fact, Calvin the pastor has had a greater influence on me than Calvin the theologian. Of course, the theology and the ministry go together, but the more I read about him the more convinced I am that it was his theology applied in the church at Geneva, not his theology written, where he left his greatest fingerprint. I recently read David W. Hall's short work on Calvin, The Legacy of John Calvin. This quote struck me because it confirmed what I had been feeling as I read about Calvin.

"While Calvin's accomplishments have had lasting influence in many sectors, it is important to recognize an oft-ignored truism about his work: his reforms began in the church and only then radiated outward...He was prudent enought to realize that the best way to reform the culture was indirectly, that is, to first reform the church.

Principles of Worship

Here are some basic principles I believe to be true concerning worship. The list below is not in any particular order and does not include everything.

1. Worship has a dual thrust. God first gives to us and then we give back to him praise. God initiates. We respond.
   
2. Worship is to be done in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Our worship is Trinitarian.
   
3. Worship is to be done according to the commands, precepts and examples set down in Scripture.
   
4. Worship is to be saturated with Scripture.
   
5. Worship is primarily discipleship, not evangelism.
   
6. We worship with our bodies, mind and feelings. Therefore all of these should be involved in the worship service.
   
7. The order of worship matters. It will shape the way we think about God, the Church and the world. Therefore the order of worship should be structured by the Gospel.
   
8. The Word and Sacraments go together. They are not enemies to be reconciled, but friends who walk hand in hand.
   
9. Worship is corporate. Therefore what we do in worship we do together.
   
10. The worship service is a prayer service.
    
11. Worship is discipline and training in the ways of God. Therefore it requires work.
    
12. Singing the Psalms is required.
    

Calvin College Gets In Bed with Darwin

Here is a very telling article about Calvin College and their descent into evolutionary theory. As you go through the article notice what other doctrines get lost when one denies a historical Adam and Eve. Also notice the total and complete hypocrisy of the men who claim to hold to the confessions, but explicitly deny them. It is amazing that this college once put out some great thinkers and was run by a denomination that was conservative and godly. Now it appears to be run by monkeys.

Smoking Jack's Pipe: God Incognito

"We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito. And the incognito is not always hard to penetrate. The real labour is to remember, to attend. In fact, to come awake. Still more to remain awake." C.S. Lewis in Letters to Malcolm.

Face to Face

I just finished Joseph Ellis' Pulitzer Prize winning book Founding Brothers. It was an excellent read. History as it should be written, with wit, humor, and insight in the men and the times. I am not familiar with the time period he covers, 1790 through the death of Jefferson and Adams in 1826. Because of this I cannot vouch for Ellis' accuracy. The book is well footnoted, but that does not always make it accurate. My guess is that most of what he writes is true.

There was one section I found intriguing. In the first chapter he gives common themes which run throughout the stories in his book. He lists these at the end of the chapter 1:

1. "The achievement of the revolutionary generation was a collective enterprise that succeeded because of the diversity of personalities and ideologies present in the mix."

2. All the members of the revolutionary generation "knew one another personally, meaning that they broke bread together, sat together at countless meetings, corresponded with one another about private as well as public matters. Politics, even at the highest level in the early republic, remained a face-to-face affair in which the contestants, even those locked in political battles to the death, were forced to negotiate the emotional affinities and shared intimacies produced by frequent personal interaction."

3. "They managed to take the most threatening and divisive issue off the political agenda. That issue, of course, was slavery, which was clearly incompatible with the principles of the American Revolution, no matter which version one championed. But it was also the political problem with the deepest social and economic roots in the new nation, so that removing it threatened to disrupt the fragile union just as it was congealing."

4. Finally, Ellis says, that "the faces that look down upon us with such classical dignity in those portraits by John Trumbull, Gilbert Stuart and Charles Willson Peale, those voices that speak to us across the ages in such lyrical cadences, seem so mythically heroic, at least in part, because they knew we would be looking and listening. All the vanguard members of the revolutionary generation developed a keen sense of their historical significance even while they were still making the history on which their reputations would rest. They began posing for posterity, writing letters to us as much as to one another, especially toward the end of their respective careers."

The theme that struck me most was the second. How different our world is today!! When was the last time political enemies sat down in one another's house and had dinner together. You could probably search every level of politics, local, state and national and not find many examples of this. The same is true in the church. The internet now allows Christians to strafe other Christians from across the country. Men now fight without ever having met their enemy face to face or had them over for dinner. I know this has to some degree been true throughout history, but still face-to-face meetings tend to diffuse the situation, especially if they are frequent occurrences. It is much harder to slander a man who is your friend even if you do disagree with him. Not impossible, but harder.