VII. The Joy and Fruit of Ecumenism – Nida’s Acquired Doctrinal
Indifference, Hort-Wescott’s Bad Text, Roman Catholic Unequal Partners in Dynamic
Equivalence
The
next stage in translating came in 1942, adding a new entity, Wycliffe Bible
Translators, which would send translators, and the original Summer Institute of
Linguistics for training them. Cameron Townsend continued to manage SIL. Ken
Pike, PhD, headed academics, and Eugene Nida was his associate. Their doctrinal
statement included.
·
The divine inspiration of the Bible
·
The Trinity
·
The fall of man
·
The atonement of Christ
·
Justification by faith
·
Resurrection of the dead
·
Eternal life of the saved
·
Eternal punishment of the lost.
Townsend wanted to expand Wycliffe, so he pressed Pike
and Nida to move beyond denominational and dogmatic boundaries.[1]
Townsend,
senior to Pike and Nida, resisted their emphasis on doctrinal unity, sensing
instead that growth would mean taking down barriers.
1.
We cooperate with missions, governments,
scientific organizations, philanthropic organizations, always cooperate and
serve, never compete.
2.
We dare to follow even when God leads
along strange paths.
3.
We are not sectarian or ecclesiastical,
not even dogmatic. We don’t try
to force people into any type of
denominational or anti-denominational mold.[2]
This provided a foundation familiar to many
denominations, brilliantly described by John Michael Reu’s Unionism. People
can view the history of cooperation and merger, dropping significant doctrinal
differences. The Methodists kept merging and conservatives kept leaving.[3]
The same thing happened with the Lutheran Church in American (1962 merger) and
The American Lutheran Church (1960 merger). When they merged in 1987, an amount
almost equal to The ALC left. However, the liberals in each case ended up holding
the property, the schools, the endowments, and the pension funds. Merger and
cooperation suffocate doctrinal debate, because differences might offend
someone and slow the process of unity. Each time conservatives leave a denomination
headed by radicals, the apostates celebrate with glee that opposition has
decreased, power has increased.
Nida’s
advantage was his inability to work in Mexico, so he was proposed by Townsend as
a link to the American Bible Society, which was once so conservative, they made
sure the KJV was not corrupted in its printings.[4]
Nida was perfectly comfortable with a creative paraphrase instead of the
precision of the KJV model. The common critique of traditional translations –
initiated by Nida was – “They are wooden,” an imprecise metric. His solution
was the paraphrase, renamed “dynamic equivalence,” not the meaning of the words
but to move beyond the words
Coming up – union of Bible Societies and Roman
Catholicism
[1]
David Daniels, Why They Changed the Bible, p. 51.
[2] Quoted
in Daniels, ibid., p. 52.
[3] Nazarenes
and Wesleyans left the Methodist Church, which had the effect of people jumping
from a hot air balloon basket, which only rises faster and invites more
departures.
[4]
Nujahr, An American Bible
