When the New Testament Disagrees

Christian history, Church Leadership, The Bible, Theology, Women in Ministry

In Acts 15 we find an account of the very first (and most important) church council in Christian history, often dubbed the Jerusalem Council (A.D. 48-49). Leaders like Peter, Paul, Barnabas, Silas, James, and many others gathered to discuss one of the most pressing issues facing the early church—What do we do about Gentiles who wish to follow Israel’s Messiah?

Some believers argued that Gentiles must first become Jews. They must become circumcised, follow the Torah, and embrace Jewish dietary law. Only then can they belong to the covenant community.

Others disagreed. Peter gave testimony to his experience in Caesarea Maritima where he saw the Holy Spirit fall upon a Roman centurion, Cornelius, and his entire household and baptized them on the spot as Gentiles. Paul and Barnabas also gave accounts of God’s work among Gentiles during their missionary journeys.

After much discussion and debate, the gathered leaders came to a unanimous agreement. Gentiles are to be welcomed into the Jewish body of Messiah just as they are, provided they abstain from four things: (1) Food associated with idolatry (my emphasis), (2) Sexual immorality (porneia) (3) What has been strangled, and (4) Blood (Acts 15:20).

Several years later (around A.D. 53–55), Paul wrote his first letter to the gathered church in Corinth. On the issue of meat sacrificed to idols, Paul never mentions the decision of the Council. Instead, he gives a much more nuanced set of instructions. While firmly prohibiting idolatry and pagan worship, Paul’s instructions regarding consuming meat sacrificed to idols can be summarized as follows:

(1) Meat itself is morally neutral.

(2) Because idols are not real gods, Christians are free to eat meat regardless of its prior association with pagan sacrifices.

(3) However, Christians must never participate in pagan worship, and…

(4) they should willingly refrain from eating when doing so would harm another believer’s conscience or communicate participation in idolatry (1 Cor. 8-10).

In other words, Paul preserves the council’s underlying concern about idolatry while applying it differently in the context of Corinth. The result is a noticeable tension between the straightforward prohibition of Acts 15 and the more situational guidance found in 1 Corinthians 8–10.

A few decades later, a prophet named John receives a series of visions while exiled on the island of Patmos. Among those visions are seven messages addressed to churches in Asia Minor (Revelation 2–3), each presented as a message from the risen Jesus Christ.

In these letters, the practice of consuming meat sacrificed to idols is categorically forbidden and regarded as serious sin. The churches in Pergamum and Thyatira are sharply rebuked because some among them have embraced teachings that encourage believers to eat food sacrificed to idols and participate in practices associated with pagan worship. For John, such behavior represents compromise with the surrounding culture and is incompatible with faithful allegiance to Christ.

Notice the differing perspectives here. The Jerusalem Council prohibits food associated with idols. Decades later, John appears to reaffirm that prohibition without qualification. Paul, however, makes a distinction between participation in idol worship and the mere consumption of meat that had previously been offered in sacrifice, which he permits under certain circumstances.

So the New Testament does not speak with a single voice on this issue. Rather, we find different authors addressing the same question in different ways, shaped by the pastoral challenges and circumstances facing their communities.

This suggests that we should be cautious about treating Acts and the New Testament epistles as a comprehensive law code containing universally applicable rulings for every situation. Rather, they are inspired accounts of apostles, pastors, and congregations using wisdom to discern what faithfulness to Jesus looked like in their specific contexts.

To be sure, beneath these writings lies a shared theological foundation centered on allegiance to Christ and his vision. Yet the application of those convictions is often contextual rather than uniform.

I’m using this example as a case study with hopes of helping us better understand what the Bible is for and how it works. If early Christian leaders and churches differed on how they sought to embody faithfulness to Christ, and these differences are inscribed within the Bible itself, then what does that reveal to us about the Bible’s purpose? Rather than constantly detaching independent verses and citing them like an attorney holding a law journal, perhaps the Bible is instead inviting us to seek and apply Spirit-inspired and Jesus-centered wisdom for our own particular contexts?

For example, I’m convinced that a similar dynamic is happening within the New Testament as it pertains to the topic of women teaching in churches.¹ Of course, this is a hot-button issue at the moment due to the recent meetings in Orlando within the Southern Baptist Convention. I won’t comment on those matters, except to say, while I continue to disagree with my complementarian brothers and sisters within the SBC, I refuse to publicly assume their motives, and I respect their right to follow their own conscience and wrestle with this issue within their own local communities.

Nevertheless, I cannot help but suggest that faithfulness to Jesus on this issue is often kaleidoscopic rather than uniform. For the writer of 1 Timothy (who I contend was not actually Paul) and the letter’s recipient, it was determined, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent” (1 Tim. 2:12). Okay, “Paul.” I accept that there were concerns within your own time and place that led you to this conclusion.²

And yet, we do have numerous recorded examples within the New Testament of women involved in apostolic ministry, prophetic ministry, theological instruction, missionary work, house-church leadership, diaconal ministry, and gospel partnership alongside male leaders.³

Perhaps this is one of the Bible’s greatest gifts. Rather than offering a comprehensive catalog of answers for every conceivable circumstance, it invites us into the same Spirit-led process of discernment practiced by the earliest followers of Jesus. The New Testament records their attempts to work out what allegiance to Jesus looked like in a variety of circumstances. And sometimes they arrived at different applications while remaining rooted in the same gospel.

The goal of biblical interpretation is not merely to locate a rule and apply it mechanically. It is to immerse ourselves in the story of Jesus, attend carefully to the witness of Scripture and interpretive tradition, and remain open to the dynamic leading of the Holy Spirit, seeking to discern together what faithfulness looks like here and now. That task is more demanding than proof-texting.

The question is not merely, “Which verse settles the matter?” but rather, “How can we faithfully embody the way of Jesus here and now?” The early church had to wrestle with that question in its own time. We still do today.

For a thorough explanation of my own position, read here. ↩︎
For those who contend that the instruction regarding women in 1 Timothy 2 is universally binding because of the author’s point about Eve being deceived and transgressing and not Adam (vv. 13-14), first I point back to the issue of eating meat sacrificed to the idols. While Paul permits the practice (under certain circumstances), the categorical prohibition against eating such meat in Revelation was purportedly given by Christ himself in a vision(!) Furthermore, was Adam not also deceived and guilty of transgression? If not, how so? We should at least acknowledge the difficulty Christian interpreters have had with this section of 1 Timothy 2 throughout history. ↩︎
Acts 21:8–9; 1 Corinthians 11:5; Acts 18:24–26; Romans 16:1–2; Romans 16:7; Romans 16:3–5; Acts 18; Colossians 4:15; Acts 16:14–15, 40) ↩︎

Bible Translation Panic and the Truth Behind It

The Bible

From time to time I come across images shared on social media like the one posted below. I see posts like this one fairly often. I also regularly read and hear comments from Christians who express concerns and questions about Bible translations. Over the years, I have encountered much confusion and misinformation regarding this topic. So I thought a quick primer on Bible translations would make for an interesting article.

The implied assumption of this image seems to be that the NIV has omitted Bible verses for the sake of some sinister agenda. For the actual explanation, keep reading…

“WHY IS THIS VERSE OMITTED IN MY BIBLE?”

First, we do not have any of the original documents of any of the biblical books. But over time, people made copies of the original documents of Scripture. Many copies. And copies were made of those copies. And copies were also made of those copies (and on and on it goes). We currently possess over 5,800 ancient Greek manuscripts. If you include early translations (Latin, Syriac, Coptic, etc.), the number rises to over 20,000.

Before the invention of the printing press, all copies were handwritten. Therefore, occasionally scribes made inadvertent mistakes (spelling errors, forgotten words, missed punctuation, etc.). Sometimes scribes would intentionally adjust a certain verse or section in order to make it more intelligible. And every so often, a scribe might even change the wording to make it more theologically “correct.” Therefore, not every manuscript looks exactly the same.

However, because of the wealth of manuscripts in our possession, textual critics can often determine which readings are earlier and which are later, and in many cases can trace the development of certain textual traditions. Therefore, through the comparison of these manuscripts, these scholars have been able to gain a pretty solid consensus on the text of the original documents.

Which brings me to the image I posted above. Why does the NIV omit some of the wording of Luke 9:56 and totally exclude Matthew 18:11 (by the way, these are just two of many similar examples)? (Sidenote: The NIV is actually one of many modern translations that omit these sections).

The KJV was originally translated in 1611 from the best manuscripts that were available at the time. However, in recent decades (and centuries), many earlier and more reliable ancient manuscripts have been discovered. Through the process of textual comparison, it has been demonstrated that in cases like these, the text that the KJV includes (that the NIV omits) was almost certainly not in the original manuscripts.

There is no sinister agenda here. This especially becomes clear when we realize that there is another version of this saying of Jesus elsewhere that the NIV does include:

“For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10, NIV)

Why omit this saying in one reference and not the other? Because the issue is not about censoring the Bible. It’s about being as faithful as possible to the actual, original text (something that every Christian should be interested in, right? …Right?).

“IS THERE SUCH A THING AS A WORD-FOR-WORD TRANSLATION?”

There are hundreds of English translations of the Bible. Bible translation is unavoidable. Unless every Christian wants to learn the original languages of the Bible (Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic), we need skilled translators. And translation is not an exact science.

Occasionally I hear people say, “I just want a word-for-word translation of the Bible.”

No, you don’t. For one thing, sentence construction in ancient Greek and Hebrew is completely different from that of modern English. For example, in Matthew 17:18 we find the story of Jesus healing a boy of demonic possession. If we were to translate it directly word-for-word, it would read something like this:

“And rebuked it the Jesus and came out from him the demon and was healed the boy from the hour that.”

This approach would obviously make the Bible unreadable.

But it gets much more complicated than just sentence structure. The ancient languages of the Bible contain tons of words that do not have exact matches in modern English. The opposite is also true. There are plenty of examples in which the English language contains words for specific concepts that do not have an ancient equivalent.

So anyone who claims to use a “literal, word-for-word” translation of the Bible is mistaken and uninformed. It doesn’t exist. Every translation involves some measure of risk, approximation, and concession.

BASIC APPROACHES TO BIBLE TRANSLATION

Translation involves “reproducing the meaning of a text that is in one language as fully as possible in another language” (from Distorting Scripture? by Mark Strauss). There are two basic approaches to accomplishing this.

The formal approach seeks to stay as close as possible to the structure and wording of the original language. As I’ve shown above, this would not be helpful (or even possible) if it were taken to the extreme. Therefore, there is some degree of compromise for the sake of readability (just like with any translation).

The upside with more formal translations is that they stay reasonably faithful to the form and wording of the original language, preserving shades of meaning that might otherwise be lost. The downside is that these translations can sometimes be difficult for the average person to understand.

Some of the best-known examples of more formal translations would be the KJV, NKJV, ASV, RSV, and NRSV.

The functional approach is focused more on expressing the meaning of the original text into today’s language. Some of the more contemporary translations (like the NLT and CEV) are well-known for this approach. The upside of the functional approach is that these translations are much more readable and understandable for the average person. The downside is that if it veers too far from the form of the original language, it can lose shades of meaning.

There are also other translations that try to find some measure of balance between the two approaches (the NIV, NEB, and ESV are prominent examples).

“WHAT SHOULD I LOOK FOR IN A BIBLE TRANSLATION?”

I have always enjoyed using a variety myself. When it comes to praying through the Psalms, I love the poetic, Shakespearean English of the KJV/NKJV. When it comes to study and preaching, I mostly lean on the NRSV.

But when it comes to daily reading, I bounce around a bit. I’ve learned that every translation has its strengths and weaknesses.

But here would be my general advice to the average churchgoer.

First, find a translation you can understand. If you can’t understand anything, what’s the point? For people who are somewhat new to Christianity, I tend to recommend the New Living Translation (NLT) as a great starting point.

I used to advise people to rely more on translations that were formulated by a committee rather than by just one person. There is a common assumption that there is an inherent weakness when the translation work is being done by one person. As the argument goes, when the work of translation is undertaken by a committee of respected scholars, there is a natural system of checks and balances that helps prevent one’s own bias or personal convictions from being sneaked into the text. On the other hand, when one is doing the work alone, the text is much more vulnerable to distortion.

However, I have since come to understand that committees can also be biased and slow to adopt fresh thinking. While a committee structure does create internal accountability, it does not eliminate bias; it simply redistributes it. Committees are composed of individuals who often share similar academic training, theological commitments, and institutional affiliations. In some cases, the very process that guards against eccentric interpretation can also produce a kind of intellectual inertia. When consensus is required for progress, the safest or most traditional rendering may be favored over a potentially more accurate but less familiar one.

In the end, every translation reflects careful scholarship, difficult decisions, and a sincere effort to bridge ancient words and modern ears. That reality shouldn’t scare us—it should humble us and make us grateful. Instead of fueling suspicion, let it fuel confidence: we have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to manuscripts, scholarship, and faithful translations. So pick up a Bible you can understand, read it deeply, compare it thoughtfully, and let it shape you. The goal is to know Christ, and the Bible’s task it to reveal him to you.

(Note: I posted a version of this article on my website several years ago. I’ve revised and adapted it to include updated data and to better reflect my current perspective.)

The Day Aquinas Stopped Writing

Christian history, Theology

Near the top of the list of the most influential Christian theologians in history is Thomas Aquinas. His writings form the cornerstone of Roman Catholic theology and have exerted a lasting impact not only on Christian thought but also on the fields of ethics, metaphysics, and natural law.

In his Summa Theologica—which he never completed—Aquinas created one of the most far-reaching theological works in history. He harmonized divine revelation and human reason through Scripture, tradition, and Aristotelian thought, articulating a comprehensive vision of Christian doctrine.

Simply put, the magnitude of Aquinas’ theological legacy is often regarded as second only to Augustine of Hippo in the history of Western Christianity.

But in the final year of his life, around the age of 48, Aquinas was rocked by an extraordinary, life-altering experience. On December 6, 1273, Thomas attended Mass, as he did every day. But during the eucharistic service he was seized by an unexpected mystical encounter so powerful that he could neither describe it nor resume his scholarly pursuits. We do not know the precise content of Aquinas’s experience. Sources describe it as a vision or revelation during Mass, but Aquinas himself never detailed it.

But from that day forward, he stopped teaching.

He stopped writing.

His great tome, Summa Theologica, would go unfinished.

People close to Thomas immediately noticed a profound change. They were concerned about him. His dear friend and confidante, Reginald of Piperno, asked him, “Father, how can you want to stop such a great work?” Thomas merely replied that he could no longer continue writing. Reginald assumed that perhaps he was physically or mentally exhausted. He probed further. Again, Thomas replied, “Reginald, I can write no more.” But then he explained, “All that I have hitherto written seems to me nothing but straw.”

Thomas withdrew into silence. Later, during a visit to his sister, the difference in him was unmistakable. Turning to Reginald, she anxiously asked what had shaken her beloved brother so deeply.

This time Thomas elaborated further, “All that I have written seems to me nothing but straw . . . compared to what I have seen and what has been revealed to me.”

A short while later, on March 7, 1274, Thomas Aquinas would pass away.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about this anecdote from Aquinas’ life. No matter how profound our scholarship, the divine cannot be fully captured in words. Yes, we cannot help but theologize. As incomprehensible as God is, we must find ways to conceptualize thoughts and articulate ideas if we are to enter into this relationship. Therefore, theology is not only necessary; it is unavoidable for those who wish to engage with God. So we do our best.

But let us not kid ourselves. Much of what we claim to know, we know only in part. We construct our systems, our doctrines, our statements of faith—and we must. Yet no matter how true those statements may be (and there is no record of Aquinas repudiating his earlier work), they remain words spoken about the Source of all that is, seen and unseen. The ever-expanding universe itself bears witness to this truth: God is immeasurably vast, and our belief statements are, by comparison, astonishingly puny.

Over the last few centuries, discoveries in cosmology, geology, biology, and other disciplines have burst old theological wineskins. And ready or not, there will likely be more Copernican-like revolutions in the centuries to come.

But among the theologically-minded, the wise and humble are open and flexible. They stand upon our creedal foundations while speaking slowly and thoughtfully about the divine mysteries.

Those who speak of sacred truths with flippancy, as if all were self-evident and trivial, profane what is most holy. Glib, unreflective certitude desecrates the sacred.

Some of the most spiritually hollow words appear in formulaic discipleship curricula, shallow worship songs, or the pages of popular Christian bestsellers. If Thomas Aquinas looked back upon his prior work as nothing but straw, I’m not sure what language could adequately describe these (actually I am, but I’d rather keep this piece PG-rated).

When we truly encounter the God who is ultimate transcendence, like Thomas Aquinas we cannot help but lay our ink pens down (or put our phones away), and to be still and behold. And we’ll know we are on the right track when our thinking and our conversation are infused with plenty of wonder, mystery, and awe—an awakening that comes from what we most need: profound encounters with Christ that leave us mystified.