I wanted to repost this essay from Gary at Luther, Baptists, and Evangelicals because he makes an important point. Don't be cowed by church elites of any denomination spouting seminary learned superiority. Your English language bibles work quite well.
Greek
Why do Baptist always want to go to the Greek to understand the Bible? It is as if Baptists do not trust their English Bibles: "Sorry, hold on a minute, I need to check the original Greek before we can believe that God really loves the whole world as your English Bible seems to say in John 3:16...we can only know for sure if we understand and read ancient Greek."
When God promised to preserve his Word...did he really mean that he would only preserve it on 2,000 year old parchment and papyrus in ancient forms of Greek and Aramaic?? Did God really intend that the only people who could REALLY know what he had to say to mankind...would be ancient Greek-educated Baptist Churchmen?? Is the non-ancient-Greek- speaking layperson sitting in the pew supposed to just shut his English language Bible and sit at the feet of these Baptist Greek scholars to learn what God couldn't explain himself in plain, simple ENGLISH??
Do you REALLY believe that God intended for only Baptist, Greek-speaking Churchmen to understand the Gospel, the Word? Because that is really what you are saying, Pastor, because the Greek scholars of the Greek Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Lutheran Church, the Presbyterian Church, and the Methodist Church think that Baptist Greek scholar are all WET on the issue of whether the Bible supports infant baptism and mandatory immersion-only baptism!
How is it possible that ONLY Baptist Greek scholars truly understand ancient Greek, and the rest of the worlds Greed scholars completely bungle the translation of the New Testament. How is that REALLY possible? It defies common sense. And if I hear another Baptist start talking about how the Greek genitive case proves the Baptist position is correct, I swear I'm going to puke! Seriously, every time I get into a discussion about Biblical translation with a Baptist he starts in with the genitive case nonsense. If you want to understand the genitive case in a Greek document...I suggest you confer...not with a Baptist...but with a GREEK!
Instead of all this Greek nonsense, which Baptist seem to have a fixation upon, I suggest that every Christian layperson do this:
1. Obtain a copy of four different English language Bibles. Read one of these "problem passages" as Baptists and evangelicals refer to them, in each of these English translations.
2. God's true meaning of the passage will be plainly understandable after comparing these four English translations.
You do NOT need to read the ancient Greek text unless you want to delve into the study of ancient Greek sentence structure or some other nuance. God promised he would preserve his Word, and the English-speaking people of the world have had the Word of God IN ENGLISH since at least William Tyndale (1300"s??). Dear Baptists...PLEASE stop depending on the ancient texts to confuse Christian laypeople of God's simple, plain message of the Gospel!
Gary
Luther, Baptists, and Evangelicals
