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Category Archives: Worship

Old music and new translations

10 Aug

From time to time, I have encountered this argument: “How can you be an advocate of 300 year old church music and 20 year old Bible versions at the same time? If you’re going to insist that we all love Isaac Watts, wouldn’t it be more consistent for you to prefer the King James Version?” Some ask the question sincerely; others (apparently) seem to think that they have found a sort of gotcha question that should undermine my advocacy of conservatism in worship.

I do favor modern translations. At Huron Baptist Church, the church of which I am a member, we use the New International Version as our standard translation. The NIV, NASB, and ESV would all be live options for me if I were planting a church. In fact, I am more likely to use any of those three before I would use the King James, both for personal study and corporate reading.

I am also in favor of (mostly) old music; do note that my advocacy of old music is not simply because it is old. I will expand on this idea shortly.

Are my positions on these two issues sustainable? Or am I being self-referentially incoherent?

I believe that my positions are not incompatible, and my defense is this: Bible translations and church music pursue the chief end of man (the glory of God) by different means.

Church music does (at least) two things: it allows us to express worship to God in a way that engages ordinate affections, and it also instructs the church as to what affections are appropriate in worship. Hymnody is always art; it incorporates both music and poetry. I argue that the sort of affections that are legitimate for worship are best expressed in the church’s traditional hymnody, and that the vast majority of music produced by the past 150 years of the American Christianity tends to debase the affections; it is thus unsuitable for worship.

Bible translations, however, have a different purpose than hymns. The purpose of a translation of the Bible is to communicate, as accurately as possible, the meaning of the original language of Scripture in the receptor language. Good translation is less about the affections, and more about the intellect; translation is largely about the communication of true propositions.

I must concede some overlap between translation and hymnody, in that good translation does have an emotive or affectional aspect. In other words, the difference between a good translation and a great one is that the best translation will not only choose words that communicate the meaning of the original document, but will also attempt to communicate its emphasis, style, and feeling. In a great Bible translation, then, Amos won’t sound like Luke, and the David won’t sound like Paul. They are different writers, and the writings of each should feel different.

Furthermore, the affective aspect of translation is very important in Bible translation. We are all familiar with attempts to translate the Bible for this or that sub-culture, often with devastatingly irrevent consequences. I have one such attempt on my shelf. Thus, I do not believe that reverence in wording is unimportant in evaluating Bible translation; it is (barring such brutalities) the secondary concern of the translator.

But for the most part (particularly in the non-poetic genres of the Bible), the key duty of the translator is to communicate meaning. If this is true, the primary standard for evaluating a translation is its success in allowing a modern reader to grasp the meaning of the original documents. I would argue that the King James, despite its beautiful language, often substantially impedes modern readers from understanding the meaning of the text. Thus, as a translation of the Bible, it is inferior to modern translations with reference to the very purpose of translation.

Some might still think me indefensible; please leave your comments below. I’m interested in the interaction.

 
7 Comments

Posted by on August 10, 2009 in Theology, Worship

 

“We know exactly what you mean,” part 2

30 Jul

I was hoping to get a bit more feedback on my original post in this series; likely, I was too vague to make comment worthwhile.

I will thus be more direct. I am involved regularly in discussions about what is right and reverent in worship. I have participated in such discussions often enough to have learned several things. First, very rarely is either party intending to listen. Second, I believe that what a person finds plausible in such discussions in based almost entirely on his experiences. This is true especially when one person is attempting to point to distinctions that the other person cannot see.

A commenter on the first post understood this correctly. How would you explain “what it is like to see red” to someone who is colorblind? Or, to make things more challenging, how would you explain how “what it is like to see red” differs from “what it is like to see green”? I think it is possible that we could employ analogies that my be helpful; the reality is, however, that the person will not truly grasp the distinction between these “what it is likes” until he actually experiences the difference himself.

This means, of course, that if our colorblind friend is stubbornly incredulous about the very existence of color (and therefore of color distinctions), there is almost nothing that we can offer him that he would accept as evidence for that distinction.

I suggest, then, that often, those who refuse to understand a distinction between various types of loves, or between the affections and the passions, are not being stubborn when they deny the conservative position on these topics. Instead, they are accurately reporting their understanding: they don’t see the difference.

Can they be made to see the difference? We shall continue this discussion (or monologue).

 
9 Comments

Posted by on July 30, 2009 in Worship

 

“We know exactly what you mean!”

29 Jul

I am, as yet, incapable of writing fiction; any attempt by me to write dialogue would sound cheap. Perhaps, post-dissertation, I will practice this art.

With that disclaimer, then, I want to offer you a story. Let us picture two couples: one couple is older, perhaps approaching their golden anniversary. The other couple has been dating for two weeks—they’re both in eighth grade.

The older couple says (as older couples sometimes do): “As the years have passed, our love for one another has grown deeper and richer.”

The junior highers reply immediately, “Oh, we know exactly what you mean! We feel the same way about one another!”

I think we would all agree that what the junior highers are experiencing—particularly in their feelings for one another—bears little relation to what the older couple is experiencing. Here’s my question (and I’ll tip my hand, for those not picking up on this: it’s a loaded question that has implications for other discussions): how (specifically) do you go about convincing the junior highers that their experience isn’t the same as the older couple?

 
3 Comments

Posted by on July 29, 2009 in Worship

 
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