Formal equivalence tends to emphasize fidelity to the lexical details and grammatical structure of the original language while dynamic equivalence tends to favor the language into which the text is being translated toward a more natural rendering for the hearer or reader. In this case, dynamic equivalence favors the readability of the translation is more important than the preservation of the original grammatical structure (favored by the formal equivalence).
Though we tend to love dynamic equivalence as a means of rendering a text of one language into our own vernacular, this kind of translation is inherently short lived and becomes quickly dated. What might be the modern equivalent for this moment is, over time, no longer able to communicate as well -- especially over a decade or more. Language is not static and words and their usage -- even grammar -- evolves. Frequent updating, however, robs the people of the familiar and ends up distancing them from that which it seeks to communicate.
It is in vogue today only because our technology makes such constant updating possible and affordable. In previous eras when printed books and memorization were required for consistency, such change was too great a cost to be paid for relevance. For this reason a formal or literary style was preferred for Scripture and liturgical texts over slang (so much more subject to change in meaning than the formal). The more stunted language of a more literal translation is actually more enduring both in accessibility for the reader or hearer and in terms of meaning.
Take for example the use of Christian in the Creed. This was not a Lutheran invention but predated the Reformation. It was an example of dynamic equivalence. Catholic was a word difficult to translate and the word Christian was intended as a synonym for catholicum. Now, long removed from the original usage, the word Christian in the creed has become antagonistic toward the original it was intended to translate (so much so that a comment on a post on this blog once insisted that the commenter would rather be Christian than catholic. This is a statement that would undoubtedly cause shock and consternation to the one who originally thought he was doing the reader or hearer a favor by proposing the change form a word more difficult to render in any vernacular than Christian. Now that person, whoever he was, never intended to rewrite the creed -- no user of dynamic equivalence admits to rewriting the text being translated. It is a fluid process of many choices and judgments. Yet the more we choose dynamic equivalence, the more distant we actually are from the original text. Roman Catholics knew this instinctively when the Novus Ordo was first used some 40+ years ago and yet we tend to be as in love with the lingo of the moment as we do the moment itself. Hence the resistance among some Roman Catholics to return to a more formal equivalence used in the 2010 Mass translations. As many have noted, nowhere is the weakness of the sense translation over the word for word rendering of the text than in the collects. Once so eloquent and majestic, the prayer of the day became a poster child for the 1960s and 1970s that eventually became a joke to the Roman Mass several generations later.
In other words, readability is not necessarily a priority for translations of Scripture or the liturgy which are meant to be heard and sung over many generations and put to memory by young and old. Lutherans should not lose sight of this truth.
20 comments:
”Take for example the use of Christian in the Creed. This was not a Lutheran invention but predated the Reformation.”
For Lutherans, the words, “catholicam” and “christliche” are not a distinction between formal and dynamic equivalence, but rather a confessional equivalence, as previously discussed on PM in a July 16, 2014, post and a July 21, 2014, post.
The holy Christian Church = the holy catholic Church = the invisible Church = all true believers in Christ. As Luther noted in the Smalcald Articles:
Denn es weiss, Gott Lob, ein Kind von sieben Jahren, was die Kirche sei, nämlich die heiligen Gläubigen und die Schäflein, die ihres Hirten Stimme hören. Denn also beten die Kinder: "Ich glaube eine heilige christliche Kirche."
Nam (Deo sit gratia) puer septem annorum novit hodie, quid sit ecclesia, nempe credentes, sancti oviculae audientes vocem pastoris sui. Sic enim orant oueri: “Credo sanctum ecclesiam catholicam sive Christianam.
"For, thank God, [to-day] a child seven years old knows what the Church is, namely, the holy believers and lambs who hear the voice of their Shepherd. For the children pray thus: I believe in one holy [catholic or] Christian Church."
”Now, long removed from the original usage, the word Christian in the creed has become antagonistic toward the original it was intended to translate (so much so that a comment on a post on this blog once insisted that the commenter would rather be Christian than catholic.”
The denigration of one word over the other (or vice versa) is suggestive of a heterodox agenda.
I've heard this claim before that the word Christliche replaced catholicam in the Creed BEFORE the Reformation, but I've never seen any evidence especially since the Creed would have been recited in Latin anyway and there have been no versions (at least none that I have ever seen) of a Latin creed published with the word Christianum. So, what is the evidence that there were German versions of the creed that were widely used employing the Christliche.
Dr Strickert,
There is nothing in Dr Luther's famous "seven year old child" dictum that refers to an "invisible Church". Since seven year old children are not given to abstract thought, it is not likely that the "holy believers and lambs" are anyone other than the real, concrete, flesh-and-blood Christians whom the child sees about him in the worshiping assembly. The burden of this paragraph in the articles is not to assert that the Church is invisible (which she is not, and which our Confessions never teach that she is), but to identify the Church with the whole people of God, not the clergy and hierarchs alone.
Chris, your ability to read the thought patterns of seven-year-olds from half a millennium ago is amazing. Did you come by this naturally or is this a skill you acquired through training?
In any case the three Creeds are clear on what the Church is, as are the Lutheran Confessions. This has been confirmed by Lutherans since then.
Luther noted (Comment on Galatians 5:19, Halle Edition, 8:2745): "Therefore we rightly confess in the Creed and say: 'I believe a holy Christian Church.' For it is invisible and lives in the Spirit at a place to which no one can come."
And Martin Chemnitz stated (Loci theologici, part 3, p.117): "The true and holy church of the elect nevertheless remains invisible."
Also, John Gerhard declared (Loci thologici, "De ecclesi", par. 151): "When we say: 'I believe one holy Christian church,' the word 'believe' shows clearly that we speak of the invisible church, which is proved also by the added adjective 'holy.'"
C.F.W. Walther noted in his Thesis I on the Church: "The church in the proper sense of the word is invisible."
In his 1889 essay, "The Distinction between Orthodox and Heterodox Churches", Franz Pieper stated his Thesis I: "Every man's first and principal concern should be, that he belong to the Communion of Saints, that is, to the Invisible Church."
The Brief Statement of the Doctrinal Position of the Missouri Synod (1932) states the position that "the Christian Church on earth is invisible till Judgment Day, Col. 3:3,4."
John Theodore Mueller, Christian Dogmatics (CPH, St. Louis, 1934, p. 547) stated: "All who affirm that the Church is either wholly (papists) or partly (modern Lutheran theologians) visible destroy the Scriptural concept of the Church and change it from a communion of believers to an 'outward polity of the good and the wicked'.”
Bjarne W. Teigen, in "The Church in the New Testament, Luther, and the Lutheran Confessions" (Concordia Theological Quarterly, Vol. 42:4, Oct. 1978, p. 389) states: "[I]t may be quickly discerned that the terms 'invisible' and 'visible' are not used in the Book of Concord, but they are found among the later dogmaticians. It is the position of this paper that the dogmaticians, the Book of Concord, and the Luther are in doctrinal agreement on this point despite differing terminology."
Between 1851 and 2001 the Missouri Synod in convention has passed fifteen doctrinal resolutions that specifically refer to the church in the proper sense as invisible, deny that the church in the proper sense is visible, or adopt theses or statements that make the same statements about the Church being invisible.
And, of course, Jesus said: “The kingdom of God does not come visibly, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you”. (Luke 17:20-21)
"The holy Christian Church = the holy catholic Church = the invisible Church = all true believers in Christ. As Luther noted in the Smalcald Articles ..."
That may be what it means for Lutherans, but is that what it meant for those who framed the Creed(s)?
Dr Strickert,
Chris, your ability to read the thought patterns of seven-year-olds from half a millennium ago is amazing. Did you come by this naturally or is this a skill you acquired through training?
If the characteristic pattern of intellectual development in children has significantly changed since the sixteenth century, then Dr Luther's remark can have no value for us, since we would not then share his frame of reference.
As for the rest of your comment, none of your citations is from the authoritative Lutheran Confessions. The Confessions characterize the Church as being the congregation of saints, in which the Gospel is rightly taught and the Sacraments are rightly administered. An "invisible" congregation cannot teach the Gospel nor administer the sacraments; only a visible body may do so. I therefore conclude that the Church is a visible body.
If Luther, Chemnitz, Gerhard, Walther, Pieper, Teigen, Mueller, and the Missouri Synod in convention teach otherwise, then they are in error. I have the Scriptures, the Fathers, the Councils, and the Lutheran Confessions to back me up.
William Tighe: "That may be what it means for Lutherans, but is that what it meant for those who framed the Creed(s)?"
That is a red herring question since what Lutheran confess is by definition what it means for Lutherans.
Chris Jones: "As for the rest of your comment, none of your citations is from the authoritative Lutheran Confessions."
No one has claimed the cited quotes were. However the quotes from the various Lutheran theologians are congruent, as expected, with the doctrine of the Lutheran Confessions that the Church is invisible.
It is peculiar that one who claims to know the mind of a 7-year-old from 5 centuries ago, seems to choke on the stated positions of Martin Luther, Martin Chemnitz, John Gerhard, C.F.W. Walther, Franz Pieper, J.T. Mueller, Bjarne W. Teigen, not to mention the Spirit-inspired recording of the words of our Savior.
I'm curious as to just how many seven-year-olds Mr. Vehse has been around. As the father of four, I've been around quite a few, my own and their friends, and I think Mr. Jones is quite accurate about the ability of seven-year-olds to think in abstraction. There may, of course, be exceptions, but Mr. Jones needn't know the mind of any give seven-year-old in particular to understand that they would understand the concept of an invisible church as being the church as opposed to being the folks with whom they worship.
As to Mr. Vehse's response to Mr. Tighe, it matters greatly what the authors of the Creed meant. If what Lutherans mean when they confess the words of the Creed is not what the framers meant then they are confessing a different Creed, a Creed which only came into existence during the Reformation.
GKL
Chris Jones referred to the words in AC.VII, but left out AC.VIII: Although the Church properly is the congregation of saints and true believers, nevertheless, since in this life many hypocrites and evil persons are mingled therewith, it is lawful to use Sacraments administered by evil men, according to the saying of Christ...
And Melanchthon makes the importance of VIII clear in his Apology: The Seventh Article of our Confession, in which we said that the Church is the congregation of saints, they have condemned, and have added a long disquisition, that the wicked are not to be separated from the Church since John has compared the Church to a threshing-floor on which wheat and chaff are heaped together... For this reason we have added the Eighth Article... [The Christian Church consists not alone in fellowship of outward signs, but it consists especially in inward communion of eternal blessings in the heart, as of the Holy Ghost, of faith, of the fear and love of God]; which fellowship nevertheless has outward marks so that it can be recognized, namely, the pure doctrine of the Gospel, and the administration of the Sacraments in accordance with the Gospel of Christ. [Namely, where God's Word is pure, and the Sacraments are administered in conformity with the same, there certainly is the Church, and there are Christians.] And this Church alone is called the body of Christ, which Christ renews [Christ is its Head, and] sanctifies and governs by His Spirit, as Paul testifies, Eph. 1:22 sq., when he says: And gave Him to be the Head over all things to the Church, which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.
And it [AC.VII/VIII] says Church Catholic, in order that we may not understand the Church to be an outward government of certain nations [that the Church is like any other external polity, bound to this or that land, kingdom, or nation, as the Pope of Rome will say], but rather men scattered throughout the whole world [here and there in the world, from the rising to the setting of the sun], who agree concerning the Gospel, and have the same Christ, the same Holy Ghost, and the same Sacraments, whether they have the same or different human traditions. And the gloss upon the Decrees says that the Church in its wide sense embraces good and evil; likewise, that the wicked are in the Church only in name, not in fact; but that the good are in the Church both in fact and in name.
If the Church, which is truly the kingdom of Christ, is distinguished from the kingdom of the devil, it follows necessarily that the wicked, since they are in the kingdom of the devil, are not the Church; although in this life, because the kingdom of Christ has not yet been revealed; they are mingled with the Church, and hold offices [as teachers, and other offices] in the Church.
We are speaking not of an imaginary Church, which is to be found nowhere; but we say and know certainly that this Church, wherein saints live, is and abides truly upon earth; namely, that some of God's children are here and there in all the world, in various kingdoms, islands, lands, and cities, from the rising of the sun to its setting, who have truly learned to know Christ and His Gospel.] And we add the marks: the pure doctrine of the Gospel [the ministry or the Gospel] and the Sacraments.
[Emphasis added]
GKL: I'm curious as to just how many seven-year-olds Mr. Vehse has been around.
I have been around a number of seven-year-olds who are able to say along with their parents in church during the Apostles or Nicene Creed, "I believe in one holy [catholic or] Christian Church."
GKL: If what Lutherans mean when they confess the words of the Creed is not what the framers meant then they are confessing a different Creed, a Creed which only came into existence during the Reformation.
Again, this question is a red herring. It is a diversion down a path that is not Lutheran.
A Lutheran is a person who holds an unconditional subscription to the Lutheran Confessions as a true and unadulterated statement and exposition of the Word of God. This means that the Lutheran understanding of the doctrine of the invisible church exposited in the Creeds and the Lutheran Symbols is a correct explanation of the truth of God's Word, the Holy Bible. If a Lutheran were to accept the premise of the question as valid and true, he would no longer be Lutheran, but rather a Lufauxran.
Furthermore, the Roman Church did reject the Lutheran doctrine of the invisible Church as stated in AC.VII and VIII, and it was answered in the Apology VII/VIII.
It is true, of course, that the apparent membership of the Church includes both true Christians and false Christians (that is, unbelievers who are members of the Church only outwardly, not truly). But this means only that a given individual's membership in the true Church is invisible, not that the Church herself is invisible. The Church, in her divinely-appointed mission of proclaiming the Gospel and administering the sacraments, is always visible. Even if some of her pastors are themselves inwardly unbelievers (and therefore not true members of the Church), yet the public ministry of Word and Sacrament that they perform remain reliable and true means of grace.
Chris Jones: But this means only that a given individual's membership in the true Church is invisible, not that the Church herself is invisible. The Church, in her divinely-appointed mission of proclaiming the Gospel and administering the sacraments, is always visible.
You can keep your Romish/Lufauxran/Loehe opinion. I'm staying with the confessional Lutheran doctrine.
Dynamic equivalence seems like an effort to modernize the meanings of antiquated words by looking at cultural language usage and changes in terms evolving over time, and then to update translations based on contemporary usage. I have a problem with this because the process of literal redefinitions will never end. In time, the original meanings are lost. I am unashamedly a KJV and NKVJ fan, and as I do not like the modern versions and interpretations of the Bible and the Creeds, I will stick with it to the end of my life.
As for Catholic vs. Christian, I don't think this was the whole point of this post. When it comes to dynamic equivalence and it's short-lived relevance, let us cogitate on the beatnik Bible. Can you dig it?
"Though we tend to love dynamic equivalence as a means of rendering a text of one language into our own vernacular, this kind of translation is inherently short lived and becomes quickly dated. What might be the modern equivalent for this moment is, over time, no longer able to communicate as well -- especially over a decade or more....
"Take for example the use of Christian in the Creed. This was not a Lutheran invention but predated the Reformation. It was an example of dynamic equivalence."
We are preparing to celebrate the 500th anniversary of a Reformation which resulted in confessional documents, to which, even today, 9,000 individual members and 6,000 congregational members of the Missouri Synod unconditionally subscribe, which refute any claim that using christlich in place of catholicam is an example of "dynamic equivalence."
"Those who want to anticipate the perfection – make the invisible visible – are chiliasts."
- Hermann Sasse (taken from a larger excerpt posted on Pesident Matthew Harrison's Mercy Journeys)
I often comment when I encounter a translator declining to translate certain words. Simply plopping a Greek or a Latin word into English is just not a real translation. It sidesteps the work of translation and passes along the job of translation to readers.
Katholikos is just such a word, and I was glad to see Pastor Peters' acknowledgement of the difficulty of translating katholikos into English. Most people make a simple translation of "universal," which simply moves the word from Greek to Latin, still not English, and not a way that Greeks used the word. They have the very useful word "ekumenos" for universal.
Pastor Peters is correct, it is very hard to translate the Greek word katholikos into English. My best guess is that the early church Greeks meant the "common" faith when they used it, to show opposition to sectarianism.
The katholikon is the common room in a Greek monastery. All the other rooms have peculiar uses and are assigned to particular persons, but the common room is common to all.
Another idea is whole, what is true everywhere and at all time. And how about the idea of unity, united together in teachings and actions.
Paraphrasing the creed: I believe in one, set apart, whole (unified), apostolic (based on those specifically sent out by Christ himself) assembly.
I believe the fathers at Nicea and Constantinople in the 4th Century meant something like "the whole, that walks together" church, and not those schizmatics, especially the Arians who do not walk together with us. They thought they said that with the simple Greek word, katholikos.
Notice also our habit of referring to the epistles that were not addressed to a particular church, as the catholic, or general epistles. These epistles are the letters common to the whole church, sent to the whole, not just to one congregation in one place at one time. General, common, meant for all.
In essence, the process of recognizing the canon (list) of scripture, turned all the books of the New Testament into common books for the whole church. Even though they may have been initially addressed to one congregation at a particular place, at a particular time, now they are all catholic.
Also notice that when the creed was translated into Latin, the translators declined to translate katholikos, but simply transliterated it, leaving the work of translation to the readers of all places and all times. The Germans when turning the creed into German, did not translate the word either, but paraphrased it with the word Christian.
Early Lutheran liturgies used the texts of German language hymns to paraphrase the Latin of the liturgy. The Lutheran choir sang the credo in Latin (still using that Greek word), then directly after, the congregation sang the German paraphrase of the creed in a hymn that was often by Luther himself, Wir glauben all.
As someone else on this thread has pointed out, the simple German translation of the creed was not the common (oooh, there's that word again) way that Lutherans would have encountered the creed in worship. And in Luther's catechism, we encounter the Apostles Creed, a whole other issue of what is and isn't a catholic thing.
Wir glauben an den Heil'gen Geist,
We believe in the Holy Ghost,
Gott mit Vater und dem Sohne,
God with the Father and the Son,
Der aller Bloeden Troester heisst
Who is called the Comforter by all simple folk (stupids?)
Und mit Gaben zieret schoene,
And with gifts beautifully adornes,
Die ganz' Christenheit auf Erden
The whole of Christendom on Earth
Haelt in einem Sinn gar eben;
Holds in one mind completely;
Hier all' Suend' vergeben werden,
Here all sin is forgiven,
Das Fleisch soll auch wieder leben.
The flesh shall also live again.
Nach diesem Elend ist bereit
Uns ein Leben in Evigkeit.
After this misery, a life is prepared for us in eternity.
I'm looking for catholic notions in the 3rd verse of Luther's German version of Wir glauben all'. I find, the whole of Christendom he holds/keeps in one mind. That's a catholic notion.
Now, if I could just find that in the creed. Paraphrases, rats, one might as well just make up stuff.
Not in the Credo, but is in the explanation of the 3rd Article in the catechism: even as he calls gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith ... whole of Christendom, holds in one mind. Yeah, that's a catholic notion.
From the SC: "gleichwie er die ganze Christenheit auf Erden beruft, sammelt, erleuchtet, heiligt und bei Jesus Christus erhält im rechten, einigen Glauben; in welcher Christenheit er mir und allen Gläubigen täglich alle Sünden reichlich vergibt " (even as He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith; in which Christian Church He forgives daily and richly all sins to me and all believers)
Again, clearly, Luther along with the Evangelical Lutheran Church confess here that the "eine heilige, christliche Kirche" (Latin: "sanctum ecclesiam catholicam") in the Apostles Creed refers to the invisible Church.
LMMV (Lufauxran mileage may vary)
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