Confessions #2

Still in the introduction, the second thing that caught my attention was Chadwick's discussion of Augustine's first exposure to the Bible. Augustine was first led to pick up the Bible after reading Cicero's Hortensius in which Cicero taught that "happiness is not found in physical pleasures of luxurious food, drink, and sex, but in a dedication of the mind to the discovery of truth." Prompted to explore the foundation of true happiness as the "discovery of truth", Augustine was turned off by the language of the 200 year old Latin Bible he found. The language of the translation was so rough that it immediately offended the sensibilities of Augustine who was used to classic and skilled Latin of those like Cicero and Virgil. As Chadwick notes, "Augustine found that once he had put it down, it was hard to pick up again. Moreover, he was offended by the polygamy of Old Testament patriarchs and the different genealogies of Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke."
When I first read this I was again struck by the similarities in Augustine's reaction to the Bible and of the reactions of those in our own day. We are descendants of the Western culture that found its birth not long before Augustine's time, and we still suffer much of the shortsightedness and cross-cultural tension that Augustine did when he read the Bible for the first time. Although Augustine was much closer to the original setting of the New Testament than we are, his philosophical mindset and worldview was still far removed from the earthy aspect of Christianity and its roots in the world. He was not prepared to take into account the translational "gap" that had arisen over the 200 years of change and learning. He was also not prepared for the differences in genre and perspective that the Biblical authors used to communicate their religious realities and experience. The earthy and literary nature of the Jewish writings and worldview were different enough from the abstract and speculative reason of the Hellenistic philosophers to cause Augustine to stumble over the Scriptures. Yet, in time, by God's sovereign grace Augustine came back around to understand, appreciate, and believe the Scriptures and the God they presented.
All of this underscores the fact that we need fresh and current translations of the Scriptures that speak in the language and to the thought patterns of all different kinds of people groups that exist and will emerge in our time; we also need to be aware of the methods, customs, skills, symbols, aims, and worldview of the Biblical writers' over against our own cultures' methods, customs, skills, symbols, aims, and worldview when we read the Scriptures and let them speak to us; but finally we can trust in God's sovereign grace through all these efforts that He will work above and beyond our failures, inabilities, and carelessness to advance His kingdom and build His church. Soli deo gloria!