The Inclusive Debate, a plea for realism
By Don Carson
IVP. 221 pages. £9.99
ISBN 0 85111 584 5
Once the angel at heaven's gate responded to a knock and asked: 'Who is there?' Came the reply: 'It is I'. Going off to find St. Peter the angel told him there was someone waiting to come in. 'Who is it?' said Peter. 'I do not know, but he is certainly a teacher'.
There is an Italian saying to which Carson introduces us: 'Traddutore, Traditore.' 'Translators, Traitors.' The very fact that we do not get the original pun in translation tells the story.
Here we have the two thrusts of Don Carson's valuable book The Inclusive Debate, a plea for realism published by IVP at £9.99. Anyone wishing to learn of the problems of translation will enjoy and profit by reading this book.
Carson shows on the one hand that translation between two languages is difficult at best (p.150) and, on the other, that languages change. Only teachers say: 'It is I.' Acceptable English can now be: 'It's me.' And it is the translators who are standing in the need of prayer.
Not for experts
'Who is this book for?' I enquired before offering to review it. In the introduction, Carson says: 'This book is not for experts.' But the ordinary reader needs to have his wits about him. There are parts that he can skim because the drift of the book is clear. But if he is to get the best out of it, he will need bookmarks and a notebook. Carson actually tells us at one point to keep our finger in chapter 2 to refer to as he deals with individual numbered points. But the effort is worthwhile. The index is not extensive and it may help you to know that definitions of 'referent' and 'gloss' are given on page 75.
The book originally stems from the controversy that arose when the NIV Committee produced the NIVI which used more inclusive language. Some of the argument washed over the Atlantic as UCCF was about to use the NIVI to give students in UK universities.
Two sides
We only got the tail-end of 'Hurricane NIV' altering the weather for a bit. America, and in particular the publisher, Zondervan, got the full blast. Committees sat, papers were published. One scholar was forced to resign from his college, apparently.
The two sides in the argument can be called egalitarians and complementarians. Carson identifies himself as one of the latter but striving to see justice done to the inclusive translation. It therefore becomes important that you also know the background of the reviewer to be aware of his preconceptions. I am old enough to be a traditionalist. But I have a Moffatt bought long ago, and many other versions since then. When I go on holiday, I can detect the way the sermons are likely to go by the Bibles in the pews, be they KJV Revised, NIV, NEB or the GNB. Carson has a little spectrum of them on page 69 and pleads that we talk about the more formal and the more fluid, to avoid the polemic polarity of paraphrastic. I like the formality of the RV with all its references for Bible study by myself, but lend the more fluid GNB to others at the appropriate moment.
Carson lays a solid foundation for his position by setting out the problems of translations from a donor language to a recipient language. He sets out the principles of the two sides and shows us how both have their weaknesses. He deals with the principles and then applies them to some of the verses over which there has been the most controversy.
What is admirable is that he does not give an opinion based on a few proof texts, like those who when the RSV came out, looked up 1 John 2.2, found 'expiation' and did not buy it. His opinion is founded on solid and painstaking scholarship.
He is far too gracious to say 'a plague on both your houses'. He breathes throughout an eirenical spirit but, in effect, he says to various people what Oliver Cromwell said to the General Assembly: 'I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.'
King Canute?
The other side of his argument is on the dumbing down of English. We may firmly believe that 'man' is generic and the third person masculine pronoun is also generic, but English is changing and the tide is sweeping this view away. We may not like it but there it is, and we have to live with it. To quote Fowler (Fowler's Modern English Usage, third edition) under the heading he and she: 'From earliest times until about the 1960s, it was unquestionably acceptable to use the pronoun he (and him, himself, his) with indefinite reference to mean anyone, a person of either sex . . . One of the minor successes of the feminist campaign to dislodge sexist vocabulary from the language has been the displacement of 'he' after indefinite pronouns by 'he or she' . . . The problem is an old one, and various methods of averting the use of a backward referring 'he' have been in use over the centuries. The only change is that the process has been greatly accelerated in recent times.'
It is easy for Fowler to say that because he is not dealing with the much more explosive problem of fidelity to the Word of God. Incidentally, the story of King Canute really tells us that he was showing his foolish flattering courtiers that he did not control the ocean. King Canute was right to say he did not control the swell of the ocean and it is doubtful if we can control changes in the English language, however we might wish to do so. (I was interested, by the way, to see that Carson speaks of driving a tank through the weakness of an argument where my generation would have driven a coach and horses. So English really is changing.)
Be gracious
The implicit plea of this book is to be gracious to brothers and sisters with other views. Women and men can come to a saving knowledge of God when preached to even from the NIrV which I find terribly staccato, or even in French where the Trinity is feminine in form.
I have friends who have been in Senegal for 15 years, translating the NT into the Fula language. They tell me that there is only one gender in personal pronouns, but then there are lots of other problems. Our church has prayed for them for years. Perhaps we should have been praying for the Board of Zondervan as well.
It makes one realise what a marvellous translator and linguist Tyndale was. But I have just looked him up and he did not use propitiation in 1 John 2.2. He had many burdens to bear, but at least he did not have to submit his work to a committee.
John Marsh
