I was about to write something about how evangelical authors (I was looking particularly at Chris Wright, in his “Mission of God”) do not take canon formation seriously, because if they did, then Chicago-inerrancy gets a bit fuzzy and then they realise they don’t have a magisterium. All die, oh the embarrassment.

And then along came this quote, which is superb:

The NIV is a wonderful example of the “say one thing, do another” dynamic I see necessary for this hermeneutic to sustain itself.

Say: We are listening to the Bible. Our interpretations come from the plain sense of the text. We are under the authority of the text and not letting the Church have a higher authority.

Do: Let’s translate “form of God” as “very nature God” so the full divinity of Christ is not in question (Phil. 2:6)–is “shape” really the same as “very nature”?! Let’s translate “firstborn of creation” with “firstborn over creation” (Col. 1:15) so there is no question of whether Jesus is created or not. Let’s add a word out of nowhere to “did not give” so it reads “did not just give” (Jer. 7:22), even though there is no such word in the Hebrew–we don’t want to leave any question about whether Leviticus was written at the time of the exodus. Let’s add another word out of the blue so that “to the dead” reads “to those now dead” so there is no room for the dead being saved (1 Pet. 4:6)–Protestants don’t believe such Catholic ideas. Again, let’s add another word that isn’t there in the original so that “is not concerned” reads “is not just concerned” so we give no room for allegorical interpretation in 1 Cor 9:9-10.

Most of these moves have no clear basis in the text and seems in each case to be motivated overwhelmingly to maintain the perspective of the neo-evangelical tradition, thus deconstructing the fundamental claims of this hermeneutic.

The situation is not merely restricted to Bible translation - but Bible translation is a very obvious example of a situation where the church has power over the Scriptures, and then pretends that it doesn’t!

You know you want to read the rest.