Next, subheading: "Spirit or Spirit?" meaning capitalized SPIRIT or lowercase SPIRIT. Notice how the New American Standard translates the passage from Romans 8:4-6: "In order that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit" (capitalized). "For those who are according to the flesh, set their minds on the things of the flesh; but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.
For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace." All those mentionings of Spirit were capitalized. As you notice, the New American Standard translators interpreted Paul to be contrasting the flesh with the Holy Spirit, and they may be correct. At the same time, Paul may have been talking about our human spirit contrasting our flesh to our spirit. If that's what Paul meant, then the message of Romans is considerably different than what the Reformers preached.
One of Luther's classic texts was Romans 7:18: "For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh." Is Paul saying that nothing good dwells in a human being, as Luther interpreted it? Or is he saying that nothing good dwells in our flesh, as contrasted with our spirit? This is not merely some technical triviality. As I said, some of the basic doctrines of the Reformation turn on whether some of these verses are saying Spirit or Spirit.
The word "spirit" can even take on a third meaning: "But now we have been released from the law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter" (Romans 7:6). That translation from the New American Standard interprets Paul to be contrasting the oldness of the letter with the newness of the Holy Spirit.
But perhaps Paul was contrasting the oldness of the literal letter of the law with the newness of the Spirit of the law—quite a different meaning—yet either rendition is linguistically correct. The point here is not to detour into a discussion of theology. Rather, I'm illustrating the fallacy of our saying that we rely on the Bible alone. We have no choice but to add something to the Bible. If nothing else, we must add an interpretation of how to translate the Greek.
The issue of capitalization is not the only interpretive problem in translating ancient Greek. The Greek of the New Testament also had no commas or quotation marks, so the translator has to interpret where to place commas and quotation marks. I know only too well as an attorney how the placement of a comma can significantly change the meaning of a sentence. I'm not bringing up all these things in order to undermine your confidence in the Scriptures.
Rather, I want your confidence to be based on truth and sound reasoning, not on blindness. Our Bible translations need to read the way the Apostles would have intended them to read. Next subheading: "An early church translation?" Once again, we find ourselves back at a familiar juncture in the road. Should we rely upon the historic understandings of the early Christians when we translate the New Testament, or should we rely upon our own understandings?
How can we even evaluate how scriptural or unscriptural the early Christian teachings were until we translate Scripture the way they were understanding it? There have been over 50 different translations made of the New Testament into English. Yet not one of these translations has attempted to translate the Greek the way the early Christians understood it. But what better place is there to go for historic evidence of how the New Testament terms were used and understood by the people of that time period?
Do we really think we understand the informal Greek of the New Testament better than the second-century Christians? Remember, for most of them, plain Greek was their everyday language. Wouldn't common sense dictate that when the Greek text can be translated in more than one way—such as Spirit versus Spirit, meaning one capitalized and the other not—we should lean heavily on their understandings of what the Bible writers were saying, rather than our own?
After all, some of them had the opportunity to ask Paul for clarification. In short, there is simply no way to take just the Bible as our sole source of authority. Out of sheer necessity, we all add tradition and translational interpretation to the bare letter of Scripture. Doesn't common sense dictate that we should go to the historic record for our tradition and translations? Still, you may have some sincere questions about these early Christian writings before taking the plunge.
Let's look at some of the questions I'm asked most frequently.