Chapter 5: The Kingdom of Children. However, someone may object saying that Paul himself had been trained in the rabbinical schools. That is correct. The door to the kingdom is not barred to those who have an advanced education. God is able to use such people in His kingdom, but only if they are willing to humble themselves and come into the kingdom as a little child. To serve Christ, Paul had to largely discard most of his rabbinical training.
In fact, Paul had told the Corinthians, "And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God, for I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling, and my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God." 1 Corinthians 2:1-5. Unpolished Language of Scripture. The unbelieving Gentiles gave testimony to the truth of what Paul said. He did not write with persuasive words of human wisdom or with excellence of speech.
In the second century, when Christian writings made their way into the hands of the Romans, the Romans laughed at the humble diction used by Paul and the other New Testament writers. In fact, when I first read the disparaging things the unbelieving Romans said about the New Testament writings, I was surprised. Now, I have known ever since I was a teenager that the New Testament had been written in Koine Greek, common Greek, not classical Greek.
But I thought this was something more akin to American English versus British English. I didn't realize that to the ears of educated Gentiles, Koine Greek was simply poor diction, something unsuitable for serious literature. The early Christians never denied the fact that the New Testament was written in unpolished Greek. In his apology, Justin Martyr told the Romans, "Renouncing the error of your fathers, you should read the prophecies of the sacred writers," not expecting to find in them polished diction.
One of Justin Martyr's converts, a man named Tatian, frequently admitted, "I was led to put faith in the Scriptures by the unpretentious nature of the language." Origen defended the unpolished language of Scripture against some of Christianity's severest and ablest critics. He explained to them, "Our prophets, the apostles, and Jesus Himself were careful to adopt a style of speech that would not only convey the truth, but that would be suitable to gain over the multitude.
For if I may venture to say so, few have benefited from the beautiful and polished style of Plato and others who have written like him. It is easy indeed to observe that Plato was found only in the hands of those who professed to be literary men.
And again, we are not to imagine that a truth adorned with the graces of Grecian speech is necessarily better than the same one expressed in the more humble and unpretentious languages used by Jews and Christians." Origen writes further, "See then, if Plato and the wise men among the Greeks, in the beautiful things they say, are not like those physicians who confine their attentions to what are called the better classes of society, and who despise the multitudes.
In contrast, the prophets among the Jews and the disciples of Jesus scorn many elegances of style, and what is called in Scripture the wisdom according to the flesh. They resemble those who investigate to provide the most wholesome food for the largest numbers of persons.
For this purpose, they adapt their language and style to the capacities of the common people." The early Christian apologist, Arnobius, answered the Romans, "You say our Scriptures were written by unlearned and ignorant men, and that therefore they should not be readily believed. But is this not a stronger reason to believe? For our writings have not been adulterated by any false statements. Rather, they were produced by men of simple minds who did not know how to make their accounts deceitful with flashy language.
For truth never seeks deceitful polish. You accuse our writers of having disgraceful blemishes. However, do not your most perfect and wonderful books contain these grammatical errors as well?" When you hear Arnobius acknowledge that there are grammatical errors in the New Testament, you shouldn't think that this is in conflict with the belief in the inerrancy of Scripture.
He simply means that the New Testament writers, including Paul, broke some of the rules of conventional literary Greek, for they were writing for the common people who knew nothing of such rules. But once again, his words are a powerful witness that in the first century, Christians came mainly from the uneducated classes, and the Holy Spirit saw fit to inspire the New Testament Scriptures to be written in the language of the common people, the uneducated masses rather than in polished literary Greek.
It all followed the pattern that Jesus had laid out. Language study. Not only did the apostles open up the New Testament to everyday men and women by writing in common Koine Greek, but they also liberated the Old Testament. As we've discussed, the Jewish theologians had imprisoned God's word in Hebrew, a language that even most Jews could no longer speak, let alone the Gentiles.
Instead of following the example of these theologians, the apostles ignored the Hebrew scrolls of the scribes and adopted the Greek Septuagint instead. As I've mentioned, when they quoted the Old Testament in their writings, they nearly always did so out of the Greek Septuagint. In fact, the Septuagint became the Old Testament for Christians everywhere. In the first century, Greek was the international language of the West and much of the Middle East. It was spoken by Romans, Greeks, and Western Jews alike.
By adopting the Septuagint, Jesus' disciples opened up all of the Scriptures, both old and new, to the world at large. In contrast to both the Jewish theologians and modern-day Christian theologians, the apostles and their disciples set up no schools to train men in language studies. They never encouraged anyone to learn Hebrew or Aramaic so they could read the Old Testament in the original languages.
Likewise, when the first Christians preached in parts of the world that didn't speak Greek, they didn't train men to study Greek so that they could read the New Testament in its original language. Instead, bilingual Christians quickly translated both the Septuagint and the New Testament into widely read languages such as Latin and the predominant dialect of Aramaic at that time. Simple theology.
There was a reason why the first-century Christians weren't meticulous in their use of Greek, nor concerned with training others to read Greek or Hebrew. It was that Christianity originally centered on Christ and His kingdom, not on fine points of theology. It's rather difficult to put together a detailed theological statement just from the teachings of Jesus. That's because, in essence, the gospel of the kingdom is not theology.
It's about people entering into an obedient love-faith relationship with Jesus the King and bearing fruit. Jesus didn't talk much about theology because that wasn't particularly important to Him. However, He did talk a lot about fruit, and He talked a lot about how we are to live as citizens of His kingdom. He taught us what it means to love one another and to love God. Those things are important to Him.