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Name:Daniel
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About Me: I used to believe that evolution was reasonable, that homosexuality was genetic, and that people became Christians because they couldn't deal with the 'reality' that this life was all there was. I used to believe, that if there was a heaven - I could get there by being good - and I used to think I was more or less a good person. I was wrong on all counts. One day I finally had my eyes opened and I saw that I was not going to go to heaven, but that I was certainly going to suffer the wrath of God for all my sin. I saw myself as a treasonous rebel at heart - I hated God for creating me just to send me to Hell - and I was wretched beyond my own comprehension. Into this spiritual vacuum Jesus Christ came and he opened my understanding - delivering me from God's wrath into God's grace. I was "saved" as an adult, and now my life is hid in Christ. I am by no means sinless, but by God's grace I am a repenting believer - a born again Christian.
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Thursday, August 07, 2008
Ephesians 5:26
ινααυτηναγιασηκαθαρισαςτωλουτρωτουυδατοςενρηματι
in-order
that
ithe-should
be-hallowing
cleansingto-thebathof-thewaterindeclaration


Translating this as literally as I know how, I get something like:
"In order that He should sanctify it, cleansing [it] by the washing of the water in the saying" - author's translation
I apologize for the wooden nature of my translation, and even the poverty of it for those who have greater skill. I could certainly have used words that were more flowery, or had more English eloquence, but doing so would come at a cost to my understanding of the text.

There are a few things here that need to be understood:

First, one of the words in the text (λουτρω), while it means bathing (to the extent that one washes as one bathes), it also is used elsewhere in a figurative sense to speak of water baptism. That use, coupled with the mention of water, is enough to embolden those who hold strong opinions about baptism, to hijack this text and try and make it say something about baptism -- even if it is clear from the immediate context that Baptism by no means has anything to do with instructing husbands in how they ought to love their wives.

Secondly, we have that word "ρηματι" which means to make a declaration, or to utter a thing - to say something. In English, because we don't speak so much about the process of speaking, and prefer our references rather be tied to what is said - we would typically, and stylistically chose to translate that as "word" - and any quick glance at parallel translations will show that this is the path the majority of translations follows. It therefore can be charged against me that I am an arrogant translator because my translation does not ape the way the majority translate the text.

I confess here that though I probably -am- arrogant, it doesn't feel that way to me. If anything, like most people, I would prefer to keep my opinions and thoughts in line with the majority - then instead of having to look the fool outside the camp - defending and answer for my opinions, I could instead share in the warm glow of the "high fiving" majority. My preference is, of course, to travel the path of ease where I am not discouraged by the friction my opinion produces in others whose own opinion cannot tolerate even a small challenge.

That as may be, I have chosen the words of my translation on purpose - to avoid certain confusions that may spring up because of habitual, English word associations. I have often pined long into the night about how unfortunate it is that we have inherited a tradition of failing to translate the Greek word "baptize". We instead transliterate it - and in doing so we almost erase the original meaning of the word because the transliterated word has an abundance of baggage that is brought with it every time it is used. Should we smell even a hint of the word - many immediately presume the text is speaking of the moment a Christian is baptized into water.

Likewise - words like "saved" suddenly lose all semantic range and only and ever mean "saved from hell" - or even the word "word" itself, which, because Christ is the "logos" and logos can be translated as "word" - causes some to immediately conclude that whenever an English bible uses the noun "word" it is fair game to mystically capitalize the "W" and presume that it also means Christ.

It is this last unfortunate association that drives me to translate ρηματι as "saying" rather than "word". Since I don't want to introduce an opportunity for those who are inclined to this sort of word association (no pun intended), to bring that baggage to the text.

Thirdly, and perhaps most significantly, I translate the preposition "εν" in its most simplest, and literal sense: "in" - even though that is rather clumsy stylistically - most translations pick another English word from the semantic range - either "with" or "by" - since the English flows better using either of those words.

There is therefore, even in many of the translations, the building blocks of bias in the text. If I come here with my eyes full of baptism, guess what? I see baptism in the text. I don't deny that certain words within their figurative use have such meaning elsewhere, but I prefer to see first if the text makes perfect sense without imposing such baggage upon it - and then to check if it makes "better" sense to impose the baggage.

Given all that - the text is saying first, that it is Christ who sanctifies the church. I think this much is plain. The problem is the metaphor that Paul works into the text here - "the washing of the water in the saying (declaration)". But before we even consider the metaphor, we need to answer the question about the word "saying"... What is the declaration? What is the saying? What is this utterance, that in it Christ sanctifies the church??

Here we begin the work of interpretation. We ask of the scriptures, "What is there within your frame that speaks of cleansing, and washing - what utterance causes such things?" Then we pour over the texts of scripture, looking for references to cleansing - what causes it? In the OT it is the sacrifices that cleanse - and so if we stopped there we would use reason to conclude that since Jesus replaces the OT sacrifices, that if the blood of bulls cleansed us in the OT it must be the blood of Jesus who cleanses us in the NT, and this is easily bolstered by the abundance of English translations which translate ρηματι as "word" - since Jesus is the "logos/word" - we can make our mystical inference and feel like we have done a fair job of understanding the text.

The problem there is threefold, first, there are references to cleansing in the NT that we are ignoring to draw that conclusion, and second, we are appealing to a mystical connection that is more coincidental than biblical (ρηματι = saying and therefore, more or less = word which = Jesus), and third, we are building upon the certainty that this refers to Jesus, but since the OT refers to the blood of sacrifices, this must refer to the blood of Jesus - which is sort of a theological "smudging" or hashing of things.

That hashing however, is not without some very strong support - consider Hebrews 9:14, "how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? ". Here we have a NT reference that has one foot in the OT, and the other in the NT, and concludes that our consciences are cleansed from dead works by the blood of Christ. That has its own interpretational challenges of course. What does it mean to have my conscience cleansed from dead works?

It means, I think. that in the same way a man was defiled in his flesh in the OT (and therefore unfit for temple worship, etc.) by touching a dead thing, and had to be cleansed of that defilement before he was allowed inclusion in "camp" as it were - and that this cleansing involved a blood sacrifice (and the sprinkling of a solution that included the ashes of a red heifer), in the same way, Christ's blood is sufficient to cleanse us from our having touched dead "works" - we are therefore, by virtue of Christ's blood, entitled to inclusion - having been "cleansed" in our flesh by the blood of Christ. In the OT there was no physical change that took place when a person was "cleansed" from defilement - it was symbolic that something had to be done in order to facilitate inclusion - and this something was that Christ had to spill his blood - we who are now the recipients of that spilled blood, not through the symbol, but through the actual - are therefore "cleansed" from the dead works that exclude us, and are able, by that blood, to draw near.

I think that is what is meant in the Hebrews text - that is, the text in Hebrews seems to refer to the blood of Christ's one time sacrifice being applied once to all to cleanse us so that we are included once and for all in the covenant.

The cleansing in Ephesians may well refer to this in part - for Christ has certainly cleansed us - but the text in Ephesians also speaks of Christ making us holy - sanctifying us - not a one timer, but an ongoing thing, which speaks not merely of an inclusive work, but of a progressive work - something that would make sense in the context of a husband loving his wife - it isn't a one time deal, but an ongoing effort to give oneself for one's wife, even as Christ gave himself, and continues to give himself, for the church.

There is another passage in the NT that speaks of cleansing - this time in Acts 15. In fact, it is the exact same Greek word, with an identical parsing - the only other instance of this same parsing in the NT. Here Peter gives an account of how the Gentiles at Cornelius' house were converted, he says in verses 8-9, "And God, who knows the heart, testified to them giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He also did to us; and He made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith." - what did the cleansing here? Faith. Their hearts were cleansed by faith.

Is this what Paul is speaking of - that our hearts are cleansed by something? If so, what do we mean here by hearts? I'll risk this, that hearts here means the same thing as when we say "Let's get to the 'heart' of the matter" - that is, or when we say "with all our heart" - we don't mean the blood pump, nor do we mean merely our emotions, or our mind - but our whole being, or the what is at the core of our selves - that is, what was being cleansed by faith.

Because we drill down a bit - it is good to step back and remember what we are trying to understand here. We are fishing, as it were, for a proper understanding of the word I translated as "saying" - and we are setting about to establish if anything else is cleansed in the NT and if so, what that is, and how it is cleansed in order to gain a better grasp of what this word ought to mean.

If we say that our hearts are cleansed by faith, and if we are open to the idea that this same cleansing is done by Christ - that is recognizing faith not as a power in and of it self, by which cleansing happens, but rather a vehicle through which Christ cleanses - then we may well be open to the notion that Christ is the link between cleansing and faith - and so we recall another link - one pertinent to our verse here in Ephesians, and that link is found in Romans 10:17, "so then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the "saying" of Christ." - I use "saying" again, because it is the same word we find in Ephesians 5:26, - ρηματος.

Faith (and therefore cleansing) comes to us by the declaration of Christ. Even without Ephesians 5:26, we can piece that much together. The thing is, does that knit with Ephesians 5:26, or does it upset it? It seems to me to fit it like a glove.

What is the declaration of Christ? Why it is the declaration of the apostles - it is the gospel, faith comes through it (and thereby justification), likewise sanctification comes through it too. Doesn't this same Paul chastise the Galatians who after having started by faith set about trying to be sanctified by works? Sanctification is by faith - and the message of faith is the gospel message. The same faith that save, when exercised, sanctifies - and if we want to drill down on that - it is really Christ who is sanctifying through the washing of the water in that declaration.

But we have forgotten to unpack the metaphor, haven't we?

The "washing of the water" is a metaphor. Yes, one of the words has a figurative use elsewhere that describes baptism, as I have said previously - but such a notion is foreign to the text, both in the immediate context, and in the surrounding context. The meaning here seems to be a metaphor.

In order to see the metaphor, let's replace it with other metaphors, and forgo the clumsy "saying" and use the noun "word" - without mysticizing a captital "W" into the text:

In order that He should sanctify it, cleansing [it] by that getting-the-job-done-power that is in the word

In order that He should sanctify it, cleansing [it] by the "washing of regeneration" that is in the word

In order that He should sanctify it, cleansing [it] by the pruning power in the word

etc.

Do you see that the washing of water in the declaration means only that the declaration carries with it a cleansing ability that is likened to the washing of water? That is, I think all that ought to be read into the text.

Now, why bother here. I mean, why spend all this time nit picking the text - why bother translating it with such literal force? Is the truth encapsulated there so important? Can't we just translate it into a more flowing oratory form of English, and interpret it with no more thought than we might give to a nursery rhyme?

The text is speaking of a profound truth, profound, I say, to anyone who has ever struggled against sin. Do you not here it - Christ is sanctifying His church, and He is doing so through the gospel. He isn't just building His church through the gospel, He is building up His church through the gospel - and there is meat here for those who are starving. For those who are floundering in their faith - wondering how they should "be" Christians - what should they do, what does a right Christian walk look like? How should they conduct themselves?

The answer is bundled here for all to see, if we have eyes and ears for it. Listen: We walk by faith - not because doing so merits something with God - for even if we lived sinlessly we would merit absolutely nothing - we walk by faith because that is the path by which Christ Himself makes us holy.

There is nothing "holy" about an atheist who lives according to perfect "godly" morals - even if he is more moral than every Christian who has ever lived, there is nothing sanctimonious about his morality - since it is not founded upon faith, it does not produce in him anything that makes him fit to be in God's presence. If we want to ascend God's holy hill - that is, if we want to experience real fellowship in the Spirit with God, I am convinced that we must hands that have been cleansed by Christ Himself through our faith. It is not that we do good and our goodness makes us holy - it is that by surrendering our lives to Christ in faith we draw near to Him, and in doing so we partake more of His nature - and like the shining face of Moses, that nearer glimpse of glory stays with us, works in us to draw us closer, and deeper.

In the context, therefore, husbands ought to love their wives in the same way that Christ loves the church - giving Himself for her - by always building her up so that she may be all she is called to be. Paul uses the image of Christ building us up to instruct husbands in how they are to love their wife - there is, in my opinion, no room to inject an argument for the mode of baptism into this text, as some do.

Anyway - that's my brief look at the text. I am a laymen, I am no Greek scholar, nor am I a celebrated thinker - I am just a guy who reads and believes, and tries not to paint new meaning into a text just because I really like the new meaning.

My encouragement to you, dear reader, is that you guard yourself against being a doctrinal fop. You know, someone who can't have an opinion unless your hero has it first - don't adorn your faith in fashionable doctrine just because it is fashionable, and don't always embrace the majority view just because it is the majority view. On judgment day you will have to answer for how you understood scripture, and saying, "well, I believed thus because someone else did, and I thought he was wiser than me" - is not going to cut it with a God who promises to give wisdom directly to anyone and everyone who asks for it personally. So be critical as you read the opinions of others - don't be a fop.

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posted by Daniel @ 10:41 AM  
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