Neikoloü Mero, BD
[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n the context of much debate over the issues confronting the Chakhesang Churches today, I am obliged to enlighten the public with some Biblical and theological perspectives on the need, importance and justifications for Bible translations into the heart language of the people. Almost 40 years ago the CBCC decided not to go for Bible Translation for fear of bringing divisions in the community. This 40 year old ghost is still haunting the Chakhesang Churches today.Of late, with the formation of Kuzhami Baptist Churches in towns primarily on ground of meeting the spiritual needs of those who have been deprived of God’s word in the heart language of the people, it has evoked mixed responses where many took it literally as a threat to the unity of the Church and the community in general. It has indeed created much confusions and questions on the minds of the public which calls for appropriate theological response and education on this burning issue. It is a matter of serious concern that even after 100 years of Christianity in the Chakhesang soil, the Chakhesang Churches are yet to realize the importance of Bible translation into mother tongues. It is still struggling with this idea whether the Chakhesangs deserve to have Bible in their own tongues. Is there lack of adequate theological scholars who can guide and put the Chakhesang Churches in the right theological perspectives, particularly on this issue? The apparent silence or apathy of the Church leadership on this vital ministry of the Church over the years and the subsequent arguments put forth by several people in the media suggests that the Chakhesang Churches should continue to maintain its status quo of using someone else’s Bible and hymnals no matter how genuine the reasons are for the sake of Chakhesang unity or Church unity. Is this theologically sound and missiologically correct?
English is the most dominant global language ever. Of course, there are other popular languages available which we can conveniently use in our Churches. So what is the necessity of translating the Bible into our mother tongues for use in our Churches? After all what is this need for Bible translation all about?
Profound answers to these questions have been set forth by Andrew Walls, a man once dubbed by “Christianity Today” Magazine as perhaps, the most important person you don’t know. In 1996 he published “The Missionary Movement in Christian History” in which he argues that translation work is both permissible and necessary to the Christian Faith. He gives two main reasons for making this claim. (1) translation is a central component of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and (2) translation is God’s means for sustaining and maturing his people.
Translation is a central component of the gospel: Christian faith rests on a divine act of translation: ‘the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us….’ (John1:14). Incarnation is translation. When God in Christ became man, Divinity was translated into humanity, as though humanity were a receptor language (Walls, 26-27). Walls makes the case that translation is central to the gospel because the incarnation of Christ is itself an act of translation. Jesus, in becoming a man, translated the fullness of God’s person and character into human form. As the author of Hebrews states, Jesus is “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” (1:3). Or as Paul says in Colosians, “He is the image of the invisible God” (1:15) But the glory of Christ’s incarnation, his translation, isn’t just in the fact that God became a man, as incredible as that is. The real glory is in why he became a man.
Lamin Sanneh, in his article “Christian Missions and the Western Guilt complex” acknowledges the distinct power of human language. In speaking about the history of translation in Western Missions, he states, “the importance of vernacular translation was that it brought the missionary into contact with the most intimate and intricate aspects of culture.” Sanneh is suggesting that, rather than being an impersonal, inanimate system of symbols for transmitting a message, like Maths or computer code, language is more like blood in a culture’s body. It is unique, native, and living medium that pulses in and out of every area of a culture.
Hence, Translation of the Bible into mother tongues is, like Jesus incarnation, to share in their “blood”. Translation enables you and your message to move into the lives of individuals and cultures to depths and extents that would otherwise be impossible from the outside. Modern day translation of the Christian message continues Jesus’ work of coming to the common. People are saved, and their faith is nurtured, when they encounter Jesus in the language they know best. Talking on the importance of Bible translation for sustaining and maturing God’s people, Walls argues that if in the last 2000 years the Christian faith had not continued to traverse new cultures and languages, then it would have long since perished from the earth. Christianity…. has throughout its history spread outwards, across cultural frontiers, so that each new point on the Christian circumference is a new potential Christian centre. Therefore, if we wish to see the Church survive into the future, we must continually be looking ahead to what languages and cultures and locales it has yet to penetrate stated Walls.
Hart Weins, a prominent Missiologist says that “A fundamental issue concerning Bible translation is the language of the heart, that is mother tongues”. This is “whatever language most effectively communicate about deep spiritual and personal matters to the majority of the members of a given ethno-linguistic group”. Ray Aldreid, an American First Nation person, states that a heart language also expresses peoples spirituality, their economics, and their political aspirations ( 2000:np).
Patrick Johnstone a renowned Missiologist said, At Pentecost the disciples spoke in many known languages. The Holy Spirit showed that this wonderful Gospel must be transmitted in every language from the very beginning. Sadly, the lesson was not learnt but is used by many to support the use of tongues in Church services rather than the need to communicate the gospel in other known languages.
Kir Franklin, another renowned theologian and Missiologist stated that, Bible translation in the context of the world’s minority people groups ensures that the Bible empowers the powerless and forces the powerful to recognize their own weakness before God. (Shaw, 2000:124). The spiritual understanding gained from the vernacular scriptures encourages harmony within the emerging Christian communities. Through reading and understanding of the translated scripture, people ‘develop an awareness of God and understand their relationship to him’ (Shaw 2000:125). They are no longer dependent upon the outside world and are equipped to do theology in their context and apply this to daily life.
Kir Franklin added that the concept of the translatability of God’s Word is at the heart of Bible translation. This ensures that God’s Word is available to all people groups in the language of their heart. This commitment ensures that God’s message to people is ‘couched in their own language and culture’ (Shaw, 2000: 125) so that God’s ‘power and authority comes to them directly in their culture’
In the light of these theological and Biblical insights particularly in the context of multilingual Chakhesang Churches, it calls for the Church leadership to do a soul-searching job as to whether the Church is making God’s word available in the language people understands and make the Church an inclusive Church for all where all language groups have access to the Word of God. A Church facing the challenge of having multilingual congregation is nothing new. We Chakhesangs are not facing anything so unique. The first gentile church in the New Testament was multiethnic and multilingual. Since then, in multicultural, multiethnic, multilingual set-ups, the churches continue to survive and thrive.
There are no other competent bodies that can address this issue except the Church leadership. If the Church leadership chose to shy away from this issue of Bible translation and inclusive ministry of the Church then it shall have to take responsibility for any untoward consequences that are detrimental to the healthy growth of the Church and the community in general. If these challenges are whitewashed just for the sake of social unity or other ulterior motives, the Living Word of God in our own mother tongues will never see its light and the Chakhesangs will perhaps forever remain “an unreached people group” in the eyes of the world missiologists because where there is no translation of the Bible in a particular people group, those people groups are categorized among the “unreached people groups” of the world, missiologically speaking.
