Accommodation religion: Encyclopedia II - Accommodation religion - In the Bible and in human language

Accommodation religion - In the Bible and in human language

Throughout the history of the Christian church, it has been generally held that the Bible - both the Old Testament and the New Testament - were divinely inspired. The principle of Accommodation allows for both the ability of the Bible to communicate objective spiritual truths about the nature of God, as well as the ability of the human authors to act as God's means by which this is to be communicated to mankind. While it is true that the authors themselves were limited and prone to mistakes, Accommodation allows for the perfect and truthful God to work in and through his human agents in order to reveal information about himself that is sufficient and complete.

It is obvious that even the means by which God uses are imperfect and limited: Ezekiel 1:28 finds the author struggling to put down in words what he was experiencing as he stood in the presence of God; 1 Corinthians 13:9-12 mentions that what we see now - what God has chosen to reveal to us - is "but a poor reflection". The fact that God has chosen to use the limited in order to reveal the unlimited may seem hard to understand, but is easy to accept once the notion of an infinite, all-powerful God is presupposed.

Linked to this idea is the added complication of human languages. Church tradition (including more recent statements of faith like the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy and the Cambridge Declaration) holds to the belief that only the original Hebrew Old Testament text and the original Greek New Testament text can be clearly identified as God's word. Therefore, any human translation of the original language will automatically not be considered God's inspired word - which naturally includes the 5th century Latin Vulgate, as well as today's more contemporary translations.

Yet accommodation allows for the belief that despite this natural linguistic barrier, God still has the power to use such translations in order to reveal his nature to people. This means, of course, that Christians don't have to learn Ancient Hebrew and Greek in order to hear what God has to say.

This all may seem to be a contradiction:

1. Only the Greek New Testament and Hebrew Old Testament can be considered the word of God.
2. God will use translations of the original languages to present the truth of himself to human beings.

Yet it could also be argued that, given that this is correct, we as human beings, by our very nature, are incapable of understanding why it is true.

Accommodation religion - Illumination

Traditional Christian theology asserts that it is the work of the Holy Spirit within the individual that God the Father is able to communicate to them via the words of the Bible.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "In the Bible and in human language", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki