We just came back from our very last foster parenting class tonight.  I can hardly believe 8 weeks have passed.  We are probably about 3-4 weeks away from having a placement!  We just need to do a few more things including finding some alternate caregivers (looking for those who would be open to coming over here to babysit on occasion?), and we'll be officially certified!  Wowee.

Last night, I was translating John 1:1-18 (from Greek to English). I was just going along, verse by verse, through this beautiful passage when I suddenly hit verse 14.  And for some reason, it hit me in a fresh new way that it has never hit me before.  Και ο λογος σαρξ εγενετο.  And the Word became flesh.  --that God would choose to make Himself known in vivid living color by becoming flesh!  He didn't just choose to tell us about Himself through words, He didn't choose to reveal Himself only by giving us a book about Himself or stop at sending messengers to mediate, no, instead, He Himself chose to take on flesh that we may see and smell and touch and really know intimately what He is like.

Perhaps I was so amazed because I just got through thinking for so long on the truth that "in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning.  All things came into existence through Him, and apart from Him, not one thing came into existence that has come into existence..." (my translation)  It set up the stage so well.  The Word is all these things - great and powerful indeed - and truly, He is God, and this one wanted to reveal Himself to us by becoming flesh.  Amazing!

As I thought about this last night, I suddenly found myself walking on the streets of East Asia again in my mind.  We went there in order to make the Word become flesh there - to bring the Word (God's heart, God's reality) into tangible, human form.  That's what missions is about.

And tonight as we got home after this last foster parenting class, the words came to me again, "ο λογος σαρξ εγενετο" -- We are making the Word become flesh to the babies who are placed in our home (as well as to the biological parents).  Such a powerful truth that God did that for us and powerful call for us to do the same as we follow in His footsteps...

Greek:
θεον ουδεις εωρακεν πωποτε μονογενης θεος ο ων εις τον κολπον τοu πατρος εκεινος εξηγησατο.

My Literal Translation:
God no one has seen ever/at any time (perfect tense - i.e. completed past tense), the one and only God, who is (present participle - i.e. continuous action) in the bosom of the Father, that he has revealed/made known/narrated precisely/expounded in detail (aorist - i.e. undefined past tense).

My Mediating Translation:
No one has ever seen God, but the one and only God, who is closest to the Father's heart, has made Him known.

My Idiomatic Translation:
No one has ever seen God, but [Jesus, who is] the one and only God, who is closest to the Father, has made the Father come to life in vivid detail for us.

Getting the nuance of this verse correctly is such a challenge.  Although the oldest and most reliable Greek New Testament manuscripts say μονογενης θεος ("the one and only God"), it is clear from the context that the author's intended meaning is that Jesus is the one and only God.  It is tempting to switch up the word and just translate it, "No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son..."  However, to do so would take away from the author's theological point (although actually, the entirety of John 1:1-18 already points to the fact that Jesus is God, so switching "God" to "Son" would not be too bad).  Of my three translations, I like the idiomatic translation the best.  Makes sense to me now why the TNIV translators did it their way now. 

Such truths revealed in this one small verse!
No one has ever at any time seen God, except the Son.  The Son has!  He has because He is God and because He is closest to the Father.  The word ων (translated as "is") is a present participle, which means that it is a continuous and on-going action.  Jesus is and continues to be in the bosom of the Father.  Wow.

In summary of the verse --  Jesus is 1. the one and only God, 2. closest to the Father, and 3. has expounded in vivid detail the Father's heart to us through His being/existence.  Being that He continues to be in the heart of the Father, He truly is the only one who was and is qualifed to make Him known, isn't He?

There's this false notion among Christians that knowing the Greek language will give you special knowledge of the Bible and therefore special knowledge to God -- as if it's the key that unlocks all secrets.  This is actually not true.  I have loved learning Greek in this past year, because it is fun reading God's Word as it was written by the original authors and catching the subtle implications of verb tense, voice and moods that might not come through in English translations.  But the best part has been having the cloud of 'mystery' lifted from the idea of Greek.  You know how pastors do it, they say, "This is what it really says in the Greek", and you can only accept what she or he has to say because you don't know any Greek.  My professor says that there really is no reason to be so condescending when you preach.  What it says in your Bible in English is what that particular Greek word means.  That is why those scholars translated it that way. 

Here are some examples of Greek words that pastors have over-exegeted:

Some pastors want to "give you greater insight" (or maybe they're just misinformed) by telling you that the word used to describe the Holy Spirit "parakletos" comes from two words: "para" which means "alongside" and "kaleo" which means "called", so they say that the word parakletos means "one who is called alongside", i.e. the Holy Spirit is one who is called to come alongside us.  And while this 'insight' sounds clever, this is not exactly true.  "Parakletos" is a word that means "helper, encourager."

In the English language, we don't usually break down a word to give us more insight into its meaning.  We don't take a word like "understand" and break it down by its parts.  Otherwise, we'd think understand means to stand under.  So why do we do this with the Greek?

The second example has to do with John 21 when Jesus reinstates Peter.  I used to teach this in my Bible studies incorrectly too.  The incredible Greek "insight" goes like this:  The first two times Jesus says to Peter, "Agapas me?"  Peter responds, "Sure, philo you."  (instead of, "Agapo you.")  So on the third time, Jesus changes his question to, "Phileis me?"  And Peter again responds, "Yes, philo you."  In explaining this passage, many define agape as unconditional, divine love, and phileo means brotherly, human love (i.e. it's a lesser love), and therefore, Peter is responding with a lesser love and in the end, Jesus goes down to his level and asks him if he brotherly-loves him.  What's the point of this?  I have no idea.  Why is it such great insight that Jesus goes from asking Simon if he unconditionally loves him to only brotherly loving him?

Actually, the Greek verb agapao doesn't just mean unconditional love.  It can also just mean regular old, plain "love".  For example, in 1 John 2:15 when it talks about the love for the world, the word that is used is also "agapao".   It doesn't really make sense to interpret that verse as divine, unconditional love for the world, does it?  So "agapao" doesn't just mean unconditional love.  There are also other places in the New Testament where the word "phileo" is used to describe God's love.  Words have more than one meaning, and to draw an exegetical insight based on one definition of a word across the board can be dangerous and just plain irresponsibile scholarship.  When we write an essay in English and have to repeat the same idea, we switch back and forth between words, using synonyms, just "because".  In the same way, Jesus is just using a synonym when He does the switcheroo.  There's no deeper meaning.  If you check commentaries, you will find that nine out of ten scholars will tell you this. 

Okay, last one.  The word in Greek that means "power" is dunamis.  Some people say that dunamis is related to dynamite, so therefore "dunamis" means "explosive".  But it really doesn't mean that.  Dynamites hadn't even been invented during New Testament times.  This is called semantic anachronism.  Preachers sometimes quote Romans 1:16 as, "I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the dynamite of God..." "as if something profound or even esoteric has been uttered.  To mention dynamite as a kind of analogy is singularly inappropriate. Dynamite blows things up, tears things down, rips out rock, gouges holes, destroys things. The power of God concerning which Paul speaks...its goal is to save...(and its aim is) for the wholeness and perfection implicit in the consummation of our salvation."  (p. 34 D.A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies).

Amen to that.  So the moral of the story?  God's word, as it has been translated in our English Bibles by Christian scholars, is God's word to us.  You don't have to know Greek to know God's word and His heart.  It's fun and great and certainly adds to things -- but it's not essential!

I arrived at the seminary early last night and checked my mailbox.  I found my first Greek exam in the box.  Just what I was looking for.  At the top of the page, I found a 1 followed by two 0s.  Apparently, I had only missed half a point and I got a 100%!  Can you believe that? 

After that, I wandered into the prayer room.  There's a clipboard in the prayer room with lines in which you could put prayer requests.  I flipped to the back where the old requests through the years had been placed.  I scanned the pages of names, page after page, and then I found it.  There was the entry:

"Mary Ann ---, 11/11/98, If God wants me to go to seminary, then He would open the doors (to Bethel)."

I just sat back and smiled with wonder.  

It's been 9 years!

I remember back then how badly I wanted to go to seminary.  I had only been a Christian for two years and felt certain that God had called me into the ministry --and I wanted to grow and learn as much as possible to be as useful a vessel for Him as possible.  But as badly as I wanted to learn in seminary, there were so many obstacles.  So I prayed and prayed and prayed. 

Fast forward 9 years later, and there I was sitting in the same prayer room waiting for my Greek class to start.  Amazing.  Sometimes God puts desires in our hearts. Sometimes He calls us to pray for them.  And sometimes it takes 9 years before He answers.  And now 11/9/07, I see why it was so perfect that He waited 9 years to make dreams into reality.  Now is the perfect timing.  Perfect, just perfect.  With God --how could I ever doubt it? 

You know how when you are trying to gather all the laundry into your arms to make it from the dryer to your bedroom, and you have way more than an armful of clothes, and what ends up happening is that a sock falls down here and a sock falls down there, so you bend over to pick up the socks that fell, and as you do that, some other socks end up falling, and you keep repeating this fun ritual until you drop more than you can pick up, and you never quite make it to the bed?  It's inevitable that you'll lose something -- if not everything all together!  This is exactly how I feel in my Biblical (Koine) Greek studies right now.  I am stuffing so much into my head -- and I keep feeling like with every new stuff that I stuff into my head, I lose some of the old stuff, and I'm just leaving behind a trail of forgotten vocab words and irregular case endings -- oh, how does that word decline, what does that preposition mean with that case, oh man, what word is that???  It's so hard!  I have been studying nonstop since last week and I am still behind.  My head hurts and I want to give up... but every time I begin to think, "I can't keep going anymore", I am urged on by this unnameable voice that I must keep going.  Pick up those socks, Mary Ann, the rewards will be endless...