1.  The first reason is because there are so many good English translations.  When they differ, how will you know which one most accurately reflects the text itself?  This is not simply a matter of "majority rules," as though you could take a poll of translations.  The community in which you will serve as pastor or teacher will expect you to be able to help them understand the text; the first step is helping them understand which text to consider.

2. No translation is perfect; it is not possible to transfer everything from one language into another.  There are nuances in Greek that cannot be expressed in any English translation.  You need to read the texts in Greek or in Hebrew for a more accurate knowledge of what the text says.

3. Language is an expression of culture.  Learning Greek is a gateway into further understanding the culture in which the New Testament was written.

4. You need to learn these languages to give you access to other tools: commentaries that will help you explore the text more fully, and Bible dictionaries that will help you understand how words and concepts function in the Biblical text.

5. To read the texts in Greek means to wrestle with these texts and their meanings on an intimate level.  To grapple with issues of vocabulary and grammar slows you down enough to listen to these texts more deeply that you have probably done before, and to puzzle over the text's meaning and purpose.  To deal with the texts on this level is a part of being a community that listens; learning Greek will help you to listen to the texts in a new way.

6. When you graduate from LTSS as pastors and other leaders in the church, others will trust you to help them listen to these texts in ways that are life-giving and faith-sustaining. They will trust you to do that task with knowledge, clarity, and skill.  Such a calling deserves nothing less than the very best of our efforts and tools, and that means expending the time and effort it takes to study these texts in the languages in which they were written.

7.  In the words of another teacher,

"In the Christian Church all teaching must be judged. For this a knowledge of the language is needed above all else. The preacher(s) or teacher(s) can expound the Bible from beginning to end as [they] please, accurately or inaccurately, if there is no one there to judge whether [they are] doing it right or wrong. But in order to judge, one must have a knowledge of the languages; it cannot be done in any other way. Therefore, although faith and the gospel may indeed be proclaimed by simple preachers without a knowledge of the languages, such preaching is flat and tame; people finally become weary and bored with it, and it falls to the ground. But where the preacher is versed in the languages, there is a freshness and vigor in preaching, Scripture is treated in its entirety, and faith finds itself constantly renewed by a continual variety of words and illustrations."
(Martin Luther, "To the Councilmen of All Cities in Germany, that They Establish and Maintain Christian Schools")

8.  Finally, I believe studying Greek beckons students into deeper contact with the New Testament texts. I believe that studying Greek may become a part of your life-long love for these texts and their languages, and that learning Greek may be the beginning of a lifetime of intimate contact with these texts  which will feed both personal faith and the practice of ministry within the Christian community.

 

Further Musings on Biblical Languages and Ministry Formation

We as a seminary have placed considerable emphasis on the claim that we do not simply train people to do ministerial tasks.
We form them to be better leaders in the church. I do not believe that learning Hebrew and Greek is simply a matter of giving
students a "tool" (though it certainly is that, and opens up access to other tools and to the texts in ways that are at best difficult
and indirect otherwise). I believe that learning the biblical languages is a part of the formation that we want to happen here.
Needing to learn the languages can shake up unfounded and unhealthy certainty. Faced with the issues posed by the nature of
human language and the range of possibilities for translation and meaning, we may more readily come to see that we do not
already know everything about the Bible – we become a bit more unsettled in our assumptions, and perhaps a bit more open
to learning something new. Dealing with Greek and Hebrew is often a time of learning that honoring the authority of scripture is
not simply a matter of looking up the right verse, but living with the text and all its ambiguities. In my own experience, learning
biblical languages and dealing with the text at that level may be important for seeing why simplistic and inerrantist approaches
to the texts simply do not work.


The theological questions which we want to engage with the texts are extraordinarily difficult to even realize or raise in a clear
way unless we learn to grapple with things like the multiple possibilities for that circumstantial participle, or the range of meaning
for that genitive construction. Philip Melanchthon said that you can=t understand the theology of the NT unless you understand
its grammar. Theological reading of the text isn=t something that happens after the work with Greek and Hebrew is done; it is
something that begins with Greek and Hebrew, and is forced on one by that work. It is harder to default to one's own familiar
theology as the obvious and perhaps only true meaning of the text when one is confronted with fundamental decisions about
grammar, decisions which often involve genuine ambiguity. The dichotomy between learning grammar and learning theology
is a false one.


Needing to deal with the biblical languages also forces us to slow down and spend some time with the texts, even those texts
that we had thought were so familiar. It brings long, focused time with specific texts, and nurtures a kind of slow, careful hearing.
Dwelling deeply in the texts of Scripture is one of the ways in which the Spirit forms us. That can, of course, happen when
dealing with the English text as well (thanks be to God!), but I find that it is far more rare and more difficult – we tend to rush
through the text, and move on to other required things. Dealing with the text in Greek and Hebrew is part of showing hospitality
toward a text that is not always easy to live with.  We are not dealing simply with a technique for gaining knowledge that could
be gained more quickly through Wikipedia or BibleWorks, but a deliberate entry into sustained and intimate contact with the
text that brings not simply answers and insights, but healthy ambiguity and struggle.


 

 

 


 

 

 

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