The “formal equivalence” approach to biblical translation strives to bring the original-language source-text to the reader by effecting as close to a word-for-word translation as possible, given the constraints of moving from one language to another. By contrast, the “dynamic equivalence” approach (sometimes called “functional equivalence”) aims to bring the reader to the source-text through a sense-for-sense translation that is less literal but putatively more comprehensible to someone unfamiliar with the cultural environment of the text’s original language. While he carefully explores the pros and cons of both approaches, to each of which he devotes an orienting chapter, it seems that professor Barton’s preference is to lean toward “formal equivalence.” 

On September 29, 1952, the D.C. Armory—capable of accommodating an audience of 10,000 and the site of numerous inaugural balls—hosted a different kind of event: a celebration of a new translation of the Bible, the Revised Standard Version (RSV), which had just been completed and was intended to replace the revered King James Version (KJV). The first copy of the RSV had been given to President Harry Truman three days earlier, but it was Truman’s secretary of state, Dean Acheson, who was the principal speaker at the Armory event. The son of the late Episcopalian bishop of Connecticut did not disappoint, welcoming the new edition while describing in eloquent terms what the King James Bible had meant to American culture and public life:
In the earliest days in the Northeast, the Book was All. The settlers came here to live their own reading of it. It was the spiritual guide, the moral and legal code, the political system, the sustenance of life, whether that meant endurance of hardship, the endless struggle against nature, battle with enemies, or the inevitable processes of life and death. And it meant to those who cast the mold of this country something very specific and very clear. It meant that the purpose of man’s journey through this life was to learn and identify his life and effort with the purpose and will of God. … But this … did not exhaust the teachings of this Bible. For it taught also that the fear of God was the love of God and that the love of God was the love of man and the service of man.
Seventy-one years later, it is inconceivable that any such scene might be replicated in 21st-century America, and not just because ours has become a far less biblically literate culture over the past seven decades. Rather, a new biblical translation would be unlikely to generate the great interest displayed in the more than 3,000 events across the country that coincided with the public release of the complete RSV, because new biblical translations have proliferated enormously in the intervening years.
As John Barton notes in his instructive new book, The Word: How We Translate the Bible and Why It Matters, the King James Version was the Bible in the Protestant Anglosphere for centuries, and so a new edition created a major shift in cultural tectonic plates. Yet Barton’s glossary of English-language editions counts over a dozen new translations since the RSV, and that process of continuously re-translating the world’s most translated book seems unlikely to abate anytime soon. Thus, a new biblical translation amid today’s biblical cornucopia would not be a big deal (even if American high culture had not become so biblically ignorant that a reporter, after asking Richard Neuhaus for a comment on some sexual scandal and being told that such shenanigans had been going on “since that unfortunate afternoon in the garden,” could follow up with, “And what garden was that, Father?”).
John Barton—Professor Emeritus of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture at Oxford—does not offer his readers a guide to these various translations, and still less a detailed evaluation of each of them. And indeed, Barton declares his summary position early: “While there can be translations that are simply wrong, there cannot be one that is uniquely right.” Rather, The Word is a thorough mapping (to use the author’s cartographic image) of the translators’ terrain. And that complex landscape is, to simplify, defined by two promontories.
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Regrettably, professing Christians do not have a perfect track record when it comes to oppression. That fact, however, does not make Christianity oppressive. Biblical Christianity provides the only coherent way to define oppression in the first place, and those who have practiced the faith have been a force for good in the world. May we as Christians continually aim to know and practice biblical truth, knowing that it is the only way that we will ever find true freedom (John 8:32).

On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States issued its opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Although this decision did not make abortion on demand illegal in the United States, it returned the issue of abortion regulations to state legislatures, meaning that each state can now regulate or restrict abortion as it chooses. Immediately, people began protesting. Men and women gathered in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere across the country, yelling and carrying signs with typical pro-abortion sentiments expressing outrage that the Supreme Court had made it legal to “oppress” women by giving the states power to severely curtail or even outlaw the “right” to kill an unborn child. In many of these protests, vehement anti-Christian language could be found. Protesters recognized the role that Christians had played in the Dobbs decision because of their decades of anti-abortion work, and they insisted that Christianity is an oppressive religion.

This was not the first time that Christians were accused of being oppressors, and it surely will not be the last. Christianity has been blamed for everything from practicing chattel slavery to destroying indigenous cultures to trampling on the rights of women to causing homosexuals to commit suicide. In sum, the claim has been made that Christianity is inherently oppressive. Is this claim true?
To evaluate the charge, we first need to have a clear understanding of oppression. Yet that is not often what we find from those who charge that Christianity is an oppressive religion. Often, at least in the West, people cry “oppression” when they are told that they cannot do something they want to do. Tell a woman who wants to terminate her pregnancy for any reason whatsoever that she cannot do so, and you might be called an oppressor. Reject the notion that two men can get married, and somebody will accuse you of oppressing people who engage in homosexual acts.
But is it oppression simply to be restricted from doing something that you really want to do? Of course not. Laws are made all the time that restrict us from being able to do what we want to do. Are speed limits oppressive? What about laws against murder?
Oppression cannot be conceived of merely as a restriction on something we might want to do. It is, rather, an offense against justice and the humane treatment of others, but who gets to define justice and humane treatment? Ultimately, it is God, who defines justice and kindness in His moral law, which is revealed in the conscience and given to us in Scripture. Restricting abortion on demand or aberrant definitions of marriage is not oppressive, and the reason is that God’s law says that it is cruel and unjust to take an innocent life and harmful to children and others to allow for the expression of sexual immorality. Those who make accusations of oppression but do not heed the law of God have no real grounds on which to make the charge. When people accuse Christians of oppression, it is right for us to demand that they define oppression and then to point them to the law of God as the only thing that can define oppression for all people.

As we look at charges that Christianity is oppressive, we will find that many of them are wholly illegitimate, based on definitions of oppression not sanctioned by God’s Word. Sadly, however, if we are honest with history, we will find that some accusations of oppression have more force. It is true that some people who profess the Christian faith have been guilty of what is rightly called oppression.

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Abiding in Christ involves keeping His commandments, a testimony to the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives (v. 24). The gospel is the gospel of the Kingdom (Matt. 4:23). It is more than a ticket to heaven; it is a transfer of alignment from one kingdom to another, involving expression of allegiance to Him who holds all authority. 

And this is His commandment: that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ (1 John 3:23, NKJV).
Often we hear the call to “accept Jesus as Savior” or “make Him Lord of our lives.” These calls reflect a response to the gift of God in Christ and a hallmark of saving faith. Saving faith is more than merely knowing the facts or even admitting the facts are true. It requires a transfer of trust and allegiance to Jesus as the Savior and Lord that He is. It proclaims not only that Jesus is the Savior; He is my Savior. He is not only the Lord; He is my Lord.
Embrace of Christ through faith reflects God’s work of grace in our lives to bring us from spiritual death to spiritual life, what John has called being “born of God” (1 John 3:9; John 3:3). Through a new heart and open eyes, we repent of our rebellion against God, reject our ability to save ourselves, and renounce self-rule over our own lives. Faith rests fully on Jesus to save us through His sacrificial death as a sinless substitute, and submits to Him as ruler over us.
The gospel requires a response.
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