According to Netherland News Live,i there is opposition to capitalizing pronouns for God—like ‘He’ and ‘Him’—in a new edition of the Nieuwe Bijbelvertaling (New Bible Translation) (NBV21) set for release in 2021.
A group of female religion researchers and theologians argues for using lower case letters, just like the 2004 version. They deem using a capital a “slap in the face” for women. The basis for the objection by the Synod of Women is their claim that using capital ‘H’ emphasizes the ‘patriarchal’ image of God, i.e. God as father (male). They deem this as having tragic and damaging consequences for women in the church.
Jesus taught us to pray, “Our Father…” (Matthew 6:9). We are meant to let the inspired text teach, reprove, and correct our thinking (2 Timothy 3:16), not use the language of modern ‘political correctness’, He/Him are God’s ‘preferred pronouns’. In Luke 1:49, Mary used male pronouns in the verse and she confessed to be a humble servant of God her Savior. Genesis 1:27 makes it clear that men and women are both made in God’s image and are thus created equal by Him. There is complete equality, because “there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).
“For God so loved the world that God gave God’s only Child, so that everyone who believes in that Child may not perish but may have eternal life.” This is John 3:16 in The New Testament and Psalms: An Inclusive Version. Published in 1995 by Oxford University Press, gets rid of masculine pronouns and generic masculine usages. The translators replaced right-handed imagery; “God’s right hand” becomes “God’s mighty hand.”
The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, that the Bible is inspired and inerrant in the autographs (the original texts of the various books). We do not have access to the original texts, we do have lots of copies of copies of those original texts. Through textual criticism (also known as “lower criticism” and is a process used for generations to evaluate ancient manuscripts) Bible scholars can analyze the minor variations in these copies to discover which variant was original. These efforts result in texts such as the Nestle–Aland and United Bible Society Greek New Testaments, which combine the most reliable variants from the manuscripts to give us the closest possible match to the original text.
While the translation is not inerrant, the nature of the message of Scripture is such that it can be communicated well in any language, and so a competent translation of Scripture can be regarded as the Word of God. The goal with all translation should be to convey the message of the original as clearly as possible in the receptor language. The politically correct translations take an unacceptable step further in that they seek to make the text inoffensive as well as understandable.
he Inclusive Version’s translation of John 3:16 also gives an example of a distortion of Scripture when Jesus is called God’s “Child” and not “Son”. First, the word used is simply not “Child”. There are a couple of perfectly acceptable words for “Child” in Greek that could have been used, if that is what Jesus had wanted to say. But the word used is υίός (huios), which unambiguously means “Son”. Second, Christians recognize Jesus as God the Son, not “God the Child”.
While Scripture is just as authoritative and applicable today as it was when the various books were penned, each book was written within a specific cultural context. Part of that context is what might today be called “patriarchy” by feminists, although the Bible’s teaching is very pro-female. Rather than distorting the teaching and beauty of Scripture with awkward translations, understanding more about the Bible’s culture is the answer to those who feel alienated by so-called ‘patriarchal’ texts.
i Cloutier, C., Synod of Women appoints Bible Society to ‘He’; netherlandsnewslive.com, 10 Feb 2021. (The translation ‘appoint’ in the English title doesn’t do justice to the Dutch version, which uses a play on the word kapittelt meaning both ‘to bring up for discussion’ as well as ‘to chastise’.)
I Am Not An Atheist 