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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   34247 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 15, 2025

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Oh boy I love a good debate about bible translations.

Even taking what you said as true, could you point to a place where luthers translation was actually meaningfully wrong? Preferably in the direction you claim he wanted to push.

Here's a bunch of nerds discussing it in depth:

https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/5593/is-it-true-that-luther-intentionally-mistranslated-romans-328

The one caveat I'll give is that most of the answers seem to be from Protestants who seem to mostly agree with Luther's decision. That said, one of the answers directly quotes Luther himself talking about the controversy over his translation, so that was quite interesting to read.

Edit: For what it's worth, members of my faith (Mormon) largely agree with the Catholic interpretation of the verse, and with Catholics about the need for works in addition to faith.

So would Bonhoeffer who famously was not Catholic.

I'm sure anybody with time can run circles around me going toe to toe about Bible translations.

But this is kindof the difference between Catholics and Protestants. We don't worship a book, we're trying to live good, Christian lives. While Protestants will get obsessive about bible translations, Catholics get more obsessive about the meaning implied.

That all said, I think the broad strokes of the reformation and the early church are pretty obvious. Ironically, it's access to information (the internet) which will likely end Luther's work.

But this is kindof the difference between Catholics and Protestants. We don't worship a book, we're trying to live good, Christian lives. While Protestants will get obsessive about bible translations, Catholics get more obsessive about the meaning implied.

This is pretty much what Protestants say about Catholics in reverse, though the charge is not that Catholics "worship a book" but rather they "worship a Church/the Pope" while Protestants worship Christ.

Fwiw I don't think either criticism is particularly made in good faith, but seeing Catholics and Protestants going at each other about who's really Christian is always bemusing to us nonbelievers.

Well yes Catholics would say that we have access to more, we have the Bible, but also we have the Church which was founded by Christ himself.

The claim that Protestants worship the Bible is based on the idea that they seem to hold the words in the book at a higher relevance than what they actually say, or what Jesus actually did or said.

(Snark snark)

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