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Is "everything
permissible" permissible in the ISV?
In 1 Cor 6:12 I
had always thought that Everything is Permissible for me should be within " "s.
I thought Paul was making reference to something someone in the Corinthian Church had
said. Could you please comment?
We presume by your comment that the phrase in
question should be rendered within quotation marks means that you think that Paul was
quoting some first century cultural equivalent to a "politically correct"
statement about Christian freedoms. We'll coin a term and call this "evangelically
correct" speaking or thinking instead of "politically correct". There is a
view among certain scholars that Paul is indeed quoting someone, perhaps even someone in
the Corinthian congregation. This appears to be the view that John MacArthur teaches. It
is, however, not the only view of the phrase "everything is permissible". The
Committee on Translation opted not to make the phrase appear in quotations. After all,
there aren't any quote marks -- or even any grammatical hints (such as an extraneous hoti
in the Greek) -- in the original text to indicate that this phrase should be treated like
an aphorism or witty saying. Therefore where the text is silent we prefer to remain
silent. Occasionally, the Committee's posture in this regard results in a slight
ambiguity. But at least we're translating the sense of the ambiguity that does exist in
the original text. That way nobody can say that our translation was a doctrinal
interpretation of the passage. Where the Greek is ambiguous, we hope to faithfully
translate that ambiguity. Where the Greek is clear, we hope to faithfully translate that
clarity as well. As to "everything is permissible" being a Corinthian aphorism,
let the commentaries bring that out. Perhaps we can persuade someone to write a commentary
based on the ISV text of the Corinthian correspondence?
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