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Acts 2:38 -- Is baptism
"since" or "for"?
Editor's Note: This
response answers a reader's question concerning the ISV's rendering of Acts
2:38.
In the Version Number 1.00
from 1999, Acts 2;38 reads as follows: Peter answered them, Repent and be
baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ since your sins are
forgiven. Then you will receive the Holy Spirit as a gift. In the downloaded
Version, that verse reads as follows: "Peter answered them, 'Repent and be
baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness
of your sins. Then you will receive the Holy Spirit as a gift.' Why the
different reading? Were new manuscripts found between 1999 and 2003, or are
there new translators on the team, or is there some other explanation? I was
just wondering. There seems to be quite a difference between the two
readings. In the former reading, baptism is because the sins are already
forgiven. In the latter reading, baptism is required in order to get the
sins forgiven?
No, of course no MSS
were discovered between v1.0 and 1.3. The change in the ISV text was made
to correct an inadvertent divergence in that passage from our Principles
of Translation. Specifically, it is our policy that, when the text of the
original language contains an ambiguity, we strive to render the English
text with an equivalent ambiguity.
Our reading of Acts 2:38 in v1.0 is accurate in that baptism follows
acknowledgment of forgiveness: hence our rendering reads: "Be baptized,
since your sins..." However, strictly speaking, the Gk. text does read
"for the forgiveness". We elected to go back to a more literal reading of
the Gk. text. That's not to mean that the more
literal reading doesn't say baptism follows
acknowledgment of forgiveness.
Quite the opposite:
Think of the wanted posters that you see in the Post Office. When the FBI
says the guy in the photo is "WANTED FOR BANK ROBBERY", do you think the
sign is saying that the FBI wants the guy because he has already committed
a bank robbery or because they want him to commit a bank robbery in the
future? The Greek (and v1.3 of the ISV) both
say to be baptized "for the forgiveness" in exactly the same way as does
the WANTED FOR BANK ROBBERY poster. The man is wanted (and baptized) for
the same reasons: the robbery and the forgiveness have both already
occurred, so to speak.
To sum up, BOTH readings in v1.0 and v1.3 say baptism occurs because the
sins have been forgiven. The issue isn't our clarity in the English of the
ISV in v1.0 (which is certainly more clear from a doctrinal perspective)
but rather the question of faithfulness to the clarity of the original
Greek, which does contain the "for the forgiveness" phrase. The text of
Acts 2:38 does not teach baptismal regeneration. Then again, neither does
the ISV, v1.30, teach this doctrine, either. The ISV, v1.30, teaches we
are to be baptized "for the forgiveness," just as the WANTED FOR BANK
ROBBERY poster says the FBI wants the guy because he's robbed the bank!
When in doubt, the ISV attempts NOT to make doctrinal conclusions, but
rather attempts to translate the same ambiguity in the original that's
there in the Greek. If you check the Greek, you'll see that v1.30 of the
ISV reflects this much better than v1.00 does. That's why we changed it to
reflect this somewhat more general rendering. The ISV Committee on
Translation has decided to leave the exposition of this verse to the
pastoral teachers who use it, who should be able to read Greek anyway, if
they're dedicated to that kind of expositional detail.
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