NTT Journal for Theology and the Study of Religion - Volume 38, Issue 4, 1984

In this article, criticisms of the Groot Nieuws Bijbel, the first ‘dynamic equivalent’ translation in Dutch of the complete Bible, are analysed in the light of criticisms of earlier Dutch translations. For the sake of the analysis, the problems of translation are discussed and a description of the demands which, in the author’s view, are required in order to produce an acceptable translation, is presented. With respect to the Groot Nieuws Bijbel, the author’s conclusion is that it cannot stand the test on many points on account of the editors’ failure to direct the project in an expert way and on account of the liberties the translators permitted themselves.

Hugo Grotius, 1583-1645, was highly gifted and widely renowned as an irenic theologian and Church politician. Why was he unsuccessful, indeed provoked only new polemics?

We seek the essential cause in the direction of his ecumenical thought. He ventured back to the era of unity before the schisms and plurality, i.e. essentially to the consensus quinquesaecularis.

We demonstrate in some detail how Grotius drifted away from the Arminian positions of his youth, insisting on the tradition of idealizing the pia antiquitas, to the neglect of undeniable realities. This no longer seems to be a practicable possibility.

‘Creation’ is a religious concept but Levinas uses it in his philosophy. According to him, God enters philosophy as her in-finition and her transcendance. Without Him, immanence is only ‘il y a’, the senseless event of nature, society and history. Creation is ‘il y a’ brought under the impact of transcendance by man. Man is chosen to bear creation’s evil by substituting himself for his neighbour’s (fr.:autrui) suffering and guilt, even if it costs his identity. – Here three questions arise: is there no ethics in joy, art and eros? Is man creation’s aim? Is creation only ‘material for his duty’? – L. Acknowledges man’s self-defence only in a secondary, derived sense: in society, where justice is to reign. Social, distributive justice has its roots in the infinite giving of personal ethics, but the two remain separate – So ethics is twofold, personal and social, never to influence one another?

Is it possible to decide which religion is right in claiming the ‘Truth’? A distinction is made between three positions: 1) Exclusivism (‘extra ecclesiam nulla salus’); 2) universalism (the world religions are human responses to the same Divine revelation); 3) relativism (religions as ‘forms of life’, not justifiable by external criteria). Having criticised these positions, I argue that we should distinguish between metaphysical truth claims in an ‘existential’ and in a ‘philosophical’ sense. In the existential sense, in view of our basic convictions, we are exclusivists. In the philosophical sense, given the condition humaine, we are not able to decide which religion is right in claiming the ‘Truth’. This is a reason for modesty and, as such, a motive for tolerance.