Re: sinful nature, original sin


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Posted by John Hunt (24.136.205.35) on July 27, 2002 at 19:08:23:

In Reply to: sinful nature, original sin posted by flavil ayers on July 25, 2002 at 21:29:59:

flavil,

Sorry about taking so long to reply.

You make a very good point about the NIV in its frequent mistranslation of a Greek word clearly meaning "flesh".

I will not pretend to be a Greek scholar, however, I doubt that any Greek scholars question the literal meaning of sarx as being flesh and hamartolos phusis as being "sinful nature" (it took me a moment to even recognize hamartolos phusis and then confirm its meaning in a lexicon and a couple of interlinears).

Although, I prefer the NIV for daily reading because of its generally accurate modern English that is easy to understand, it really becomes a paraphrase in many places. In the case of sarx in Romans 8 and others, it is imho a clearly bad paraphrase. Although in harmony with my own understanding of what "sinful nature" means I find the substitution acceptable, it distresses me that it could easily mislead others. What particularly troubles me about their mistranslation here is the fact that they chose not to accurately translate a word that has an exact thought for thought/meaning for meaning in the English language. The NIV is supposed to be a thought for thought translation, but when they deliberately exchange a word that has a clear modern day meaning for a phrase that makes it have an exclusive meaning that is substantially different, they in effect are saying that God made a poor choice when He inspired His word in these places. THAT is troubling, indeed!

The paper on Total Hereditary Depravity that I essentially compiled (see link) details why I believe Scripture clearly teaches the modern day concept of Original Sin to be false. I hope this helps.

Go in the grace of God,

John



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