Restoring Apostolic Faith

Most Christians assume their English Bible is a clear window into God’s Word.

It’s not. It’s a stained-glass window — beautiful, meaningful, but shaped by the hands who crafted it.

Every believer who says, “I don’t need Hebrew or Greek,” quietly depends on someone else who did.

And whether they realize it or not, that blind trust is steering their theology far more than they think.

If you want to take Scripture seriously — not just devotionally, but faithfully — you must understand the world behind your translation.

Because the Bible wasn’t written in English, and pretending it was has done more damage to Christian theology than any skeptic ever has.

This article explores why.

Why “Bible-Only” Thinking Is Actually Tradition-Only Thinking in Disguise

Christians love saying it:

“I don’t need Hebrew or Greek. I have the Holy Spirit.”

It sounds confident, even spiritual.

But it collapses under the slightest scrutiny.

C. S. Lewis warned us about this decades ago:

“The moment you read any translation, you are at the translator’s mercy.”

And that’s the whole point — you are at someone’s mercy.

1. The Illusion of Linguistic Independence

What people really mean when they say,

“I don’t need the original languages,”

is something closer to:

“I’m comfortable letting translators, commentators, and pastors do the hard work,

as long as they agree with my theology.”

But Scripture didn’t fall from heaven in English.

It came through real human voices, in human languages, shaped by human cultures.

N. T. Wright puts it bluntly:

“If we ignore the original context, we will unavoidably replace it with our own.”

And that replacement is where bad theology breeds like mold.

2. Translation Is Interpretation. Always.

Any translator will tell you:

There is no such thing as a word-for-word translation.

The ancient world had words English can’t capture without explanation:

• chesed (loyal love / covenant devotion)

• pistis (faith → allegiance/trust/faithfulness)

• aiōnios (age-long, belonging to the age to come)

• ruach (breath/spirit/wind/presence)

Every translation choice shades meaning.

Even Jerome admitted over 1,500 years ago:

“The literal meaning of Scripture often lies hidden.”

He wasn’t joking.

3. When Doctrine Picks the Translation

People don’t realize how often this happens:

• Calvinists gravitate to the ESV

• Charismatics love the NKJV/NLT

• Fundamentalists cling to the KJV because 1611 was a great year for English

• Scholars prefer the NASB ’95

Translation isn’t neutral.

It reflects the worldview and theological pressures of those doing the translating.

As Dan McClellan often says:

“A translation is not the text. It is an interpretation of the text.”

If you don’t know who interpreted it,

you don’t know what you’re swallowing.

4. Blind Trust Isn’t Faithfulness — It’s Passivity

If you don’t know:

• how the languages function

• how idioms work

• what cultural assumptions shaped the text

• which manuscript families were used

• why certain variants were chosen

• how grammar influences theology

…then your entire faith is built on the competence and honesty of strangers.

The early church never made that mistake.

Origen, even in the 200s, insisted:

“To seek the meaning of Scripture, one must understand its language.”

Modern Christians drift because they’ve forgotten this.

5. Scripture Was Never Meant to Be Read in Isolation

Early Christians did not hand out personal Bibles.

They handed out trained interpreters who knew the languages and the culture.

They believed:

• Scripture is communal

• Interpretation requires skill

• Language matters

• Context shapes meaning

• Ignorance breeds error

Augustine — who, for all my critiques, nails this point — once said:

“Every undertaking must begin with understanding the words.”

He wasn’t wrong on that.

6. “The Holy Spirit Teaches Me” — Sure… But Through Who?

If the Spirit alone guaranteed correct interpretation:

• Why does every Spirit-filled group disagree?

• Why do doctrines contradict across denominations?

• Why do English-based interpretations splinter communities?

• Why did God inspire languages instead of impressions?

The Spirit illuminates truth —

but He doesn’t erase grammar.

He doesn’t override context.

And He definitely doesn’t translate the Bible into English on demand.

7. The Honest Middle Ground

You don’t need to become a linguist to be faithful.

But you do need to:

• respect the languages

• respect the context

• respect the authors

• listen to scholars who actually know what they’re doing

• let Scripture reshape doctrine, not doctrine reshape Scripture

John Walton captures this beautifully:

“The Bible was written for us, but it was not written to us.”

If you miss that, everything else falls apart.

8. The Real Problem Isn’t Ignorance — It’s Arrogance

The most dangerous interpreter is the one who:

• doesn’t know the languages

• doesn’t know that they don’t know the languages

• refuses correction

• builds doctrine on English phrasing

• defends their translation like it’s inspired

Ignorance is forgivable.

Arrogance is not.

Gregory of Nyssa saw this even in the 4th century:

“Error begins when we read the text as if it were written in our own time.”

Tell me that isn’t half of Christian social media.

9. What Scripture Is Supposed to Be

At its core, Scripture is:

Ancient voices speaking ancient truths through ancient languages.

Our job isn’t to drag those voices into English and force them to sound modern.

Our job is to go back —

to their world,

their worldview,

their grammar,

their culture —

and hear them as they would have been heard.

That’s not elitism.

That’s humility.

That’s obedience.

That’s faithfulness.

Conclusion: You Don’t Need the Languages — But You Do Need the Truth

You don’t need to know Hebrew or Greek to be a faithful Christian.

But you absolutely do need someone who does,

because your entire understanding of Scripture hangs on their shoulders.

The question is whether you’re choosing people who:

• know the languages

• know the history

• know the culture

• know the manuscripts

• and are willing to correct your doctrine when the text demands it

The goal is simple:

Stop letting tradition speak louder than Scripture.

Stop letting English flatten the depth of God’s Word.

And start letting the Bible speak in the languages God chose.

That’s the heart of Restoring Apostolic Faith.

And honestly?

It’s the way back to first-century Christianity.