What prophets actually hang on

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

This coming Sunday, I have the job of leading an adult study class on Biblical interpretation through an Anabaptist lens. In short, when early radical reformers took exception to the prevailing interpretations of the gospel, they underwent startling, life-changing rebirth which so deeply affected them that they became dangerous beyond tolerating to the established order, a threat urgent enough to motivate both state and church to consider and carry out their brutal genocide.
     The idea that both lay people and priests could—thanks to Gutenberg and the printing press—read for themselves every word of the canon and by a natural progression, make judgments about what it meant, was anathema to the orderly, traditional structures that kept humble parishioners in their place in the hierarchical Great Chain of Being.
     Making private judgments about what a text means can be an onerous, thankless, dangerous activity. “How dare you!?” was the response to interpretative insights offered by Luther, Zwingli, Manz, Grebel, Simons and others.
     Below are three samples of translations of the same scripture as rendered by the King James Version (KJV), the Contemporary English Version (CEV) and the New International Version (NIV).          Each version was birthed in an aura of prayer, of rigorous scholarship and extreme vetting by many knowledgeable editors. Although strikingly similar, they show differences in their nuances. “Every man” in the KJV, for instance, becomes the gender-neutral “yourselves” in CEV, NIV. “Strife or vainglory” in KJV becomes “jealousy and pride” in CEV, and “selfish ambition and vain conceit” in NIV.
     I have attempted simultaneous translation—German-English-German—and I've translated/interpreted old records, also German to English and v.v. These efforts have taught me that there's no such thing as precisely equivalent, confident translation from language to language, culture to culture. Every attempt is an interpretive exercise. It's a struggle to discern what is meant and to render meaning as closely as one is able; the samples below each represent an attempt at exactly this.

3 Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than themselves. 4 Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. -Philippians 2:3-4 (KJV, published in 1611)

3 Don’t be jealous or proud, but be humble and consider others more important than yourselves. 4 Care about them as much as you care about yourselves. -Philippians 2:3-4 (CEV, released in 1991)

3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. -Philippians 2:3-4 (NIV, 1966+, most recent update, 2011.)

There lies at the core of Anabaptist convictions a paradox that we often fail to recognize and in this failing, render ourselves prone to division. This Anabaptist conviction is so anti-Aristotle, so “horizontal” in a “vertical,” hierarchical world that it resets the traditions of Christianity all the way back to Christ and his followers walking the dusty, dangerous paths of Palestine. And the irony is that we understand the Christian life to be both supported and lived-out in the context of community, but that this community grants autonomy not only to other, sister communities but to each individual of which it's made up.
     It can only work if we embrace what has to be our core conviction, and that is that we are all the same in one key element: it's love and not doctrinal orthodoxy that binds us, both to the universe and to each other. Of course, we work together at the details of interpretation, of course we disagree at times but that divides us only when we abandon the core Anabaptist concept of Christian unity.
     It introduces another paradox, of course. At one extreme, we have historical records of converting people to Christianity by driving hordes into the baptismal waters at sword point. We live at the other extreme as convinced Anabaptists: the natural extension of having received unconditional love from God and from our brothers and sisters is that it colours, even determines all our activities in our world. It's in the spilling over, the scattering of love beyond ourselves and our communities that we become “evangelical.”