anyhow, i think i've made a little progress on this one verse & wanted to share what i found & gather feedback from anyone else who has wrestled with this or other parts of the chapter. let me start off by quoting the verse. i'll use the NKJ.
the reason i was curious about this verse is that when i have read it i seemed to get the impression paul is expressing frustration, as in "how can it be that you all do this disgraceful thing i'm about to name?" this little verse seems to be an important turning point in the charismatic/noncharismatic divide. charismatics tend to see it as paul's encouragement for everyone to come to church prepared to give "a psalm, a teaching," etc., while noncharistmatics tend to see it as paul expressing frustration with a church that was too charismatic and needed to sit quietly while the pastor conducted affairs. i'm exaggerating the debate, i guess, but you get the point. churches seem to be adamantly on one side or the other in their interpretation.26 How is it then, brethren? Whenever you come together, each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification.
what i did was looked at the greek for "how is it, then, brethren?" (i'm not a greek scholar but you may not need to be in this case). the greek is transliterated: Ti oun estin adelphoi. the definition given for these words in Biblos.com (a great resource, BTW) in order is "what then is it brethren."
when i saw this it reminded me of the many places in Rom. where paul is in argument mode & says "what then shall we say, brethren?" or "what shall we say then?" or even just "what then?" sure enough, when i went back to those other places i find almost identical greek words with slight variation.
for instance Rom. 3:9 begins "What then?" (Ti oun) which is (not surprisingly, i guess) "what then?" Rom. 4:1 begins "What then shall we say that Abraham our father has found..." in greek this is Ti aun eroumen which literally translates as "What then will we say?" there’s many other examples i could name. searching for “what then” or “what shall” in paul’s epistles turns up 13 examples in paul's epistles.
so what i concluded was that the present verse is probably not anything more than paul regathering his readers after a short discursis & saying “so where does that leave us in my larger argument?” there wouldn’t be anything pejorative in his tone. and in modern english, at least, “how then is it” can have that pejorative impression. like “how is it we can’t seem to get anything done around here?” or some other sarcastic utterance. it’s an idiomatic thing.
so i wondered why didn’t the NKJ translators use the more literal “what is it, then, brethren.” the answer seems to be obvious, that this is an ambiguous phrase in english, though its equivalent apparently was not in greek. if i was going through an argument & made an illustration, cited some scripture & then said “what is it, brethren?” your first impression is probably “what is what?” so apparently the NKJ translators opted to change it to “how is it,” but overlooking the unfortunate prompt of sarcasm we seem to unwittingly get as modern english speakers.
i looked at other good word for word translations & they seem to have avoided this mistake. since “what is it, brethren” (a word for word literal translation) is ambiguous they had to go anouther route, but i think they preserved the right meaning (if i am indeed correct). the NASB says “what is the outcome then, brothers?” (adding the word "outcome") the ESV says “what then, brothers?” (leaving untranslated the verb estin). the message translation says “so here’s what i want you to do” (added for grins).
so what is the outcome, then, brethren? it seems like i have to abandon the impression that paul is expressing frustration. but this change still leaves the passage tantalizingly ambiguous for me. it now appears that in saying “what then, brothers?” paul is gathering together his discursis of v. 21-25, or perhaps back to v. 6, and saying “so how should we apply the truths i’ve just brought forward for you.” that discursis has some interpretive challenges of its own, but it basically seems to be committed to showing that spiritual speaking gifts need to be comprehensible to edify the church & edifying the church in a church gathering is more important than merely exercizing a speaking gift for its own sake.
but paul’s following sentence still doesn’t say (as many charismatics seem to assume) “whenever you come together each of you should have a psalm, etc.” it only says “each of you has.” so that sounds descriptive of what they were doing, not prescriptive of what they should be doing. i wish we did have something prescriptive from paul here! and maybe with his words “whenever you come together...” are meant in the sense of “suppose you have a situation where you come together and each of you has...” i could see that as a valid reading. then his answer would be “the solution is to let everything be done for edification.”
but even paul’s descriptive words may be of some value. he doesn’t forbid each member (“each of you”) to come with these as long as everything is done in order. here we have a church that had sat under paul’s personal teaching for 18 months & was operating in this way that would be impossible in the typical modern institutional church & though he doesn’t endorse everyone coming with something to share (it appears it wasn’t in his purview) he doesn’t take the opportunity to correct it.
so maybe this is all we are able to walk away from the passage with. i find many “one another” passages in the NT that seem logistically to require every-member participation in the church. (i’m still looking at them, but it seems naive to think all of that “one anothering” was only to happen outside of the specialized church meetings). but i’m left with something less than an apostle telling us to keep the meeting open & away from being dominated by one or two specialized people set before a passive audience.
any comments?
