The Way from Babel: The Role of Language in Advancing God’s Mission in the World Paul K. Kimbi: Consultant for Bible Translation Programs, WGA

Introduction

The account of creation closes in Genesis chapter one with the creation of man: “So, God ​ created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them” and gave them a charge: “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue ​ ​ it” (Genesis 1:26, 27). So many views have been put forward to explain what the image of God in ​ mankind means. Ware (2002:21) discusses some of these views (ranging from structural, relational to functional views) and concludes that “we are created to reflect his own nature so that we may represent him in our dealings with others and over the world he has made.” We are in the image of God so that we can participate with him in his mission. Ware highlights the relational view and says “God's image is reflected in our relation to one another and to God” (2002:21). Clines (1968) talks about the psychosomatic nature of humankind-our bodies are not just a mere dwelling place for the soul nor a prison house for it but both body and soul form a unit. God made us in this way so that we perform our responsibilities towards him and towards one another and the environment. The theology of “embodied presence” (Harmelink 2019) highlights human ability to communicate in general and in particular to do Bible translation and argues that our “knowledge depends on our being in a world that is inseparable from our bodies, our language and our social history-in short, from our embodiment…. The very ability to use language is a gift from the one who created us” (2019:3). From these discussions, we can say communication is a core component of the image of God in mankind. “We communicate because he communicates” (Harmelink 2019:3) and communication helps us to galvanize ourselves to respond to the responsibilities we have towards God, towards one another and towards the environment. Communication helps us to respond to God’s charge for us individually and collectively. “The God of Israel, whose declared mission was to make himself known to the nations ​ through Israel” (Wright 2006:124) invites us to participate in his mission. To do that we need to communicate and to make sure our message is understood. In this article I argue that God uses language as a key instrument to advance his mission in the world and that we use language to respond to God’s invitation to participate in his mission. Three passages of Scripture permit us to see how God uses language in a strategic way viz. Genesis 11:1-7, Acts 2:1-13 and Revelations 7:9-10. God used languages to disempower and scatter a disobedient people who would not heed to his instruction to fill the earth (Genesis 11:1-7). He symbolized the coming of the Holy Spirit and the empowerment of the disciples (Acts 1:8) ipso facto by making them speak in various languages (Acts 2:1-13). Language serves like a centrifugal medium in God’s mission for the outward movement of people and Revelation 7:9-10 presents a mirror reflection of an inward movement, “a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb”.

God commissions us in the unfolding plan of his mission When God gave the world he had created to humankind he commissioned human beings to “be fruitful ​ and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:26, 27). This charge was programmatic, in ​ other words, it was intended to accompany the unfolding plan of God making himself known amongst the nations. “The God of Israel, whose declared mission was to make himself known to the nations ​ through Israel” (Wright 2006:124) now invites us to participate in that mission. After the fall in Genesis 3 and the consequent destruction of the world in Genesis 6, God was refashioning the world through Noah and his family and again charged Noah and his sons: “And God blessed Noah and his sons and ​ said to them, “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Genesis 9:1). God later chose Abraham ​ (Genesis 12) and repeated this charge to him. In Genesis 17, he said to Abraham: “Behold, my covenant ​ is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you” (Genesis ​ 17:4-6). God is “totally covenantal and eternally committed to the mission of blessing the nations through the agency of the people of Abraham” (Wright 2006:63) and invites us to make him known amongst the nations (Psalm 2:8). It will be important to note that nation is a “community of humans ​ formed on the basis of a common language… (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) and that the Greek ​ ​ work “ethne” translated as nations is almost synonymous to ethnic or ethnic groups. I therefore ​ ​ submit here that when God talks about nations, he sees different language communities.

God considerably empowers us for his mission through languages When people began to multiply, they came up with the idea to build a city and a tower in order to make a name for themselves. Their mission was in opposition to God’s mission. Rather than make God known, they wanted to make themselves known. This was facilitated by the use of a single language (Genesis 11:1). The single language they spoke served as leverage to resist the command to fill the earth. But God equally used languages to disempower a rebellious people. “And the Lord said, ​ “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech” (Genesis 11:6-7). One ​ way we can read “confuse their language” would be “disempower them by differentiating the languages they speak”. The multiplication of languages at Babel disempowered the people against their resistance to fill the earth but at the same time, it also acted like a centrifugal force causing them to spread out. God initially used languages to cause the people to move out to different parts of the world. In this way, God empowered the minority groups by giving them their own languages. Languages of the world are a tool for propagating God’s word but language also conveys culture. “When [some of] the missionaries came to Africa, they did not simply bring the gospel message, they also brought western culture” (Prill 2018:161) and this nuanced the gospel. Prill (2018) recounts a story about a Christian parachurch organization in South Africa and observes that their leaders were both expatriates and nationals but that during meetings, the nationals tended to stay quiet. Their silence was interpreted sometimes as ignorance but this was not the case. They simply felt inferior using the . “By using English language the way they did, the missionaries not only exercised power over their indigenous co-leaders but also sent out a message of communicative superiority. This message was emphasized even more by the missionaries’ refusal to learn the local language” (2018:169). Language use can be an exercise of power. God empowers us sometimes with language for effective missions and when we underestimate the role of language in the ministry, that can sometimes lead to very negative repercussions or counterproductivity.

Language axis could be a potential tower of disenfranchisement One question we have been asked in many communities in during mobilization for Bible translation is why the Bible should be translated in the local language when almost every member of the community understands English (and or French) with multiple versions of the Bible. This often leads us to think about Babel, the place where people, united by one language decided to build a tower to make a name for themselves. “It was man’s first initiative at globalization….and the globalists are speaking the same language as they spoke then: let us make a name for ourselves” (Tofibam 2020:4). Language axis has a potential to lure people into an insidious form of Babel. Greed (2016:4) affirms that “one language is a language of domination” and “by scattering the people in Genesis 11 God was affirming minority identity and opposing imperial identity.” Major languages have been used for centralization and for building a culture around a common language. Over-centralization can lead to marginalization of minority languages. From antiquity, history shows us powers such as the Greeks and the Romans that sought to centralize the world and enforce the use of language and culture to make a name for themselves (Tofibam 2020). The Francophonie and the Commonwealth of Nations are examples of language axis. The Francophonie (54-member states) developed from “a cultural and linguistic association mainly aimed at the maintenance of the position of French in the world to a political entity active in promoting the defense of language and cultural diversity in a global world” (Veronique 2013). Similarly, the Commonwealth, constituted in 1949, was founded amongst other things on the premises of shared history, language, culture (Iyer 2018). Today it gathers about 2.4 billion people in 43 countries. These groups revolve on the axle of a common language. Dillon (2016) observes that language policies can lead to linguistic neo-colonialism thus centralization. He cites the example of Ireland. “Colonized by British rulers for over six centuries since 1366…, the use of the Irish language was considered disloyal to the crown and also, at times, was seen as an infection of purity of the Britishness. In many cases, the language was considered something to be extinguished along with the religion of the Irish people.” Language shift and worse still language extinction leads to a disenfranchisement or sheer annihilation of the identity of a people. What language shall we speak before the throne as described in Revelations 7:9? A ? Shall we appear in blocs such as Francophonie or members of the Commonwealth speaking in English? I write this article in English but my first language is called Kom, a language spoken in Cameroon. I believe I will represent my ethnic group, the Kom people before the throne amongst the great community of saints and not appear in heaven as a proselyte of English.

God symbolized the coming of the Holy Spirit with the speaking of various languages At Pentecost, God chose to symbolize the coming of the Holy Spirit with the manifestation of “speaking in tongues” (Acts 2:1-13). At Pentecost, the disciples were empowered to become witnesses of Christ in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8), thus echoing God’s plan for the people to fill the earth. God could have sent Angel Gabriel to come and announce the coming of the Holy Spirit as was the case when Jesus came to the world. But of the many ways God could have acted, He chose to show the coming of the Holy Spirit with the sign of languages. Pentecost was a reminder of Babel empowering the disciples to scatter in diverse directions to different language communities (different nations) and become witnesses of Christ. Prill says “the glossolalia phenomenon, however also demonstrates as Franklin and Niemandt state, God’s acceptance of all languages and the importance he places on them as means of communicating his truths” (2018:168, 169). Pentecost thus is a continuation of Babel. Human empires tend to impose one language but God had intended a world of diversity from the beginning. When the people heard the disciples in their various languages, their first reaction was that of awe: “And at this sound the multitude came together, ​ and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. (Acts 2:5-6). ​ This was a mark of God’s acceptance of these languages as vehicles of the communication of his mission. There is always a sense of awe when people hear God in their language.

The Pentecost trends of Bible translation God empowered the disciples at Pentecost and symbolized this with the speaking of different ​ languages. “And they were amazed and astonished, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking ​ Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? (Acts 7-8). Bible translation ​ creates a sense of awe just like Pentecost. When people hear the word of God in their mother tongue, especially spoken by outsiders, there is always bewilderment. Many of the early missionaries who came to Africa understood the importance of the word of God in the local language and many engaged in studying local languages and translating the Bible into them. Alfred Saker for example, the Baptist missionary who came to Cameroon arrived in the country in 1842 and had the gospel of Matthew translated into the Douala language barely four years after his arrival. By 1862, he had the whole New Testament translated into the Douala language (Slageren 1969:59). Similarly, “the Presbyterian missionaries arrived Cameroon in 1890 and their leader Rev A.C. Good immediately began to study the Bulu language. He translated the four Gospels of the New Testament into the Bulu language” (Babalola 1988: 158) shortly after. This paradigm continued in other African countries. Watkins (1978:108) notes that “from its beginning in 1842, the Anglican Church has been ahead of all other denominations in communicant membership in Nigeria. There are several reasons for this, not the least of which is the fact that large portions of Scriptures were translated from the very beginning of mission work into the Yoruba, Ibo and other languages.” Language is inexorably linked to missions and the success of the missionaries in communicating the gospel in the early days of Christianity in Africa significantly depended on their ability to learn and use the local language in their communication. I have been told that for many African nations, Christianity and Colonization came almost at the same time. While many of the missionaries thought it necessary to learn the local languages to communicate the word of God, the colonial staff never did.

The missional impulses of Scriptures in a first language of the people Missions is generally understood as taking the gospel across boundaries and cultures, mostly understood to be geographical boundaries. Bosch (1991:9) holds that the “Christian faith is intrinsically missionary” and the “entire Christian existence is to be characterized as missionary existence” (1991:10). This, in other words, attest to the need of every Christian to seek to communicate his/her faith. Bosch discusses on paradigm shifts in missions noting that missions now can go in every direction by all and sundry. Bible translation nurtures and matures many believers to be able to do evangelism and other missional activities. Translation of the Bible into other languages helps believers who hitherto were unable to communicate their faith because of language to be able to do that. African language communities are embedded with different layers of culture and religions. I grew up in a community with different expressions of African Traditional Religion and Christianity and to a limited extent Islam, all cohabiting in the same community. If missions is understood to be taking the gospel across cultures, then it is possible for a person in such a community to be involved in full missionary activity even though s/he has not moved geographically. The challenge that has stopped many in such communities from involvement in missions had been the absence of Scriptures in the mother tongue (the only language they understand). Christianity remains vulnerable in ​ communities without available Scriptures in the language. African Traditional Religion for example thrives on the use of the local language where it is practiced. Stories of Scripture engagement from the Kom New Testament help to show that Scriptures available in a language people understand can promote missions in a very significant way. Two short anecdotes substantiate this. Miriam is a woman of an advanced age in the Kom tribe of North West Cameroon. Her dreams to read the word of God cut short because she realized she couldn’t go to school at a mature age to learn English, the only language in which Scriptures existed for the Kom people. Her hopes were rekindled in 1998 when the New Testament was being translated into the and the consequent literacy classes in the language. Finally, she became literate in her language and could now read the Bible. She suddenly began to read the Bible to most of the elderly women in the community. The inability of these elderly women in her church to read the Bible in the only language they understood had been to them like a stone at the tomb of the word of God. Their worry had always been “who will roll away the stone for us.” Miriam is now the answer to that prayer. She reads for the women, she does evangelism amongst her peers in the community. It can well be said Miriam empowered by the availability of Scriptures in the Kom language is making God known to many around her. Margaret’s husband was her first convert by reading Scriptures in the language. Like Miriam, Margaret was illiterate in her mature age but with the translation of the New Testament, she enrolled in the literacy classes and has learnt to read and write the Kom language. Her husband was mesmerized to see his wife read (from the Kom New Testament). That day on Christmas eve of 2006, she read the Christmas story from Luke 2 to her husband and her co-wives with their many children. Like the Pentecost experience, her husband watched her in awe and later on that year gave his life to Christ and got baptized. Margaret, herself a choir leader, was able to draw inspiration directly from Scriptures and to compose her songs.

Conclusion God speaks to be understood. We understand better when we hear a message in our first language. When Jesus explained the parable of the seed (Matthew 13:21), he said; “as for what was sown on good ​ soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it. He indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.” Languages can be likened to the soil and the good ​ soil is the language in which one understands a message best. God is making himself known and desires for everyone everywhere to know him. For this to happen, each and everyone needs to hear God in a language s/he understands best. When we hear God only through another language, God is mediated to us. The word of God is no longer mediated for the Kom people in Cameroon. Scripture internalization is now easier for them with the New Testament in their language. There is also a sense of dignity for the people because they have the word of God in their language. Many people in the community like Miriam and Margaret have been empowered to do evangelism and they are doing it confidently because they have the word in a language they understand best. Many people have come to the faith because they have understood the message of salvation presented to them. There is a visible church growth in the community. Some of the former Kom translators are now missionaries serving across in related language communities. The Kom New Testament is being used to speed up the translation of other New Testaments in the cluster of related languages in which Kom is found. There is evidently a missional use of the Kom New Testament both within its communities and across the neighboring ethnic groups. God is using the Kom language to advance his mission both within and outside of the Kom nation.

References

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