One of the problematic consequences of adopting a doctrine of the infallibility and/or inerrancy of Scripture is that we are blinded to the fact that what we read in a text is what we bring to it. We always read ourselves and our assumptions and contexts into texts. We cannot do otherwise. As a result, many modern Christians assume terms like “sin,” “salvation,” “eternal life,” and “the Kingdom of God” carry fixed, universal meanings. They use these terms as if their definitions were self-evident, handed down directly from God, untouched by history or culture. Yet, like all language, these words are shaped by the contexts in which they were written—and just as crucially, by the contexts in which they are read. The meanings we ascribe to them today may be vastly different from what they signified to the original audiences of Scripture.
Derrida famously argued that meaning is never fixed; words do not point to some eternal essence but derive their significance through différance—the play of differences between them and other words. Meaning is always deferred, always contingent upon context. This is especially true of biblical language, which has been translated, interpreted, and reinterpreted over millennia, passing through the philosophical frameworks and cultural assumptions of vastly different eras. To pretend that we can simply take Biblical terms at face value, without attending to their historical and linguistic evolution, is to ignore the fundamental nature of language itself.
Sartre, for his part, would remind us that meaning is never imposed upon us from without. The way we understand concepts like sin and salvation is an existential (if unconscious) choice, shaped by our own historical and social realities. A first-century Jew under Roman occupation would have understood “salvation” in profoundly different terms than a twenty-first-century evangelical living in a global superpower. Yet, modern Christianity often assumes that such terms carry a singular, objective meaning, valid across all times and places.
Take sin, for example. In much of Western Christianity, especially in Protestant traditions influenced by Augustine and later the Reformation, sin is primarily understood in legal terms: a violation of divine law, an offense against God that demands punishment. This is the framework that gives rise to penal substitutionary atonement, the idea that Jesus must suffer in our place to satisfy God’s justice.
But this is not how sin was originally understood in the Hebrew Scriptures. Now I do not claim any form of expertise in the ancient languages of Scripture, but those scholars who are widely agree that the Hebrew word most often translated as “sin,” chata, is more about missing the mark—failing to live in alignment with God’s ways (in other words, a way of being-in-the-world rather than any number of individual transgressions). It is relational rather than juridical, more about damage to the fabric of community than about breaking some abstract legal code. In many Biblical texts, atonement is about restoration, healing, and reconciliation rather than retributive punishment.
Jesus himself frequently subverts the legalistic concept of sin. He eats with tax collectors and sinners, not to demand their repentance but to welcome them into fellowship. He forgives sins without requiring sacrifice. He tells the story of the prodigal son, where the father’s forgiveness is given freely, without any hint of legal transaction. Yet later theological developments recast sin in the framework of Roman legal thought, transforming Jesus’ radical inclusivity – his ethic of relational healing – into a system of guilt, punishment, and debt.
This shift in our understanding of the nature of sin – from a brokenness in the social mechanisms that shape human relatedness that needs realignment to a series of individual transgressions that require a punitive response – has tragic consequences not only for how we relate to one another, but for how we conceptualise God.
If we frame sin simply as an individual transgression, we absolve ourselves of complicity in the broken relational structures where the individual problematic actions are birthed. And if we cannot accept our complicity (in more Biblical terms, if we cannot repent), we have no incentive to correct those problematic social mechanisms. We perpetuate the problem.
Similarly, we reduce God to a cosmic judge. And a capricious one, at that. But that is the subject of the next post. The point is that it is enormously irresponsible to assume that we do not interpret words. Especially words that we regard as sacred. Words have power because words shape thought, thought shapes action, and action shapes our relational realities.
When we say that we are saved from “sin”, then, what we think we are being saved from matters. It also matters what we think we are being saved for. Salvation is often framed in modern Christianity as an escape from eternal damnation. The gospel, in this reading, is primarily about securing a place in heaven after death. Yet, in the Hebrew Bible and in Jesus’ teachings, salvation is far more concrete and this-worldly. The Hebrew word yeshua (from which Jesus’ name derives) means “deliverance” or “rescue,” often referring to liberation from oppression, exile, or suffering.
When Jesus speaks of salvation, he does so in the language of Jubilee—of debts forgiven, captives freed, the marginalised restored to community. His proclamation of the Kingdom of God is not about an otherworldly paradise but about a radical reordering of social relationships here and now. Yet, later Christian theology, shaped by Greco-Roman and medieval philosophical categories, shifts salvation away from social transformation and into the realm of personal piety and the afterlife.
Speaking of which, “eternal life” is another phrase that has been profoundly altered by linguistic and cultural shifts. In much of modern Christianity, eternal life is understood as simply living forever—an endless duration of time in heaven. But the Greek phrase zoē aiōnios does not primarily refer to unending chronological existence (at least, if Michael Hardin and a host of other scholars, all of whom have a thorough grasp of Ancient Greek, are to be believed). Aiōnios is better translated as “of the age to come” rather than “eternal” in a temporal sense. Jesus’ promise of eternal life is not about infinite duration but about a new kind of life—one infused with the reality of God’s reign, a life that begins here and now.
John’s Gospel makes this explicit: “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3). Eternal life is relational, about participation in divine love, not simply an unending existence. Yet, the influence of Greek metaphysics, with its emphasis on the immortal soul, reshaped this concept into something foreign to its original Jewish context.
Perhaps no phrase has been more misunderstood than “the Kingdom of God.” To many Christians today, this phrase refers to heaven—God’s domain, which we enter after death if we meet the required conditions. But in Jesus’ teachings, the Kingdom of God is not a distant paradise but an imminent reality, something breaking into the present. “The kingdom of God is within you,” he tells his followers (Luke 17:21). It is about the transformation of human relationships, the overturning of unjust structures, the radical ethic of love and forgiveness enacted in real time.
Yet, as the church moved away from its Jewish roots and aligned itself with imperial power, the Kingdom of God was increasingly deferred to the afterlife. The radical vision of Jesus—where the last are first, where enemies are loved, where debts are erased—was spiritualised, made safely otherworldly. A kingdom that could have threatened empire was domesticated into a kingdom that reinforced it.
If we take seriously the historical and linguistic complexity of these concepts, we begin to see how much has been lost in translation—literally and theologically. Christianity’s most foundational ideas have been filtered through layers of cultural and philosophical interpretation, often obscuring their original subversive force.
Jesus’ teachings were radical, destabilising, even offensive to those who clung to conventional religious wisdom. Perhaps the best way to honour them is not to defend our inherited doctrines at all costs but to allow ourselves to be surprised, even unsettled, by what Scripture actually says. After all, if the gospel is truly good news, it must be good news here and now—not just in some distant afterlife, but in the living, breathing reality of our relationships, our communities, our world.
Vapors In The Wind 
Leave a comment