Translation and Theology: The Lord’s Prayer in Three Chinese Versions

Abstract

This study examines translations of the Lord’s Prayer in the Chinese Union Version, Today’s Chinese Version, and the Contemporary Chinese Version (New Testament), exploring how the doctrine of the incarnation is woven into these translations. The author explains how an ideal translation aims at “relevance in faithfulness.” Having provided his own rendering of the prayer, the author goes on to discuss the theology of God’s sovereignty and the theology of the cross that it demonstrates, concluding that biblical translation involves both a theological grasp of the text’s objective revelation and reflection on the subjective theological position(s) held by the translator.

Keywords

translation Lord’s Prayer Chinese Union Version Today’s Chinese Version Contemporary Chinese Version

Translators’ introduction: I (Naomi Thurston) first met Changping Zha and his wife over a meal of Sichuan-style hot pot, where nearly every kind of meat and vegetable is cooked together in a soup of hot, numbing peppercorns. An apt setting for a meeting with this Renaissance polymath, whose interests span from modern art to social criticism, biblical studies to intellectual and Japanese history. With his boyish round face, heavy Sichuanese accent, interest in the postmodern, and extensive connections with curators, critics, and artists in the avant-garde art scene from Kunming to Beijing, one might not immediately associate Zha with solemn treatises on the philological minutiae of the Greek New Testament or theological expositions on the incarnation. In fact, his personal library boasts versions of the Bible in half a dozen languages that he regularly consults for scholarly research and devotional reading.

While Professor Zha’s writings are not known for their simplicity, the point he makes in this essay (translated into English here for the first time) is one that becomes clearer and more profound the longer one considers it: the incarnation is reflected in all human efforts to translate. The work of translation is messy, involved, costly, and ultimately invaluable in its consequences because it builds a relationship previously considered impossible. In this succinct discussion of translation and theology, Changping Zha shows how the Lord’s Prayer, which itself reveals the rhetorical structure of the incarnation, has been variously translated in three versions of the Chinese Bible. These differences illustrate the classic problem of prioritizing fidelity either to the source text or to contextual relevance. The incarnational logic of “becoming” integrates both concerns in what Zha calls xin zhong ya, literally, “elegance in faithfulness.” This is an interesting allusion to Yan Fu’s three principles of translation (“faithfulness, expressiveness, and elegance,” xin da ya). In this articulation, however, with reference to biblical translation by a person of faith, the xin in xin zhong ya implies translating from a position within Christian faith and its credal traditions. Zha then highlights the importance of formal equivalence—fidelity to the original—and a translator’s theological position of faith. We translate this principle as “relevance in faithfulness” to highlight, not a particular style of language that is faithfully translated, but its efficacy, or successful rendering, in the target context.

It should be noted here that some translation choices are based on terms that Zha uses in particular ways and that belong to his original articulations of theories he has written about in other works. For example, the translations “human-human” and “human-divine” are taken from previous English translations of Zha’s “world relational” aesthetic theory, which he discusses at length in the first of his two-volume History of Ideas in Pioneering Contemporary Chinese Art [in Chinese] (2017). Translating these terms consistently with previous translations, we wish to honor the integrity of Zha’s terminological frame of reference. Most important, however, we hope to communicate Professor Zha’s ideas, which are rich and sometimes complex, but also spiritually nourishing.

—Wenqian Wang and Naomi Thurston

The theological foundation of biblical translation

Theological implications of the incarnation

In systematic theology, the christological doctrine of the incarnation denotes the “Word” of God “becoming flesh” in the historical person of Jesus of Nazareth.¹ The Word of God, being in Jesus Christ, was manifested in Jesus’s words and actions, his conception by the Holy Spirit, his preaching of love, his vicarious death, resurrection, and ascension, and his promised return and judgment.² In the words of John the apostle:

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. . . . For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known. (John 1:14, 17–18 NIV)

In Christianity, the key to understanding God the Father is knowing Jesus Christ, who is the only way to God and the sole mediator between humanity and God (1 Tim 2:5; Heb 9:15; 1 John 2:1). Before created humanity, Jesus the mediator offers assurance for the existence of God; before God the Creator, Jesus is the guarantor for the existence of created, sustained, and restored humanity. The key distinction between the two natures of Christ is seen in Jesus’s representing humanity to God and God to humanity. “We are not God but [his] creations, limited and finite. This [realization] motivates human gratitude. Once we forget this basic reality, the more we aspire to greatness,”³ the deeper the deadly abyss we sink into.

The theological basis of biblical translation

If we apply the doctrine of the incarnation to biblical translation, we will find that its application in history can easily be divided into three types: the first type centers on the “Word,” or dao in Chinese. It aims chiefly at representing the precise meanings of the source language and follows the principle of direct or literal translation focused on conveying the Word of God and, wherever possible, finding formal equivalents for the morphological and grammatical structures of the source language.

Another type of translation fixates on the “flesh,” ròushēn, or the contextuality of the text. Its aim is to understand and render meanings and connotations within the target language by following the principle of meaning-for-meaning, or semantic (free) translation that emphasizes the recipients’ “fleshly” (contextual) conditionality, such as linguistic usage in a particular time and era.

A third type of translation is focused on the incarnational aspect of “becoming,” chéng, and falls somewhere between literal and freer, contextual translation practices. In fact, both literal and free translations contain aspects of “becoming” (the original Greek implies a process of “generating” or “bringing forth”). Translations prioritizing the “Word” can be characterized as literal, while those biased toward the contextual, or the “flesh,” can be described as free, or as preferencing functional equivalence.⁴

Analysis of three Chinese translations of the Lord’s Prayer

The principle of literal translation in the Chinese Union Version

The most prevalent and widely used Chinese translation of the Bible in circulation today, the Chinese Union Version (CUV), was translated mainly from the 1885 English Revised Version (ERV). In addition, on questions of scholarship, the CUV translators turned to the 1901 American Standard Version (ASV).⁵ And for guidance in translating passages of particular importance to church and other traditions, the King James Version (KJV) was consulted; the Peking Version of 1872 served as the Chinese reference text.⁶

Due to its literal translation style, which results from a more or less direct rendering, the ERV has not been widely adopted in the English-speaking world. “The revisers’ ideal of ‘faithfulness’ in translation was a meticulous word-for-word reproduction of the Greek text in English words, using the same English word for a given Greek word whenever possible, leaving no Greek word without translation into a corresponding English word, following the order of the Greek words rather than the order natural to English, and attempting to translate the articles and the tenses with a precision alien to English idiom.”⁷ This “faithful word-for-word rendering” follows the Cambridge rather than the Oxford style of translation, and “although the meaning is accurate, the evocativeness and dynamic rhythm of the KJV is lost almost entirely. As a ‘research Bible’ it may be useful to scholars and pastors, but the congregation will return to the KJV for recitation in the assembly.”⁸ However, it must be noted that lexical and syntactic correspondences between the source and target languages do not necessarily produce equivalent meanings. This is due to the considerable divergences among cultural significations when comparing the two languages. Based on this principle of direct translation, the translation of the Lord’s Prayer in the CUV—except for the phrase “hallowed be your name” (which in the CUV is rendered “may all people revere your name as holy”)—generally reflects the theological intention of Jesus’s prayer, emphasizing the heavenly fatherhood of God and the relationship between “us” as a community and the heavenly Father, tianfu in Chinese. This concern is reflected in article 11 of the translation principles outlined in 1891 by the translators of the Mandarin Union Version, which states: “Make a special effort to render literally words and phrases which have a theological or ethical import, and which are, or may be, used by any school for proof or support of doctrines; putting an explanation in the margin, if necessary.”⁹

The CUV renders the Lord’s Prayer as recorded in Matthew’s Gospel thus:

Wǒmen zài tiānshàng de fù, yuàn rén dōu zūn nǐ de míng wèi shèng. Yuàn nǐ de guó jiànglín. Yuàn nǐ de zhǐyì xíng zài dìshàng, rútóngxíng zài tiānshàng. Wǒmen rì yòng de yǐnshí, jīnrì cì gěi wǒmen. Miǎn wǒmen de zhài, rú tóng wǒmen miǎnle rén de zhài, bù jiào wǒmen yùjiàn shìtàn, jiù wǒmen tuōlí xiōng’è (huò zuò ‘tuōlí è zhě’), yīnwèi guódù, quánbǐng, róngyào quán shì nǐ de, zhídào yǒngyuǎn. Āmén.

Our Father in heaven, may all people revere your name as holy. May your kingdom come [lit. “descend, come down”]. May your will be done on earth, as [it is] done in heaven. Give us our daily nourishment [lit. “drink and food”] this day. Pardon our debts as we have pardoned people’s debts. Do not lead us into temptation [“help us avoid any encounter with temptation”], rescue us from evil (or from the Evil One). For the kingdom, power, and glory all belong to you, forever. Amen. (Matt 6:9–13)¹⁰

There is, however, one significant difference between the ERV and CUV translations pertaining to the first half of the prayer. The ERV retains the original meaning of the Greek in this passage, highlighting the priority of “our Father in heaven,” and the name, kingdom, and will of the Father, by rendering the opening lines, “Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.” The CUV, in contrast, after opening with the appellation, “Our Father in heaven,” renders the next phrase, “may all people revere your name as holy.” This wording introduces an abrupt shift in focus that turns the reader’s attention toward human agency. Although the grammatical structure in the Greek sentence is a verb-object sequence (i.e., “people” is not the subject), the Chinese structure here nonetheless emphasizes “people.”

Just as in the KJV, the closing doxology of the Lord’s Prayer found in verse 13b (“For the kingdom, power, and glory all belong to you, forever. Amen”) is shown as part of the main text rather than presented in a sidebar, as is it is in the ERV.¹¹ The CUV translators clearly thought that Christian tradition here should be incorporated into the Christian faith. Verse 13b is absent from several ancient scrolls, while the full arrangement of the words and phrases of this verse are found in manuscripts dating back no earlier than the ninth to the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries. It also appears in Coptic manuscripts from the third century onward, in Armenian, Georgian, and Ethiopian translations from the fifth century, in a Syro-Harclean version from the year 616, and in Slavic versions from the ninth century onward. While it is missing from several of the ancient scrolls, in others it appears only partially, such as in the Syro-Curetonian version of the third or fourth century, in which the ancient Syrian omits the word “power.” The minuscule manuscript of the gospels, which dates to about 1122, renders the verse thus: “For the kingdom, power, and glory of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all belong to you, forever. Amen.”

The textual evolution of this passage demonstrates the significance of the credal declaration “I believe in the communion of saints,” as recorded in the Apostle’s Creed; that is, it traces the orthodox beliefs of Christian saints throughout the ages as integral to the Christian faith as such. The emphasis on sola Scriptura—Chinese wéidú Shèngjīng—during the Protestant Reformation does not dictate that Christians should “read only the Scriptures—wéi dú Shèngjīng.¹² This doxological closing line supplied by church tradition reminds Christians that the faith of the biblical canon is also that of the Christian tradition—more than that, it is faith within the kingdom of God. The Bible translators who labored in China [just over] a century ago¹³ clearly believed that Chinese Christians who would one day be reading the CUV no less belonged to the universal church. Their understanding of the universality of God’s Word, which the biblical text itself emphasizes, motivated their choice to focus on the “Word” of the “Word becoming flesh” as the guiding principle of their extensively literal translation.

The contextual equivalence approach of Today’s Chinese Version

Today’s Chinese Version (TCV) demonstrates the application of the second translation principle, namely, a translation approach centered on the contextual, or “flesh,” aspect of the incarnation, indicating a rendering aimed at consistency in meaning, contextual equivalence, and so forth. This version was translated on the basis of Today’s English Version (TEV, later renamed Good News Bible or Good News Translation), published in 1966. The original purpose of the TEV as envisioned by the American Bible Society was to cater to learners of English in Asia and Africa. Following initial criticism, it was republished in 1976, the New Testament having been revised and the Old Testament retranslated. The TEV was distinctive for its simple diction and intelligible colloquial style. A gender-neutral translation appeared in 1992. In 2001 a Catholic edition was published. I once hand-copied this version, noticing as I did so that the English expressions were often oversimplified and lacked accuracy when compared to the more faithfully rendered New International Version.

The Lord’s Prayer in the Good News Translation reads:

Our Father in heaven: May your holy name be honored; may your Kingdom come; may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today the food we need. Forgive us the wrongs we have done, as we forgive the wrongs that others have done to us. Do not bring us to hard testing, but keep us safe from the Evil One.

In this version, “your holy name,” “your kingdom,” and “your will” retain the focus of the original Greek version by lending absolute priority to the heavenly Father in the prayer of the human petitioner, while words or phrases like “the wrongs” and “hard testing” are rather colloquial.

In TCV the passage reads:

Wǒmen zài tiānshàng de fùqīn: Yuàn rén dōu zūnchóng nǐ de shèng míng; yuàn nǐ zài shìshàng zhǎngquán; yuàn nǐ de zhǐyì shíxiàn zài dìshàng, rútóng shíxiàn zài tiānshàng. Cì gěi wǒmen jīntiān suǒ xū de yǐnshí. Ráoshù wǒmen duì nǐ de kuīfù, zhèngrú wǒmen ráoshùle kuīfù wǒmen de rén. Bùyào ràng wǒmen zāoshòu chéngdān bù qǐ de kǎoyàn; yào jiù wǒmen tuōlí nà xié’è zhě de shǒu.

Our Father in heaven, may all people revere and worship your holy name. May you reign in the world. May your will be realized on earth, as it is realized in heaven. Give us the drink and food we need this day. Forgive us the wrong we have done to you, as we have forgiven those who have wronged us. Keep us from being tested beyond what we can bear, and rescue us from the hand of the Evil One.

Except for the phrase “may all people revere and worship your holy name,” which adopts the same focal shift toward human agency that characterizes the CUV translation, the expressions “drink and food,” “wrong done,” and “the hand of the Evil One” are markedly more secular in tone, which eases understanding for a Chinese readership. Compared to the Greek emphasis on “your holy name” and “your kingdom,” TCV’s renderings “may all people honor your holy name” and “may you reign in the world” de-emphasize the centrality of God’s sovereignty highlighted in the original Greek. In this way, although a free, contextually aware translation aims to express original meaning and intent, it may not always strike the most authentic note or render the tone of the source text.

The translation principle of “becoming” in the Contemporary Chinese Version (New Testament)

Between the direct, or literal, translation centered on the “Word” and the free, contextual rendering focused on the “flesh” of the incarnation—that is, somewhere between the CUV and TCV—another Chinese translation follows a third type of principle, the Contemporary Chinese Version (New Testament).¹⁴ This version illustrates the translation approach centered on the “becoming” of the incarnation. It is “a translation of the original texts into a highly comprehensible modern Mandarin.”¹⁵ The Old Testament was translated on the basis of the 1983 Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, while the New Testament was translated from the 1993 fourth revised edition of the Greek New Testament, published by the United Bible Societies. The translation generally inclines toward more compromising translation solutions, as can be seen in its rendering of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew:

Wǒmen zài tiānshàng de fù, yuàn nǐ de míng bèi zūn wèi shèng. Yuàn nǐ de guó jiànglín. Yuàn nǐ de zhǐyì chéngjiù zài dìshàng, rú tóngxíng zài tiānshàng nàyàng. Qiú nǐ jīnrì cì gěi wǒmen dàngtiān suǒ xūyào de shíwù. Qiú nǐ miǎn qù wǒmen de zuì zhài, zhèngrú wǒmen miǎn qù biérén de zuì zhài. Qiú nǐ bùyào ràng wǒmen xiànrù shìtàn, jiù wǒmen tuōlí nà è zhě. Yīnwèi guódù, quánbǐng, róngyào, quán shì nǐ de, zhídào yǒngyuǎn. Āmen.

Our Father in Heaven, may your name be revered as holy. May your Kingdom come. May your will be accomplished on earth, as it is done in heaven. We ask that you give us the nourishment we need each day on this day. We ask that you forgive us our debt of sin as we have forgiven others their debt of sin. We ask that you do not lead us into temptation [but] rescue us from the Evil One. For the kingdom, power, and glory are all yours, forever. Amen.

From a theological perspective, this translation is closer to the Greek, avoiding the shift in focus toward human agency found in the CUV and TCV. The name, kingdom, and will of the Father in heaven are at the heart of the prayer. The translation “debt of sin” combines the meanings of sin and debt, which share the same root in Aramaic in the rabbinic texts.

The principle of “relevance in faithfulness”

Corresponding to the incarnational notion of “becoming,” the translation principle of “relevance in faithfulness” requires continuous consideration and contemplation on how to translate between the two poles of “faithfulness,” or loyalty, to the source text (“formal equivalence”) on one hand, and “relevance,” or contextual equivalence (“functional equivalence”), on the other. The features of each approach, whether literal or free, relate to the translator’s tendency toward either “fidelity” or “relevance.” In order to “fulfill the Word of God,” the formidable task of translating the Bible into Chinese thus requires fidelity to the original text and sensitivity to the demands of relevance in consideration of the target readership. I have tentatively coined this translation principle “relevance in faithfulness.” It emphasizes the aspect of “becoming” in the doctrine of the incarnation, expressing the “holy rendering of the Word of God (faithfulness)” and “the holiness of the Word of God in rendering (relevance).”

Drawing on the United Bible Societies fourth edition and applying the principle of “relevance in faithfulness,” the Lord’s Prayer can be translated as follows:

Our Father in the heavens, may your name be revered as holy. May your kingdom descend [lit. “come down”]. May your will be accomplished, on earth as in heaven. Give us our daily grain this day. Absolve us of our debts as we have pardoned the debts of others. Do not let us fall into any kind of temptation, [but] rescue us from the Evil One. For the kingdom, power, and glory are all yours, forever. Amen.¹⁶

Theme and content of the Lord’s Prayer: The sovereignty of God

At the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus employs the vocative case, the direct address of “Father,” to indicate the established relationship between God and humanity (6:9a). Simultaneously, he tells the disciples that this prayer is to “our Father in heaven,” suggesting “a relationship among human beings” who pray collectively. These two relational dimensions are signified in the theology of the Lord’s Prayer. “Heavenly Father” is a traditional Hebrew expression, which Matthew uses twelve times. In Mark 11:25 we read of “your Father who is in heaven,” indicating that “we [being human] are God’s creation and that,” according to the Hebrew understanding, “as his children, we have a responsibility to him.”¹⁷ As the “Father in the heavens,” God is wholly transcendent and exists beyond the natural world. The fulfillment of human desire in prayer should thus no longer be prioritized but is subordinated. The teaching to “pray to your Father who is in secret” [Matt 6:6] teaches us that consistently living well requires that we follow God’s will and submit to his guidance. When we pray, gratitude precedes supplication—the gratitude expressed is without condition; we are aware of the will and love of the Father and know that our lives are bound up in his. This deep connection is not due to personal talent or ability. Hence, the disciple, praying in secret, has no other prayer than this: “our Father in heaven.”¹⁸

In Matthew’s Gospel, then, we first encounter Jesus including himself in the prayer with us as he instructs his disciples to pray, saying: “Our Father in the heavens,” “our” also pointing to the unique relationship between himself as the Son and God [as the Father]—he is the Messiah foretold in the Hebrew Bible during the Second Temple period, and he has taken up a unique mission. Furthermore, he prioritizes the relationship between God and humanity over all other human relationships, including humanity’s relationships with nature or history. This theological emphasis on God’s presence, or God’s dwelling with humans as expressed in “our Father,” is reiterated elsewhere in Mathew’s Gospel (1:23; 28:20) and is followed here by “your” name (the holy name of “Father,”’ 6:9b), “your” kingdom (the kingdom of the Father, 6:10a), and “your” will (the will of the Father, 6:10b). In this way, the transcendent “God” of the Hebrew tradition has become the “heavenly Father” of the disciples through the words of Jesus. According to the Matthean Jesus, God maintains his transcendence within his immanence. The God who is the “Father in heaven” dwells among “us,” the community made up of Jesus’s disciples. Next, Jesus also emphasizes the essential importance of relationships among the believers, God’s children, in the realm of human relationships; in relating to their heavenly Father, the believers form the “community of us.”

According to Jesus, the “name of the heavenly Father” is “the name of God” or “the name of the Lord.” This name has been “defiled or hallowed by the actions of human, as can be seen from the example of the martyrs, whose sacrifice and dedication have so often led others to glorify the Lord.”¹⁹ At the same time, God continuously calls Israel to reveal his holy name among the nations:

I will show the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, the name you have profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Sovereign Lord, when I am proved holy through you before their eyes. For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. . . . Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God. (Ezek 36:23–25, 28)

The fundamental difference between human beings and God is of course that human beings are not God; they cannot survive without him, and they subsist in his determination. Since their relationship with God takes precedence over all other human relationships, God’s will and human determination are inseparable. When the disciples pray ‘May . . . be hallowed,’ this prayer becomes: ‘May you lead us in that way!’”²⁰

Second, the “kingdom of our heavenly Father” is the “kingdom of God” (Matthew also uses the expression “kingdom of heaven”), and it is the realm of God’s sovereignty. When people follow the Word of God, his kingdom is in their midst (Luke 17:21). In addition, the kingdom of God has come to people because of the proclamation of Jesus. Jesus says: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt 4:17 author’s translation).²¹ “May your kingdom come” and “may your will be accomplished” express the same idea, namely, that the kingdom of God has come to those who obey his Word. At the same time, it is the fulfillment of the will of God, and therefore people have entered the kingdom of God.

Third, the will of the heavenly Father is “the will of God.” When Jesus instructs his disciples to pray for the will of the heavenly Father to be done on earth as it is in heaven, we see that the fulfillment of the Father’s will is not limited by space; this echoes the theme of the previous verse. The main point is to “recognize the eternal sovereignty of the King,”²² which comprises his transcendent sovereignty and his immanence, his dwelling with us: for the sake of humanity, the almighty God involves himself in the affairs of God’s kingdom on earth. But what is “the will of the heavenly Father” we are told to pray for? In the Hebrew tradition, God’s will encompasses his purposes, his “favor and blessing” (Deut 33:23), as well as his “aid” in times of trouble (Ps 106:4). The original meaning of “your will” in the Greek text can thus be understood as his loving-kindness and benevolent will.²³

Moving from the significance of the “human-divine” to “human-human relationships” in examining the Lord’s Prayer, one notices eight instances of words representing the personal pronoun “we” in the Greek text, beginning in Matthew 6:11.²⁴ The “we” denoted here is the “we” that bears witness to the human-human relationship within the human-divine relationship, the “we” that collectively regards God as Father, and the “we” that knows God as “protector” (6:11), “pardoner” (6:12), and “savior” (6:13a). While those who refuse to accept this devotional theology are excluded from “the community of ‘us’” and belong to an other that is separated from God, according to the Christian creationist understanding, all living beings are his creations.

“Give us this day our daily necessities” is a prayer offered to the Father who provides, but it also points to God’s providence itself. The sentiment of this plea is reminiscent of the words of Agur, son of Jakeh in the Solomonic Proverbs:

Two things I ask of you, Lord;

do not refuse me before I die:

Keep falsehood and lies far from me;

give me neither poverty nor riches,

but give me only my daily bread.

Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you

and say, “Who is the Lord?”

Or I may become poor and steal,

and so dishonor the name of my God.

(Prov 30:7–9)

“When we pray to God, we need only ask for the daily necessities that sustain us, and to be kept from the extremes of poverty or wealth; we should seek God’s provision for today, according to his good plan.”²⁵ This is how Jesus taught his disciples to pray for their daily provision. This latter part of the prayer also reminds us of the manna that God provided for the people of Israel when they were adrift in the wilderness (Exod 16:35; Deut 8:2–10). God is the God not only of Israel’s patriarchs but also of his future people, and the One who cares for humanity’s physical needs “today.” He is the heavenly Father who supplies people’s needs. The prayer “Give us this day our daily necessities” thus relates to the needs of Jesus’s disciples in the present, on “this day.” Jesus also teaches them to be “thankful today and strive toward goodness this day,”²⁶ encouraging believers to trust God anew each and every day. This is consistent with Jesus’s teaching throughout the Gospel of Matthew: “Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matt 6:34).

In Aramaic, “debt” and “sin” share the same etymology. Luke’s Gospel reads: “Forgive us our sins” (Luke 11:4) rather than “forgive us our debt.” Jesus here teaches the disciples that as a community, from first to last, everyone is guilty before the Father and in need of forgiveness from above. Without God’s forgiveness, “we” have no power to forgive others because debtors cannot borrow to repay their debt. In the same way, the disciples need God’s deliverance in community. So far, the image of God as heavenly Father is that of God as “our savior,” “pardoner,” and “protector.” The image of the heavenly Father is also embodied in his actions toward the community of disciples in the daily provision of nourishment, the forgiveness of sin and debt, protection against temptation, and sheltering from evil, as well as in his absolute sovereignty over the created world. “Because of the self-constructed foundations of human beings, [the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer] do not originate in human consciousness, skills, desires, and the like, but in God’s determination to break through into those foundations, leading to the petitioner’s pleas, ‘may your will be done’ and ‘may your name be hallowed.’ This prayer is the most fundamental responsibility human beings give voice to.”²⁷ Otherwise, humans are no more than rarefied objects floating around the universe, subject to every kind of arbitrary manipulation.

If God, as the heavenly Father, is able to answer the prayers of the disciples, it follows that the “kingdom, power, and glory” really do belong to God. The doxology in the conclusion of the Lord’s Prayer is generally considered to have been added considerably later, but this addition is consistent with the theological logic of the context, because Christian prayers should ultimately return to the human-divine relationship (6:13b), back to the praise of God’s victory, and his sovereignty over all human-human relationships so as to echo again the prayer’s opening: “Our Father in [the] heaven[s].” This is the fundamental theological doctrine that Jesus passed on to his disciples in his teaching on prayer.

The theology of the Lord’s Prayer: A theology of the cross

In terms of the rhetorical structure of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew’s Gospel, verses 9–10 relate to the human-divine, or vertical, relationship within interpersonal, “human-human,” relationships,²⁸ while verses 11–13a point to human-human, or horizontal, relationships within the human-divine relationship. Finally, verse 13b addresses the human-divine relationship. While each section with its horizontal-vertical relational structure separately suggests the form of a cross, together the two parts overlap to form an additional cross.²⁹

This structure corresponds to that of the Ten Commandments. “You” in the first four commandments of Exodus 20:3–11 indicates the people of Israel, along with anyone trapped in the “house of slavery”; it denotes human-human relationships. The first four commandments point to the human-divine relationship within interpersonal relationships. As expressed in the following six commandments of verses 12–17, Jehovah appears as the issuer of the absolute decrees; this highlights the situatedness of human-human relationships within the human-divine relationship. Functionally, this rhetorical structure, which appears both in the Lord’s Prayer and in the Ten Commandments, may have contributed to the rise of a “theology of the cross” in the wake of the Protestant Reformation.

Conclusion

This article has considered the notion of the Christian doctrine of the incarnation as a principle of biblical translation. Historically, this principle can be traced in three distinct types, namely, translations centered on the “Word” (literal), those oriented on the “flesh” (free), and those versions focused on the incarnational aspect of “becoming” (combining elements of both literal and free renderings). These approaches can be found respectively in three Chinese translations of the Lord’s Prayer as recorded in Matthew’s Gospel—in the Chinese Union Version, Today’s Chinese Version, and the Chinese Contemporary Version (New Testament). Having explored the principle of “relevance in faithfulness” when translating the Lord’s Prayer, the discussion turned to its prominent theological themes. The article also critiqued the shift in focus toward human agency in the CUV and TCV versions of the Lord’s Prayer, revealing the essential principle that Bible translation relies, on the one hand, on the grasp of objectively revealed theology and, on the other, on the translator’s reflections based on subjective theological positions. Without these, any biblical translation ignores the historical reality of the Bible as a canon of doctrines.³⁰

Footnotes

Notes

Author biography

Changping Zha is professor at the Institute for the Study of Daoism and Religious Culture, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China. He is the chief editor of the avant-garde journal Rénwén yìshù (Humanities and art) and the author of several books and numerous articles in fields ranging from biblical studies and theology to aesthetics and the intellectual history of contemporary Chinese art. His full-length works include (all in Chinese) Introduction to the Logic of the World-Picture of the New Testament (2011), A History of Ideas in Pioneering Contemporary Chinese Art (2 vols., 2017), and Humanist Criticism of Contemporary Art (2019).