“Way Back When”, I spent my college years at a fundamentalist school some funny things sometimes happened. Here’s one. In the summers the college sometimes rented out its extremely beautiful campus to various church groups for their regular summer conferences and the like. One summer they rented the campus to a group from the Hollywood Presbyterian Church, not knowing that the featured speaker would be the British theologian J.B. Phillips.
Now, perhaps many if not most of my readers will not have heard of J. B. Phillips. He had recently authored the now very well-known and popular fresh translation of the New Testament letters entitled Letters to Young Churches. Since Rev. Phillips was bye then world-renowned even we rather benighted narrow-minded fundamentalist Christians were excited about sitting in on the conference. This om the King James translation outdated Scofield Reference Bible of 1811, a fundamentalist version of the King James translation.
Well, to begin with, during the week Reverend Philips was frequently seen strolling around the campus smoking a cigar. This set a good many folks on edge because smoking was not allowed at our school. Fortunately, no hubbub resulted from this awkward situation. Secondly, however, it soon became known that the Philips translation of Paul’s letters not only differed from the standard King James version, but actually disagreed with it at certain crucial junctures. This presented a more formidable difficulty for those on the college faculty.
Actually, partly because of the growing popularity of the Philips translation Rev. Philips soon produced his translation of the Gospels, making it possible to publish the full Philips translation of the entire New Testament. Indeed, the Philips translation pretty much held sway in many churches until the arrival of the new Revised Standard Version and The New English Bible in 1976. Since those days, of course, numerous translations of the Bible have appeared, some obviously more valuable than others.
Well, once the conference got under way we college folks all learned a great deal from Rev. Phillips daily talks and from meeting people of different, broader views about the meaning of the Christian Faith. We learned that the perspective of the Hollywood Presbyterian Church was not actually so very different from our own, except for certain issues concerning how one becomes a Christian and heaven and hell, and all that. Later on I was to find out that this particular group of Presbyterians were far more conservative than regular Presbyterians, but that’s a horse of a different color.
At the close of the conference Rev. Phillips talked to us more informally about his life, his ministry, and his actual translation work. He shared that as he worked with the original Greek texts the New Testament “came alive” for him in a new and fresh way. They seemed to be more vibrant than when he had read them in the King James version. Then he shared a letter he had received from an American lady admirer in which she thanked Rev. Phillips for “burning out” for God there in England.
After a solemn pause, Rev. Phillips related to us how he had replied to the lady. He said something to this effect: “My dear madame, I thank you for your encouraging remarks, but I wish to assure you that I am not “Burning out for God”. I am simply trying to do the very best I can for as long as I can.” Since we in the audience were used to hearing people speak about “burning out for God, we were rather stunned by Rev. Phillips reply. Over the years, however, I have come more and more to appreciate his candor and insight. I can easily resonate with his desire to “Burn as brightly and as long as I can”.