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CURRENT ISSUES IN THE GENDER-LANGUAGE DEBATE:
A RESPONSE TO VERN POYTHRESS AND WAYNE GRUDEM
1
by Mark L. Strauss
Bethel Seminary San Diego
INTRODUCTION
In recent years the evangelical community in the United States has been rocked by a
sometimes divisive debate over gender-related language in Bible translation.
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Though
discussed in academic circles for some time, the issue erupted onto the evangelical
landscape in 1997 with the public outcry associated with the publication in Great Britain
of an inclusive-language edition (NIVI) of the popular New International Version (NIV).
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The debate has come to center stage again with the publication of the New Testament of
Today's New International Version (TNIV), a revision of the NIV which utilizes gender-
inclusive language for masculine generic terms in Greek. While all recent Bible
translations utilize gender-inclusive language to some degree,
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the popularity of the NIV
among evangelicals has made the TNIV a lightning rod of controversy.
Three monographs were published in the wake of the NIVI controversy: my own
Distorting Scripture? The Challenge of Bible Translation and Gender Accuracy, Don
This paper will appear in the forthcoming Festschrift for Ronald Youngblood, The Challenge of Bible
Translation. Communicating God's Word to the World (eds. Glen G. Scorgie, Mark L. Strauss, Steven M.
Voth; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003).
1
With gratitude and joy I offer this article in honor of Dr. Ron Youngblood on the occasion of his
retirement. Ron has been a wonderful mentor, friend and colleague during my years at Bethel Seminary
San Diego.
I am grateful to New Testament scholars Darrell Bock, Dan Wallace, Roy Ciampa and Craig
Blomberg, linguists and Bible translators Wayne Leman, Peter Kirk, and Mike Sangrey, and Ben Irwin,
associate editor at Zondervan, all of whom read early drafts of this work and offered many helpful
suggestions. I come away from this experience convinced that all research in New Testament should be
examined and critiqued by linguists and Bible translators, and all research in Bible translation should be
examined and critiqued by biblical scholars. As iron sharpens iron, so these disciplines need each other.
2
No universally accepted terminology has been established in this debate. The terms "gender-inclusive,"
"gender-accurate" and "gender-neutral" have all been used. While each of these may carry different
nuances depending on the context, all three refer to translations which replace masculine generic terms with
inclusive (non gender-specific) ones. I will discuss this definition later in this paper.
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The debate is chronicled in my book, Distorting Scripture? The Challenge of Bible Translation and
Gender Accuracy (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1998), 20-22, and in greater detail in D. A. Carson,
The Inclusive Language Debate. A Plea for Realism (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), 28-38, and in Vern S.
Poythress and Wayne A. Grudem, The Gender-Neutral Bible Controversy. Muting the Masculinity of God's
Words (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2000), 13-29.
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In addition to the NIVI and the TNIV, translations or major revisions which intentionally use inclusive
language ­ to varying degrees ­ include the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB; 1985), the New Century Version
(NCV; 1987), the New American Bible (NAB; NT and Psalms revised; 1988, 1990), the Revised English
Bible (REB; 1989), the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV; 1990), the Good News Bible (GNB; revised
1992 [also called Today's English Version, TEV]), The Message (1993), the Contemporary English
Version (CEV; 1995), God's Word (GW; 1995), the New Living Translation (NLT; 1996), and the New
English Translation (NET; 1996-2001), the International Standard Version (ISV; 1998), the Holman
Christian Standard Bible (HCSB; 2000), and the English Standard Version (ESV; 2001). Among these,
the last two arose in the context of opposition to the NIVI and so are more reserved than the others in their
use of inclusive language.