Ethiopia

Ethiopia

Thursday, July 29, 2010

A missiological poser

Wow, I haven't posted since 2008. Well here's a little missiological poser for you to start off again. No, not poser as in "he's a right poser" but as in posing a little conundrum.

I know of an ethnic group which has no word for ‘God’. The translators of the Bible decided to use the word "Dios," which is Spanish for God. However, this group do have a word for ‘spirit’, because they believe that there are many spirits, for example in the trees, in the waterfalls, and of the animals. These spirits can be good, bad, or indifferent to humans. Because the group do not have a word for the Devil either, the translators used their word for ‘spirit’ with a suffix which means "the biggest" to describe the Devil.

Do you think this is theologically correct? If so, why? If not, why not?