Contributed by Mark Naylor, Coordinator of International Leadership Development (CILD) for Northwest Baptist Seminary and Fellowship International. He holds a DTh in Missiology from UNISA with a focus on intercultural communication. He has spent over 30 years in Bible translation into the Sindhi language and teaches courses on cultural sensitivity and contextualized communication.
Acknowledging my debt to Lamin Sanneh’s 1989 classic, Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture. American Society of Missiology Series No. 13. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1989. 255 pp.
Sanneh’s seminal work, Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture has had a lasting impact on missiological thought. It has been widely reviewed and analyzed by scholars far more qualified than myself, and I would direct readers seeking a thorough overview of Sanneh’s arguments on how culture affects the Christian message to those reviews. My purpose here is not to provide another analysis of the text, but to reflect on how Sanneh’s work has shaped my own understanding of Bible translation and the relationship between culture and the communication of the gospel[1].
Since the 1980s, I have been involved in gospel ministry among Muslims and in Bible translation into the Sindhi language which is spoken in the province of Sindh, Pakistan. Sanneh’s exploration of the theological and cultural implications of translation, particularly in contrast to Islamic views of sacred scripture, has been especially formative for me.
Translatability
Sanneh opened my eyes to the foundational significance of the “translatability” of the Christian message. This concept undergirds the legitimacy, necessity, and inevitability of contextualization of that message. Legitimacy addresses the skepticism and resistance to contextualization within some Christian communities. Necessity emphasizes the nature of communication itself, which demands that any message must be reshaped and reworded to be understood across linguistic and cultural boundaries. Inevitability recognizes that all knowledge is culturally embedded—that is, contextualized by nature.
Sanneh (1989:3) argues that “language is the intimate, articulate expression of culture, and so close are the two that language can be said to be synonymous with culture, which it suffuses and embodies.” Later he (1989:200) says that language is “the garment that gives shape, decorum, and vitality to conscious life, enabling us to appreciate the visible texture of life in its subtle, intricate variety and possibility.” Therefore, translating God’s Word in another language is to express the message through the lens, perceptions, and priorities of a context foreign to that of the original audience and language. This is “tantamount to adopting indigenous cultural criteria for the message, a piece of radical indigenization….” (1989:3) or as Flemming (2005:171) declares, “interpretation requires a conversation between the sacred text and our human contexts.”
Sanneh summarizes his thesis in another work, Disciples of All Nations: Pillars of World Christianity (2008:25), where he writes that
Christianity’s engagement with the languages and cultures of the world has God at the center of the universe of cultures, implying equality among cultures and the necessarily relative status of cultures vis-à-vis the truth of God. No culture is so advanced and so superior that it can claim exclusive access or advantage to the truth of God, and none so marginal and remote that it can be excluded. All have merit; none is indispensable. The ethical monotheism Christianity inherited from Judaism accords value to culture but rejects cultural idolatry, which makes Bible translation more than a simple exercise of literalism. In any language, the Bible is not literal; its message affirms all languages to be worthy, though not exclusive, of divine communication.
In Translating the Message, Sanneh (1989:1) describes the affirmation of language and culture through translation as the “destigmatizing” effect. The Creator God, who is Lord over all, affirms the languages and cultures of every people group as valid mediums through which He speaks. The very act of translation advances the missio Dei through what Sanneh (1989:29) calls “mission by translation.” In this framework, the recipient culture becomes “the true and final locus of the proclamation,” allowing the gospel to arrive without implying a rejection of that culture.
The descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, when the apostles proclaimed the gospel in many different languages, serves as a foundational moment legitimizing the practice of translation. Acts 2 is not a reversal of Babel—for that would have resulted in the unification of language—but rather a transcendence of Babel, affirming the legitimacy of translation and, by extension, the contextualization of the gospel into all languages and cultures.
Dance Analogy
In my DTh thesis (2013:362), I proposed a dance analogy to illustrate the dynamic dialogue between the biblical text and culture, as well as between the translator and the receptor audience.
Through the mind of the believing hearer, the context shapes, prioritizes and flavors the received message while that message simultaneously impacts the worldview of the believer in an interactive “dance.” Approaching the text as God’s Word with the expectation that a word will be spoken to us that is relevant for our situation, we encounter a message that alters our lives, our faith, and our praxis…. The way in which we must read scripture today is controlled by the fact that we are, from moment to moment in the complex events of our time, dealing with and being dealt with by the same living God who meets us in scripture, seeking his will, offering our obedience, accepting the share he allots to us of suffering, and looking for the final victory of his cause.
Relativizing the Translator’s (Outsider) Culture
Another implication of the translatability of the gospel is that of “relativizing” the translators’ culture so that the recipient culture becomes the “true and final locus of the proclamation” (Sanneh 1989:29). For the gospel or scripture to be genuinely embraced by another culture and “owned” by its insiders, those insiders must participate in the process by expressing the message through their own lenses and ways of understanding.
This perspective calls for humility on the part of the translator to ensure that their own theological framework or cultural assumptions do not dominate the formation of the translated text. Insiders are the ones most capable of communicating the message in a way that is natural, impactful, and faithful to its intended meaning. While the translator may have greater training and insight into the original message, insiders are more competent to express that message in a manner that fits the indigenous context.
Sanneh (1989:53) observes, “When one translates, it is like pulling the trigger of a loaded gun: the translator cannot recall the hurtling bullet. Translation thus activates a process that might supersede the original intention of the translator.” Furthermore, he (1989:53) argues that translating scripture into a “fresh medium” can challenge—and even overturn—the translator’s own prior convictions, offering “new ways of viewing the world” that may lead to both personal and cultural renewal. He contends that translation undermines the “forces of uniformity and centralization,” as no single cultural or theological framework can fully contain or control the biblical message. Each new translation offers the potential for fresh insight and deeper understanding. Viewed this way, translation is a God-ordained opportunity for mutual correction: perceiving Christ through the lens of one culture or theological tradition can expose distortions or blind spots in another.
Connected to this discussion is Sanneh’s (1989:31) concept of the “shifting of the ground of comprehension,” which describes how understanding moves from one cultural context to another. The translator begins with comprehension rooted in one culture and ends by re-engaging the message with believers in a different cultural setting. “The believing reader understands through the ‘lenses’ of their own culture and a transforming dialogue between God’s Word and their worldview ensues” (Naylor 2013:361).
Dialogical Nature of Translation
While Sanneh provides the theological and missiological foundation, my own experience as a translator confirms these dynamics in practice. Translation is not a unidirectional act of transferring fixed ideas from one culture to another. Rather, it is one moment in a series of historical acts of exploring and expressing the sacred text through a relational and dialogical process. The assumption is that the receptor culture’s language and communication forms are sufficient to accommodate the message. Therefore, translation involves giving up control and trusting the community of believers to receive and interpret God’s Word in their own context.
In my doctoral thesis (Naylor 2013:358), I outlined three levels of submission necessary for faithful translation. First, the translator must submit to the message itself, acknowledging it as sacred and above any pre-formed theology. Second, submission occurs within the translation team, where the insights, preferences, and phrasing from mother tongue speakers take precedence over personal inclinations of outsiders. Third, once the translation is released into the hands of the receptor community, interpretation belongs to them. Their cultural insight allows them to discern nuances and implications that may not have been apparent to the translators.
A practical example of this is the concept of the Holy Spirit. In Western evangelical theology, the Holy Spirit is understood as the third person of the Trinity—a view shaped by centuries of theological reflection. However, when Sindhi Muslims read biblical texts referring to the Holy Spirit, they interpret it as a reference to God’s active power rather than a distinct person of the Godhead. As Sindhi believers engage these texts, they begin to develop a theology informed by their own cultural assumptions. Though it may diverge from Western formulations, this theology emerges from genuine engagement with scripture and provides a valid position from which interaction with other theological perspectives and traditions can profitably occur.
Translation, then, is an ongoing theological conversation that respects and values the cultural context within which God’s Word will be understood and engaged. It requires a posture of commitment and submission to the original message, resulting in an authentic and fresh expression of the gospel.
Contrast with Islamic view of Translation
Sanneh (1989:211–214) highlights the sharp contrast between the Islamic and Christian orientation to the translation of scripture, particularly noting the “preeminent, exclusive role of the sacred Arabic” in the historical process of “Islamization” throughout the Muslim world. In contrast, the Bible reflects a pattern of divine accommodation: God communicates within the limitations of human language and perspective. He speaks to the prophets using language, idiom, and metaphor rooted in their cultural context, and, in the ultimate expression of divine revelation—his character, will, and mission—the Son of God is incarnated as a human being within a specific geographic, cultural, and linguistic setting. In this sense, Jesus is the Word of God “spoken” locally.
Islam, by contrast, emphasizes the transcendence and unknowability of God. As noted in the introduction to The Qur’an (2004:iii–iv), translation is considered impossible, since even the Arabic text represents only a limited approximation constrained by human understanding. Because Jesus is, for Christians, God “translated” into human form, Sanneh (1989:7) asserts, “for Christians, mission has come preeminently to mean translation; for Muslims, mission has stood stubbornly for the nontranslatability of its Scriptures in the ritual obligations.” Elsewhere he (1989:29) adds, “Mission as diffusion[2] is unquestionably the stronger strand in Islam, whereas mission as translation is the vintage mark of Christianity.”
In my lectures, I sometimes share a personal encounter that illustrates a key challenge in cross-cultural engagement with scripture. A local Islamic teacher, after reading a copy of the New Testament I had given him, raised an insightful objection: “This isn’t God’s Word; it contains God’s Word.” His concern was that while certain passages—such as the Beatitudes in Matthew 5—clearly conveyed a message from God and could therefore be considered God’s Word, the narrative sections were, in his view, merely historical accounts or human reflections. His expectation that scripture must consist solely of direct speech from God limited his ability to engage meaningfully with the text. In contrast, the average Sindhi, shaped by the everyday experience of multilingual communication, tends to assume the translatability of meaning. This underlying assumption enables them to interact with the biblical message in their own language and context, even if they do not fully accept its authority.
My own experience in missions among Muslim Sindhis during the 1980s and 1990s affirms Sanneh’s thesis regarding translatability. Sindhis are typically fluent in two or more languages, making them well-acquainted with the daily reality of cross-linguistic communication. While they uphold the sacredness of Arabic in relation to understanding the Qur’an, their multilingual experience often produces a degree of cognitive dissonance. On one hand, Arabic remains sacred and central in religious ritual; on the other, their everyday lives require navigating multiple languages. As a result, they are more inclined to engage with the concepts presented in the Sindhi Bible rather than reject it outright simply because it is not in the original language. Although many Sindhis approach the biblical text with skepticism—regarding it as less authoritative than the Qur’an and questioning its authenticity—they nonetheless tend to read and discuss its content respectfully, often comparing it with their own faith perspective. The assumptions framing such engagement align closely with Sanneh’s description (Naylor 2013:176–177).
Contextualization
Sanneh’s work has significantly influenced my theology of contextualization. Based on the essential translatability of scripture he asserts that a primary assumption behind the concept of contextualization is opposition to the idea of a “hermetically sealed culture as the exclusive conveyance of God’s truth” (Sanneh 1989:30). This perspective has practical implications, as I discovered during my involvement in translating and adapting a curriculum based on the Socratic method of dialogue. The stated goal of the program was to help students engage with scripture while remaining sensitive to their own cultural concerns and perspectives. However, despite these intentions, the curriculum’s authors—shaped by a North American, theologically conservative framework—viewed their material as presenting universal biblical truths. As a result, students were not encouraged to use their own contextual lens to develop theological expressions from God’s Word; instead, they were confined to the assumptions and priorities embedded in the curriculum.
Sanneh (1989:47) highlights two key aspects of what he calls the “incipient radical pluralism of Pauline thought.” First, God does not “absolutize any one culture” as normative for all; second, all cultures “have upon them the breath of God’s favor, thus cleansing them of all stigma of inferiority and untouchability.” This theological affirmation is evident throughout the New Testament, as the apostles sought to communicate what they had seen, heard, and touched (1 John 1:1) in ways appropriate to each new cultural setting. A pivotal example is the debate over circumcision for Gentile believers, as recorded in Acts 15 (cf. Gal. 2:12; 5:11–12). This event marked a watershed moment for the early church—a key issue of contextualization that revealed the challenges of translating the gospel into a new cultural context. Both this incident and the broader narrative of the New Testament serve as case studies in maintaining the integrity of the gospel while embracing cultural distinctives. As I argued elsewhere, “It is not the concluding admonitions of the council (Acts 15:20) that should be considered universal, but the process by which they struggled to discern the way the gospel was to be expressed in a new setting” (Naylor 2013:261).
Conclusion
Lamin Sanneh’s work has deeply shaped both my theology and practice. His insight—that the translatability of the gospel is central to how God has created and engages with culture—challenges us to see mission not as the diffusion of our own cultural expression of faith, but as a transformative dialogue. In this dialogue, the gospel takes root in a new culture and is expressed in ways shaped by that context. True contextualization preserves the integrity of God’s message while allowing it to be spoken afresh. Translation, then, is not simply a matter of finding equivalent words; it is an affirmation of the worth and dignity of every language and culture as a fitting vessel for divine truth. This perspective calls us to a model of mission that is both humble and hopeful—one that entrusts the Spirit of God to proclaim the unchanging gospel anew in every tongue.
List of References
Flemming, D 2005. Contextualization in the New Testament: Patterns for Theology and Mission. Downers Grove: IVP.
Naylor, Mark 2013. Mapping Theological Trajectories that Emerge in Response to a Bible Translation. Unpublished DTh thesis: UNISA.
Sanneh, Lamin 2008. Disciples of All Nations: Pillars of World Christianity. New York: Oxford University Press.
The Qur’an: English Meanings 2004. Translation of the meaning of the Qur’an. Jeddah: Saheeh International, AlMuntada, Al-Islami.
Notes
[1] Many concepts in this paper have been drawn from my DTh thesis (2013), in which a deeper and fuller development of these concepts can be found.
[2] “Diffusion” refers to the spread of a message or text without being shaped or modified by the surrounding cultural context.