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This chapter seeks to alert contemporary education practitioners in life and values education about one foundational observation: If a curriculum for life and values education needs to make significant use of any diachronic historical text, then both the orientations and contents of that curriculum will be shaped characteristically by the translation paradigm that is applied to the translation of that text.

The use of a “diachronic historical text” is neither hypothetical nor uncommon. This is because insofar as religions are rooted in history, all religious teachers are essentially epistemic translators across time and culture (Bennett 2007). To teach is often to translate. This chapter is to illustrate how the arts of translating and teaching (Higgins and Burbules 2011) are interlocking and how teachers using diachronic historical texts, who are conscious of their simultaneous roles as translators, can be more effectual in their teaching.

This chapter is based on personal experience of teaching and translating a diachronic historical text in Asia. The diachronic historical text referred to is The Epistle to the Romans, authored by Apostle Paul in the middle of the first century. It is one of the most influential writings from foreign and diachronic historical origins to arrive to Asia. In fact, the entire Bible as a Judeo-Christian collection of religious texts originating from Mesopotamia and Europe has continued to grow in its circulation and influence worldwide. In the past, it has been extensively studied and disseminated in the West. Nowadays, the New Testament is perhaps the most widely taught diachronic historical text in the Asia-Pacific region.

In the last few centuries, there has been very noticeable growth of Christianity in the Asia-Pacific region. More recently, Global Times has cited a semiofficial source which put the Christian population in China in 2010 to be 23.05 million (Yang 2014). Meanwhile, international observers have estimated 5 % of the population is Christian (The Economist 2013; Yang 2014), and even a very depressed projection would suggest there would be 13.48 million Christians in China mainland by 2020 (Yang 2014). Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, the Christian population now makes up 14.3 % in a total population of 7.1 million. Similarly, this rise of Asian Christianity is evident elsewhere. In South Korea, Christians account for 29.4 % in a population of 48.4 million. In the Philippines, 92.6 % in a total population of 9.49 million is Christian. In Australia, it is 67.3 % in a population of 22.6 million. In face of these data (The Economist 2013), it would be hard to maintain that the New Testament as a classical text from another time, another place, and another culture is relevant only to the “traditional West.”

Context of This Study

This chapter is based on my frontline experiences of translating The Epistle to the Romans and of teaching Romans to adult Chinese-speaking Christians in Hong Kong. The guiding question is: How a diachronic historical text, that is, an ancient Christian text, is to be taught to meet the unique circumstances and needs of learners (Caffarella 2002; Wiles 1999) in the contemporary context of the Asia-Pacific region?

Altogether, I have offered six rounds of such courses between 2009 and 2015. They are inquiry based and concept based. Four were offered at churches, one at a seminary, and one with a small learning group. My teaching aim is not for religious conversion but to initiate within each of the learners the process of self-inquiry (Needleman 2007, p. 183).Footnote 1 Learners will be awakened to their inner ideological pluralities. Their interculturality will first be established, for they have indeed been acculturated with several cultural sub-traditions. Next, learners will be guided to work through the essential process of value clarifications . The ultimate learning outcome expected of them is that they may live a life that is more reflected upon than before.

Most researchers have this far been concerned with the macro- and externalized dialogues between cultural traditions out there, such as comparing religious doctrines; yet meaningful inter-tradition dialogues must at the end of the day be taking shape within the internal dialogues (i.e., self-talks) within an individual. Moreover, such a pure and distilled local cultural tradition is no more. It is definitely quite difficult to come across one monocultural person in Hong Kong. Since education curricula have been modeled after that of Britain, all learners here have already been exposed to Western perspectives about life and values through formal schooling and professional training. For instance, they cherish progress and competition, scientific methods, material advancements, and balance of powers. At the same time, however, all participants on my courses are native Chinese speakers with some essential values and perspectives rooted in the Chinese tradition. Finally, at the subjective inner world level, they naturally have their own Christian thoughts and values.

It is not far fetching to say that in many parts of the Asia-Pacific region, people’s epistemologies both about the external and their internal worlds are no longer monocultural. People’s inward phenomenological worlds are overloaded with multiple and often conflicting strands of “-isms” that have historical origins in different parts of the world. Thus, it is quite the norm to expect something from modern Europe which owes its own cultural roots to Greco-Roman traditions. Therefore, educators are faced first with the challenge of how to develop curricula and materials that help people philosophize and next on how to teach, so as to conduct effective value clarifications that will enlighten and help one’s discovery of the true self of principled integrity. In other words, my teaching Chinese-speaking Christians in Hong Kong is essentially teaching learners who have been interculturally acculturated.

Translation Paradigms as Defining Tools

My journey as a teacher about life and values for intercultural learners began with my training in the disciplines of education and translation. As a teacher so trained, I set out to retranslate The Epistle to Romans in my leisure. My original intention (Ho 2010) was to produce a version that should be readable even by a casual and nonbelieving reader. Eventually, I discovered it was too daunting a task. Its inadvisability stems from several facts. The original author of Romans (i.e., Apostle Paul) did not intend this epistle as an instrument to win converts. It was not meant to be simple and easy.Footnote 2 In fact, this epistle addressed to the Romans is, by Paul’s design, geared to explore into deeper questions about life and values. It was written specifically for leading the learners toward deeper “spiritual” and transcendental (Maslow 1996. pp. 73–75) dimensions about life (e.g. Rom 6 and 7). It was not written for beginners. To make it overly simple would be presenting deceptive messages and betrayed the author’s original aims.

In short, the prevailing translation techniques, as suggested by the Linguistic Translation Paradigm (LTP ), are not most desirable for the purpose of translating (and teaching) of Romans. Those techniques aim at moving the source text (i.e., The Koine Greek text of Romans)Footnote 3 nearer to contemporary readers. This move from first language (L1) (source language) to second language (L2) (target language) is to be realized largely through “domesticating” (Wills 2006)Footnote 4 the alien or “unnatural” language expressions and any unfamiliar values, perspectives, and messages. Direct and linear semantic equivalences between L1 and L2 are assumed to be readily available. Translation is, therefore, perceived as the simple act of identifying the equivalentFootnote 5 linguistic terms (Tam 1984).

The subsequent and corresponding teaching to a Chinese audience is then the simple step of showing the right term in Chinese. These modes of thinking and of operation simply do not match the explicit authorial intention of Paul. These ways of translation and teaching are ahistorical. Paul, however, has taken great care to anchor the meanings of his words through historical narrations in The Epistle. Examples are Rom 4, 5, and 9 plus his numerous elaborations of historic ancient prophets. If ahistorical and direct equivalence could have served equally well his educational intentions, he simply did not need to write this longest epistle of all. (It is the longest of all epistles in the New Testament.) Besides, if serious readers were to read Romans ahistorically, it could appear to contain unexplainable and much debated semantic gaps (Donfried 1991). Some of these gaps could have arisen because of the inherent methodological deficiency of the Linguistic Translation Paradigm. That is, the Linguistic Translation Paradigm has first failed to appreciate The Epistle’s attempts to give thicker elaborations of its core concepts, and subsequently it has failed to relay or to recommunicate fully the depths of the central issues as discussed in The Epistle in the lived historical context (Smith 2007 Footnote 6; van Manen 1990) of humanity.

This means, LTP is less than appropriate for the task of translating Romans. Among other factors, it has made L2 Romans more difficult to comprehend as a coherent whole. In terms of its operation, an ideal LTP translation aims at being readily “understandable” within the established mentality of contemporary L2 readers. Hence, the translated L2 text is slanted toward the contemporary biases and beliefs of L2 readers. The historical (i.e., cultural) meta-settings that rendered words meaningful and that made passages connected have, by default, slipped out of the immediate consciousness of LTP translators. This is because the desired translation result is to minimize readers’ efforts. However, in the long run, this aim is achieved at a dear epistemic (and spiritual) cost. With the underlying and connective historic-cultural substratum removed in the L2 translation, the surface message of individual segments of the epistle could have achieved the aim of being “reader-friendly,” easy, and simple. However, the links across messages together with anything unusually “weird” to modern mentality are lost. As a whole, the understanding and the teaching of the entire Romans become only the more difficult (Ho 2009, pp. 161–162).

That is, therein is a pedagogical danger. “Little learning is required!” is implied by the LTP mode of translating and teaching. Most things, concepts, and perspectives that are “alien” to the established mind-set of L2 readers have been reshaped, so that the translated L2 segments are readily readable. This means the historical specificities of the original context that surrounded the L1 text are removed from both the translator’s and his subsequent readers’ visions. Any insights and perspectives that appear “weird” in L1 Romans are “domesticated.” Hence, the unavoidable demerit of an LTP Romans is that most of the original novelties originating from Apostle Paul’s diachronic and philosophical viewpoint (as found in L1 Romans) have been ironed out. That is, the LTP way of translating runs the risk of making an authentic and stimulating text simply too plain, too familiar, and, therefore, too ordinary. It could then be that only very little challenging material that deserves serious efforts for the learning and the teaching is left in a curriculum that is based upon an LTP Romans.

Hence, I was forced back little-by-little toward another translation approach, namely, the Cultural Translation Paradigm (CTP) . The intention was to make fuller sense of the source text, with fuller respect to the historicity of the source text. That is, the translator seeks to move contemporary readers closer to the original text so as to show or teach them something. Where the Chinese language is involved, this CTP attempt is blessed. This is because the Chinese language possesses a long history and has a vast linguistic, spiritual, and philosophical database across time behind it. Hence, provided the translators indeed try it hard enough, something comparable – though not necessarily easy and plain – or close to the original vision as contained in the Koine Greek text could be found in the Chinese language (Ren 2007, pp. 238–239). Yet, since this approach is to move the learners toward the source text, learners of the translated text could find themselves being faced with a text presenting alien visions and perspectives about life (Chen 2012, pp. 84–92),Footnote 7 despite the fact that the language is Chinese.

Thus, both in theory and practice, there are two approaches regarding the positioning of learners in relation to any classical text taken from another cultural tradition that are being used or taught in a curriculum. One may take a firmer stand on the text and then seek to move learners toward it, that is, seeking to discomfort learners a little bit and move them toward less familiar visions as contained in the classical text. Alternatively, one may do the teaching the other way round. In any case, it is a matter of fact that one’s curriculum design, teaching strategies, and translational strategies are intertwined. Curriculum orientations, in fact, have begun with the choices that the translators have made.

In general terms, the prototypical and contrastive differences between the Linguistic Translation Paradigm and the Cultural Translation Paradigm are tabulated in Table 6.1 (Ho 2013, p. 105) below.

Table 6.1 A contrastive overview of the Linguistic Translation Paradigm (LTP) and the Cultural Translation Paradigm (CTP)
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We should note in particular the differences between these two paradigms concerning how one makes knowledge about the world and oneself (i.e., “epistemologies” and “historic realities and rootedness” in Table 6.1). Whether a translated text of The Epistle to the Romans fails or ticks in these aspects of knowing would make direct qualitative differences for learners who are learning through an L2 text (Cheng 2010).

To sum up, at the end of my own translating adventure, I have completed a retranslation of The Epistle to the Romans, by adopting the cultural sensitive approach rather than the literal and make-it-easy-to-read approach. This translated text and the knowledge I acquired in the process of translating, therefore, constitute the foundation for my subsequent teaching of Romans to Chinese-speaking Christians in Hong Kong.

Reconstructing Paul’s Curriculum in Romans

Interestingly enough, Paul was a translator and teacher too. That is, back to the times of Paul, unlike later generations of Christ followers, he had no New Testament as the canon to fall on. That is, as a multicultural Jewish teacher (Branick 2009, pp. 60–112), as an international and multicultural citizen (Branick 2009, pp. 37–59), and as a recipient of revealed and inspired holy visions and teachings in his subjective lived experiences (Rom 1:1), Paul was essentially a teacher and translator seeking to instruct and to enlighten across alien socio-ideological terrains. In doing so, he was facing the same challenges for a teacher and translator as we have this far been concerned.

Figure 6.1 (Ho 2013, p. 173) below is a representation of Paul’s position as a cross-boundary explorer and teacher.

Fig. 6.1
figure 1

Paul’s intercultural circumstances as a teacher and translator and his authorship of The Epistle to the Romans

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There should then be no reason to doubt the legitimate relevance of using Romans as a text for life and values education and as a guide for self-discovery across cultures (Caird and Hurst 1994).Footnote 8 This was, indeed, by Paul’s design, its original discursive aims.

Hence, based upon repeated hermeneutical reflections in the attempt to recapture the gist and concerns of L1 Romans, I find it is justifiable and useful to conceptualize the 16 chapters of L1 Romans as in Table 6.2 (Ho 2013, p. 452). This listing has, in practice, also proved to be helpful to contemporary learners.

Table 6.2 The intercultural curriculum in Romans for life and values education
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As seen in Table 6.3, there is a clear internal logic running through the various chapters of L1 Romans. The deep structure is the perceived dichotomy between the law and unearned Grace.

Table 6.3 A sample curriculum – connecting the learners to their “inner human” and assisting them to make meaning of The Epistle to the Romans historic-critically
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As a summary, Paul’s L1 Romans is truly a translation-al work, intending to teach across cultural and phenomenological frontiers. By “translation-al,” it is designed to uplift learners, to enable them to see and experience beliefs, values, sentiments, and perspectives which they hitherto have no practical ideas about. That is, the learners should be “trans-laid” (i.e., in German to setzen sie über) to newer plateaus. They should grasp better the inner transcendental “self” as well as unearned GRACE which dawns upon one’s subjective and phenomenological union with the believed-in Christ Jesus.

Connecting Paul’s Curriculum to Contemporary Learners

Again, lest some readers might lose track, please be reminded my aim is entirely educational. The subject matter touches on spiritual and philosophical issues. The pedagogy is respecting the baseline situations and needs of learners (Vella 2002). The core strategy is to confront and help learners to seek value clarifications (Hannam 2012, pp. 107–122) within themselves, and with reference to a text that is sacred, or at least respectable, to them.

The learner’s common respect of a text, however, does not make them conflated beings. In some cases, such personal wish and self-image only make them more overloaded and confused internally in terms of their personal maxims or philosophies. As said earlier, their secularized schooling, the material and competitive economy of Hong Kong, and their Chinese cultural baggage were all complicating internal ideologies of theirs. How to live a reflected-upon life? And as Christians? And in the multicultural city of Hong Kong? They, in their search for personal integrity, are in need of help to overcome real problems arising from conflicting desires and values.

In fact, if we refer back to Fig. 6.1, these same learners’ needs could be comparable to the needs of those living in Rome and for whom Paul wrote his L1 Romans. This is then another indisputable rationale that makes our study of The Epistle to the Romans in a contemporary context legitimate and relevant. This is because many “-isms” that are confronting the “postmodern” world today actually have philosophical counterparts, if not indeed roots, in the Greco-Roman world. In the process of making a CTP Romans, I have become more informed about those philosophical strands which Paul was responding (Malherebe 2006) to in his L1 Romans. Connecting these counterpart strands of Greco-Roman humanisms to the present-day lived experiences of Chinese learners living in the secularized and free society of Hong Kong is, thus, well grounded in reasons.

In a nutshell, present-day Hong Kong is, in many aspects, organized along principles borrowed from Europe. And from the Renaissance onwards, Greco-Roman thoughts have been revived in secularized philosophies and institutions. Helping contemporary learners to establish this historical perspective could be foundational. They can then realize the genuine values and soundness of attempting to learn from a diachronic text taken from ancient Rome, as penned down by Apostle Paul.

Developing Curriculums for Learners

We will cover in the remaining part of this chapter the significant dimensions of an education cycle. They are curriculum development, learning and teaching resources, pedagogies, and evaluation by learners. We will begin with curriculum development.

Given the variation in group size, course duration, and the varied settings of the courses, the actual curricula for each Romans course that I taught were different. Yet some curriculum design principles are consistently observable in them. All curricula must:

  1. 1.

    Be inquiry (Ornstein and Hunkins 2004) and concept based (Erickson 2007), rather than dogmatic in content

  2. 2.

    Highlight that we as humans are inescapably beings living in history

  3. 3.

    Bring out the internal philosophical pluralities of the learners

  4. 4.

    Discuss the relations between “I” (the philosophical subject), Grace, and law

  5. 5.

    Include engaging points to tab onto the learners’ latent personal axioms

Point 1 means learners are accepted with their baselines. The teaching is not on imposing dogmas. Point 2 brings the “sacred text” down to a comprehensible level. In fact, all knowledge about humans (including about life and values) would acquire fuller sense if we approach them historically. A CTP -minded teacher would help learners to see values and life are essentially story based. So, individuals are the authors of their life scripts (Mesle 2009; Taylor et al. 2000, pp. 31–43). Then learners’ thoughts would logically unfold. Thus, class and group dialogues (Connolly 2008) (as have been anticipated in curriculum designs) would eventually link up to that some learners’ sudden but logical awareness about Point 3. This can then be discussed and knitted into value clarifications in relation to Points 4 and 5 for the whole class.

Above, in Table 6.3 (Ho 2013, p. 565), is the curriculum used in a short course offered for the department of extramural studies at a seminary.

In short, Table 6.3 shows how the five curriculum design principles are incorporated into a curriculum. Referential dialogic themes and features of Chinese sub-traditions (such as Sunzi, Buddhism, and Confucianism) are built into the curriculum. The aim is to permit the teacher-translator and the learners to traverse across cultural perspectives together. That is, a teacher seeking to trans-lay learners to unexplored horizons must plan well, so as to enable them to do their own philosophizing (Slattery 2006).Footnote 9 A curriculum that takes the translating role of the teacher seriously has to contain intercultural pegs, to enable learners to do their inward “housekeeping” as a sovereign subject of their own life and choices.

Developing Learning and Teaching Resources

As said earlier, I have developed a CTP version of The Epistle to the Romans in the Chinese language. In the process of my teaching, a number of learning objects (such as diagrams) have also been designed (Ho 2013, pp. 258, 281). Moreover, in order to support the more intellectual-minded learners, I have written academic papers on paradigmatic aspects of translating The Epistle to the Romans (Ho 2010, 2012). Tabulated below are three selected verses from the CTP Romans that I have translated (Ho 2009). They cover Rom 1:19, 7:22, and 14:12. They are reported here in English, despite their originals being in the Chinese language. For the obvious reason of length, CTP considerations are given only for Rom 14:12.

CTP Roman Verses

To consider LTP and CTP as dichotomous or be in any form of objectivism versus subjectivism is a false notion. As demonstrated in the examples here, being culturally conscious does not mean free “translation” or ignoring textual (grammatical and syntactical) evidences. Rather, it means, on the basis of textual clues and taking them all seriously, one seeks to think deeply about the cultural messages that could possibly be conveyed by the written text in its original discursive setting.

  1. 1.

    About the conscience , Rom 1:19:

NIVa

Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them

A CTP understanding (in English)

That is said because that which originates and reflects the goodness of God, and that which is knowable in the interactions among humans, is always evident and knowable to all. This is because God has long unveiled that directly to all mortals living among men (Ho 2009)

Koine Greek

διότι τὸ γνωστὸν τοῦ θεοῦ φανερόν ἐστιν ἐν αὐτοῖς· ὁ θεὸς γὰρ αὐτοῖς ἐφανὲρωσεν (Douglas 1990)

  1. aAll NIV verses in this chapter are retrieved (2015, 5 31) from http://www.biblestudytools.com/romans/
  1. 2.

    About the “inner human,” Rom 7:22:

NIV

For in my inner being I delight in God’s law

A CTP understanding (in English)

Truly then, according to the inner human of me under the flesh, I am yearning for the law that springs from God (Ho 2009)

Koine Greek

συνήδομαι γὰρ τῷ νὸμῳ τοῦ θεοῦ κατὰ τὸν ἔσω ἄνθρωπον, (Douglas 1990)

  1. 3.

    About individual moral responsibility, Rom 14:12:

NIV

So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God

A CTP understanding (in English)

So then each and every individual from among us will be giving an account directly to God concerning his or her very “self” (Ho 2009)

Koine Greek

ἄρα [οὖν] ἔκαστος ἡμῶν περὶ ἑαυτοῦ λὀγον δώσει [τῷ θεῷ] (Douglas 1990)

Features of the CTP Understanding About Rom 14:12

  • The CTP line brings into the limelight “his or her very ‘self’.” This stress is to contextualize the teaching of Rom 14:12, linking it to Paul’s philosophical anthropology as suggested in Rom 7, such as in 7:22 above.

  • This is a theory of individual responsibility for one’s conduct in interactions among humans. Understood in the context of paternal authority (Buckland 1969, pp. 397–398; Zhou 2005, pp. 230–237) in the law of Rome, in which every female and every slave are legally belongings owned by the male household head, this is revolutionary in its nature.

  • Contemporary relevance: In a big city like Hong Kong, learners often find their life being shaped by factors completely outside of their control. Reviving conceptually the sense of individual responsibility could be the key to sounder moral and physical being of oneself. While “walking with God,” everyone must be and still is an active coauthor of their own life script.

In my CTP translation of Romans, readers will be supplied with additional and essential data that could help anchor their spiritual and epistemic understandings to the historical setting of the original text. Concepts and perspectives alien to contemporary biased understandings about life and values are not obliterated. This is because such “non-domesticated” elements and perspectives can be the distinctive lessons for learners to explore. Hence, it is reasonable to suggest that most learners in culture-conscious curricula so designed should be able to hear and le arn something new.

Teaching Methods/Pedagogies

The teaching methods and pedagogies have to solve two intertwined problems. (1) How to help learners discover they are actually engaged in a diachronic (and timeless) engagement with Paul, the original author (Higgins and Burbules 2011)Footnote 10; that is, how to move the learners toward the L1 text of Romans? (2) How to break the hold of the ideas of the law as being externally imposed upon learners, such that they may begin to see their degrees of freedom in making choices about life and values? The first can be done through the supplement of historical data and use of CTP -based materials. The second has to be done by the teachers consciously taken upon themselves the role of translators, seeking to teach interculturally and across perspectives. Below are, thus, the essential aspects for the teaching of life and values using the diachronic and classical text of The Epistle to the Romans.

Grasp the Original Cultural Dimension of the Text

This means a teacher using a classical (and hence essentially diachronic) text must first of all understand the text sufficiently well in its original cultural setting. Then, the teacher as a “cultural guide and analyst” should make highlights and bring to the learners’ focal awareness the unfamiliar, previously unnoticed, or even alien values and perspectives, as presented in the original text to its original learners. This would mean the teacher should trans-lay the story-ed, historical, and socio-interactionary context surrounding or underlying The Epistle to the Romans.

Bring About Learners’ Dissonance

Since the learners are adults, they have their baseline knowledge and established perspectives. No learners should be offended. Yet no learners should be left as a distant observer. The study of The Epistle to the Romans is not for doctrines. It is for guiding learners into deeper self-understanding of their own value systems, which in the end may or may not be in perfect agreement with the visions or values of Paul. In other words, a teacher needs to help learners experience a phase of dissonance (Cooper 2007, pp. 60–61), before they may choose to depart from their blind spots (Van Hecke 2010) and their emotive, epistemic, and linguistic comfort zones that have often been built upon the basis of, or left untouched by, the prevailing Linguistic Translation Paradigm.

Confront the LTP Mind-Set of the Learners

Naturally, the above attempts would entail guiding learners to unlearn the LTP-procreated mind-set which declares “I learn only when everything is plain and simple.” This mind-set, unfortunately, has been continuously reinforced and sustained by the Linguistic Translation Paradigm itself, as well as by the general cultural climate for speed, performance, and consumerism that are characteristics of modern cities (Chia 2010). In a nutshell, in order to help learners see across cultures and do self-examination about their internal interculturality, the teacher as a translator must also be an active presenter of questions.

Connect the Text to Learners’ Lived Experience

Not all learners are at ease with philosophizing . They need help before they can see the real relevance of the text themselves. The “Class Snapshot” below is transcribed from part of my class. The learners are asked to jot down on a piece of paper one of their most significant personal secrets. Then, after some sufficient time for them to write has lapsed, I will say:

Class Snapshot 1

Everyone has some secrets. The recent movie “The Reader” [Der Vorleser, which is a novel by German law professor and judge Bernhard Schlink] tells you a story how the woman “prisoner” who does not know how to write, but is shameful to let others know that she is indeed illiterate, would rather be jailed than revealing the truth. To her, the biggest inner conversation, or inner script, is “I must not let them know [I can’t read].” That inner voice is carrying with it the force of a law, a nomos (ὁ νόμος). Her life is thus totally impacted. So, similarly, an “internal maxim” in you that is constantly warring against unearned Grace as an option for life is a curse to you. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy for the soul so involved. “You ask for it, then you’ve it.” On the other hand, “unearned Grace” can only be received when you do not try to earn it. It’s all that simple. God’s promise is that you don’t have to earn the unearned Grace. That is, “A decent life before God must start with that right inner conversation that you’re persisting in telling yourself.” [NB. The inner maxim is then the life orientation (i.e., values) of the learner.]

The underlying class activity intends to help learners realize that deep inside each of them, there are rules or laws that they have borrowed from their lived cultural contexts. Making learners aware of this is the gateway connecting the learners to one of the main themes of The Epistle, which is about the supposedly dichotomous relation between the law and unearned Grace.

Assisting Learners in Inter-perspectival Clarification

Nowadays, “pure Chinese-ness” is a fictitious imagination. Inside every Chinese-speaking Christian, there are at least two perspectives. First, there should be their proclaimed Christian faith; and, secondly, their Chinese-ness. Moreover, apart from these two strands of thoughts, we are most likely to encounter a whole spectrum of secular auto-nomous humanisms. They could include progressivism, scientism, hedonism, “marketism,” or perhaps also Marxism. Yet this reality represents opportunities. This is because only on basis of the existence of these real and competing options will inquiries lead to value clarification that can be meaningfully conducted. Before the “Class Snapshot (2)” below is conducted, learners have to jot down their “most pressing problem” on a piece of paper.

Class Snapshot (2)

(See Table 6.3, Meeting 3.)

Teacher::

Now let’s refer to what you’ve jotted down. Every day, you’re preparing for today’s and tomorrow’s show… The problem is “Are you continuously writing yourself bad scripts?” The question then is: Are you writing for yourself every day the script to be a strong man and by your own efforts and in accordance to the NOMOS that you believe? If yes, then you will keep yourself very tired and you will not see God’s Grace….

Learner: :

But we still need to have some data to support so that we can know the right decision. That is, we do something according to [or by the laws of] the Bible. In other words, Paul also refers to the laws of causality. The Bible is ….

Teacher::

Then you read The Bible….

Learners: :

[Laughed.]

Teacher::

.…nowadays we are fully saturated with the beliefs of causality…. But as according to Paul, you need only to trust Jesus, the resurrected Christ, and that’s it. Then, you should pray. We get to unearned Grace simply because we follow. And the most killing is not that we should refer to BIG LAWS…. The most killing parts in your life are in the silent happenings every day in the small things. It’s in and with the small things that you’re scripting your life. Do you understand?.... (I hope I’ve done something meaningful for you.) ….

Learner: :

But it’s really difficult… to rise above the laws of causality (of NOMOS)….Difficult to live away from the controlling notions of the law…

Teacher::

If you try to build up your life through becoming stronger and stronger and by your own efforts, you will not see…. [Someone sobbing….] Plenty of the gracious gifts will be walked passed and you missed them out totally…. You keep walking into the walls…. and it hurts…. You want to be strong and by your own law [i.e., be auto-nomous]….

Learner: :

This walking into the walls and the hurts: I suppose it’s the meaning of Rom 12: 1–2….

In other words, it is by pointing to inner ideological pluralities on the part of the learners that the teacher can be of help in guiding them to do inter-perspectival self-examination and, thus, to become more conscious about the choices that they have made.

Rely on the Logic of the Text Being Taught

A time-tested classical text has internal logic in it. There is no need to reinvent its logic. In fact, once learners begin to see themselves and the text of Romans are interrelated, and that the text is not about giving them the right dogmas from outside to hold onto, but answering real questions that thinking learners could really be asking, then the process of engaging the text for self-discovery will begin. Questions will naturally follow questions. This is not a possibility. It is an observed inevitability. “Class Snapshot (3)” below, for instance, is the teacher’s invitation to the learners. It brings out genuine questions that Paul’s Greco-Roman learners were asking back in Rome in the first century.

Class Snapshot (3)

So, why is The Epistle so startling to the Greco-Romans? It tells them in this universe controlled by the law, the nomos (ὁ νόμος), God can breakthrough and give them the unearned Grace. Then the Greco-Roman original recipients [and you] have plenty of questions: Why? How is that possible? Is that fair? Can we be a “good man” in this or that alternate way then? Is that true? Is God then not playing by the book? Why is it like that [fair or unfair]? Moreover, if you humans are sinners, then God bestows Grace to save this world, then is this God not a god playing ad hoc ? Does God have a plan? Or is God simply messy? If one preaches unearned Grace, what will happen next?.... So, if Paul and his readers are serious about Grace, Paul must have to tell them [and you] about the future too? There is a whole logical system in it [i.e., in the cosmo]; and it must be. But after all his explanations, we may still be puzzled. That is, after all of this and that, there are still mysteries…. So, when you read Romans , do take these original logic and original perspectives with you. This can help a lot….

In short, referring to the actual class contact experience just reported above, my learners in Hong Kong and Paul’s learners in Rome do have a lot in common in their queries. The urge to be asking is, indeed, the starting point for the intercultural teacher to connect learners more deeply to the text. And, on the whole, the teaching methods and pedagogies used by a CTP -minded teacher should work together to move learners toward the worldviews and perspectives represented in The Epistle to the Romans, rather than bending the text to suit the mind-sets and assumptions of contemporary learners.

Immediate Reflections on the Process and the Outcomes

On the whole, it takes dedicated efforts to understand The Epistle to the Romans. It also takes skills and clear thoughts to develop curricula and resources. After trying to overcome the significant obstacles of translating and teaching a diachronic text in contemporary context, some reflective points relating to learners and outcomes could be made. They are outlined as follows:

In a city, people have the accustomed tendency to take knowledge as doing something with something. To do self-discovery and value clarification by examining one’s inner world is requiring learners to do something which they have little comparable experience. Besides, not few learners would have established views about what Paul was like and what The Epistle to the Romans was about. With such LTP -generated and LTP-sustained opinions, learners often treat the text as something with which they do something (Peterson 1997).Footnote 11 That is, learners might have wanted to look at the text (as if it were some kind of a manual), but many are not prepared to look at themselves.

Yet the teachings unfolded in my courses generally point to the inner human, the conscience (Costigane 1999, pp. 6–10), and to humans’ existential conditions in relation to the law . Thus, some learners, in their dissonance s, were bound to raise direct questions about translation paradigms. These questions should not be avoided. They should be answered (cf. Table 6.1), and then learners might begin to see the Text is not as simple as they might have imagined. They would eventually cease seeing the Text as something totally external and as a tool for doing something else. They may then begin to appreciate the philosophical perspectives and demands of The Epistle. In short, they may then be more prepared to judge how a text might be more meaningfully interpreted and then begin to philosophize for themselves.

Noteworthy is that the teachings so designed and conducted are, in fact, aspects of inquiry-driven and concept -based curricula. Learners would acquire the ability to identify central questions about life and values. After having been moved closer to the original perspectives of Apostle Paul, the learners would eventually modify their personal frameworks for looking at life and evaluating values. The ability to reflect and free oneself from “borrowed values” is at least part of the joy for most learners.

Another outcome is that learners have the experience of assessing their own interculturality. For example, being “Christian” is no longer a conflated idea. One’s life and ethical actions have to be realized in communities. Seeking mere “fair transactions” is far from being all and everything that is desirable as reasonable and good in one’s life. The rediscovery of the “inner human” is the revitalizing force to one’s life as a moral being. Below are some sample end-of-course evaluative feedbacks from learners. Indeed, they do seem to have experienced something unique in learning The Epistle to the Romans through the culturally trans-laying teaching approach. They wrote:

  • I experience studying The Epistle to the Romans from another perspective.

  • I am inspired to look beyond established framework.

  • I’ve expanded my mental framework and thinking patterns when reading the Bible.

  • My vision/knowledge/presumption about “I” indeed influences how I approach knowing God.

  • I appreciate the deeper dimensions of God’s saving acts; I have deeper understanding about the “inner I .”

  • I appreciate further the unearned Grace of God and its relation with “I.”

  • I appreciate the deeper meaning of The Epistle.

  • I appreciate my position [as a transcendental human] and my relation with God.

  • God is beyond and above the law of causality. From the clay to the finished vessel, it’s a process of coauthoring with God.

  • I appreciate better The Epistle to the Romans and [its impacts on] spiritual growth.

Knowledge Transferability and the Way Forward

As for knowledge transferability in general, some significant lessons are worth reporting for educational practitioners in the Asia-Pacific region, such as school teachers, pastors, philosophers, and academics with interests in intercultural dialogic issues or in life and values education.

In terms of constructing an analytical understanding about the world around, modern material sciences from the West have clear superiority over the knowledge systems both of medieval Europe and of Asian traditions in general. However, in terms of perennial philosophical problems, which are rooted in the very psychic and socio-interactionary nature of humans, “premodern” thinkers, both European and Asian, do not necessarily look pale at all when contrasted with contemporary thinkers. There is no essential reason to dismiss them as irrelevant to our times on the sheer ground of their being medieval, ancient, religious, or spiritual. In fact, “premodern” minds – and “oriental” minds alike – are often experts in their observations about the inner dimensions of humankind. Such classical works should be explored and evaluated on the basis of their logical and empirical validities. Chinese, for instance, could learn something from reading Marx and Kant, as well as from Buddha and from Paul. Similarly, the West could learn from Buddha, Wang Yangming (Yu 2009), Mencius, and Confucius. Their “truths” about existential problems that confront humankind could have no national or temporal boundaries.

In other words, there is no reason to assume Paul has nothing to offer as a thinking mind, a philosopher. On the other hand, it is a pity for believing learners to see Paul’s epistle to the Romans solely as a dogmatic piece that allows no room for critical reading and thinking (Paul and Elder 2012). In fact, it is both practically desirable and educationally possible to design studies of the epistle with concept - and issue-based curricula, characterized by reflections and inquiries. The essence of an ideal curriculum is then to take to heart the Cultural Translation Paradigm (CTP) as the foundation in the meaning-making process of the classical text to be used. That is, while the teachers attempt to move learners closer enough to really understand what an original classical thinker has wished to say, the learning process itself can all the same be squarely focused upon the baselines and needs of contemporary learners.

Obviously, this approach to curriculum design, and to teaching, is more demanding than taking the words in every verse of a classical text as complete by the sheer literal meaning in themselves, regardless of textual coherence and wider sociocultural contexts. Yet, as educators, these are exactly intercultural challenges to be met rather than to be evaded. This is because, as revealed this far, a CTP way of learning and teaching is actually enlightening, possible, and achievable.

There are naturally problems in bridging the sociocultural divide between Paul and contemporary Chinese-speaking learners. I judge there are three oddities and two common causes that are worth noting:

  • One oddity is that contemporary learners, at the beginning of their learning process, generally do not believe that there is certain existential “commonality” between Paul’s original ancient audience and themselves as contemporary learners.

  • Learners are generally unaware about their internal ideological or belief pluralities. Both their perceived self and their epistemological stand are very often mistaken to be fairly straightforward and unsophisticated. Hence, not few would suppose they have simply enrolled themselves in the study of a dogmatic piece; and that, by studying The Epistle to the Romans, they would acquire more objectified and grander understanding about their God, rather than be gaining deeper understandings about themselves.

  • The third difficulty is the learner’s disbeliefs and skepticisms about the credibility of another path toward translating and teaching. Their doubts are about the justifiability and the legitimacy of being cultural and contextual rather than linear, literal and abstractive, when one interprets and teaches a classical text.

On closer examination, behind all these oddities, is the conspicuous absence of that simultaneous ability to think and assess a text historically and philosophically. It seems that the general tendency to assume truths are abstractive, ahistorical, and propositional is a common mental disposition among modern city dwellers.

The first common cause which may explain these oddities is the dominance of the market. It stresses plainness and quickness in communication. Besides, in the urges to stimulate consumptions and sales, all subtler philosophical understandings about humankind have generally been suppressed in the media. In other words, overcoming this acquired mind-set for and of ahistoricity is a fundamental challenge for any aspiring educators who may wish to be more intercultural in their approach to teaching and translating. The second explanatory factor is paradoxically the dominance of the Linguistic Translation Paradigm (LTP) itself. This is because in the efficiency-driven city environment, such as in Hong Kong, many learners have acquired the reflexive belief that LTP is the only thinkable mode for translation and teaching.

So, there are indeed great educational gaps waiting to be filled by the CTP way of translating and teaching. Below are, in particular, some possible developmental focal points for future application of the Cultural Translation Paradigm in translating and teaching in the Asia-Pacific region. They are the following:

  • The study and teaching of other epistles of Paul: The pastoral writings of Paul do not seek to make plain statements to win converts. They do not provide ahistorical, merely abstractive and propositional types of epistemological findings. Instead, they all explore human possibilities and philosophies in the given historical context of those recipients addressed to by those epistles, despite some propositional statements might, thereby, be derived.

  • Religious and spirituality curriculums: With improved educational opportunities and fast-advancing communication technologies, it is quite hard to come by an audience that is strictly mono-perspectival in its outlook. Even steady adherents to established religious congregations are multicultural inside. The world is becoming more pluralistic than ever before. The LTP way of teaching and translating is no longer meeting the actual, intellectual, and spiritual needs of learners. Pastors, theologians, and philosophy educators should rise up to the challenges of these global and intercultural circumstances. The CTP way of teaching, at least, could be a rational strategy to guide learners toward greater transcendental freedom. It can be a key educational path for better interfaith dialogues too.

  • Secularized postmoderns in search of deeper understandings about humanity: In other words, this same intercultural mode of research and thinking, represented by the Cultural Translation Paradigm, can be of functional and pedagogical values to researchers and educators in general. There is no theoretical reason to assume Christian, Buddhist, or other oriental traditions, in fact, have nothing perennial to offer. One theoretical challenge however is that the Linguistic Translation Paradigm, in its preference for simplifications and abstractive truths, could be preventing researchers and learners from reaching beyond the deeper meanings of those classical texts in questions.

Conclusion

If more religious educators realize the centrality and impacts of translation paradigms in their teaching of using a diachronic historical text (Ho 2013), then more religious educators will have greater trans-laying impacts. This is because both the orientations and contents of their curricula have indeed always been characterized by the translation paradigm that is applied to the translation of that historical and classical text. In turn, the curricula so arising will determine distinctively whether the subsequent teaching should permit or encourage inter-perspectival inquiries and self-discoveries. In any case, as noted earlier, Asian Christianity is on the rise. This rise could in part be due to the rapid social dislocations and value changes in the Asia-Pacific region in the past and recent decades. In part, it could also be due to the debatable and fragile link between metaphysics and ethics in traditional Chinese philosophies (Du 2013, pp. 99–102) which used to have huge cultural and institutionalized influences in the Asia-Pacific region. In short, contemporary Asia is in desperate search for spiritual and ethical values. That can be Christianity – or perhaps personalized “Christianities” – which respects the historicity and the interculturality of the believers. If more educators are turning more effectual (Slattery 2006 Footnote 12) both in waking up religious learners and in walking them out of their state of spiritual “zombieness” (Rom 6:4) – by way of helping learners to come into deeper inter-perspectival encounters with diachronic and life-changing texts – then learners and teachers will both benefit. Both will also be making social, epistemic, and intellectual contributions in the region. This is because any persons who deeply appreciate the Christian principle of Grace and individual ethical responsibilities should possibly be more gracious as neighbors in their communities. All these are then the immediate as well as the longer-term contributions of CTP -teacher-and-translators to the religious and spiritual education Region. The CTP path is not easy. It is, however, possible.