Where did that verse come from?
The entrance and interior of the CENTER at Autumn Ridge are decorated with a logo graphic with a biblical text:
“At the center of all this, Christ rules the church.”
Ephesians 1:22
Some people are curious about this text and its origin.
Let me tell you that story.
In 2009 I was leading a study to consider building an addition at Autumn Ridge Church. Various names were considered for the space, but the Building Implementation Committee settled on “the CENTER” as the simplest and clearest option to capture the idea that many purposes and functions would be served in the space.
That same year I had decided to again read through the Bible, but this time I deliberately chose to study a different translation, The Message by Eugene Peterson. I had always favored the New International Version, but had found it easy to be lulled into reading over the familiar words without much impact. The Message offers a fresh take on the scriptures, with the goal of capturing in the mind of the reader the kind of powerful impact that would have been experienced by the original readers of the written message in the original languages.
Saint Augustine said “variety of translations is profitable for finding out the sense of the scriptures.” I have definitely found this to be true. Because few of us read the Bible in the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek languages, we are all dependent on translations. Paraphrase means literally to “say the same thing in different words” and that is what any translation must do. Thus, every translation is truly a paraphrase.
I was interested to read that different kinds of translations aim for different things, and no careful translation is necessarily better than any other. Of particular interest, the verse numbers imposed on the Biblical texts are artificial and not meaningful during translation.
Some translations (for example the New King James and English Standard Version) aim to try to find an English equivalent for each word of the original language, sacrificing the flow of thoughts and ideas for the “formal equivalent.” Other translations (for example the New Living Translation and The Message) are “idiomatic,” aiming to convey the ideas and the impact of the ideas in words familiar to modern readers. In the case of The Message, Peterson worked from the original Greek and Hebrew with the goal:
…to recapture the tone, to bring out the subtleties and nuances of the Hebrew and Greek languages while keeping a sense of the firsthand experience for contemporary readers…”If Paul were the pastor of my church, how would he say this?” or “If Jesus were here teaching, what would it sound like?”
So I was studying The Message at the same time that I was leading the Building Implementation Committee and working on ways to share the CENTER concept with the congregation for study and consideration.
In developing the communication materials for this process, I created print illustrations and brochures and a simple logo that used the cross as a symbol to mark the center of a circle. At the same time I searched the Bible (using The Message version I was studying) for uses of the word “center.” I was interested to find the concept of “center” in Peterson’s translation of Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus. In discussing his love for the Ephesians, Paul writes:
I ask–ask the God of our Master Jesus Christ, the God of glory–to make you intelligent and discerning in knowing him personally, your eyes focused and clear, so that you can see exactly what it is he is calling you to do, grasp the immensity of this glorious way of life he has for Christians, oh, the utter extravagance of his work in us who trust in him–endless energy, boundless strength! All this energy issues from Christ: God raised him from death and set him on a throne in deep heaven, in charge of running the universe, everything from galaxies to governments, no name and no power exempt from his rule. And not just for the time being, but forever. He is in charge of it all, has the final word on everything. At the center of all this, Christ rules the church. The church, you see, is not peripheral to the world; the world is peripheral to the church. The church is Christ’s body, in which he speaks and acts, by which he fills everything with his presence.
You can perhaps see why I thought this was a lovely passage to capture the idea of “center” from a Christian perspective. As to the actual verse number, recall that verse numbers were invented later and imposed artificially on scripture. Peterson emphasizes this by not dividing his translation into individual verses. The phrase selected for the CENTER logo is near what other translations calculate to be Ephesians 1:22, but this is not important in idiomatic translations like The Message. It is the idea that counts.
In some ways I wish we all were Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic scholars so we could study the Bible in its original language. Even then, however, we would still find challenges in archaic word uses and unknown references and meanings. No matter what Christians do, they must rely on multiple translations to come to even a partial understanding of the meanings of the many different kinds of literature captured together in the Bible.
Late during construction of the CENTER, Pastor Bill Price and I simultaneously had the notion of decorating the CENTER with a permanent and public statement reminding guests of the facility name, emphasizing the symbolism of the cross of Christ, and sharing the scripture passage that places Christ at the center of all the energy of the universe.
So now you know the story of the CENTER logo text.
For those who are interested, both the large wall mural in the CENTER and the entrance window text were applied as vinyl graphics, a relatively inexpensive and durable solution.
Jim Maher
