Translate to lead to Christ?

Thanks for the question, Aaron. I think this is a good focusing question for those involved in Bible translation. I'd like to ask a couple follow-up questions and then offer some suggestions.

First, what does it mean to "lead someone to Christ"? Do you mean leading people to an evangelical conversion? Or do you mean leading people into the unity of faith, into the full measure of the stature of Christ? Or do you mean leading people to ethical transformation, with Jesus as the great exemplar? Or leading them to Christ in the Sacraments? Or leading them to encounter the Christ Event?

Second, if we translate to lead people to Christ, is that our only motivation? Our guiding motivation? A subsidiary motivation? Is that what every translated verse must do -- and if it doesn't achieve that goal, we've failed?

I ask the first question because a guiding motivation or purpose should be clearly defined, or it's no real help, and I can imagine Bible translators from various backgrounds saying "yes" but meaning quite different things by that yes.

In my second set of questions, I'd like to see "leading people to Christ" put in a context of other commitments and principles and motivations. Otherwise it could lead to quite irresponsible translation practices: a translator may decide that this or that bit of Scripture, if faithfully translated into this or that cultural or religious context, might drive people away from Christ. So in service of a higher goal, the translator feels justified in excising or mistranslating parts of Scripture that aren't well calculated to leading the recipient audience to Christ. (At this point, the goal verges on becoming an ideology.)

On the other hand, if by "lead people to Christ", we mean "let the Holy Spirit do his work with the word that he inspired, as he inspired it", then we might be on firmer ground -- letting each passage and text work out its own unique purposes, purposes which ultimately conspire to build up the church, the body of Christ, which is the fullness of the one who fills all things.

Thank you, Joshua, for those helpful comments. I agree that whoever says "lead people to Christ" should clarify it. And what is role of a motive for translation versus a purpose for translating versus a criterion for evaluating a translation decision? I agree that we shouldn't allow "lead people to Christ" to become the rational for mistranslating.