Knowledge of Salvation

by Joyce Voysey

One thing that I notice in Chapter 17 is that Paul “reasoned, preached, disputed, declared.”  Reasoned with the Thessalonians; disputed and preached at Berea and Athens; declared at Mars’ Hill in Athens.  The declaring at Athens was Paul’s delightful speech, inspired by the altar inscription TO THE UNKNOWN GOD, and which includes that telling phrase, “For in him we live, and move, and have our being.”

As usual, there was a mixed reaction – some mocked, some wanted to hear more.  He departed to Corinth.  Women are prominent among Paul’s converts.

There is a delightful interlude in Corinth when Paul meets up with Aquila and Priscilla.  They were Jews who had been deported from Rome, and they were tentmakers.  Thus, Paul met fellow trades-people. They lived and worked together.  When Paul left Corinth after a year and six months, Aquila and Priscilla travelled with him over the Aegean Sea to Ephesus, where he parted from them.

Back to sea again, Paul sailed back to Caesarea in Israel, and then up to Antioch.  Sort of finishing his second journey – he seems to have been ever on the move.

At Ephesus we find that Aquila and Priscilla have converted Apollos, a prominent Alexandrian.  It seems that Aquila and Priscilla were not Paul’s converts, but were already Christians when he met them.  Dummelow (One Volume Bible Commentary) looks further into Aquila and Priscilla’s history as recorded in other books of the Bible.  He notes for instance, that the church at Ephesus met at their house (I Cor. 16:19) and that “after St. Paul’s trial they returned to Ephesus (2 Tim. 4:19), which is our last notice of them.”

Acts chapter 19 introduces us to folk at Corinth who had been baptised by John and had not heard about the Holy Ghost.  When Paul explains to them that John’s teaching of repentance included the necessity of believing on Christ Jesus, they were baptised by Paul, and the Holy Ghost came on them.  There were about 12 men.  Question: Did John baptise any women?

Paul spends three months “disputing and persuading” in the synagogue “things concerning the kingdom of God,” and so it went on, until “all they which dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks.”  And don’t you love the special sentence (verse 11): “And God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul”?

Have you been somewhat bemused, as I have, and not quite satisfied by the fact that Wyckliffe’s translation of Luke 1:88’s “knowledge of salvation” (KJV) was “science of health”? 

I have found an article which satisfies me.  Here is an excerpt from the article, by “M.C.S.”, called Wyckliffe’s Version of the New Testament, from The Christian Science Journal May 1897:

http://journal.christianscience.com/issues/1897/5/15-2/wyckliffe-s-version-of-the-new-testament

WYCKLIFFE'S version brings before us another word, which unhappily has suffered in the lapse of time. Health is a word which has now an almost exclusively physical meaning, or at most a physical and intellectual one. We speak of bodily or mental health, and, in a figurative sense, we speak of a healthy trade; but we do not apply either health or healthy in a purely spiritual sense. This, however, is Wyckliffe's constant practice. Health is, in fact, his standard word for salvation; the knowledge of salvation is 'the science of health,' the gospel of salvation is 'the gospel of health;' the way of salvation is the 'way of health.' A thoroughly Saxon word instead of the Latin, and a word perhaps better than salvation in some respects, because it seems to carry with it the idea of sanctification, which to most persons salvation does not; for salvation, as generally understood, means deliverance from some external evil, e.g., hell torments. But this word health teaches us to consider the subjective in religion; it reminds us not only of danger, but of danger proceeding from disease; it tells us that salvation must be wrought in us as well as for us; that it is a subjective as well as an objective process. It were well if this fine word could be restored to its former position; if the spiritual could again be associated with it, so that every man might be reminded that however strong he may be in body and in mind, he is not in a healthy state unless he is a believer in the Son of God. A thoroughly religious man is the only healthy man. Such is the train of thought suggested by "Wyckliffe's use of the word."

—Friends' Review (reprinted from Good Words) Philadelphia, 1863. No. 32.