I hate the NIV. As soon as you read that, you probably pigeon-holed me, saying "Oh great, another KJV nut!" Well, for what it's worth, I don't like the King James either. (In fact, my favorite translation is actually the New Jerusalem Bible, but nobody else seems to care for it much.) The reason I dislike the NIV is because it consistently translates the Greek in a way that tends to "prove" evangelical orthodoxy without making any note of it.

Let's look at an example that I came across in the service tonight. The NIV translates Ephesians 1.21 as:

Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.

Now, this translation certainly seems to go towards a traditional understanding: "you got a problem, the problem is sin, and the answer is JESUS." However, I'm not sure it very accurately reflects the Greek. Consider the NRSV's translation:

And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds,

In many ways, this means the same thing as the NIV. However, notice that the NIV inserted two words that are not in the Greek: "because" and "your". There is nothing in the Greek to clearly state that the evil deads belonged to the Colossians as individuals - in fact, this translation seems (to me) to be an individualistic encroachment on scripture. To see why, go back and look at 1.19-20

For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

God isn't just making our, particular, evil deeds okay - he is answering and redeeming the evil of all creation. No, I'm not a universalist - I believe that Goodness for all creation will require God to condemn all who do evil. However ... if God is redeeming all creation, and all of creation's evil deeds, then where does that put us? Can we go on sinning and be part of that redemption? Hardly.

Anyway, to come back to my point .. whether my gut thinking (and that's all this is) on this subject is correct or not, the NIV's sloppy translation would never let you know that there was even a possibility that the evil deeds were not those of individuals who had now become Christians. This is a bad thing.

(I'm hoping to get a copy of the ESV this week, which looks increasingly intriguing.)