The Sunnyvale Statement Signing and Discussion

The Stewardship of Scripture and the Case Against Restrictive Copyright

So this is in page 4 of your bulletin. The 17th century introduced exclusive publishing rights that limited the printing of the authorized version of the Bible. The 18th century witnessed the advent of modern copyright law, a legal mechanism that, by design, restricts the free propagation of Scripture.

In our own day, these regulations have only expanded and their impact has increased with the invention of digital publishing. God has given His Word freely. No man has the authority to control or limit its transmission.

The author of Scripture has protected and preserved this Word for thousands of years, and we can trust Him to continue to do so apart from human contrivances. We thank God for the labors of those who have made the Bible accessible to the nations.

But we lament that many translations and editions of Scripture are burdened with legal and organizational restrictions that are ultimately inimical to the Great Commission. Therefore, we, the undersigned, unite in one conviction.

Scripture is the Word of God, and He has authorized His people to use, copy, distribute, translate, and adapt it regardless of man's consent. May the Word of the Lord run freely and be glorified, filling the earth as the waters cover the sea.

Affirmations and Denials on the Authorship and Identity of Scripture

Affirmations and denials concerning the authorship of Scripture. We affirm that God is the divine author of Scripture, the Word of God written and has given His Word to His people as a gift. We deny that Scripture may be regarded as merely human writing or that any may claim an exclusive right over it.

Two, concerning the identity of Scripture. We affirm that the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments are the inspired Word of God and that all forms thereof, whether autograph, autograph, recension, translation, or adaptation, retain a divine quality that necessarily entails certain liberties for those to whom they are entrusted.

We deny that any human effort, creativity, or error involved in the transmission, recension, translation, or adaptation of Scripture undermines any of these liberties. Three, concerning the use of Scripture.

We affirm that the people of God have been given Scripture to search and meditate on, and therefore all who have access to the Word are granted the liberty to make full use of it, regardless of man's consent.

We deny that misuse or any other danger undermines this liberty or that any have a right to forcibly restrict others from lawfully using the Word of God. Four, concerning the reproduction of Scripture.

We affirm that the people of God have a prerogative to preserve Scripture and therefore all who have access to the Word are granted the liberty to copy it in any medium or format, regardless of man's consent.

We deny that textual corruption or any other danger undermines this liberty or that any have a right to forcibly restrict others from lawfully copying the Word of God. Five, concerning the distribution of Scripture.

We affirm that the people of God are called to propagate Scripture and therefore all who have access to the Word are granted the liberty to distribute it in any medium or format, regardless of man's consent.

We deny that misattribution, economic exploitation, or any other danger undermines this liberty or that any have a right to forcibly restrict others from lawfully distributing the Word of God. Six, concerning the adaptation of Scripture.

We affirm that the people of God should make full use of Scripture and therefore all who have access to the Word are granted the liberty to adapt it regardless of man's consent. We deny that mistranslation, mishandling, or any other danger undermines this liberty or that any have a right to forcibly restrict others from lawfully adapting the Word of God.

Amen.

Signing the Sunnyvale Statement

All right.

At this time, Andrew, I'll go ahead and have you sign it.

We've got a sharpie here.

You all are going to have a chance to sign this during the lunch. We have practice sheets here. If you want to practice writing your name. I actually usually just initial but I want to write my full name for this.

So I'm going to practice. Also, there's no pressure to sign this. You just won't be on the right side of history.

All right.

Is Copyright Law Encouraging Christians to Break the Law?

At this point, we're going to have a brief discussion about this statement. Yeah, Andrew, you're going to lead this portion here. Feel free to lead the discussion wherever you want it to go. But maybe I'll start with you heard that phrase regardless of man's consent.

One of the common questions we got about this was are we encouraging people to break the law?

Regarding scripture.

Uh, I don't see the statement as encouraging people to break the law. I just see it as simply stating that it would be permissible, not necessarily there'd be a, uh, it would be always right to do so when Jesus was approached about the temple tax or rather when Peter was, and then he asked you, uh, Jesus asked him about the temple tax, uh, who pays the taxes, the, the people are the sons of the King, the sons of the King are free, but in order to not give offense, Jesus ended up paying the temple tax.

So sometimes maybe right to go along with the law in order to avoid offense. Uh, so this is not advocating that it would be right to break the law in every circumstance. At the same time, I believe that we should with, uh, Tyndale as presented in that video, be willing to say, shall a license stand in the way of the word of If we are eager to praise Bible smugglers and make them heroes, uh, we have to acknowledge there would be a point where that would be the right approach.

And the reality that we've shared in other videos is that many people around the world are forced to be lawbreakers in one way or another by these conventions, by the status quo. Am I coming through?

No.

Okay.

So the, the average missionary is confronted with these kinds of restrictions and what do they, they do? They have to make a decision. I have my brothers and sisters in Christ here who want to grow, maybe a situation like the one we saw earlier in the lightning talk with Kenya or whatever, and you're, you're confronted with the situation.

Um, the only way that this person could ever afford or even purchase, because remember, most of the world does not have access to a credit card or a bank or a way to pay online. And so even if they had the money, they couldn't buy this book, this commentary, this sermon series, this whatever it is, even if it's a penny because of that restriction.

So you're faced with this, this dilemma. Do I say, sorry, you know, there's this nameless, faceless entity back in the United States who denies that you can have access to this and I have to slavishly abide by that denial.

Sorry, and I can't share this with you. So that's what missionaries face every day. And I think most of them break it. They break the law because, yeah, I mean, I think they feel in their heart. There's something wrong here.

There's a tension. This is very, very contrary to the Great Commission, to the whole ethos of.

Missions.

And so, yeah, this is causing people to be lawbreakers either inadvertently or intentionally all over the world constantly. And Conley had asked me to share just a little bit of the reality of how this harms the world overseas.

We made a whole video on this, if you haven't seen it, on how the Jesus trade harms the world, the bitter fruit of this whole enterprise. And just to give you some examples of that, there's a Bible Society in Africa that refuses to print more Bibles in this one translation for this one small people group.

And why is that? Well, because they can't afford the print run, but there's all these other.

Options.

They could give it away digitally. They can do print on demand, but they don't want to do that. It's too much work or they can't lose control of it if they give it away digitally, right? And so they just don't print more Bibles and the people are pleading for more.

Another group in Africa, the same thing has happened and to the point where they haven't been able to get a copy of their Bible for so long in their language that they basically started operating as if there is no Bible in their language and just translating on the fly in their services.

So these are just a couple examples of how this impacts. And there's the audio Bible issue too. Many oral cultures in the world, you know, two-thirds of the world are oral cultures. That means they are not primary text-oriented cultures.

And so they do best either by listening to an audio book or listening to someone read. And so many of these translations are locked down by copyright and it's forbidden to make an audio version. The publisher won't make an audio version.

So meanwhile, many people who are illiterate in that language group or who just would do much better listening to it have much higher comprehension. They can't get an audio Bible and the things just go on and on like that.

So those are just a few examples.

Scripture Citations, Proof Texts, and the Need for Argument

Yeah, go for it. Yeah, perhaps maybe we can get a mic up here in the meantime. I can make a few more comments.

Just pass the mic around.

Okay.

Yeah, if you've got one. We originally have published a statement with scripture citations. A lot of modern statements with affirmations and denials don't do what historic confessions do where they put the proof text and pardon me now realizes why that's the case because we frequently got a lot of comments saying you're misapplying the text.

This is out of context, etc. The way you apply scripture, just like I was arguing requires some deep thought, you know, Jesus was willing to say, have you not read to the Sadducees about I'm the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob implying that there's a resurrection.

You could imagine someone just citing that verse and saying, this doesn't show that there's a resurrection, right? There needs to be some argumentation made there. So we removed those. Uh, but then the question we get, of course, is, well, what's the scriptural basis for this?

Uh, hopefully you've heard a lot of that scriptural basis, uh, these couple of days, but I do want to remind you of the Sarah, very same verse that motivates the translation of the word of God in the Westminster confession and the second line of Baptist confession, 1 .8, uh, Colossians three 16, let the word of Christ dwell in you, richly teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

Uh, this really has become one of the, uh, chief verses that guides my understanding of what motivates, uh, not just the translation of scripture, uh, but all resharing and adaptation of scripture, that that is the full use that is intended by God.

Not only that be reshared as we teach one another, but then even adapted to teach them properly and Psalms and spiritual songs. Uh, Michael.

Practical Examples of Copyright Restrictions in Worship and Bible Distribution

I think for a lot of people, the question, should we break the law? You know, that came up earlier and I think it's to make people uncomfortable and you've alluded to this, but could you maybe provide a few concrete examples of ways we're probably already breaking the law unknowingly.

Because of these things?

And that might help us realize what's going on.

Yeah.

Do you want to, do you have any examples that come to mind?

The example that comes first to mind is not about scripture itself. It's actually about, uh, CCLI. So if you are familiar with, uh, oftentimes you go to a church and they have a projector where they're singing the songs and you'll see the CCLI number at the bottom and that's their license number to be allowed to sing these without having to pay a certain, uh, without end up getting fined.

Now, there are reasons that I don't think that's actually needed in the.

U .S.

I believe our copyright law covers this, but, uh, internationally, uh, they don't necessarily have such provisions, but internationally, there's also not an enforcement of copyright. And so no one really thinks about these things.

You know, they just sing these songs. They don't realize there's a worship tax they're supposed to be paying. And so across the world, people sing songs to God without even thinking about, oh, am I supposed to pay someone for this?

That's really common. Around here. That's, you know, that might be considered anathema, but, uh, in the rest of the world, it just doesn't even cross their mind. Uh, there are a number of others with just the way you would share scripture on social media, but, um, yeah, Andrew, if you want to elaborate on any of.

That, yeah, there's, there's a lot of different ways that if you go to copy .church, I think that's a good place to start is take the quiz, uh, on copy .church, and John points out there that pretty much every, every Christian has broken the restrictions in some way, inadvertently, unknowingly.

Of course it is covered by fair use. Um, but I don't think most quick Christians are even aware of these restrictions on scripture. And, um, certainly there have been many Christians who have printed out a whole book, like third John and given it to their Bible study group and things like that, and completely obliviously breaking the law, um, fair and square, you know?

And so, yeah, I think there are a lot of well-meaning people who, who are doing this all over the States and elsewhere.

Yeah.

I mentioned earlier, one of my messages that, um, my oldest daughter's copied the book of Luke by hand. I'm not going to say which translation she copied it from, uh, because I don't want, uh, yeah, her to get litigated by the publisher that made that translation.

But yeah, is this, is this even legal for her to put that, uh, and could they in theory sue her because of this? Uh, once again, I, I don't want to come off as saying they definitely would win in court or they definitely have legitimacy to all their legal claims because there's a lot of ambiguities around the extent of fair use and things like that.

But the fact of the matter is that at the beginning of the Bible or on their online terms, they explain what their requirements are and that it is that you would not copy a whole book or you would not copy more than 250 verses, et cetera.

Uh, one other question that we got a number of times was what do we mean by.

Lawful?

Uh, lawful just simply refers to according to the law of God. Uh, some people were confused by this cause it sounds like we're talking about human law. I think it's good to work with the vocabulary that has been well established in theology.

Uh, even if you look at once again, the Westminster confession or second London Baptist confession in the section on the civil magistrate, they will use lawful to talk about God's law. And then in the same context, they talk about the laws of men.

Uh, so it's, it's lawful just means according to God's law, uh, it just means what is right. Uh, another question we got from multiple people was why do you keep using the word of God to refer to scripture?

Isn't the word of God, Christ, uh, that I believe is coming from a place where is, uh, it's at least misguided. Uh, yes. The word, the essential word is Christ. The written word is scripture. I explained this yesterday that theologians have these distinctions, right?

Principium ascendi, the principle of being versus the principium cognoscenti, principle of knowing, uh, it is right to call both of those the word of God. Uh, Jesus and speaking to the Pharisees, uh, talked about how they, uh, elevated the traditions of man above the word of God, right?

He uses this to refer to scripture. He's not talking about himself there when he says the word of God. So there, there's no reason to shy away from calling scripture, the word of God. But it was a little surprising that this was an occasional comment that we got.

I don't know whether or not it comes from Bardian theology, you know, the theology of Karl Barth, but maybe it does where scripture is not the word of God. It just contains the word of God or as a witness to the word of God.

Uh, but that, uh, that's erroneous theology.

Also on the statement website to sign in digitally, uh, we referenced in the video at the end, uh, on, on copy .church, you'll find a Q and a there as well. So many things that we won't be able to discuss here at length.

In this Q and A session, we've written quite extensively answers to all sorts of things that we anticipate people asking or who have asked.

And we will of course have another Q and a session day where you'll be able to ask more questions. Uh, but at the end of this segment, I had wanted, uh, Andrew to ask me a final.

Question.

So Andrew, could you ask me that question now really organically and natural? So it sounds like it wasn't preplanned.

Uh, what was that question?

I've got it written down at the bottom there.

Uh, let's see here.

It's labeled important.

Creative Possibilities for a Public Domain Bible

Final question.

Yes.

Given the possibilities of a public domain text affords, what would you do if you were to print your own Bible?

Yeah.

I thought it would be good to talk about some of the creative opportunities that are available with this. You know, this is, we are part of what makes this movement so exciting is we're not just tearing down, you know, we're not just criticizing.

We are people who want to build and want to use the word of God to its full extent. So I, I've wrote down some thoughts of what I would like to see in a Bible that were printed. If I were just trying to be creative with it, uh, the first is maybe it would have this very statement and the opening, uh, and the preface, uh, to explain to people the importance of the freeness of the word.

Uh, also I was thinking about if you were to start off with the BSB text, the standard Bible and modify that, what are some things you could do to stand out? All the BSBs I've seen printed, uh, are all double column.

I've always kind of liked single column texts. So I think I'd make a single column. Uh, the, I really like it when Bibles have this nice drop caps and traditionally the right kind of drop caps are three lines.

But, uh, but typically in the Bibles, you will just see that there are two lines because two lines are a lot easier to do. I would like three line drop caps. Uh, I would render the section headings in the margins, uh, because that's a fun that way they're not in the, uh, they're not just flowing.

Sometimes I accidentally read the section headings, by the way, one really interesting thing I noticed in the BSB, uh, in other translations, uh, what's referred to as Syria, they refer to as Aram, uh, except in the section headings and the section headings, they still call it Syria.

Uh, that's interesting. A side note about the BSB there. Uh, so you could also put verses in red, but instead of doing the verses of, uh, that are Jesus's own words, you could do all the verses about freely giving in red, that would be cool.

Uh, and then, uh, you could do a few interesting changes to the text itself. So for example, uh, in our Wednesday night Bible study, as we've been going through second Chronicles, I've been pointing out to people frequently, the second Chronicles is the last book in the Hebrew Canon.

And I think that's really useful as you try to understand its purpose to guide the people in their need for Messiah. Uh, Jesus said from the blood of Abel to Zechariah, he's saying there from the blood or from Genesis to second Chronicles.

I think that would be neat to use the Hebrew, uh, Canon ordering. Uh, uh, in the preaching we heard from Michael as he was going through the BSB, he was replacing the Lord with just saying Yahweh. That would be an interesting one to use, uh, some rendering of the divine name.

Like Yahweh.

I also, uh, for the BSB, I don't totally like the capitalized pronouns. I know a lot of people like that, but it's interpretive. And then you find that they don't do that for the angel of the Lord. And if the angel of the Lord is Christ, then it seems wrong to make it decapitalized on these times where there's some theological interpretation necessary.

So I've always just liked normal, not capitalized pronouns. So you aren't doing that interpretation. Uh, and then you and I had that article we wrote on second Corinthians 2 17 about, uh, whether or not it should say peddling for profit, if the word just means selling, if it just means commercializing.

Why for profit, because it implies that, uh, you could sell it just as long as you don't have the bad.

Motive.

So, uh, yeah, maybe even removing that additional phrase. It's added in for profit.

Uh, is that in the BSB?

It is. Yeah.

They say for profit in the BSB.

Yeah.

So these are the kinds of things that I do, uh, or maybe I have already done.

Actually.

Whoa.

So you on your podcast recently covered Pretoria, uh, this printing company in Netherlands, it does short run prints of Bibles.

Uh, that's how you knew about this.

It is. Yes.

So instead of preparing for my talks ahead of time, like I should have, I was, I spent so much time on this project. So I typeset it with LaTeX. If any of you are familiar with LaTeX and, uh, you know, it's not, it's not perfect in every way, but, uh, I was, I was really happy with it and proud of.

It.

So he's got the drop caps folks.

It's got the drop caps and 250 verses, uh, highlighted in red, which is kind.

Of cool.

Like it was kind of helpful for me as I'm going through and just seeing how many passages have to do with freely giving.

Uh, whoa.

Wow.

So I made more than two of these. If you all check under your pew right now, you get a car, you get a car, you get, no, I'm just kidding. Uh, but, uh, during lunch at the table, there will be these, if you, if you registered, your name will be on them.

Uh, clearly there are enough people here or few enough people here and enough these Bibles that even if you didn't register, you can get one too. Uh, so those will be available.

Thank you.

Wow.

Now I know some of you are going to have trouble getting all this on the airplane with you, but, uh, maybe you can find someone to freely give it to if that's needed. Uh, yes, Courtney. Uh, no, this is short run.

I just did 50. Uh, the expenses go down substantially if you do more because they can ship them by crate and, uh, yeah, anyway. So, yeah, I'd love to talk to you more about, uh, our experience, uh, printing.

Through that.

Cause you seemed really curious about it. Um, podcast episode.