In the first chapter of his book, “The Sin of Empathy”, Joe Rigney’s starting point is that in Hebrews 4:15, the writer talks about Christ sympathising with us in regards to our weakness. However, the NIV uses the word “empathise.” Rigney writes: .” The Greek word in question is sympathizo, which makes the English cognate a natural choice.[1]
He goes on to say
“The NIV’s translation decision reflects a broader cultural shift away from sympathy and toward empathy. At one level, this is a very small change, the substitution of one prefix for another. “Sympathy” (and its Latin equivalent, “compassion”) literally means “suffering with” (sym + pathos in Greek, com + passio in Latin; throughout this book, I will use sympathy and compassion interchangeably). “Empathy,” on the other hand, means “suffering in.”[2]
I believe that he has stumbled into three linked errors here. First, he has presumed motive behind the NIV’s translation choice, assuming that the translators are being manipulated by the current culture. Secondly, he assumes that interpreting a word is as simply as looking at the elements of the compound and interpreting them based on their etymology. This assumes that a word is being used exactly as the original word was used without deviation. Have a look at contemporary definitions for sympathy and empathy.
An internet search offers the following for sympathy.
“feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else’s misfortune. “’hey had great sympathy for the flood victims’”
Meanwhile, the alternative search for empathy comes up with:
“the ability to understand and share the feelings of another ‘he has a total lack of empathy for anybody’”
What we realise at this point is that the modern word “sympathy” is not a direct equivalent for the idea suggested by the Greek compound “suffer with”. Instead, it’s meaning has moved towards the sense of “pity.” I can pity someone without suffering with them. Empathy in that respect is the word which has taken the place of sympathy. It may possibly include the idea of entering into, however, it is entering in, in order to feel or suffer with, to share in a persons suffering. Indeed, we cannot presume, especially noting the word’s usage in connection to Christ that “sympathy” did not include the idea of entering into when the writer to the Hebrews spoke about Christ.
Rigney is committing a form of root fallacy and perhaps we could have saved a lot of time and paper if he hadn’t.
[1] Rigney, Joe. The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits (p. 16). Canon Press. Kindle Edition.
[2] Rigney, Joe. The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits (p. 17). Canon Press. Kindle Edition.
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