The 2012 annual Reformation Lectures were delivered October 25–26, 2012, in Mankato, Minnesota. These lectures are sponsored jointly by Bethany Lutheran College and Bethany Lutheran Theological Seminary. This was the forty-fifth in the series of annual Reformation Lectures which began in 1967. This year the name of the Reformation Lectures has been changed to the Bjarne Wollan Teigen Reformation Lectures. Dr. B.W. Teigen was instrumental in the establishment of these lectures. The format of the Reformation Lectures has always been that of a free conference and thus participation in these lectures is outside the framework of fellowship.
The theme of the lectures was “Bible Translations for the 21st Century.” The first lecture, given by Dr. Cameron MacKenzie (Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, IN), was entitled “Battling Over Bibles: Episodes in the History of Translating the Scriptures.” The second lecture, presented by Pres. Paul Wendland (Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary, Mequon, WI), was entitled “Formal and Functional Equivalency in Bible Translation.” The Reformation Lectures consisted of an historical study of certain Bible translations and the principles involved in the proper translation of Holy Scriptures. All faithful translators of the Bible must adhere to a high view of the Scriptures, maintaining the verbal inerrancy of the original autographs. The theory of translation may be seen as a spectrum or a continuum moving from formal equivalency (word for word) to functional equivalency (thought for thought). No translation is purely formal or functional, but each translation tends in one direction or another.