Corpus Pragmatics (2020) 4:253–258

https://doi.org/10.1007/s41701-020-00079-9

BOOK REVIEW

Anna Wierzbicka, What Christians Believe. The Story of God

and People in Minimal English
2019. ISBN 978-0190855284. New York: Oxford University Press, 344 p.

Zuzanna Bułat Silva1 

Received: 30 January 2020 / Accepted: 7 February 2020 / Published online: 20 February 2020
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

A new book by Anna Wierzbicka may surprise the linguistic audience. The theo-
retical perspective of the author, who is Professor Emerita at the Australian National
University (Canberra) and founder of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM)
approach to meaning, is that of a semanticist who devoted all her life to discover-
ing the universal conceptual core of human mind, on the one hand, and to prove
the astonishing diversity of human thinking, on the other. Anna Wierzbicka, bold
as usual, after having written, inter alia, about bananas and bicycles (1985), emo-
tions (1999), and sex (2012), conquers yet another territory, that of the Bible. At
the intersection of theology, translatology and linguistics, she makes an attempt to
understand for herself and explain to others what the core beliefs of Christian faith
are. It is done by the means of translating the basics of Christianity into the recent
off-spring of NSM, viz. Minimal English (ME, see Goddard 2018).
Wierzbicka already published three books on Christian faith before: What Did
Jesus Mean? (2001, 2001 Polish translation), Jak można mówić o Trójcy Świętej w
słowach prostych i uniwersalnych, ‘How to speak about the Holy Trinity in simple
and universal words’ (2004, in Polish), and W co wierzą chrześcijanie? Opowieść
o Bogu i o  ludziach (2017), an earlier, Polish version of “The Story of God and
People”, which constitutes the core of the present book (Part II). The aim of “The
Story”, which the author herself calls “an exercise in clear thinking” (p. 13), is “to
convey the essentials of Christian faith accurately, making every word count and be
justifiable from a theological and historical, as well as a linguistic, point of view” (p.
xi).
What Christians Believe is divided into four parts. Part one, a general intro-
duction and overview of what is covered in the rest of the book, provides a short
résumé of Wierzbicka’s approach to the study of meaning and shows how it can
be applied in theological investigations. Chapter 1 introduces the idea of simple

* Zuzanna Bułat Silva

[email protected]
1
Department of Romance Studies, University of Wrocław, Pl. Nankiera 4, 50‑140 Wrocław,
Poland

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 254 Z. Bułat Silva

and cross-translatable words that can be used to express what Christians believe
“in a clearer, fuller, and universally accessible form” (p. 11). Chapter  2 sheds
light on the pragmatic aspects of the Bible, showing how meanings expressed
there are dependent on the cultural and historical context in which it was written.
It is extremely important, the author argues, to understand the underlying prac-
tices and values of the speech culture of Palestinian Jews, in order to grasp the
“dramatic picture language that was characteristic not only of first-century Pales-
tine but also of the Jewish prophets for many centuries before” (p. 23). Chapter 3
questions the undescribability of God, which some scholars assume a priori, and
argues for the possibility to interpret the Bible with the help of shared human
concepts. Chapter 4 explains the basic ideas behind Minimal English, “a highly
reduced version of English which can ensure maximum translatability without
compromising intelligibility” (p. 45). Minimal English, based on Natural Seman-
tic Metalanguage, consisting of 65 universal concepts, called semantic primes
(which, together with their grammar, constitute the shared, common core of all
human languages) is the key descriptive and methodological tool used in the
main part of the book. In the last section of chapter 4, Wierzbicka justifies the use
of non-universal words in ME (some of them introduced by the “called-mecha-
nism”, as in e.g. “something called the Temple”, p. 59) and discusses metaphors
central to the language of the Gospels.
Part two, the core (from Latin cor, ‘heart’) of the book, is “The Story of God
and People” in 40 chapters, each up to two pages long. The whole Story is writ-
ten in Minimal English in an attempt to articulate the core Christian beliefs “with
greater precision than would be possible in one particular language, with all its
culture-specific richness” (p. xii). The first seven chapters refer briefly to what is
written in the Old Testament: the creation of the world, Abraham, the Ten Com-
mandments given to Moses, and the prophets. Chapters 8 to 22 narrate the story
of Jesus’s life, and the remaining chapters give a detailed description of his death
and what happened afterwards, including what happened to the Apostles.
“The Story” starts with the definition of God, which is written entirely with
semantic primes:
There is someone not like people.
This someone is someone above people; this someone is above everything.
This someone is now, always was, always will be.
This someone is everywhere.
There is no one else like this someone. (p. 69).
The first two lines picture God as a person, but not of a human kind, who is above
all people and all places. The next two lines show the exceptionality of God,
who is eternal, “always was, always will be”, omnipresent, “is everywhere” and
unique, “there is no one else like this someone”. In chapter 2 of “The Story”, dif-
ferentia specifica of human kind is given: people are “not like other creatures”
on earth, because they know that they will die and they have a conscience, or a
sense of morality (they can think: “I can do good things, I can do bad things”, p.
71). Chapter 3, in turn, brings the definition of Satan: “someone bad” who “wants

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Anna Wierzbicka, What Christians Believe. The Story of God… 255

people not to live with God” and because of this “says many things to people,
these things are not true” (p. 72). A very interesting summary of the main points
of Jesus’s teachings is given in chapter  15. They are rendered via very simple
expressions (“it is good for you if …” and “it is bad for you if …”). Jesus’s most
important commandment—“to love thy neighbor as thyself”—is translated into
Minimal English as:
It is good for you if you often think about other people,
   if you feel something good toward other people,
It is good for you if you want to do good things for other people (p. 96).
It is of course not possible to give a detailed description of “The Story”, so I will
concentrate on one, interesting aspect: the frequent use of metaphors and similes.
In NSM, metaphors can be rendered via the prime LIKE, e.g. my hands are like
stones, but they are not used very often. In “The Story”, on the contrary, there are
quite a lot of them, e.g.: “he will be like the light” (p. 80), “he will touch you with
fire” (p. 90), “he was like a lamb when people want to kill it” (p. 109), “didn’t we
feel something like fire, something very good” (p. 131), “I am the way” (p. 134),
“your words will be like keys to a place where people can live with God” (p. 142), “I
want you to be like a shepherd” (p. 143), “light like no other light” (p. 146). (Inter-
estingly enough, the comparison of Jesus to “light”, so central to the whole Story,
is quite a new development: it is absent from the Polish version of “The Story”,
published in 2017.) It is revealing that so many metaphors are used in “The Story”
to talk about Christian faith, because expressions of this kind—unlike regular NSM
explications—cannot be understood directly or interpreted univocally. For example,
“he is like a lamb” may refer to either someone being ‘gentle’ or being ‘a victim’.
The metaphors thus give a certain freedom of interpretation, and a really ecumenical
touch to “The Story”, as expressed directly by the author in chapter 38 (p. 142):
Later Christians knew what Jesus said to Peter. They talked about it.
They knew what he said with the words “shepherd”, “keys”, “rock.”
They didn’t all think about it in one way.
Christians talk about it now, as before, they don’t all think about it in one way.
“The Story” is brought to an end by the reiteration of God’s love for people and a
conviction that all people can be saved:
God feels something very good toward all people.
God wants to do good things for all people.
All people can live with God if they want to (p. 147).
Part three consists of brief commentaries on each chapter of “The Story”. The
author describes her problems with explaining the complexities of Christian faith
by the means of very limited vocabulary and very simple syntax of a minimal
language. Some chapters have gone through more than twenty versions, numerous
consultations with other scholars and students, and also with native speakers of
non-Indo-European languages (e.g. chapter 2 was translated into Longgu and dis-
cussed with native speakers of this Austronesian language by Deborah Hill, see

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p. 154). Wierzbicka also explains how she arrived at the definition of some key
Christian concepts, such as “sin” (p. 158), “incarnation” (p. 161), “blessings” (p.
165), “temptation” (p. 187) or “faith” itself (rendered via “I think like this: this
is true, I know it, I want to think like this”, p. 163). She also uses ME to under-
take some historical linguistic excursions, throwing light on how the meaning of
ekklesia ‘church’ has changed from “a group of people who gathered in one place
at one time” to “people living in many different places, at many different times”
(p. 280). Some comments unravel grammatical intricacies of writing “The Story”,
such as the impossibility of using counter-factual construction (“if you had been
here, my brother would not have died”, p. 210), because of its lack of cross-trans-
latability. There are also very interesting remarks about the languages spoken in
Palestine in Jesus’s times. According to the author, Jesus spoke to Pilate in Greek
(p. 226), and dying on the cross he spoke in Hebrew, not in Aramaic, his first
language (p. 234). The number of quotes of many important works of Christian
scholars—not only Catholic such as the popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI,
but also Lutheran and Orthodox—is bewildering: out of nine pages of references
approximately 80% are theological books and papers. Yet what is the strength in
terms of scientific craft, is also the book’s weakness: the proliferation of quotes,
not all of them discussed, makes Part three difficult to read. Still, I consider the
commentaries helpful, as they explain passages from “The Story” which may not
be easy to grasp at the very first moment. My recommendation is to read one
chapter of “The Story” followed by a commentary at a time.
Part four contains three appendices on the words ‘forgiveness’, ‘love’ and
hilastērion (roughly, ‘place of mercy’), respectively. The first two, on the emotion
terms central to Christian moral legacy, are of great interest both to psychologists
and to linguists. In Appendix A, Wierzbicka explains that Christian ‘forgiveness’
comprises the following components: “I don’t want to think about this person: ‘this
person did something very bad to me’”, “I don’t want to feel something bad toward
this person” and “I want to think about this person in another way”. The last compo-
nent, according to Wierzbicka, “appears to be absent in the Buddhist concept, where
the focus is on freeing oneself from harmful thoughts” (p. 292). While I cannot say
anything about the Buddhist equivalents of ‘forgiveness’, the very first component
mentioned by Wierzbicka, “I don’t want to think about this person: ‘this person did
something very bad to me’”, appears to show a distorted picture of forgiving oth-
ers and should be rephrased. ‘Forgiveness’ entails neither forgetting nor negation of
what happened to the person harmed. Furthermore, a suggestion that the act of for-
giving someone means that the victim does not want to think about the wrongdoer—
“this person did something bad to me”—sounds very unfortunate, especially in the
context of many acts of terrible child abuse by priests.
In Appendix B, Wierzbicka demonstrates the shift in meaning of the concept of
‘love’ from Old Testament āhēb, denoting ‘preferential love’, to New Testament
agapao, whose core meaning rests on ‘thinking about someone’, ‘feeling something
very good toward them’ and ‘doing good things for this someone because of this’.
Appendix C provides a detailed analysis of the Greek word hilastērion, rendered as
‘propitiation’, ‘expiation’ or ‘expiatory sacrifice’, and as such may appeal to theolo-
gians, translators and students of the Bible.

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Anna Wierzbicka, What Christians Believe. The Story of God… 257

What Christians Believe is undoubtedly a unique book—it tells the Bible story
in a completely new way, rephrased in a comprised vocabulary of Minimal Eng-
lish, which forces readers to re-think what they believe in and what they know about
Christian faith. Anna Wierzbicka answers not only the questions of people who want
to know about Christian faith, she also addresses the doubts many Christians have:
can all people be saved, did God want people to kill Jesus, did Jesus think that God
abandoned him? This book may appeal to all Christians, challenging their faith, and
making them ponder over what being a Christian and “living with God” is about.
Some explications in ME, such as translating Peter “being the rock on which the
church is built” as “being below all people”, are of special importance to the church
leaders who are reminded by the author that “[a]uthority in the church should be
exercised at all levels to serve people, and not to rule” (p. 282).
Despite its “unconventional style” (p. 46), and the aforementioned profusion
of quotes, the book is a pleasure to read. Beautifully edited by OUP, with a great
cover featuring a fragment of Rembrandt’s painting The Return of the Prodigal Son
(c.1669), it is carefully typeset (give or take some minor typos). Unfortunately, some
claims made by the author are not substantiated. On page 203 the author states, “as
evidence suggests, “light” is a universal human concept, and thus the word is fully
cross-translatable”, but no evidence is adduced, nor reference is given. A similar
claim made about the universality of the concept “soul” on page 219 is not sup-
ported either. Some statements are unclear, such as, on page 218, “[t]he frame: “it
is like this in my soul now” excludes any possibility of mixed feelings”. Why can
“feeling something good” and “feeling something bad”, i.e. mixed feelings, not
occur at the same time in one’s soul, as the author holds? In a chapter where she
describes the story of evangelisation of Aboriginal people in Australia (p. 267–268),
there is not a single mention of the child removal policy pursued by the Australian
government and Church in the twentieth century. This cruel practice of taking Abo-
riginal and mixed-race children from their families (so called stolen generations)
and placing them in Christian missions and orphanages led to severe traumas and
language and culture deprivation. Presenting the story of evangelisation of Australia
without referring to stolen generations is a serious misstep.
What Christians Believe is definitely a thought-provoking book for all those inter-
ested in the essentials of human spirituality. It may be of special appeal to people
who do not know much about Christian faith and want to learn about its rudiments.
But also theologians, students of the Bible and people who consider themselves
Christians will find this book fascinating, because it forces them to rethink religious
dogmas and questions their faith. As a first, experimental attempt to use Minimal
English to render the core message of the whole Bible, it is also an important read-
ing for linguists, anthropologists and communication scholars. Above all, however,
Anna Wierzbicka teaches us how to be courageous in the contemporary world of
political correctness, sensitivity to some subject matters and constant fear of not
being scientific enough. What makes this book truly exceptional, and yet in line with
her other publications is Wierzbicka’s unbelievable (pun not intended) passion for
the truth. No matter what fellow linguists will say.

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Compliance with Ethical Standards 

Conflict of interest  On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of
interest.

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Wierzbicka, A. (1985). Lexicography and Conceptual Analysis. Ann Arbor: Karoma.
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