Over the weekend I had several fruitful conversations with Critical Text/Multiple Version Onlyists. These conversations are going to serve as the larger bulk of my musings this week on the textual/version issue.
One conversation I had over Sunday lunch with a very hospitable family form my church. At one point in the discussion I began to explain that academic conclusions about manuscript evidence do not possess the requisite authority to declare whether the story of the woman caught in adultery is Scripture or not. To which the wife, a dyed in the wool James White fan, declares, “It’s all about the manuscripts.”
To which I replied, “Then where is the place in a discussion that’s ‘all about the manuscripts’ for the Spirit of God speaking through the words of God to the people of God who then receive the true words of God by faith?” Really no place was provided for the content of my question. My gracious interlocutors merely stated that God does that, but they did not locate it anywhere in the knowing and determining what is or is not Scripture.
So in thinking about it since that conversation I think there needs to be a clear nuance between a decidedly non-Christian Historical Flow of how the Bible comes to the Church and a decidedly Christian Authoritative Means whereby the Spirit-led Church, as the only determiner of what is Scripture, determines what is or is not Scripture. Below is a rough comparison of how I believe these two should be divided.
In the left column is the Historical Flow which is how the Bible comes to the Church through the moments of history which any deity from any Abrahamic religion could do. The right column is the distinctively Christian Authoritative Means whereby the Church evaluates the Bible as it comes to them through history. These of course are generalities aimed at presenting the basics of these distinctly different sides. As such, these sides can generally be applied to anytime the Bible has come to the Church through historical means, but only one makes specific room for the Holy Spirit in determining which words are His and which are not.
1.) Textual Scholars evaluate the textual
evidence and make the best judgement
they can based on the data and their
own subjective judgment.
2.) The decisions of the textual scholars are passed down to the Church through the Greek text and the subsequent versions translated from the Greek.
3.) Left to itself, the Historical Flow makes the textual scholar to be the authority in determining what are or are not the words of God, and the Church merely submits to those decisions.
Observation 1: There seems to be little to no place in this system accounting for the role of the Holy Spirit in authoritatively determining what words are and are not His words.
Observation 2: Assuming the flow of the above, there is little difference today between the way God’s people submit to what words are God’s words via textual scholars and the way God’s people submitted to what words are God’s words as declared by the Catholic priest or Pope.
Observation 3: If this flow or something near it accounts for how the modern evangelical textual critics account for how the Bible rightly comes to Christ’s Bride in time and space and how Christ’s Bride is to submit to those chosen words as the words of God, then the Confessional Text/Standard Sacred Text position is correct in labeling such a method godless, transcendentless, and worthy of opposition and ultimate defeat.
If it is not, then the literature and lectures offered by the modern evangelical textual scholar have largely failed to indicate that such is not the case.
1.) Textual Scholars evaluate the textual
evidence and make the best judgement
they can based on the data and their
own subjective judgment.
2.) The decisions of the textual scholars are passed down to the Church through the Greek text and the subsequent versions translated from the Greek.
3.) The Church, recognizing that while several Greek texts/versions contain the Gospel, each Greek text/version differs and God does not differ with Himself in the slightest. Therefore each of the several Greek texts/versions cannot equally be the word of God in totality.
4.) As a result the Church, by the Spirit of God recognizing the voice of the Shepherd in the words of God, accepts and/or rejects some or many of the decisions made by textual scholars because the Church does or does not hear the voice of the Shepherd in some or many of the readings chosen by the textual scholar. In short, the Christian plumber and stay-at-home mom tell the textual scholar that his choice to put in or take out these or those words was a mistake or acceptable.
5.) The textual scholar as a servant of the Church humbly accepts the decision of God’s people and as a result the scholar retracts their choice as unacceptable.
Observation 1: In this flow there is a robust exegetically and theologically based position for the role of the Holy Spirit in authoritatively determining what words are and are not His words.
Observation 2: Assuming this flow is to plainly and clearly remain in the vein of our Reformation era forefathers in rejecting man, whether Pope or textual scholar, as the one who declares to the Church what is or is not God’s word. Rather this flow, preserves the Reformation truth that the Scriptures are autopistos, trustworthy in and of themselves needing no scholar to bolster or supplement that trustworthiness.
Often an objection comes up at this point which says, “Assuming that the Church is the final authority in determining what is or is not the word of God, can’t they make a mistake and choose something that is not God’s word thus calling the whole method into question?”
Indeed, the Church could make a mistake but that is not grounds to reject the method of having the Church as the final arbiter of what is or is not the word of God. Could we not say that pastors make mistakes? Indeed we could. Does that mean we ought to do away with the office of the pastor? The same goes for deacons. Has the Church at times, even now, failed to perform its duty as the instrument of God’s will in the world as salt and light? Indeed, it has, but that doesn’t mean that now the local Moose Lodge and 4H Group is now the means of salt and light in the world while the Church is not. Yes, the Church can be mistaken but that doesn’t somehow make textual scholars the final arbiter of what words are or are not the words of God.
The Spirit guides His people into all truth including the truth of what words are God’s and what words are not. This is the way.
Another objection is, “Well what do you do with the fact that the Church at one point held to the Latin Vulgate, a translation, and now the Church holds to the Hebrew/Greek, and you hold to the KJV in the English. How can all of those be right and also wrong?”
First, in order for there to be a contradiction there must be contradiction in time and way. Are the Latin Vulgate and the Hebrew/Greek the word of God at the same time and in the same way? No. Without getting into necessary details the Latin only contained the words of God while the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia and the TR are the word of God. The difference of course here is the difference between an glass containing water and a glass being water. Furthermore, the Latin can only at best possess the substantia doctrinae of the original while the Hebrew/Greek possess the substantia doctrinae and the substantia verbae. As a result of these two reasons, among others, the Holy Spirit’s voice is more clearly and completely heard by the people of God in the Hebrew/Greek original than in Rome’s Latin translation.
“But what about modern versions?”, you say. The same applies. In many of the modern versions the voice of the Shepherd can be heard in them so that the reader can come to saving knowledge in Jesus Christ. But in many other ways the opposite is true.
Take for instance the fact that many of the most popular modern versions, excluding the KJV at this point, include the long ending in Mark and the story of the woman caught in adultery albeit in brackets and/or with a footnote mentioning that the oldest and best manuscripts do not include these texts.
Why the contradiction? The scholars claim these passages aren’t original, and yet they are printed in our English modern versions. The reason is that the Authoritative Means still reigns because that is the way God intended to inform His people of His words.
What do you mean?
Well, in an interview with Daniel Wallace, he was asked why the publishers of these modern versions continue to publish the long ending of Mark and the story of the woman caught in adultery? His reply was that publishers are afraid that if people in the Church pick up a new Bible and that Bible doesn’t have the story of the woman caught in adultery, those people will return that Bible, news will spread, and no one will buy that Bible which will be a huge financial cost to the publisher. So instead, against the advice of the scholars, the publishers leave these texts in because the publishers recognize what the people want.
Such a scenario is the very definition of the Authoritative Means: 1.) The textual scholar says X should not be in the Bible. 2.) God’s people disagree. 3.) The Bible retains X despite the expert opinion of the textual scholar. The problem is that the textual scholars are too proud to submit to God’s people and so they persist in their rebellion against Christ’s Bride.
In this sense then it is fair to say that the ESV, which retains and brackets the story of the woman caught in adultery, is as a translation more reliable, more accurate, and more the Scripture than the Greek of the NA 28. Put simply, in this case a translation [i.e., the ESV] is superior to the original [i.e., NA 28].
Just as the KJV informed Scrivener regarding what is now the TBS Greek NT, so the ESV is informing the NA 28. But where Scrivener was humble enough to make the changes, the modern evangelical text critics remain in their hubris and rebellion to the Church as the Authoritative Means or final arbiter of what are or are not the words of God.
At this point you could offer servings of irony by the spoonful.
Standard Sacred Text.com 