On February 18, 2022, I posted an article entitled “Dr. Mark Ward, Psalm 12:6-7, and the Historic Exegetical Argument for the Providential Preservation of God’s word.” Now approaching the two-year anniversary of this response to Dr. Ward’s opposition to Psalm 12:6-7 teaching the providential preservation of Scripture, I thought I would follow up on Dr. Ward’s response to the posting. As far as I can tell, Dr. Ward’s method is to throw rhetorical rocks through the exegetical windows of Psalm 12:6-7 and then run away hoping that everyone will forget he has offered no rebuttal to the providential preservation historically taught in the passage. After two years more than sufficient time has passed for a Ph.D. to mount a thorough refutation, which leads to the conspicuous conclusion that Dr. Ward no answer for the historic, exegetically based grounding for Scripture’s providential preservation of Psalm 12:6-7. For Dr. Ward and others who deny that any verse of Scripture teaches providential preservation, for a leader in the evangelical critical camp to allow this passage to stand without refutation is significantly problematic. Indeed, allowing the passage to stand unchallenged compromises an essential part of the critical position by moving Scripture’s preservation from a solely phenomenal issue to an exegetically, theologically grounded matter. Additionally, accepting one passage as grounds for providential preservation, shifts the critical paradigm away from an empirical premise to a position driven by prior Christian precommitments and the probability of other supporting passages. Dr. Ward’s inability to refute Psalm 12:6-7 is an insurmountable, paradigm shifting problem for the evangelical textual critic that he has chosen to ignore hoping everyone will forget.
Of course, if this post prompts a continued debate, we at StandardSacredText welcome the exchange. But after two years it is clear that Dr. Ward’s best defense for rejecting Psalm 12:6-7 referring to providential preservation is hoping everyone will forget that his dogmatic, drive by position is without historic grounding.
Standard Sacred Text.com 
About a month ago, I asked Mark about a paper he was supposed to do on Psalm 12:6-7, several years ago. His reply to me was, “I have not yet published that paper. It’s scheduled to come out in a theological journal in 2024, Lord willing.”
LikeLike
Thanks brother. Thanks for the update. I guess we’ll see but a published paper would be helpful for the honing of our position making the argument for Psalm 12:6-7 even more robust. Historically, exegetical arguments are simply ignored by the critical camp. If Dr. Ward wants to dive into the deep end, it would be a welcomed break from the expected silence. Blessing brother Robert!
LikeLike