Dr. Ward’s Time is Running Out

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 surpassing 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. Based on a shared contact with Ward on his planned response, Ward assured the brother that his response would be included in a scholarly journal sometime in 2024. Now June of 2024, with half of the year past, Ward is creating an increased sense of anticipation by raising expectations for the impending journal article refuting the pre-critical rendering of Psalm 12:6-7 to teach the providential preservation of Scripture. Up until today, Dr. Ward’s method seems to be 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. But having raised expectations of an upcoming journal article, all interested parties patiently wait, anticipating the Ph.D. will write a robust, scholarly rebuttal to the historic, churchly, exegetical tradition. Just by way of reminder, 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, evidential 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 delay, if not culminating in a robust refutation of Psalm 12:6-7, will be ensconced as an insurmountable, paradigm shifting problem for the evangelical textual critic, whose only defense will be that he has chosen to ignore hoping everyone will forget. If, after two years and 10 months, or the close of 2024, no journal article or Ph.D. level response is offered, it will become publicly and abundantly clear that Dr. Ward’s best defense for rejecting Psalm 12:6-7 referring to providential preservation is indeed simply hoping everyone will forget that his dogmatic, drive by position is without historic grounding.