What could be less then to afford him praise,
The easiest recompence, and pay him thanks,
How due! yet all his good prov’d ill in me,
And wrought but malice; lifted up so high
I sdeind subjection, and thought one step higher
Would set me highest, and in a moment quit
The debt immense of endless gratitude,
So burthensome, still paying, still to owe;
Forgetful what from him I still receivd,
And understood not that a grateful mind
By owing owes not, but still pays, at once
Indebted and dischargd; what burden then?
– John Milton, Paradise Lost, 46-57.

Here John Milton proposes perhaps the greatest fault of Satan in his rebellion against God – forgetfulness. Satan recognizes that his requirement to praise God is a meager requirement given who God is and what He had done for the fallen angel. Yet Satan admits, “Forgetful what from him I still receivd.” And with this forgetfulness he refused to praise or show gratitude to his Creators and with his refusal to praise came pride and with his pride came his fall from grace. No doubt, forgetfulness is a greater evil than perhaps we are willing to admit in our modern day.

As we continue our journey through Carl Trueman’s The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self while making comparisons to modern evangelical textual scholarship, we come now to another feature of deathworks, and that is, “forgetfulness”. If you have been following this series at all you will know that American sociologist and cultural critic, Philip Rieff, has featured prominently thus far, particularly in his assertion regarding third worlds.

For Rieff, if you remember, first worlds are those who have a mythical or fateful grounding for their morality and societal norms. Second worlds are those that ground their morality and societal norms in faith e.g., Christianity. Third worlds are those which admire first and second worlds but desire to destroy those worlds. Part of that destruction stems from the third worlds “forgetfulness”. Trueman writes,

“Underlying the notion of the deathwork is, as we noted, a basic repudiation of history as a source of authority and wisdom. This in turn means that what Rieff calls ‘forgetfullness’ is one of the hallmarks of third worlds and a dominant trait of modern education.”

Trueman, Rise, 100.

I have argued in other posts here and here that modern evangelical textual scholarship is the very definition of a deathwork. Indeed, modern evangelical textual scholarship fits the bill even in the area of forgetfulness or “a basic repudiation of history as a source of authority and wisdom.” Metzger and Ehrman observe under the section entitled, The Overthrow of the Textus Receptus,

“It was perhaps not surprising that Wescott and Hort’s total rejection of the claims of the Textus Receptus to be the original text of the New Testament should have been viewed with alarm by many in the church.”

Metzger and Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament, 181.

Again the standard fair of Expressive Individualism fits like hand in glove when compared with modern evangelical textual scholarship. Plainly and obviously, Wescott and Hort rejected the historical claims that the Textus Receptus was the original form of the original text and Metzger and Ehrman recognize as much. Furthermore, they do not seem to include themselves among those alarmed by this rejection. And why should they be alarmed by the rejection of a basic repudiation of the textual history represented by the TR as a source of authority and wisdom? Such a repudiation seems to be baked in. Here is a quote from Harold Greenlee,

“With the work of Westcott and Hort the TR was at last vanquished. In the future, whatever form an editor’s text might take, he or she would be free to construct it with reference to the principles of textual criticism without being under the domination of the Textus Receptus.”

Greenlee, Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism, 71.

“Without being under the dominion of the Textus Receptus” is the same as saying, “Without being under the dominion of the standard sacred New Testament text of the believing community.” Which is equal to “a basic repudiation of history as a source of authority and wisdom,” and particularly the New Testament theological textual history of the English-speaking believing community.

Textual scholarship is now free from the dominion of the standard sacred text of the English-speaking believing community and Queer scholars are now free from the dominion of the same in large part because there is no standard at all, not even for evangelicals. “Well, wait. There is a standard in the original,” says B.B. Warfield “but are long lost.”

“But…but…we do care about textual history,” our interlocutors say. “We look at historical texts for a living,” they retort. If you think such objections, then you have miss my point entirely. The history I speak of is not primarily one of ancient manuscripts. The history of the TR is one which represents the work of the Holy Spirit in preserving His word though His word to His people.

The rejection and vanquishing of the TR was a rejection and attempted vanquishing of the Spirit of God’s moving through the words of God in the people of God to recognize those words as the words of God. The rejection and vanquishing of the TR is a rejection and vanquishing of a distinctively Christian view and understanding of Scripture. And if we can reject a distinctively Christian view of Scripture we can easily reject a distinctively Christian view of man, woman, marriage, and sexuality.

Indeed, forgetfulness regarding the TR and the KJV has become one of the hallmarks of third worlds and a dominant trait of modern evangelical higher education. Again, the likeness of modern Expressive Individualism and that of Modern Evangelical Textual Scholarship is familial. These two are cousins or even sisters whose names are Forgetfulness and Immediacy and modern evangelical textual scholarship can’t decide who to marry so they’ve married them both.

N.B. – It seems that most of our interlocutors when speaking of KJV-Onlyism or a Standard Sacred Text or a Confessional Text they always go after that small town pastor who’s doing his best to navigate personal issues, family issues, church issues, cultural issues, and also the version issue. Why don’t they swing at Burgon or Hills or Letis? Why haven’t they build robust exegetical, theological, and philosophical groundings to support the way they treat the Bible? The cynical answer is that they are lazy or weak-willed. The more gracious answer is that they simply haven’t gotten around to it after 150 years of being at the helm of nearly all evangelical schools of higher learning. Which do you think is more reasonable?

I’ve called out Metzger and Greenlee here, both exceedingly proficient in text-critical disciplines who most of the other side argue are evangelicals. We’ve also gone after Blomberg, Jongkind, Wasserman, Wallace and many other scholars. Set your sights higher boys. It’s easy to pick on people who haven’t made it their life’s calling to have this discussion. But to set your sights higher will take work, a lot more work given your abject failure to properly construe our position and those like it.

“And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on the cross. And the writing was, JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS…Then said the chief priests of the Jews to Pilate, Write not, The king of the Jews; but that he said, I am King of the Jews. Pilate answered, What I have written I have written.”

John 19: 19, 21-22

The Jews want the title changed. Why, it is unclear. Perhaps they feared their ethnic association with seditious king. Perhaps they hated the fact that Jesus would be called their king even in execution and death. Perhaps they saw the sign as an insult perpetuated by their oppressors and particularly Pilate. Whatever the reason, the Jews wanted the words changed.

Why should Pilate change what he had written? Were his words false? We know that Jesus is indeed King of the Jews and of all Creation. There is no square inch of creation over which Christ does not say, Mine. But it is also true that Jesus claimed to be the King of the Jews, the Lord’s Anointed One, the Messiah. So both claims are true.

If Pilate were to change his words would they communicate his message in a sufficiently reliable way? It seems so. Whether the sign reads, “Jesus of Nazareth who said he was the king of the Jews” or “Jesus of Nazareth the king of the Jews”; the greater bulk of the political and theological implications are carried in both versions. That is, both versions are sufficiently reliable versions.

We see further that there are two versions in the “manuscript tradition.” – one version, the Pilate version, and another version, the Jewish version. Both versions are in the historical literature. Obviously the Jewish version is the older oral version in that the Jew did not believe that Jesus was the king of the Jews but only that He said He was the King of the Jews.

As far as we know, Pilate had little to no knowledge of Jesus to this point as is indicated by his rather elementary line of questioning to both the Jews and Jesus. Which again points to the facts that Pilate’s reading, Jesus is the King of the Jews, is the more recent reading. Pilate did not think oldest was best and of course it is Pilate’s reading that makes it into the Scriptural text while the Jewish reading is relegated to the apparatus of history.

So why is it that Pilate’s reading is the reading that is chosen and the one that appears in the text? Pilate’s reading is on the sign and ultimately in the Scripture text because in that historical moment Pilate invoked his authority and didn’t change the sign. What he wrote is what he wrote, and that is enough of an answer for the sign to remain unchanged. Pilate’s words are the words that prevailed because Pilate has the authority as governor of Israel and as author of those words.

How then do you think a reading is chosen for the Bible? Is it God the Holy Spirit who has ultimate authority as Governor of the universe and as Author of His own words speaking through His words to His people or do you think it is the NT text-critical Judaizers of our day who come to God and say “Write not…but rather…”?

What God has written God has written and that fact alone possesses the requisite potency and authority to determine what readings are and are not the word of God.

“Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?

Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For Christ our passover is sacrificed for us:

Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”

I Corinthians 5:6-8

As some of you know the Lord has blessed my wife and I with 9 children so when my wife makes bread she makes a lot, sometimes up to 40 pounds of dough. She then bakes twenty 2 pound loaves and we freeze them for the week. Pop a frozen loaf into the microwave for 11 minutes on Time Defrost and and you get a delicious loaf of hot homemade bread ready for butter and honey.

Follow me for more cooking and baking recipes.

To the point, 40 pounds of dough takes a relatively small amount of yeast/leaven to cause the whole lump to rise. Paul warns the church in Corinth that such is the way with evil. A little evil, a little immorality will adversely affect the whole of one ‘s moral life. It’s a principle of Christian life as leavening is a principle in baking.

But not so in the Christian academic world. If leaven is that which is corrupt or that which is not from God, then the modern Christian academic world recognizes and admits there is leaven in the Critical Text and in the subsequent English versions of that New Testament. This is why the term “sufficiently reliable” is used rather than “utterly reliable” or “totally reliable” or even “certainly reliable.”

“The original text is in the body of the text or the apparatus,” we are told. Or, “Yes, there are errors or variants or uncertainty regarding this or that reading but on the whole no major Christian doctrine is affected.” I wonder how that plays out with Paul’s language quoted above? Perhaps it would go something like this:

“Yes, I know I have some small sins in my life but on the whole I commit no major immoral acts.” Most Christians would object to such a claim but they have little problem accepting and vigorously defending the argument that their version of the Bible has little problems, but nothing major.

Our opponents would have us believe that Paul’s text of Scripture at Paul’s time was not free from all leaven, while at the same time they claim Paul calls the Corinthians to a holiness absent all leaven of immorality. Again, the modern evangelical textual scholar has put the cart before the horse.

One can only be purged of their “leaven” if the thing doing the purging is equally as purged. Put another way, one can only be sanctified insofar as the thing doing the sanctifying is itself sanctified. We are told that there are word of men, albeit few and relatively meaningless per our interlocutors, among the words of God in the Greek New Testament.

That is, the word of truth which we are to be sanctified through is not itself perfectly sanctified. How then is the Christian to believe that they too have been called to perfect sanctification when the thing doing the work of sanctification [i.e., the Bible] is not itself perfectly sanctified? And with that question in the balance evangelical textual scholars then have the audacity to claim that no major doctrine is at stake.

But some might object, “No, it is the Holy Spirit who does the sanctifying work through the Scripture and not the Scripture itself. Therefore the Scriptures can be a little off and we can still be called to remove all leaven from our lives.”

I do not deny that the Holy Spirit does indeed affect sanctification in the Christian’s life, but the words of Christ are, “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth” (John 17:17). Jesus says, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4). No doubt, the Holy Spirit has a vital and primary role in the work of sanctification, but He does it only through His word and that is the emphasis of John 17:17. Unless of course you are Charismatic and you believe God still issues special revelation apart from Scripture but consistent with Scripture, but that is another blog post.

In sum, whether Christian academics like it or not, the term “sufficient reliability” claims that the whole of Scripture is not set apart unto God. Contained therein are the words of men, but that’s ok because no major doctrine is affected. In reply, “Of course major doctrine is affected. You are claiming a Bible which you admit has leaven in it and then you turn around and tell God’s people they can’t have any leaven in their lives.” The hypocrisy is palpable.

If God’s word can have leaven in it and remain morally upright then so can ours, and only out of the abundance of one’s heart does the mouth speak. Leaven in the heart is leaven in the mouth and leaven in the mouth is a sign of leaven in the heart.

When our interlocutors admit to leaven in the Greek New Testament they admit to leaven in the mouth of God and if in His mouth then in His heart.

Remember kids, no major doctrine is at stake.

We hear over and over from CT/MVO academicians that modern versions are “sufficiently reliable.” When pressed on the meaning of that term it seems that they mean something like, “It is possible to be saved out of many of the modern translations” or “The general gist of all major Christian doctrine is present in most modern versions.”

I have no problem agreeing with the former and I suppose I do on the latter as well so long as we understand that the Action Bible and the Golden Children’s Bible do the same. But are the modern versions, being “sufficiently reliable, able to do what is necessary?

Can the stream be purer than the fount from which it springs? Good trees bring forth good fruit and bad trees bring forth bad fruit (Matt. 7:17), do they not? Is it not the case then that sufficiently reliable trees bring forth sufficiently reliable fruit? It seems so. And if Scripture is merely a sufficiently reliable tree then the fruit derived from the Scripture is also only, merely, sufficiently reliable.

And what kinds of fruit are derived from the Scripture? Knowledge of the Triune God. Faith that comes by the hearing of the word of God. Sanctification through the word of truth, and of course salvation itself. A sufficiently reliable fountain can only yield sufficiently reliable streams. And sufficiently reliable trees can only yield sufficiently reliable fruit.

There once was a fig tree which had no figs, but that was because it wasn’t the time of year for fig trees to bear figs. What did the Lord do to this tree? Did the Lord say, “Now there’s a sufficiently reliable fig tree. One day we’ll have some of its figs.”? No, it was quite the opposite. Christ cursed the fig tree because it was only, merely, sufficiently reliable. And why did He curse the fig tree?

The fig tree as a symbol of Israel represents their imperfect obedience, indeed, their hypocrisy. And how is it that one is to achieve perfect or complete obedience? Well, as was said above, if the tree is complete then the fruit which comes from that tree will also be complete.

Jesus says, Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Christ is recorded in several places saying that heaven and earth would pass away before the law would pass away, before a jot or tittle of the law would pass away.

Paul tells Timothy that the Scriptures make a man of God perfect or complete. Peter tells us that the Scriptures pertain to all life and godliness. The point being that if a soul is to be saved they need only a handful of verses to come to know themselves as sinner and Christ as Savior. Furthermore, the Bible is unnecessary to have a sufficiently reliable understanding of the major tenants of Christian theology. Erickson’s one volume Christian Theology offers a sufficiently reliable understanding of the major tenants of Christian theology though it is not a Bible.

But the Bible is not only for salvation, but also, and just as equally, for sanctification, for the perfection of the saint. And it is the word of God which does that perfecting. Again, sanctify them through thy truth thy word is truth, Jesus says.

If the word of truth is only a sufficiently reliable word of truth then its perfecting power is only sufficiently reliable. Christ did not come to bring a sufficiently reliable redemption; He came to bring a perfect and perfecting redemption.

Sufficiently reliable Christianity as born from a sufficiently reliable Bible is that cursed fig tree and that lukewarm Church which Christ can only spew out.

I came across a recent article by a New Testament scholar, Christ Keith, who made the following observations,

“Those of us who cherish biblical texts on some level or another also need to exercise the important and necessary right to disagree with the text.”

Indeed, the freedom to disagree with the text is almost necessary to the modern text-critical enterprise. At one point the story of the woman caught in adultery was considered Scripture but now most modern textual scholars disagree as is their apparent responsibility when faced with “sufficient” manuscript evidence.

The textual apparatus itself speaks to the inherent disagreement regarding the text even among textual scholars. Some readings get an “A” while others get a “B” and still others get a “C” or even a “D”. Not only do textual scholars disagree with the text as it was formulated they also disagree with each other regarding what is the correct reading.

Keith goes on to write,

“I saw a different claim in a social media… It said, ‘Either you believe the Bible or you don’t. Period. You can’t pick and choose which parts are true and which are false for the sake of your moral relativism.’ Nonsense. Believers or not, we recognize the distance between the biblical texts and ourselves all the time.”

Keith observes that some people claim, especially King James advocates, you can’t pick and choose which parts of the Bible are indeed the Bible and which parts are not. For the Standard Sacred Text advocate you either take it all as Scripture or leave it all to some degree of relativism.

Keith’s response is that such an opinion is “nonsense”. He goes on to explain that whether you are a believer or not it is quite obvious that the textual tradition is an ancient tradition and one from the Middle East and not from Middle America or mid-17th century England. It seems inappropriate then that TR/KJV advocates would seek to foist the language and culture of the King James English onto the Bibles of today. The Early Modern English of the KJV is outdated and needs to be changed. Sound familiar?

**********************

What if I told you that the above quotes were indeed written by a New Testament scholar, Chris Keith who got his Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh and is currently the Research Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at St Mary’s University, Twickenham (London, UK)?

What if I told you further that Dr. Keith’s comments quoted above were not directed toward textual scholarship and against a standard sacred text?

What if I told you that Dr. Keith’s comments were actually from an article written today entitled, I study the Bible, LGBTQ kids deserve more empathy than Christian Academy provides: Opinion?

I would imagine that up to the ********************* above most textual scholars and for that matter most evangelicals would hardly demur from my observations, but as soon as Dr. Keith’s comments are understood in the context of LGBTQ+ rights then of course most evangelical academics would cry foul, That’s where we draw the line!, they might say.

So you can disagree about the text itself but not about content of what it teaches which was ultimately chosen by textual scholars? The text comes before the content. The fountain can be disagreed with but the streams coming from that fountain are incontrovertible?

You can recognize that the textual tradition is of ancient and foreign origin and therefore the academic pro’s need to do the hard NT text-critical work.

BUT

You may not recognize the teaching of the text as of ancient and foreign origin in order to do the hard work of queer theory or critical race theory.

My point is that modern textual criticism occupies the same space and even utilizes the same language and same behavior as queer theory and critical-race theory. Only the object of inquiry is different.

The queer theorist’s work is a deathwork to admire and then destroy traditional sexual roles and norms.

The modern text-critical theorist’s work is a deathwork to admire and then destroy the Traditional Text (i.e., TR/KJV) as rule and norm.

Perhaps one day we will all finally agree that the Modern Text-Critical King has no clothes.

Here at StandardSacredText.com we have repeatedly asserted that there was one autograph, there is one canonical apographa (the TR), and as a result it seems only natural to assert that there is one standard sacred text for the English-speaking Church. We believe that text to be the KJV.

We anchor our belief in the above because the Bible teaches that the Holy Spirit speaks through His words to His people and His people through faith receive these words as the words of God, and not the words of men. In short, we anchor our belief in the Bible in a transcendent source. God the Holy Spirit is caring for His people and His words through His singular care and providence.

The man pictured above is named Philip Rieff, an American Sociologist and cultural critic who taught at the University of Pennsylvania into the late 20th century. Rieff’s thought features prominently in Carl Trueman’s The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self in offering a categorization of societal shifts.

Rieff construed societies under three categories when it came to their morality and moral underpinnings: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd world societies. These demarcations are not concerned primarily with geographical or economic concerns, but rather with moral concerns. Trueman, summarizing Rieff, observes,

“…fist and second worlds justify their morality by appeal to something transcendent, beyond the material world.”

Trueman, Rise, 75.

He goes on,

“First worlds are pagan, but that does not mean they lack moral codes rooted in something greater than themselves. Their moral codes are based in myth.”

Trueman, Rise, 75.

Regarding second worlds, Tureman writes,

“Second worlds are those worlds that are characterized not so much by fate as by faith. The obvious example here is Christianity.”

Trueman, Rise, 75.

Third worlds on the other hand,

“do not root their cultures, their social orders, their moral imperatives in anything sacred. They have to justify themselves, but they cannot do so on the bases of something sacred or transcendent.”

Trueman, Rise, 76.

So of course the question now is, Where do modern evangelical text-critical scholars root their moral imperatives to treat the Bible as they do?

As we have stated at the start of today’s post, we anchor our moral imperatives for treating the Bible as we do in the teachings of the Bible itself. God’s people know God’s words are God’s words because God’s people hear God’s voice in God’s words.

How does the modern evangelical textual scholar determine which words are the original words of the New Testament i.e., God’s words? Their answer, “Evidence and the interpretation thereof confined by the limits of their immanent frame.” And what is an “immanent frame”? Trueman explains,

“Rieff’s third worlds are the worlds of [Charles] Taylor’s immanent frame, where this world is all that there is, and so moral discourse cannot find its justification or root its authority in anything that lies behind it.”

Trueman, Rise, 77.

If you remember, we discussed Charles Taylor’s understanding of the social imaginary noting that the one’s social imaginary is a series of intuited beliefs held by a large group or even a nation.

Within the social imaginary of the modern evangelical textual scholar we see clear representations Rieff’s third world and Taylor’s immanent frame in that “the current manuscript evidence is all that there is.” The modern evangelical textual social imaginary has little problem claiming that we have all of the NT in either the text or the apparatus of the most recent Critical NT Text. And how do they know this? Based on the evidence we have. And how do we know the evidence we have is reliable? Because its the evidence we have.

In other words, to quote but modify Trueman above, “…so the modern evangelical textual discourse cannot find its justification or root its authority in anything that lies behind it.” And this is true both textually and theologically.

The former in that modern NT textual scholars will readily admit that they seek the initial text and not the original. Which is to say that in seeking they merely theorize about the text [i.e., initial text] which lies immediately behind the texts we currently have while simultaneously affirming that the theorized initial text is probably not the original text.

Nor are modern NT textual scholars keen on employing theological a priori in their textual decisions and therefore do not root their authority or justification in some metaphysical or theological foundation. Nowhere in the textual apparatus will you find appeals to the authority of Scripture or inspiration of Scripture in retaining a reading. Nor will you find in the textual apparatus “evidence” to omit a reading based on the fact that the Church knew about that reading and rejected that reading. All that matters in the apparatus and for that matter in the body, is how the evidence is weighed/interpreted by modern textual scholars.

For them and their complicit evangelical counterparts, the evidence is all there is and they do not find their authority or justification in anything which lies behind that evidence. Or, as Rieff defines it, such a third world culture is rightly understood as a deathwork, which is

“an all-out assault upon something vital to the established culture. Every deathwork represents an admiring final assault on the objects of its admiration: the sacred orders of which their arts are some expression in the repressive mode.”

Trueman, Rise, 96.

What is modern evangelical textual criticism than a deathwork, an all-out assault on something vital to established ecclesiastical culture – the TR/KJV of the Reformation? Wescott and Hort and their intellectual progeny persisted in this assault for over 150 years along with Marx and Darwin and Freud. Then in a most mercenary sort of way, evangelical academia has come along side to help in the deathworks. And do our opponents not admire that which they seek to destroy? Every time they spawn a new Bible they compare it to the TR and KJV. Why? Because they admire the unity that the TR/KJV brought and brings but they want to destroy the TR/KJV for the same reason. What is more, textual criticism insists that it is an art to that end and the practitioners of which see the TR/KJV as a repressive mode of the text-critic’s expression.

What more do we need? Modern evangelical textual scholarship is every bit a deathwork of Rieff’s third world and Taylor’s imminent frame.

So of course we resist these deathworks, and we do so with joy in our hearts for the opportunity to do so.