There is nothing exegetically or theologically prohibitive to believing in a standard sacred text. The Bible no where contemns such a belief. There is no distinctively Christian authoritative ground upon which to stand to claim that belief in a standard sacred text of Scripture for the English-speaking believing community is wrong, evil, against Scripture, or unbefitting the Kingdom of God. So while there are many things which can and do divide us because there are disputes on this or that rendering of Scripture, belief in a standard sacred text is not one of them.
We may not be able to agree on which denomination is most faithful to the first century church. We may not be able to agree on what is the proper mode of baptism. We may not be able to agree on the functional nature of the Communion elements. We may not be able to agree on the nature and term of the Millennium. We may not be able to agree on the form of public worship i.e., regulative principle or not. We may not be able to agree on the interrelation of the sovereignty of God in the affairs of men’s souls. We may not be able to agree on the role of the Sabbath in the New Testament or whether an attempted depiction of Jesus is a Second Commandment violation. We may not be able to agree on the nature of our respective biblical hermeneutics. We may not agree on which confession of faith to hold to. We may not agree on whether it is immoral for a Christian to sent their kids to a public school. We may not agree on the point of theological method. We may not agree on the point of apologetic method. We may not agree on the nature of Creation’s beginning. We may not agree on which Bible a Christian ought to read.
But we can agree that there should be one Bible that the English-speaking believing community should read. There is absolutely zero explicit or implicit exegetical evidence/argumentation condemning such a Spirit-led consensus among English-speaking churches. The church in the West is divided, weak, and aggregated and a standard sacred text could easily provide a measure of needed stability for all English-speaking Protestants.
So while the church in the West has much to be divided over and in many cases, for good reason. This one thing we need not be divided over, and that one thing is to hold to a belief in a standard sacred text for the English-speaking church. Let us then have unity around that one thing, around a standard sacred text of Scripture and from that point continue our discussions on those thing about which we disagree.
We agree with out opponents that the New Testament has far more manuscripts and far more complete manuscripts attesting to it than any other book of antiquity. We are told that it is an “embarrassment of riches.” The conclusion our interlocutors often draw from this truth looks something like, “If we trust that we have the works of Socrates or Homer even though we only have a few relatively later copies, then we should trust that we have the works of the New Testament seeing we have relatively more and earlier copies of the NT.” Put negatively, our opponents often opine, “If the number of manuscripts we currently have for the NT aren’t enough to believe that we have the actual words of the NT, then certainly the relatively fewer manuscripts we have of the works of antiquity aren’t enough to believe we have the actual words of Socrates, Homer, Hesiod, and Sophocles.”
At first it may appear that this is a potent argument, especially the negative form, in defense of the New Testament. But in the end, it really is not. It is true that Greek antiquity scholars speak of having the Iliad written by Homer or the plays of Sophocles, but when you read the scholarly literature on these sources few if any scholars are willing to conclude that they have the actual original of Homer.
Perhaps the clearest example of this is found in the works of Socrates and the literature based on such works. There are no surviving works written at the hand of Socrates. All the written material we have of Socrates was written by Plato. To this day there remains significant debate about what words of Socrates in Plato’s works are actually Socrates’ words. Some are thought to be Socrates’ actual words and some are thought to be Plato’s paraphrase of Socrates’ words and yet some others are thought to be wholly Plato’s words in Socrates’ name. And at each of these points there is dispute as to whether such is the case. In the end, no one really knows if the Socratic Dialogues are actually by Socrates, but that does not keep students of ancient philosophy from identifying the Socratic Method or attributing to Socrates the quote, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Even in learning elementary logic it is assumed that we know Socrates:
All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
The point is that modern scholarship has little qualms about claiming we have the words of Socrates while simultaneously admitting that we are not sure the words we do have are indeed the words of Socrates. So to besmirch the validity of the NT manuscript tradition does nothing against the validity of the case of whether or not words X, Y, and Z are indeed Socrates’ words. Modern scholars already admit that they may not be his words, and that is ok for them. They simply assert that we have is good enough. Now the modern evangelical text-critic is in a bind because their bluff has been called. It is admitted that we very well may not have the original words of Socrates. Now, will the NT scholar admit that we very well may not have the original words of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians? No, but with the rise of the ECM and the abandonment of the search for the original by many text-critical scholars, NT textual criticism is starting to come into line with the boarder scholarship concerned with ancient texts.
Put simply, if modern evangelical text-critic thinks he can build a case for the reliability of the NT text based on the fact that Plato experts think they read the actual words of Socrates in Plato, then that house of cards is doomed to fall, and to fall fantastically. Why? Because Plato experts admit from the start that words X, Y, and Z may not be the words of Socrates. It would only be natural then for the Plato expert to enjoin upon the NT text-critic to admit the same about his NT.
In the end, the number of NT manuscripts is only an “embarrassment of riches” when compared to a standard that is already held in low degree [i.e., whether the Socrates’ words are actually his]. Put more vividly, there are about 250 surviving manuscripts of Plato’s Dialogues. And we are not sure if any of the words contained therein are indeed the words of Socrates. We have approximately 6,000 manuscripts of the NT. If we turn manuscripts into YouTube views, then Plato has 250 views and the NT has about 6,000 views. When compared, the NT has 20 times more views than Plato does. WOW, right!
Well, it is only “wow” because of the things compared. Here is a video of monkeys reacting to magic
Monkeys Reacting to Magic has over 82,000,000 views. Now all of a sudden 6,000 views isn’t WOW. What if there were 82,000,000 million total copies of the NT books? 6,000 manuscripts would barely registers on the scale. So much for an “embarrassment of riches.” What if there were a 1,000,000 or 500,000. If such were the case we would think ourselves poor for having lost so much. How many copies were their of Plato’s work? No one knows. How many copies of the NT books were there? No one knows. But in both cases it is fair to conclude that there were more than we currently have and probably many more than the ones we currently have.
In sum, we don’t know how many copies of the NT books ever existed and without a robust sense of inspiration and preservation and an understanding of the leading of the Spirit of God through the words of God to the people of God; we can never know whether our 6,000 manuscripts are representative of the vast trunk of the tree or representative of a weak and aberrant twig more suited to be cut off and cast into the fire than to be called Holy Scripture.
How would you know what the evangelical textual critics were describing the Bible if they did not have the TR to compare it to? The first text of Scripture the critic read was the TR and this foundation allowed the expert to place his investigation within the realm of Scriptural texts. His new text isn’t something wholly different from the TR and that is how everyone knows he’s talking about a Bible. If you were to take away the TR it would be impossible for the critic to say he is working with biblical texts. He is only “close” because the TR had already got him most of the way there. So while disparaging the Reformation text, it is the same text that gives the critic’s study credibility, so much so that many churchmen don’t see a difference between the two. Instead of criticizing the TR the modern text critic should thank the Reformers for giving them a huge head-start in creating their historical critical text. They could not have done it without the TR.
As we shall see, because so much of the critical text was first in the TR, the following are some editorial suggestions for the sake of methodological transparency.
Introductory Material
In one way the critical text is like the Qu’ran. Both plagiarize the Christian Scriptures to gain credibility. To be fair, in the front of each critical Greek text, a disclaimer should be included stating that 80-90%?of the text is taken from the Received Text either in the chosen reading or apparatus. It is misleading to infer by omission that the critical text, except for some lexigraphical, grammatical, or syntactical changes, is original.
Footnotes
In long passages, the critical text and versions should include the following note in the text column which states, “The following [number] of verses have been excerpted without change from the Trinitarian Bible Society’s TR.” This will prevent the accusation of plagiarism. After all, giving credit where credit is due is a scholarly virtue.
Color coding
In keeping with the editorial design of the Five Gospels, all TR readings should be in black to separate them from the blue lettered critical text. In this way a true accounting of the critical changes to the TR can immediately be made by the reader, again relieving the critical text of accusations of plagiarism.
Examples
The following are a few examples of critical text passages plagiarized from the TR. The sad thing about this is that the historical critical method is so feckless it cannot come up with its own text. The critical text is not a text; the critical text is a number of different words and grammatical structure inserted into the TR. The critical text could have been a companion lexicon, including only the suggested changes to the TR, with footnotes to the TR, a glossa ordinalis of a sort. Instead, the editors initial step was to includ lexical entries or the gloss, directly into the text of the TR. It’s like Ford Motor Company putting its badges on a Chevy and calling it a Ford because it has “Ford” monogrammed on the seat covers. (This is not intended to disparage Ford by this comparison. See the 1966 Ford GT40 victory at Le Mans). While the TR is maligned, the critical text could not exist without it. It is a text, and not a lexicon, only because the CT borrows the text of the TR. For our purposes a verse-by-verse examination of the Book of Philemon is offered. Twenty-five verses should be sufficient to demonstrate the focus of this post.
Bold numbers, or the second line are Nestle’s 28th edition. Bold print in the text accents the variations between the TR and Nestle’s 28th ed.
The following are the differences between the texts using the TR as the authority.
Nestle’s 28th ed.
2: Changes ἀγαπητῇ to ἀδελφῇ — “beloved” to “brother.” Different words with similar meanings.
6: Omits ἰησοῦν, Jesus
7: Transposes and changes ἔχομεν πολλὴν to πολλὴν ἔσχον – “we have great (joy)” to “has given me great (joy)” Change from active to passive
9: Transposes ἰησοῦ χριστοῦ to Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ — “Jesus Christ” to “Christ Jesus.”
10: omits μου – “my (bonds)”
11: adds [καὶ] –“and”
12: omits σὺ δὲ and προσλαβοῦ. Changes τουτέστι to τοῦτ’ ἔστιν – omits “thou therefore receive.” “that is” us translated the same way.
13: transposes διακονῇ μοι to μοι διακονῇ — “ministered unto me” is translated the same way.
18: changes ἐλλόγει to ἐλλόγα – “he hath wronged” to “he has done you any wrong.” Change from verb to a noun.
25: omits ἡμῶν and ἀμήν – “(the grace of) our Lord” to “the grace of the Lord,” and omitting “Amen.”
Observations:
Verses 1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, and 24 are identical. 15 out of 25 verses are identical. Then of the remaining 10 verses 13 changes are made that affect 17 words out of 339 words in the TR or 5% of the words in the book.
The point of this exercise is to show that to read Paul’s letter to Philemon in Greek in the N28 is to read the TR with minor variations. Though a corruption of the Original (apograph), pragmatically speaking little has been gained by the N28 critical changes. 95% of the book reads exactly as the TR, and yet we are supposed to accept that the 5% makes this an entirely different text of Philemon? If the critical text is considered a stand-alone critical edition on the book of Philemon, which of course it is touted to be, it can’t be any other way, then the editors of the N28 Book of Philemon are culpable of plagiarizing the TR.
Faithful versions are “divinely [derivatively] inspired” and have “canonical dignity.”
34. The authority of Holy Scripture is canonical, or normative, as in part not only the sense, but also the words of those same divinely inspired Scriptures, or the original text [apograph], in order equally to the versions, recorded by human studies, and it has both the writings and the investigated doctrine, as in itself and absolutely proved, and the authority is founded in the inspiration of the God of truth, and Scriptures, by reason of the words of the original text [apograph], has a dependency on God; thus also in order to us, or that by divine faith we might believe, the books of Scripture under which, by which are shown to us, by the properties, that is by the choice of words in a certain language, by the order and context, to be divinely inspired, and thus to have that normative force, or canonical dignity, and since the testimony of the church alone does not suffice, truly also it is proper to engage this internal testimony of the Holy Spirit, or this operation of the Holy Spirit, which is effective through the same Scriptures. (italics added)
Regeneration is indissolubly united with the first act of immediate inspiration. God is the principle cause of regeneration, Scripture is the efficient cause of instrumentality.
39. To the affects of Holy Scripture pertains further its second effect, that it has a force or active power, supernatural and truly divine, for the producing of supernatural effects, namely the converting, regenerating and renovating of the minds of people, from the divine commands themselves, as far as can be seen, also intimately and indissolubly united by the first act of inspiration beyond the use made of it; and which, approaching it by reading, hearing, or meditating, by the second act it stretches itself out, thus that the effect of that supernatural grace, as from God, as the principle cause, and thus from Scripture itself, as by an efficient cause of instrumentality, at the same time and successively, those effects are produced effectively by one undivided power. (italics added)
Scripture’s perfect and complete instruction
40. Further third in the affects of Holy Scriptures is its perfection, or sufficiency, through which it is able to instruct us perfectly and completely about all things which are necessary for the acquiring, believing and doing of human salvation.
Scripture’s perspicuity by being led supernaturally through Scripture itself and its light.
41. Finally fourth among the affects of Scripture perspicuity has a place, or that thing, by which those things that are necessary for the believing and doing of people tending towards salvation, by the words and phrases thus clear and by the received use of speech, are put forward in Scripture so that actually being able and directing attention to the words by a moderate understanding, the true sense of the words, as far as they are necessary by decree, it is possible to reach out for and to embrace the main points of doctrine simply by apprehension of the mind; as the intellect of humans, by apprehending the words and the signified things being offered, is led supernaturally through Scripture itself and its light, or through the divine strength joined to it, to the assent of faith. (italics added)
John William Baier, Compendium of Positive Theology, ed. by C. F. W. Walther, trans. by Rev. Theodore Mayes (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1686, 1877), Prolegomena, sec. 34, 39, 40, 41.
John William Baier (1647-1694): a Lutheran rector and theological professor of the University of Halle. He wrote, Compendium Theologie Positive (Jena, 1686); De Purgatorio (Jena, 1677); De Aqua lustrali Pontiffciorum (Jena, 1692); Collatio doctrince Quackerorum et Protestantium (Jena, 1694).
As we continue our discussion regarding those things in which both we and our interlocutors agree, we come now to the agreement that no two Greek manuscripts agree at every point. Put simply, they are all different. Usually our interlocutors follow this observation up with something like, “See, God did not preserve every jot and tittle.” Which of course is ridiculous as are similar conclusions like, “Given the evidence, Jesus could not have literally meant letters and parts of letters will be preserved.”
A point of nuance which our interlocutors seem to either miss or ignore is that the promise to literally preserve every jot and tittle of God’s word does not mean that every jot and tittle will be between two covers or in a single book at all times. Certainly this was the case at Jesus’s time in that the canon was only the Old Testament at His time while simultaneously the elements necessary for the inspired Gospels were being played out at the very moment Jesus declared that not one jot or one tittle will pass from the law. The point, that the Old Testament was not between two covers until perhaps Ezra’s time and the New Testament was not between two covers at the end of the first century.
But the lack of being between two covers does not somehow militate or render effete Jesus’ promise that every jot and tittle would be preserved. That said, it is fair to ask, “Ok, so then how do we know that the words that are between to covers are indeed the words of God and not men?” Good question.
As we have discussed in our last two installments on this topic, a second observation is that the emphasis on the originals has for us always fallen to individual words and only recently fallen to the editors of the ECM. The Standard Sacred Text position argues for every word in our TR/KJV being the word of God properly construed. And so it is a reasonable question not to ask, “Is some manuscript X the original words of God”, but to ask, “Which words in manuscript X agree with the Original?” And what proposals do we have as means to determine which words are original to the autograph?
On the one hand, the prevailing modern evangelical text-critical approach is to claim that the oldest reading is best reading, the hardest reading is the best reading, and the shortest reading the best reading.
On the other hand, the Standard Sacred Text position maintains that the Spirit of God speaks in the words of God to the people of God and in those words the people of God hear the voice of their Shepherd and they receive those words by faith as the words of God and not of men.
As you can see we and our interlocutors propose vastly different methods for determining which words are God’s words and which words are not. Thiers is predominantly if not exclusively naturalistic, relative, and transcendentless. Ours is predominantly supernatural, absolute, and transcendent. What is more, we can account for the use of textual criticism, in fact we encourage it, but we do so within the bounds of exegesis and orthodox Christian theology. Our interlocutors on the other hand can and do largely ignore the bounds of sound exegesis and orthodox Christian theology and such despising will not/does not affect their method at all.
As such, the Standard Sacred Text position has greater explanatory scope and force than the prevailing modern evangelical position. We can account for the role and use of textual criticism while simultaneously putting forth an argument that is predominantly supernatural, absolute, and transcendent. Our opponent got the text-critical part down but they wholly lack, or quite nearly to it, any exegetical and theological grounding for their position.
Our method demands Christian pre-commitments, and their method can do just as well without Christian pre-commitments. Our method is distinctively Christian and their method is distinctively not Christian.
So while we agree with our interlocutors on the evidence that no two Greek manuscripts agree; we disagree obviously and sharply on how we are to treat that evidence.
(Portions of this post draw on the material of “A Post-critical Ecclesiastical Case Study.”)
Dr. Jackson “declares that the ‘defective’ old faith is inferior to the new faith which is a ‘scientific faith’ and a ‘twentieth century faith’ through which ‘this world will become the kingdom of our Lord and his Christ.’”
“Scientific faith” as a parallel to “twentieth century faith” and a contrast to “old faith” is taken subjectively. “Scientific” is another kind of faith foreign to the Scripture. By analogy, science would be the authority from which this kind of faith is derived. This is not some kind of undefined faith in the scientific method, but a new kind of faith motivated by science. With the “old faith,” faith came by hearing the Scripture, but with the deconstruction of the Bible, the source of faith is now science. “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of scientists,” (read textual critics). It is scientific faith. Science now imparts faith to believe that science is the solution to that which plagues man.
As seen in a prior post, (“A Post-critical Ecclesiastical Case Study”) scientific faith is utopian. Scientific faith is inclusive; everyone will be in heaven. Scientific faith is kinder, the idea of shedding blood is repulsive and therefore symbolic. The idea that man is sinful is resolved by evolution and the rejection of the literal rending of the first three chapters of Genesis. Divinity resided in Christ just as it does in every man. God is seen about us in the goodness of man and the beauty of nature. And scientific faith is empathetic teaching the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. On every front, the results of scientific faith demonstrate a kinder, gentler world than that offered by the old Scripture and the old faith. The new Scripture reflects this new scientific faith, the solution to man’s problems, its radically historic interpretation essential to maintaining this “positive” movement forward.
When fundamental and evangelical groups separated from this ecclesiastical modernism in the early 20th century, they acted much like the Reformers separating from Rome. The Reformers kept infant baptism and the fundamentalists and evangelicals kept the modernist Bible. (See Fundamentalism’s Folly? Fundamentalist leaders boasted that they have never held to the KJV and were always critical text men). It was too much to say that Jesus was a mere man but not too much to say that the Bible was reconstructed according to the same historic, scientific principles. Contemporary MVOism is simply the historic evolution of early 20th century modernism’s scientifically formulated Scripture, and its current usage is historically consistent with Evangelical and Fundamentalist leaders of the past.
Which brings us to two key determinative issues. The issue of sufficiency and the issue of eschatological vision. As a matter of sufficiency, it would seem clear that if Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism have survived for over a century without maintaining the details of Reformation era Protestant orthodox bibliology, that the scientifically constructed Bible is sufficient for the Church and its mission. (The successes of Fundamentalism are more appropriately assigned to use of the KJV in the church. Though scorned by those in leadership, the rank and file held the KJV as the word of God in English.)
The other issue is eschatological vision. If one’s view of the future is one of continuous moral and spiritual normalcy, then a sufficient Scripture has proven itself to be enough and will remain so. There is no perceived need for a correction or return to pre-critical categories. Scientific categories, though not as nuanced as pre-critical formulas, are sufficient.
If, however, your eschatological vision sees the world in a spiritually deteriorating condition, then the claim to sufficiency is false. Sufficiency was just another word for degrees of increasing spiritual and ecclesiastical decline that over time revealed its true nature. A pivotal moment in church history vividly demonstrating this spiritual and ecclesiastical decline can be marked from the inability of the church to gain an ecclesiastical consensus and ascendency in social-political issues the most prominent being the 1973 legalization of abortion. This acquiescence manifested an internal indifference already present in the church. And to this day, the church acts ambivalently toward the killing of the unborn. This apathy may stem from a misguided interpretation of Romans 13, but the fact that there has been relative silence from the pulpits of America indicates the decline of virtue and spiritual strength.
Nonetheless, to make a compelling case for a return to the pre-critical Protestant orthodox theology and understanding of the Scripture, an apologetic must be made showing the claim for sufficiency to be a façade for spiritual and moral deterioration, and an eschatological vision of ecclesiastical and cultural decline. Otherwise, it appears that the KJV position is simply making too much out of little. If these two factors are considered uncritically, an argument can be made for “scientific faith” or a scientific kind of faith to create a Scripture sufficient for the Church and a normative future where that Scriptural sufficiency will remain sufficient and therefore in no need of correction. Sufficiency and apathy are coordinating affects. This is the worldview which cradles MVOism.
How then does one begin to challenge the sufficiency of this scientific faith when dealing only with the issue of Scripture? Already disassociated from modernist theological formulas cited above, how can the outlier of a historical critical reconstruction of Scripture be rejoined with a robust orthodox Theology, Christology, Soteriology, Anthropology and Ecclesiology?
The first step toward association must be passive. The content of MVO versions must be allowed to penetrate the spirit of sufficiency. Sufficiency will not accept active changes but sufficiency, because it is sufficient provides the platform for passive spiritual growth. One of my best friends was saved out of a Rheims-Douay Roman Catholic Bible because John 3:16 reads almost, if not word for word, the same as the KJV. After reading the passage he wondered why his priest had never showed him that passage. Indeed, before looking it up himself, he argued with me that the verse was not in the Bible at all. He was happy with his Bible, it was sufficient, until he read more of it. And so it is with the new versions. Reading through the ESV, et al each year, cross referencing noticed themes, asking for the illumination of the Holy Spirit while reading. The study of a sufficient Scripture will guide the saint and the Church in a manner spoken of by the Apostle Paul in his epistle to the church in Philippi, “That ye may approve things that are excellent; that he may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ.”
The second step toward associating the doctrine of Scripture with the larger body of Christian Theology, also passive, is the willingness to hear the internal testimony of the Spirit through the words of Multiple Versions. 1 Cor. 2:13 says, “Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but that the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual with spiritual.” The Holy Spirit can use a sufficient Bible to allow the believer to “Grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”
The third passive step is to prayerfully meditate upon how the sufficient Scripture interacts with and is part of the larger body of Christian theology. What does the sufficient Bible tell us about the role of the Holy Spirit, the living Word and the written word, et al.
Internalizing, listening, meditating – all passive aspects of interacting with a sufficient Bible are steps toward freeing the doctrine of Scripture from its present post-critical isolation to its consolidation with the larger body of Christian theology.
In this episode of Warrior Theology Podcast Dr.’s Van Kleeck discuss preservation and collation as central elements within the version debate. As with all meaningful discussions, it is necessary to enumerate and properly define the terms in question so that the conversation can carry on in a helpful and fruitful path. To that end we give you part three of our treatment of the version debate.
In March of 1956, a succinct history of the First Baptist Church in Grand Rapids was published by Baptist Testimony Publishers, Inc. The 32-page booklet entitled The Tragic Fall of the First Baptist Church provides selections from sermons made by the pastors of the church describing First Baptist’s slide into apostasy to what we now know as Fountain Street Church.
Beginning the history of the First Baptist Church we read of Deacon J. C. Buchanan who was baptized in the Grand River in 1842 and was for 60 years a member of Fountain Street Baptist Church. Concerning the early days of the church he wrote,
“No soft-sided Baptist floated into us in those days. Only muscular Christianity could endure the strain; but the elect came one by one, sometimes two at a time, which was very encouraging. Sometimes we listened to a sermon by one of our numbers. And then we had sound doctrine to Captain Davies had a library of Presbyterian sermons.” (Taken from the 25th Anniversary folder.)
Jumping ahead 64 years we read of the collapse of the church having adopted post-critical methods and a modernist philosophy. “It is very significant that on July 1, 1906 (Dr. Randall’s final year as the pastor of the Fountain Street Baptist Church), former pastor John L. Jackson was invited back to speak to the now modernist controlled church. Jackson’s sermon entitled, ‘The Old Faith and the New’ (misusing I Cor. 13:11 as a text) reveals his complete rejection of Bible truth which he once apparently propagated and his open espousal of modernism. The sermon was published by the church’s so-called ‘Class in Applied Christianity,’ of which the following is a quotation:”
“Whether for better or for worse, most of us have passed away from our childhood’s thoughts and opinions. We do not see the world as we once did. Our Bible, our God, our church, our duty are not to us what they once were.”
[Jackson readily admitted that post-critical ideology prevalent in the early 1900’s was the catalyst for a wholly reconstructed notion of Christianity.]
Jackson made the following comparisons:
“It may be worth our while to indicate, in a brief way, what are the different points of view, of the old and the new faith, concerning the fundamental doctrines of Christianity.”
The New View of the Bible Versus the Old:
“By the old faith the Scriptures were regarded as one book, with one author, God… The new view sees that there is much in the book that is not for us, for our age … We believe these scriptures were inspired… We do not believe they are infallible…. Their inspiration was not different in kind, but doubtless in degree, from that of good men to whom God has spoken in all ages.”
The New View of God Versus the Old:
“The old faith saw God afar off in the heavens, sitting in majesty and splendor upon his throne. The new faith sees him in the flower and the grass, in the prattle of the little child, in mother’s love, in the hero’s noble deed, in the inspired poem, in the new science, in the old philosophy, most of all, in the lofty aspirations and the kind deeds of the common people whom we meet day by day. All that is beautiful and noble in our world is the spirit of God filling the earth with his glory.”
The New View of Jesus Versus the Old:
“With the clearer conception of God comes also the better understanding of Jesus. The old faith robbed Jesus of his humanity…. The new faith is saving Jesus to us as a brother and friend as well as a Savior. We see him to be human – not part human and part divine as we once thought – but altogether human – a man like ourselves. He was altogether human. Was he not then divine? Yes! Because humanity perfected is divine.”
The New View of Salvation Versus the Old:
“The new view of faith cannot believe that Christ made a bargain with God that for the shedding of so much blood the Father would forgive a sinful world…. We cannot think that the mere physical blood of Christ had in it any more virtue than the blood of any other man. The blood in itself has no power to save. The word is a mere figure of speech and stands for life…. It was a new view to man of the love and mercy of God.”
The New View of Man Versus the Old:
“This new faith also gives a new vision of man and his destiny…. We see truth in the old tradition of a sinless Adam and a fall when we interpret the story in the light of evolution. The fall then as an incident on the onward path of the human up to the divine.”
The New View of the Church and the Old:
“Finally the new faith gives us a new Church with a new mission and a new message. We can make room in the heavenly mansions for the pagan, Socrates, and for the heathen, Gautama. We cannot see how God can righteously condemn a heathen for not believing in a Christ of whom he has never heard. We need not have anxiety about our own salvation if we have grown interested in helping and blessing other people.”
“In closing, Dr. Jackson asks the question, ‘Is the new faith better than the old?’ and answers it by saying that, ‘only those who have lived in both realms of thought can answer that question.’ He declares that the ‘defective’ old faith is inferior to the new faith which is a ‘scientific faith’ and a ‘twentieth century faith’ through which ‘this world will become the kingdom of our Lord and his Christ.’ Thus Dr. Jackson turned his back on the Bible to which he once pledged loyalty and to the Christ which he once presented as man’s only salvation. The “new faith” had taken the place of the old in the Fountain Street Baptist Church and Dr. Jackson’s view replaced the great principles articulated by Pastor Isaac Butterfield on a Baptist Church and its mission.”
[The ramifications of post-critical methods and philosophy were not limited to the historical critical method for reconstructing Scripture. Separating inspiration from the Church and replacing inspiration with reason and science was the principal change, but only one of many changes made to Protestant orthodoxy. A historical critical, fallible, Scripture gives the church a panentheistic God, a human Christ, a bloodless atonement where Christ is merely our example, the acceptance of Darwinian evolution, and universal salvation. The ecclesiastical transition between the old faith and the new faith was called modernism.
While readily accepting that the evangelical interlocutors, as Dr. Van Kleeck calls them, do not accept Jackson’s modernistic theological and ecclesiastical conclusions, asking why “The New View of the Bible Versus the Old” is accepted is a valid inquiry. If the adverse theological and ecclesiological ramifications of post-critical philosophy is rejected, why not also reject the adverse effect the historical critical method had on the Protestant sacred text, the KJV? How is one of the several adverse changes that brought the spiritual ruin of a one-time thriving Baptist Church been preserved and argued for as theologically and ecclesiastically normative. This inconsistency, so far, has not been answered. Are we witnessing, to use Dr. Jackson’s term, “scientific faith” to replace the “defective” old faith in the promises of God?]
Having established certain points of agreement between our position and that of the opposition here and here, we turn now to a discussion of the following:
“Given the absence of the original documents all that we have at our disposal are copies. Indeed, in most cases we have copies of copies or copies of copies of copies etc.
I think we can also agree that these copies were not the product of immediate inspiration. That is, each copy was not a product of the Holy Spirit bearing along the copyist in doing his work of copying. Rather, the copying came about by mere secondary causes. The faithful copyist produced a copy which was relatively consistent with his exemplar and to the degree of competence he possessed in the field of scribal copying. As a result, errors crept into the copies.
On this point our interlocutors would like to make a fine distinction between errors and variants. They often maintain that a variant like Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς [Jesus Christ] vs. Χριστὸς Ἰησοῦς [Christ Jesus] is not an error but a variant. To this we respond that if God gave Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς in the Greek then God intended not just the words and meaning but even the order of the words. The original written at the hand of Paul had an original order and our opponents have offered no meaningful argument to expunge word order from the act of inspiration. As such, and seeing that the burden of proof rests upon them to prove word order is exempt from the act of inspiration, it seems that variants of this type are properly understood as errors when construed in light of divine inspiration.
So then, drawing on yesterday’s post, the emphasis falls not to whole document but to the words contained in those documents. On this point I am happy to see that the editors of the ECM and practitioners of the CBGM are finally coming around to the idea that it is the individual words that matter and not manuscript families or neutral texts though much of that stench still remains on these scholars.
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The emphasis for our position has always been on the words, indeed our emphasis on the words has been deemed radical by some. It is our side that has vehemently argued not only for the preservation of every word but the preservation of every letter and even piece of letter. At this point I wanted to share an anecdote from yesterday. I was speaking with a pastor who does not hold to the Standard Sacred Text position nor does he read from the KJV. Furthermore, he did not know that I hold the TR and KJV by argument and conviction. In this environment he made the comment, now being 52 years old, that in his estimation the deliverances of modern evangelical textual criticism seem to make Bibles more and more like the TR/KJV tradition as the years pass. He started with making some observations about the RSV and then to the NIV and the finally concluding with the ESV only to note that these iterations have become more like the TR/KJV tradition and not less. This pastor’s observations are of course not pie in the sky.
We know now that the editors of the ECM have found a renewed appreciation for the Byzantine text-form in recent years and the Byzantine text-form makes up the greater bulk of the Greek which underlies the KJV. We also know that while the Critical Text demands that the long ending in Mark be removed and that the story of the woman caught in adultery be removed, these text still remain in the Bible. For over a hundred years the Critical Text crowd as decried the inclusion of these passages in the modern versions and yet they remain even amidst the protest. The modern versions are bending toward the Traditional Text, the Ecclesiastical Text, the Confessional Text. The reason behind this is unclear. There are gracious, realist, and non-gracious interpretations of this bending phenomenon which we will have to leave for another time.
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Seeing that it is the words of the copies that matter and not necessarily the document as a whole, then the mechanism whereby we are to identify the original must be aimed not at whole documents but at whole words and parts of words. The editors of the ECM are finally starting to do this and they think they can do it with the help and speed of computers as in the formulation of the CBGM. Modern textual scholars have combined their relative genius with the artificial “genius” of computing speed. Which is to say that they are looking beyond man to machines in order to divine the original words of the New Testament.
We of course have no problem with using computers to do the work of textual criticism. The discipline itself is subjective and it remains subjective with or without computers. I suppose we should congratulate modern textual criticism for finally making it to the Information Age. But we have repeatedly asked that they look not beyond man to machine but to look beyond man to God in the person of the Holy Spirit in order to make determinations about what is or is not the New Testament.
The main difference between us and our interlocutors on this point is that while modern textual critics have turned their attention to computers as their new hope in finding the original words, we in accordance with our Reformation era forefathers have looked beyond the terrestrial and have compelled our interlocutors to consider that it is the Spirit of God that teaches us which words are God’s word and that the Christian receives these words as God’s words by the divine gift of faith. We continue to affirm the transcendent as the answer to which words are God’s words and they continue to mire themselves in the transcendentless.
To this day our modern evangelical text-critics turn to lifeless machines to help answer their textual questions while we here at Standard Sacred Text clearly and explicitly enjoin upon them to turn to the Source of all that is good, true, and beautiful in answering their textual questions. If you think my comparison here to be too simplistic then please by all means provide six or so recent scholarly sources that make a robust argument for the exegetical and theological grounding of modern textual criticism and its use of the CBGM. You know, help fill in the gaps for me. Between six sources you should be able to easily conjure up 200 or so double-spaced pages of scholarly material. Then after the material is presented we’ll see if and to what degree it can withstand scrutiny. Furthermore, be prepared to have this new material comport with Wasserman and Gurry’s A New Approach or else be ready to deny their work as cogent or authoritative.
In the mean time it is either scholars with their computers that are going to locate the original inspired infallible words of the New Testament or it is going to be the Spirit of God working through the people of God in receiving the original inspired infallible words of God by faith. We demur on the former and heartily embrace the latter.
Standard Sacred Text.com 