This is the third and last installment of the “The unquantifiability of the historic canonical collating process” series. This post argues for the traditional Protestant orthodox understanding of Matthew 5:18 based on Isaiah 59:21 and scientific support for the traditional orthodox rendering.

OPTION 2:

Supposition: The last received iteration of Matt. 5:18 is accepted as being historically defensible based upon the self-authentication of the inspired words, the leading of the Holy Spirit, and the submission of the Church to the prior and last iteration of the unquantifiable collated canon.

Answer 1: Like all the preceding iterations it is defensible as the collation of inspired canonical words up to that point in history. For example, Aleph and B, Westcott and Hort’s so-called “neutral texts” were prior iterations of texts containing inspired canonical words as far as the collation of canonical words existed to that point in history (4^th c.) but failed to be the last canonical iteration as received by the Church.

Answer 2: As stated before, prior iterations confirm the canonical product of the historically unquantifiable collating process of Matthew 5:18. Aleph and B are near or at the beginning of the “initial” text premise because, except for papyrus fragments, there is a three-century textual void between the autographa and Aleph and B again demonstrating the unquantifiability of the historic canonical collating process of inspired words. The transmission of inspired words to the 3^rd century is scientifically unquantifiable. See Wasserman and Gurry, A New Approach, 12: “From this definition its follows that the initial text may refer to the author’s text or to something later.”

Answer 3: Textual criticism therefore argues indirectly, but positively for the truth content of Matthew 5:18 finding value in prior iterations, like Aleph and B, of the canonical collating process by appealing to an unquantifiable historical canonical collating process. In the historical critical method’s failure and subsequent nuanced CBGM methodology, the scientific method confirms both negatively and positively the unquantifiability of the truth content of Matthew 5:18.

Answer 4: To reject the inspired canonical product proven to be such by the historically unquantifiable process is to deny the eschatological trajectory of Matthew 5:18 of the historically unquantifiable process of collating the totality of the inspired canonical words. This collation process, in that its end point is only inspired words, has a winnowing effect upon the historically unquantifiable canonical process. Only certain words in a text belong in the inspired canon, those determined by the historically unquantifiable process. To reject the last iteration of the inspired canonical product and revert to an iteration of the historically unquantifiable process would be to deny the very purpose of the canonical collating process, the hypothetical trajectory of the historical critical method.

Answer 5: Therefore, until such a time that the unquantifiable canonical collating process again begins, which is uncertain being unquantifiable, the last received iteration stands as Canon, the historical demonstration of Matthew 5:18, the Greek Received Text and traditional Masoretic Hebrew. There is the revival of prior iterations of the canon, but there is only one Canon of Scripture.

Summary: Matthew 5:18, therefore, has been, and continues to be, historically accurate. Not one jot or tittle has passed from the law,” and speaking of the “law” synecdochically, it applies to the entire Canon. Moreover, it is impossible to say that Matthew 5:18 is false in that the Church possesses the last, received iteration of the Greek and Hebrew text in the Received Text and traditional Masoretic texts through an unquantified historical canonical collation process of inspired words. The last, received iteration is no more indefensible than any of the preceding iterations as far as the collation of the canon existed to that point in history, e.g., Aleph and B or the “initial text.” The notion of the passage being indefensible is contrary to the historic canonical development of each preceding iteration’s testimony to the truth of Matthew 5:18. Indeed, the textual critical return to prior iterations of the unqualified canonical collating process demonstrates significant support for the last iteration of the canonical collating process, the Canon, the Received Text, and Traditional Masoretic Hebrew, the original language apographa underlying the English Standard Sacred Text, the King James Version. Just read any new version; they sound like a prior, stilted, incomplete iteration of King James Bible.  Blessings!

In part one of this series, we argued that the historical critical method’s failure after 150 years of scientific discovery to identify the canon is sufficient grounds to say that the historic collation of canonical words is unquantifiable which agrees with Protestant orthodoxy, but of course for obviously different reasons. Consider this agreement the coming together of General and Special revelation – what takes a lifetime of General revelation to uncover God’s will, Special revelation states in a moment of reading. General revelation has shown critical scholars the unquantifiability of historical canonical collating process of inspired words after 150 years of failure. For the saint, and for the Church throughout history, we trusted the words of Christ in Matt. 5:18 and came to the same conclusion by faith. In part two we explore this commonality, while exposing further the futility of the historical critical method and popular denials of the truth of Matthew 5:18. The Church should be thankful that God did not reveal the “how” of his providential plan to preserve his word in history but only that he did. Truly, John’s note that “even the world could not contain the books that should be written” about Christ is nowhere truer than considering the magnitude of the unquantified mechanism of verbal preservation. This divine work of inestimable component parts accents the absurdity of the textual critical method to quantify the work of God as if the critic could capture the “how” of God’s infinite wisdom and oversight to keep his inspired word pure. Albeit, even if thousands of volumes were written describing to the smallest detail how preservation unfolded in history, the fallen mind would have thousands of volumes to reject as spurious. God gave us what we needed in one small library of books called the inspired canon and asks us to accept the “how” by faith.

Picking up, then where we left off,

1. Repeat point 2 in part 1 an unspecified number of times an unquantified number of times since the autographa was penned.

• The inspired product of this unquantifiable historic process comes to be received by the Church as its last iteration, which brings us to accepting or rejecting the last iteration. The idea of “last” is unknowable because the process is unquantifiable. “Last” is therefore what is “received” by the Church as canonical in and by Scripture through the leading of the Holy Spirit. Additionally, “last iteration” should not be understood as exclusive or unique in respect to its place in the process. Matt. 5:18 has always been historically accurate within the scope of the unquantifiable, historical collating process of inspired words, either for the part or the whole. The last iteration is a synecdochic iteration – the canonical whole standing for the multiple canonical historic iterations; the prior iterations were also synecdochic – the canonical part standing for the canonical whole, the last inspired, canon.

OPTION 1:

Supposition: The received, last iteration of Matt. 5:18 is rejected as being historically indefensible.

Answer 1:This is the position of the modern critic who fecklessly argues that the historic collating process of the inspired word of God is quantifiable according to some preconceived and arbitrary system therefore finding the Canon to be merely phenomenal as scientifically qualified. But as we have seen, the historic collating process of inspired words is not quantifiable for phenomenal and noumenal reasons. Phenomenally, all external criteria for canonicity fail — apostolicity, antiquity, public reading, doctrinal, ecclesiastical authority, and the historical critical method. Likewise, noumenally, the wisdom of God’s providence is seen only after the fact. Providence cannot be classified, categorized, or easily referenced being beyond the mind of man to comprehend until after its manifestation. Therefore, the prolonged failure of the critical, closed, and empirical method to make the argument for or recreate a scientifically quantified canon lends its support to the unquantifiable truth content of Matthew 5:18. Not only is Matthew 5:18 defensible, the historical critical method’s failure to provide scientific criteria or a standard over the past 150 years serves to confirm the unquantifiable truth claims of Matthew 5:18. Science’s failure has demonstrated that historic canonical collation is unquantifiable. This statement is not theological or dogmatic. Science cannot get the scholar back to the autographs, nor can science explain how the autographs transitioned through history. The answers to these queries are unquantifiable. Furthermore, because the scientific method confirms the object predicated by the subject, the only canon that could be located would be anthropological. The scientific method does not allow the object to transcend the subject.

Answer 2: To reject the last iteration, an error in the historically unquantifiable process must be scientifically demonstrated. With the failure of textual criticism’s qualified methodology to locate the canon comes the end of a scientific platform real or proposed to reject the last iteration of the historically unqualified process of canonical collation and therefore there are no longer any scientific grounds or criteria for showing an error in the historically unquantified process of canonical collating the inspired words. After 150 years of failed attempts to recover the autographa using quantified methods, the unquantifiable aspect of the canon’s formulation can no longer justly be in question in the mind of the serious scholar, because the scientific methodology, after a long search, has itself concluded that discovering the how of canonical formation is unquantifiable. All criticism of the last iteration is therefore ad hominem.

Answer 3: Appeal to prior iterations that differ from the last received iteration is not a negative witness against the last received iteration to the degree that the prior iteration’s inspired words are canonical or consistent with the historic unquantifiable collation of canonical words. Indeed, to varying degrees, all iterations support the collation of inspired canonical words up to a certain historical point. Corrupted 1^st century manuscripts to appear apostolic undoubtedly mimicked inspired documents containing or removing the same inspired words and thus Paul’s warning in 2 Thess. 2:2. Such corrupted manuscripts may have had inspired words and sentences that served a moral or perhaps even an evangelistic purpose but were rejected as documents as corrupt and non-canonical pseudepigrapha.

Answer 4: To remove the long ending of Mark or the Pericope de adultera is recognized now as scientific fraud, lingering systemic remnants of the false assumption that science could quantify the canon. These exclusions falsely suggest that the editors, based on their qualified system, were constructing a canonical exemplar they had never seen. This illustration is precisely why a qualified critical system for canonical reconstruction fails, and in the gravity of its failure lends its support to the unquantifiable historical collation of inspired words called providential preservation. The choices now are either providential preservation or nothing. This quantified, closed system assumed a prior iteration of the last received iteration is the canon, when by the critics’ own admission, their findings were tentative, uncertain, and thus evolving, three signs of the system’s failure and incapacity of creating a “new” canon out of a possible prior canonical itration. At best, manuscripts absent these two passages were prior iterations of the canon, as were all Scriptural corruptions, of the unquantifiable collating process not received as canonical by the Church.

Answer 5: In effect, modern textual criticism is trapped in a closed scientific system of the critics own making, infinitely bouncing between prior possible iterations which are a mixture of inspired canonical words and false readings whether by modification, addition, but primarily subtraction. This process would continue ad infinitum because the system does not allow for any determinative authority external to the system to determine its worth, authority, or produce a last iteration. It seems that if not for avarice and superbia the intellectual fatigue of digging a hole only to fill it back up again repeated for decades should have pointed the scholar to a more constructive academic exercise some time ago.

Answer 6: Modern versions reflect the bouncing between possible prior iterations and are also a mixture of inspired canonical words and false readings whether by addition or subtraction. Following the critical text, modern versions serve a utilitarian purpose, as do lectionaries and gospel pamphlets, but fail to meet the standard of a vernacular, authoritative canon. The mixture of inspired words and non-inspired words, or the absence of inspired words, in conjunction with the failed persisting notion that the historic collation of the canon is quantifiable are the principal points of contention between pre-critical and post-critical Bibliology.

Summary: Therefore, by the failed limits of its own closed, empirical, quantifiable constraints, no scientific method or criteria exists to reject the unquantifiable historic collation of inspired, canonical words guaranteed by Matthew 5:18. In the simplest terms, “No one can argue scientifically that the Received Text and traditional Masoretic Hebrew text are not the Christian canon because no one has ever seen the autographa to say otherwise.” Indeed, the prolonged inability and ultimate failure of the historical critical method to locate or reconstruct the autographa scientifically reinforces the Protestant orthodox apologetic, which has been argued for at length at Standard Sacred Text, for the unquantifiability of the truth content of Matthew 5:18 based on the promise of Jesus Christ. To be continued. Blessings!

Why are variations within the manuscript tradition raised as a prima facia defeater to Matt. 5:18? Acknowledging that no two manuscripts are identical is enough for almost everyone to say, “Turn off the lights on your way out.” How then, does the historical record confirm the truth of Matt. 5:18 for the Canon of Scripture?

1. The process by which the words of the Canon were collated cannot be classified, categorized, or easily referenced because all external criteria for canonicity fails. Also, because the result of divine providence is only recognized after the fact. The product, or Canon, does not divulge how the words were identified as canonical other than that they were immediately inspired and show the evidence of that inspiration as surely as does the presence of light. The question of the truth of Matt. 5:18 then deals with the inspired character of a product brought about by a historically unquantifiable process. Unquantifiable means unspecifiable or unidentifiable. That is, the historical collating process of the canon is not bound to a system based on a text type, a neutral text, an older, shorter, harder to read text, a text from which another text would derive its origin, is not part of a genealogical system by any name, is not part of any system. This assessment is not theological, dogmatic or of a religious nature. It is undeniable, that after 150 years of failed attempts to recover the words of the canon, the unquantifiable aspect of the canon’s formulation is no longer in question and should be accepted as settled science. Work continues in the CBGM project, but its trajectory is not canonical, more like verbal archeology. To deny unquantifiability of the historic canonical collating process it therefore should be considered unscientific. Though all external scientific criteria have failed, vestiges of the failed system persist now only by slowing scholarly momentum. In another generation, I suspect, the entire historical critical enterprise will be a forgotten novelty. It is difficult but not insurmountable for the critic to admit that their life’s work had little enduring worth, or that the disciples of these men to admit they were misled.
2. Returning then to the argument of mainstream Protestant Orthodoxy, after the Enlightenment’s incursion into the Christian principium, the historical canonical collating process is bound only to the text’s nature as the word of God, and to the capacity of the Church to identify that inspired text through the leading of the Holy Spirit. The capacity to identify inspired words throughout the course of history is unquantifiable. Science, also observed and validates the unquantifiability of the process. Though the text is a literary phenomenon, the identification of the inspired text transpires through the dynamic relationship between the Spirit, Word, and Covenant keeper whereby the written revelation of God and God the Spirit moves the Church to accept the inspired word.
3. The inspired product of this process, because the process is historically unquantifiable, existed in history as canonical iterations, the historical process not yet complete. To say that Matt. 5:18 fails because the unquantifiable historic process had not yet concluded the final canon is historically premature, not accounting for the historical limitations of the collation of canonical words. After Christ uttered the words recorded in Matt. 5:18 the unquantifiable canonical collating process was eschatologically secure and assured. When Matt. 5:18 was uttered by the Lord, those that only possessed part of the whole of the canon, not knowing the final scope of the canon, nevertheless knew that the canon as God designed it would be infallible. The book of Matthew was synecdochically as a part of the whole to speak canonically for the whole of the canon. And because Acts 5:18 is true, and the source of all truth as God’s Word, this assessment is also scientifically consistent. Both the promise of God and science concur that the historical canonical collating process of inspired words is phenomenally unquantifiable. Each word or each Book of Scripture, designated an “iteration” was the word of God, it was canonical, it was self-authenticating, evidencing its inspiration but only as far as the collation of the canon existed to that point in history. To be continued. Blessings!

The books of the Scripture are therefore called Canonical, because as they have had their Prime and Sovereign Authority from God Himself, by whose divine will and inspiration they were first written, and by whose blessed Providence they have been since preserved and delivered over to posterity, so have they been likewise received, and in all times acknowledged by his Church to be the Infallible Rule of our Faith, and the Perfect Square of our actions in all things that are anyway needful for our eternal Salvation.

Other books, what honor soever they have heretofore had in the Church, or what is there still continued to them; yet if they cannot show all these marks and characters upon them, 1. That they are of Supreme and Divine Authority; 2. That they were written by men specially acted and inspired for that purpose by the Spirit of God; 3. That they were by the same men and the same Authority delivered over for such to all posterity; 4. That they have been received for such by he Church of God in all ages; and 5. That all men are both to regulate their Faith, and to measure their Actions by them, as by the undoubted witnesses of God’s infallible Truth, and Ordinances declared in them.

Dr. Cosin, A Scholastic History of the Canon of Holy Scripture or the Certain and Indubitable Books thereof, as they are received in the  Church of England (London: Printed by E. Tyler and R. Holt for Robert Pawlett, at the Sign of the Bible in Chanecry-Lane, near Fleet-street, 1672), 1-2

John Cosin (1594 -1672) English hymnwriter and Anglican cleric who became Master of Peterhouse College Cambridge, Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University in 1660 and Bishop of Durham.

Translations that are fundamentally formal translate what the word says, while translations that are fundamentally dynamic translate what the word means. I say fundamentally because no translation is solely one or another, but rather fundamentally formal or dynamic. On one occasion when asked to speak about the superiority of the Received Text and King James Version, a Wycliffe translator was also present at the pastor’s home after the service. I though it a splendid opportunity to test my academic definition of dynamic equivalence against a real-world Bible translator.

I began with a hypothetical interpretive scenario, “What if the receptor language did not have the word “red”? describing the primary color. I continued, “In place of the word ‘red’ could the translation be, “the color of the sky at the end of a nice day,” replacing one word with twelve words that mean red, based on the adage, “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight.” To these inquiries the Wycliffe translator said, yes, that would be a fitting translation, especially because the rendering was following a traditional literary phrase. I then asked, “how many of the twelve words that created the paraphrase were God’s words?” His concern was not accuracy but readability. Rather than the tribal language, the trade language would have sufficed to fill the gap permanently or until the Scripture shaped the tribal culture and language to provide a new word that said “red.” In my scenario, the only authentic word was “red.” This paraphrase is indicative of dynamically translated versions, such as the NIV. I always thought that all the words that did not have underlying Hebrew or Greek support should be in italics.

Dynamic equivalent translations are not new to Christianity as noted in the 1568 Bishops’ Bible. At Psalm 12:7, rather than maintaining a formally equivalent translation like its predecessors, translating what the pronoun says, “them,” the Bishops’ Bible includes a dynamically equivalent rendering by including what the bishop’s concluded the pronoun meant. “(Wherefore) thou wilt keep the godly O God: thou wilt preserve every one of them from this generation for ever.”^[1] Disregarding the Hebrew, or for that matter the Greek/Latin texts, and assuming “them” solely referred to people, the translators replaced the pronoun “them” with the words, “the godly,” words that cannot be substantiated by any textual tradition.

Never really gaining any influence against at the Geneva Bible, this passage is illustrative of why the Bishops’ Bible never attained the ascendency among English Bibles and contributed to the necessity of the King James Version.

[1] The Holy Bible 1568 (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilm)

Since my first speaking introduction by Dr. David Otis Fuller to present the defense of the King James Bible in 1987, the CT/MVO position has hardly budged from its original 19^th century moorings. Like a boat that has never seen open water the position is so tied to a narrow interpretation of the evidence that it has been allowed to see the ocean of evidence for the Reformation Scriptures. After so many years the CBGM remains dependent upon the same four antiquated and worn-out presuppositions of Westcott and Hort in the 1880’s –the  shortest, longest, oldest, and mss that best explains the origin of another – is to be preferred. The point is, the critic scoffs at the notion that the interpretation of the evidence can only be performed by the guidance of the Word and Holy Spirit. He’s on his own. He boasts of being on his own, but is this boast really boast worthy? What follows is a little Calvin Theological Seminary grad school tutorial on epistemology or “knowing what we know.”

What connects the manuscript evidence, or object, to the mind of the critic that enables the critic to understand the evidence properly? It is external to him, he did not write it, the manuscripts are empirically observable, parchment, ink (which in itself creates a multitude of problems by their own admission). Which brings us to the truth that facts are not what man makes them; facts existed before the mind of man analyzed them, six-day creation a demonstration of that fact. The worlds were here before Adam was created to experience them. God makes the facts what they are; God’s interpretation of the facts is the only true interpretation. In other words, ontology, or what is, precedes epistemology, what we know about it. God made both the mind of the critic and the object, in this case the mss, and it is God which is the personal, common bridge between the mind of man and the thing he immediately created or through secondary causes brought into existence. God as the personal, common bridge between the mind and object enables the mind to properly interpret the world in which it lives. God allows us to see a sunset as it was meant to be seen and properly interpret it because He is the link between the sunset and the mind of man. If God is omitted, the sunset is because of “mother nature.” God also allows us to see the mss as it was meant to be seen and properly interpret them because God allowed them to be written and allows them to exist. To properly interpret all the facts that surround us we must know the God that made the facts what they are, and the only way to know the God that made the facts as they are is through the Word and Spirit.

But let’s suppose an impossibility that there is no God to be the link between the mind and the object. The autonomous mind must then project or create meaning for the object and interpret the object according to that projection making the fact what it is. In this case epistemology precedes ontology – what we know about something makes the thing what it is. Either the mind of God or the mind of man will assign the object meaning, and with the exclusion of God, the mind of man is what remains. The irresolvable problem with this scheme is that autonomy by definition is singular, isolated, and fundamentally schismatic. Autonomy drove Eve to separate herself from God and Adam to blame his beloved Eve for the transgression. Autonomy destroys perfect unity. Indeed, autonomy has no unifying characteristics. Autonomy makes every man god. See Gen. 3. The minds of men project multiple meaning to the object and multiple interpretations of the multiple objects. One means of limiting the multiplicity of meanings and interpretations is for one mind or some minds to convince other minds that their mind’s projection of the object is superior to all others. This convincing can be performed in different ways. One manifestation of the autonomous tyranny of this projection is what we call secular scholarship. After removing God, the autonomous mind gets to interpret the world and the facts however they please. Such minds assign value to objects and value to morals and virtue. Such minds determine what is right and wrong good or bad, accurate or inaccurate. To agree with them is good; to disagree is not only mistaken, but also bad. Another kind of convincing  is when these gods have the power of the State to compel the lesser minds to yield or to conform to their interpretation of the facts and their projection of the world. Visit the Holocaust Museum in DC to see to what lengths such projectionism will go to assert itself.

The problem is yet further exacerbated when after years of the mind failing to make the facts what they are, leaving men in despair, finally and totally isolated within himself. His confidence in other minds wanes, the impossibility of opposites meaning the same thing depending on the many autonomous interpretations of the facts leads to skepticism, the uncertainty of the mind itself after making a projection and then reversing itself, leaves the mind isolated within itself. The autonomous mind, after removing God, cannot maintain the link between itself and the object, which leaves the mind abandoned to itself, knowing nothing for sure. With Descartes, all that can be said is, “I think, therefore I am.” Not to be sidetracked from its goal, the mind in this paradigm creates a world of little gods, each god making a world in their own image, with their own sectarian laws and morals; little autonomous kingdoms were the autonomous mind reigns supreme. Man does indeed want to be like God, but God is God, and He has asserted his Authority through the Word and Spirit. God lovingly stands in the way of the host of gods and in his grace and mercy sent His Son, so that little gods might be rescued from their self-deluded, meaningless world and experience the fulness of truth and life. See Luke 19:10.

The modern textual critic is attempting to gain power over the minds of men the likes of which the world has never seen. Some may not see the forest for the trees but whether actively or passively engaged, the results are the same. To control the creation of the Book ascribed to God, a Book that has the power to change the lives of men and shape the course of history, by themselves taking the role of God in its creation seems more than a serious thinker could contemplate. Are we to swallow the notion that the only way to recover the words of God is to leave God out of the project? If we have access to the Original Writer, why not ask Him what He meant by His Writings? But you see, there is no one to ask. This entire project acts as if God does not exist, that we do not have access to Him, or if He does exist what He has already told us about His Word is futile and impossible. See Matt. 5:18. The critical text, even if it could come to completion, would only be provincial or sectarian, serving only the kingdom of the mind that created it. If that autonomous kingdom had the “scriptures” what a powerful kingdom it would be. Indeed, look around you at the power the autonomous kingdom of the scholar and his interpretation of the “evidence” already possesses over the Church. According to that autonomous kingdom, if they don’t have the scriptures, neither does anyone else.

If God is preserved as the link between the mind and the object, the interpretation of the object will be made through the Word and Spirit. What is right or wrong, good, or bad, sweet or sour, will stand for all minds because the Mind of God is the link between  the minds of all men and the object. Today, like every day, the saint has the choice of kingdoms within which to live. He can either live in his own autonomous kingdom in forsaking the love of his Lord, or he can submit his life to Lord and live in the kingdom of Heaven.