I will worship toward
your holy temple,
and praise Your name
for Your lovingkindness
and Your truth;
For You have magnified
Your word above
Your word above
all Your name.
Psalm 138:2
I will begin with a question: How could an imperfect book come from a perfect God? As you read through the Scriptures, there are a great number of footnotes that say that we can’t be sure if certain passages should be included. Christians are told that these problems exist because of alleged "copyist errors," and that the "original writings" of the Bible are perfect. But how does anyone know? We don’t have the original writings! With the production of so many Bibles, the King James Version, the New King James Version, the New International Version, The ESV, The ASV, the Moffat Bible, the Scofield bible, the paraphrase Bibles: Oh! So confusing; which one is correct? Furthermore, with so many variants, corruptions, and not having the original manuscripts, the question is not impetuous; it needs to be answered. God promised to preserve His word in Isaiah 55:10-11; 59:21; 1 Peter 1:24-25; Matthew 24:35. God is perfect, and a God of truth. Everything God said in the original manuscripts was true. Copyist errors do not affect the truth of what was originally said, copyist errors do not show an imperfect book came from a perfect God. When someone, such as myself, says the Bible is inerrant, they mean the Bible is without any error in the original manuscripts and without significant error (infallible) today. However, I think part of that question that is being asked is, how we can trust the message in a book that has copyist errors in it. I do not believe an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent God of truth allowed His word to be messed up.
Another question: Is something true just because someone writes it down? Christians are often taught that the "manuscript evidence" proves the truthfulness of the Bible. More specifically, Christians are told that there are thousands of copies of manuscripts of the scriptures, and this somehow makes the Bible reliable. But how? Anyone could write something down, and produce thousands of copies of what they’ve written. Does that somehow make what they wrote down true? Of course not! In establishing the truthfulness of our Bible today, you have to establish that it originally was God’s word, and has been preserved without significant error. Thus the manuscript evidence Christians talk about is necessary but not sufficient. Manuscripts are important to establish b), but they do not address a). When I have taught about the reliability of the Bible in Sunday school, I believe it is important to point out both aspects.
It is difficult in many of the Churches of today to hear the word; Reformation, or Reformer, in fact it is hard to find a Church that even uses the word; Protestant, it is though those words have become pejorative. Why do I bring this fact to your attention? Because the Reformation was not a heretical movement within the Church; it was a return to the Bible, the Bible as the infallible word of God and the rule for faith and life. These men, Calvin, Luther, Swingli, and others protested against the Roman Catholic Church and their teachings and exercise of theology that was not Biblical. The Reformers, those Protestant men believed and taught that the Bible was the living Word of God. In this book God reveals HIMSELF, not mere information concerning Himself. The Protestant Reformers understood this fact. To them the Bible was no mere book of doctrine but the revelation of the living God. In the Bible Christ revealed Himself. Martin Luther emphasized this in the preface of his German New Testament version (1522). "Briefly, St John's Gospel and his first Epistle, St. Paul's Epistles, especially those to the Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, and St. Peter's First Epistle: these are the books which show you Christ and teach all which it is needful and blessed for you to know, even if you never see nor hear any other book or any other doctrine." And there is no doctrine in Scripture which would be affected if all the various readings were allowed or if all the disputed words, or those about which there is any doubt, were omitted. It is also true that many Churches fail to mention such as the Thirty Nine Articles and the Westminster Confession of Faith, written by the men of the Reformation, a statement of the position of the Church. The official position of the Church of England (Episcopal Church), as defined in the Thirty Nine Articles (1562), was in agreement with the Protestant Reformers as far as the authority of the Bible was concerned. "Holy Scripture contains all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation. In the name of the Holy Scripture we do understand those canonical Books of the Old and New Testament, of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church." This Article was included in the Methodist Articles of Religion, an abridgement of the Thirty Nine Articlesprepared by John Wesley and adopted by American Methodists in 1784.
The first chapter of the Westminster Confession is generally regarded as containing the fullest exposition of the orthodox Protestant faith concerning the holy Scriptures. The section on the testimony of the Holy Spirit is especially notable and reads (substantially) as follows: "We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church to an high and reverent esteem of the holy Scripture; and the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the agreement of all the parts, the purpose of the whole (which is to give all glory to God), the full explanation it makes of the only way of man's salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection of it, are arguments by which it abundantly proves itself to be the Word of God. But our full persuasion and assurance of its infallible truth and divine authority is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts."
This Westminster Confession was adopted not only by Presbyterians (1647) but also by Congregationalists (1658) (41) and by Baptists (1677). Some parts of the Confession were altered to agree with Congregational and Baptist convictions, but in regard to the chapter on the Scriptures all three denominations found themselves in complete accord. These thoughts and statement were taken from The King James Bible Defended by Edward F. Hills; INTRODUCTION; TEXTUAL CRITICISM AND CHRISTIAN FAITH.
This failure by the Churches in their omission to speak and teach in regards to the creeds, to admit of their Protestant roots, the very fact that they are supposed to be Protestants, not in name only, but in fact, has caused a failure and that failure has been one of the major factors that has allowed the entrance of modern philosophy to enter the world and most importantly into the Church. This entrance taught a neutrality in regards to the world, a Neutral World-view. Modern philosophy made its appearance immediately after the Protestant Reformation. The leaders of this new movement ridiculed both sides in the then current religious controversy. "Once there was a man," they quipped, "who had two sons, one Catholic and one Protestant. And so each brother converted the other, and God had mercy on them both because of their zeal." But in order to escape punishment these early modern philosophers denied that they were antichristian. They were only being impartial, they insisted, and unprejudiced. And from this claim has arisen the modern world-view, which has always pretended to be neutral and unbiased in all religious matters.
Weakened by dead orthodoxy and pietism, conservative Protestants of the late 17th and 18th centuries failed to resist the rising neutral world-view as vigorously as they should have done. Instead of taking their stand upon God's revelation of Himself in holy Scripture and pointing out that the neutral world-view is not really neutral but antichristian and full of contradictions, they began to adopt it themselves, especially in those areas of thought not specifically covered by their Reformation creeds, namely, philosophy and biblical introduction and above all New Testament textual criticism. Soon a serious inconsistency developed in the thinking of orthodox Protestants. At their colleges and theological seminaries especially students and teachers alike were torn between two world-views. In their study of systematic theology they maintained the believing world-view of the Protestant Reformation, but in their study of philosophy, biblical introduction, and New Testament textual criticism they adopted the neutral world-view of Post-Reformation rationalism. Today this illogical state of affairs is still being perpetuated in a few theological schools, but most of them have resolved the tension by becoming completely modernistic. The purpose of this blog is to endeavor to reverse this trend by promoting consistently Christian thought especially in the sphere of New Testament textual criticism.
The Bible has been scrutinized over and over again and again; never has a book been so investigated. It has been the problem that has plagued the Church; that problem being that many liberal preachers and Churches teach that the Bible has flaws. This causes the congregants to believe that the Bible is not infallible, and this belief underlies their actions of life. Notice one fact: More than 50% of marriages in the Church end up in divorce. Furthermore, some Churches allow homosexuals to become leaders in the Church, or allow women to be teachers and preachers of men: all of these practices are unScriptural, yet are allowed by these modern liberal Churches. It is not enough to hold up the Bible, as does Joel Osteen, and claim that you teach from it, but in reality this is not true for what is being taught is only their opinions, and those opinions are mediated by modern philosophical thought.
I will cover some of the variants and corruptions in the next blogs. My goal is to bring you to understand that the Bible is true and that those variants and corruptions have not caused God's word to become untrustworthy, rather that we can trust that God has kept His word, even allowing man to translate into the vernacular languages so that all men could find Him Who has revealed Himself in the Bible.
Do not grant,
O LORD,
the desires of
the wicked;
Do not further
his wicked scheme,
lest they be exalted.
Psalm 140:8
Take Time To Pray
Richard L. Crumb
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