The Westminster Confession of Faith in 1646 as part of its definition of sola scriptura says,

Scripture alone is sufficient for all of anyone’s doctrine.  Someone can get all of his doctrine of the preservation of scripture from scripture itself.  Yet White says that, no, your doctrine of scripture can change from something derived alone from scripture, because extra-scriptural evidence changes doctrine. This violates sola scriptura.  White by his own admission doesn’t believe sola scriptura.  Many doctrines will change with that approach.  White may say he changes only this one, but it buttresses all the changes anyone wants to make.  This is his admission.  This isn’t me trying to create a problem.  I’m just the reporter.  It isn’t the only issue for him, but it is at the root of his problem.

In part one, White said that we (that includes me) didn’t do history very well.  How history is done well in this instance is interpreting the original intent of the framers of the London Baptist Confession.  That is historical theology.  To do that, you read what they wrote on the same subject. Again, we’re talking about the doctrine stated therein, not what someone like Calvin or Beza said about a few textual variants.  Calvin made 41 statements about variants and on 37 of them, he agreed with his textus receptus.  He was a textus receptus person.  The four that he didn’t still were available to him.  He knew about them.  He accessed them.  You’ve done history well, regarding doctrine, if you accurately represent what the people were saying.  In his earlier ecclesiastical text video, White says that Calvin disagreed with “a number of TR readings” — that is a misrepresentation. In the relatively few mentions of textual variants, he agrees with the TR 37 out of 41

White is saying that doing history well means guessing something that the authors of the LBC would have done or they would have believed or they would have written if conditions were on the ground the same as they were three hundred years later.  Benjamin Franklin would have gone to the moon. We are saying that they derived their position from scripture.  You can not only see that in the confession, but you can also see it in all their writings, when they discuss the doctrine of preservation.  They start with what scripture says about its own preservation.

At 48 and following of his first video, White says the methodology is the issue, the how God did it. The London Baptist Confession and believers of that period talk about how.  The following statement in the LBC in the section on scripture represented a fundamental of their method:

Yet, notwithstanding this, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth of Scripture and its divine authority, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.

The method that God used through His Spirit is represented well in the bibliological confession of Thomas Ross:

Scripture teaches the verbal, plenary preservation of the verbally, plenarily inspired autographa (Psalm 12:6-7; Matthew 5:18; Matthew 24:35);   that the preserved words would be perpetually available to God’s people (Isaiah 59:21); and that Israel was the guardian of Scripture in the Mosaic dispensation (Romans 3:1-2), and the church the guardian in the dispensation of grace (1 Timothy 3:15). The Holy Spirit would lead the saints to accept the words the Father gave to the Son to give to His people (John 16:13; 17:8). Believers can know with certainty where the canonical words of God are, because they are to live by every one of them (Matthew 4:4; Revelation 22:18-19) and are going to be judged by them at the last day (John 12:48).

This is the methodological presupposition, which is the basis of believers writing that God’s words were “kept pure in all ages.”  Further statements in his confession reveal further this truth:

God intended for His Word to be recognized and received by the churches as a whole (Colossians 4:16; Revelation 1:3-4). . . .  The Bible promises that God would lead His saints into all truth, and that the Word, all of His words, are truth (John 16:13, 17:8, 17). Believers are not to set themselves above the Word but receive it with the faith of a little child, rejecting secular and worldly “wisdom” (Matthew 11:25-26; 1 Corinthians 3:18-20). . . . The Bible shows that the true churches of Christ would receive and guard these words (Matthew 28:19-20; John 17:8; Acts 8:14, 11:1, 17:11; 1 Thessalonians 2:13; 1 Corinthians 15:3; 1 Timothy 3:15). . . . The Bible presents as a pattern that that believers would receive these words from other believers (Deuteronomy 17:18; 29:29; 1 Kings 2:3; Proverbs 25:1; Acts 7:38; Hebrews 7:11; 1 Thessalonians 1:6; Philippians 4:9; Colossians 4:16).

Richard Muller writes in his Post Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 2, Holy Scripture: The Cognitive Foundation of Theology (p. 541):

All too much discussion of the Reformers’ methods has attempted to turn them into precursors of the modern critical method, when in fact, the developments of exegesis and hermeneutics in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries both precede and, frequently conflict with (as well as occasionally adumbrate) the methods of the modern era.

This is what I’ve said about comparing what believers did 1500-1850 and what Westcott and Hort did. They weren’t the same.

The LBC authors presupposition about the text is the same as about the canon, because they are both theological.  They believed that scripture was self-authenticating.  John the Baptist recognized Jesus. That didn’t mean that John had authority over Jesus.  Believers received the text of scripture.  In JETS, July 1997 (p. 204), Roger Nicole writes:

There is a notable parallel here with the establishment of the OT canon. God entrusted his OT oracles to the Jews (Rom 3:2), and they were providentially guided in the recognition and preservation of the OT. Jesus and the apostles confirmed the rightness of their approach while castigating their attachment to a tradition that was superimposed on the Word of God (Matt 15:1–20; Mark 7:1–23). God entrusted his NT oracles to his people in the churches, and they are nearly unanimous in the recognition of the NT canon. . . . The consensus of churches on the NT is an index and evidence of the Holy Spirit’s guidance. The Holy Spirit is the moving authoritative force.

Keith A. Matheson wrote recently (2001) in his book The Shape of Sola Scriptura (p. 319):

But although the Church is a fallible authority, [scriptural teaching] does not assert that this fallible Church cannot make inerrant judgments and statements. In fact, in the case of the canon of the New Testament, adherents of [scriptural teaching] would confess that the fallible Church has made an inerrant judgment. But do we believe this because a particular Church tells us so? No, we believe this because of the witness of the Holy Spirit, which was given corporately to all God’s people and has been made manifest by a virtually unanimous receiving of the same New Testament canon in all of the Christian churches. This is not an appeal to subjectivism because it is an appeal to the corporate witness of the Spirit to whole communion of saints. The Holy Spirit is the final authority, not the Church through which He bears witness and to which He bears witness.

Much more could be said here, but this is the thinking of believers on the text of scripture, paralleling with the reception of the canon, they received the text also.  The text is actually what the Bible talks about, the words of scripture.  The canon is an outgrowth of that theologically.

At about 49, White ridicules my mention of his brushing the authors of the reformation period and post reformation period confessions, reformed scholasticism.  He himself in his ecclesiastical text video dismissed them by saying that he “doesn’t believe in the infallibility of reformed scholasticism,” smearing them as scholastics instead of biblical theologians.  It was the early reformers who have been proven to be influenced by scholastics, not the authors of the LBC.  Influence of scholastics and the wholesale capitulation to scholastics are much different.  Either way, you can’t just dismiss the doctrine of hundreds of years of believers with a name call, which is what he does.

At 49:22, White says that he didn’t call anyone reformed scholastics, but read someone else who talked about reformed scholasticism.  That’s not what he was doing in his ecclesiastical text video, so this if falsehood #7.  White needs to go back and listen to what he said.

After 50, White goes back to something he has been saying a lot.  The people who agree with the statement on preservation in the London Baptist Confession will be stuck in their internet chat and not able to deal with people in evangelism in the real world, since they have so much evidence they’ll be able to use.  I’ll call this falsehood #8, because it is not true.  I am quite confident that I have personally evangelized more people in my lifetime than White.  As a pastor, I’ve influenced then many others to evangelize even more.  Where I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, I deal with every religion in the world on a regular basis, ones that I would guess that White has never met.

You reading here who are James White apologetic fans really do need to reconsider your support of him.  I’ve preached through all four gospels.  Jesus presented evidence, no doubt, but that was not the basis of faith.  These were signs that He was the Messiah, but for men to believe, they must receive His Words.  Paul expands on this by saying that the problem is the suppression of the truth.  It’s a volition problem, not an intellectual one.  Jesus said that they must want the will of God, or they would not know the doctrine.  I can’t cover all this here, but White does not have a sound, scriptural apologetic, and this is seen again and again.  He is caught up in his own knowledge and thinks that he contributes a lot through that, and in so doing, confuses a lot of people.  I recognize he calls me dangerous.  The religious leaders called Jesus a lot of things.  The name-calling, which White employs again and again, means nothing.  The rebellion problem of even Muslim scholars will only be changed by a powerful, scriptural message, not a man-centered evidential one.

If you go out and evangelize and use the Bible, that’s enough.  The Bible is sufficient for every good work.  The Bible has all that you need.  You don’t need the so-called mound of evidence White refers to.  The enemies of God may mention it, but it really is a distraction in the matter of evangelism.  I have found that I need that evidence more for someone like James White and others like him, more than I need it for any kind of evangelistic work.

I said that White was overturning accepted doctrine, and White just before 50:30 asked me to show him a counsel that was binding upon him.  There is no counsel binding anyone, that is true. The Bible is binding though, and Paul said that some will depart from the faith, not all.  This is the value of historical theology.  You can’t expect everyone to be wrong on doctrine.  Especially seeing the quality of the belief of that period, the biblical theology of those men shouldn’t be dismissed.  White is doing that at his own peril.  He’s saying they’re wrong and he isn’t showing why they’re not from the Bible. He says they’re wrong because of the extra-scriptural evidence.  I haven’t been pointing out the strawmen of White through this whole analysis, but this is a strawman, that someone was referencing a counsel binding upon him.  He goes into a tirade over something that didn’t happen.

White after 50:40 says that the believers of that period used the TR by default and not by choice.  You can’t have it both ways.  You can’t point out Calvin and his agreement with a few non TR readings (he calls it “a number”) and then ignore the 37 where he agrees with the TR reading.  That is not default. Nevertheless, we’re not talking about the text itself at this point, but whether their doctrine was correct.  White includes that in his assessment.  If they had the papyri, their doctrine would have changed too.

At 51, White says, “sorry but this is just very badly written.”  I had one pronoun without a referent in a blog post that I changed after hearing White critique it.  That could have been better written, it’s true.  A lot of times when I write these posts, I break a long paragraph into two and I don’t clean up the referents.  I agree with White on this one sentence, but not everything.  What I want you to consider is a White, who uses very often very long verbalized pauses, “uuuuuuuuummm,” and all the time is using wrong noun pronoun agreement. He slaughters the language on a regular basis.  I’m being kind here.  This is just another strategy to discredit by him.  I think he should just keep on the subject here.

At about 51:30, White says that only King James onlyism causes division among evangelicals, not belief in the preservation of scripture.  That agrees with my point.  Evangelicals don’t care about preservation of scripture as much as they do what causes division.  They relegate the doctrine of preservation to a non-essential.  You have a wide range of beliefs that are acceptable in order to keep unity.  This is why White gets a pass for much of what he says from evangelicals.  On the other hand, I’ve said in the past, a change in versions in a church through the last 25-50 years has caused more division even than Ruckmanism.  I believe the latter causes it too, but not to the extent that all the new versions have.

At 52:15 and following, White says that any text you use has been mediated to you through textual criticism.  That is not a doctrine of scripture.  The doctrine is that God preserved the text and ensured that it was available to every generation of believers.  I don’t give credit to textual criticism for getting me my Bible.  Yet, this is how White thinks.

At 53:49, White says that “Erasmus had the biggest influence on the production of what is called the textus receptus.”  Aland says that the textus receptus already existed before Erasmus and it was the text before Erasmus that was agreed upon by the churches.  In other words, Erasmus was taking the received text and printing it.  There wasn’t very much amendment occurring.  This wasn’t Erasmus pulling in text families and culling together an apparatus.  The political scene had changed and the invention of the printing press came along, and he was able to print a first edition.  What was a hand copy became a printed one.  I refer you back to the Muller quote above in the evaluation of what went into a reformation era text.

After 54, White continues to harp on the idea that the entire history of the transmission of the text of the Bible was regular textual decisions.  Not one speck of theology comes in here, nothing supernatural at all.  This not the language you would hear from believers until post-enlightenment.  They talked about what God had done in preserving His Words.

After 54:30, White mocks the idea of providential preservation, saying that I can believe that angels brought down “an Oxford calfskin bound King James if” I want.  He turns from an original language text preservation to an English translation in order to brush it as some type of Ruckman position. That is falsehood #9.

After 55, White says that when he says “preserved perfectly,” he means all the original readings still exist.  That is a conservative evangelical eclectic text position.  It is a new position on preservation that began with Warfield in the late 19th century.  The adherents have no biblical basis for it.  It is an attempt to straddle what the Bible teaches with their assessment of textual evidence.  I have never met someone who believed it after one or two questions, as weak, unbiblical, and unhistorical as it already is.

First, the explanation of White is not what God tells us to expect about the preservation of His Words.
Second, the explanation of White is not what the writers of the London Baptist Confession believed.
Third, the explanation of White isn’t actually preservation, because then the Words would not have been available for use by God’s people in all ages.
Fourth, the explanation of White will result in a never ending process with an unsettled text.
Fifth, the explanation of White comes from unbiblical presuppositions.
Sixth, the explanation of White clashes with at least what I’ve ever heard from those who say the same as him, because no one I have talked to believes that there is a manuscript existent with the original reading of 1 Samuel 13:1.  I’m guessing that White doesn’t know of one either.
Seventh, the explanation of White is a human invention.

At 55:15, White says he can defend his position and has with some fairly knowledgeable opposition.  I don’t believe he can defend it against what I’ve written above.  Even if he could, he’s starting with an unscriptural position to defend.  Last, he can’t defend it, because to defend it, he would need to know what was in the original manuscripts,and so he’ll never be able to say he’s sure.

White’s riff after 55:30 is funny if you majored in biblical languages like I did.  He’s showing off in a condescending way, and he just looks silly doing it.  It is the true straw man here, because the biblical and historical position isn’t the preservation of a “manuscript.”  There isn’t a belief that this one perfect hand copy made its way down through history.  It is the belief in the preservation of Words.  He asks, “Which one?”  The belief is a presupposition.  If you believe what the Bible says about preservation, it is what you believe.  Is there a text?  Of course there is.

At about 56, White says no two manuscripts are identical.  That is falsehood #10.  He should read Wilbur Pickering, who actually did look at the Byzantine manuscripts and found that several of them were identical.  This is a common eclectic text falsehood.  If he keeps saying it, after reading Wilbur Pickering and checking that out, then he’s lying.  At this point, we’ll just say he’s not well informed, despite acting like he is.

As White wraps up the first video, he says that “this stuff is dangerous, because it destroys faith.”  Faith comes through hearing the Word of God, and the Word of God doesn’t teach what White does. What White teaches is what is faith destroying.  When the Bible says God preserved every Word so that someone believes God preserved every Word, that is the strengthening of faith, not its destruction.  Not knowing what the Words are, that is what destroys it.  That’s what White believes.

More to Come.