I agree with almost all of what Religious Affections Ministries (RAM) and Scott Aniol, its general director, write and then say about worship. I’m also very sympathetic with the concept of “conservative churches.” However, to be conservative, it’s important to be consistent in that position.
A few weeks ago, one of the writers at RAM, a pastor of a Baptist church in Michigan, Michael Riley, started a series in which he defends the critical text and modern versions (CT/MV) as consistent with conservatism (now three parts: one, two, three). I’m glad Riley is giving it a shot, because it says that inconsistency is on the radar of RAM. As I pointed out in my part one, Riley reports that Aniol heard from conservative evangelical churches in the UK, while he was there on a sabbatical, that his conservative position on worship clashed with his support of CT/MV (I had already written about that point, linked in part one).
In my part one of a rebuttal to Riley, I introduced four principles or propositions that especially show why a critical text/modern version belief and practice clashes with conservatism. I will be referring to that list as I analyze and expose his presentation, maybe also bringing others to those four.
Riley starts his part two by asserting that a critical text position on the preservation of scripture doesn’t conflict with conservatism. Even though he is a critical text advocate and uses a modern version in his church, he understands the textual receptus (ecclesiastical text, ET) position is a good argument and defensible. He’s not arguing against the ET, just that it doesn’t mean that holding CT/MV negates conservatism. His first argument is that CT/MV better reflects apostolic writing, which I’m assuming he means, the New Testament. He begins his next paragraph stating his “core argument”:
My core argument is this: our chief task in textual criticism is to discern (by whatever methods we believe best) what the text of Scripture said when originally penned under the inspiration of the Spirit.
Riley then parallels for several paragraphs an advocacy of ET with one of paedobaptism. He says that both might fit better in church history, but they clash with scripture, and a truly conservative position will proceed from the Bible. He concludes:
[T]he goal of textual criticism is to discern what the text of Scripture originally said. That is a flatly conservative position: to discard innovations that have accumulated in the church, to hold to that which was handed down in the beginning.
I applaud Riley for admitting that CT/MV is not historical. Although he doesn’t write this, it would also be to say that the ET position arises from a totally apostate bibliology. The church for centuries strayed from scripture, only to be returned by CT/MV. Is that true? In addition, does scripture show that a true doctrine could be ahistorical? On biblical grounds, I reject ahistorical doctrine. The true church has never been in the majority, but it continued, the gates of hell not prevailing against it (Matthew 16:18).
The Bible is still and always sole or final authority, so I agree that to overturn historical doctrine, someone better show some excellent exegetical basis. I don’t see that at all with CT/MV. It doesn’t proceed from history or exegesis. A tell-tale part of Riley’s core argument is in the parenthesis, ” by whatever methods we believe best.” ET contends that the method itself must proceed from biblical grounds. The methods themselves matter and this stands at the root too of conservatism.
Let’s say that someone believed that to find the correct text, he should use dowsing, also known as the divining rod, a superstitious means of finding ground water, which arose, it seems, in the 16th century. That was a method people believed for finding water, but not an acceptable one. Methods matter, and “whatever methods we believe best” isn’t the standard.
The actual means God gives for recognizing His Words is the church, the accepted means also of the canonization of the twenty seven books of the New Testament. Just like God uses a confluence of divine and human for inspiration and even sanctification, He uses the same in canonization. This is not human authority standing over scripture, but a divine means of recognition of what God inspired. The rejection of a multiplicity of non-canonical books occurred by means of the church. Canonicity of books follows from a biblical teaching of a canonicity of words — the lesser, books, surely following from the greater, words.
The biblical means of preservation also should follow a biblical expectation. Paedobaptism isn’t biblical. We know how this unscriptural practice arose in history. Infant sprinkling always had those rejecting it in the true church. CT/MV parallel more with paedobaptism, because neither comes from that “excellent exegetical basis” that I mentioned above, when it arose in church history as an innovation. CT/MV is truly the innovation, because it relies on a naturalistic and unreliable means for the recognition of scripture. Its results do not match a biblical expectation of a settled, authoritative, and available text.
CT/MV assumes neutrality to modern textual criticism, not a conservative assumption. The method of identifying the true text springs from God, just like moral law and transcendent beauty. It bypasses man’s lying eyes and trampled crime scene for faith, which emerges from the pure mother’s milk (1 Peter 2:2) of God’s Word. CT/MV is a leap from the dark. It is the apostle Paul’s, “wisdom of this world” and of “the wise men of the flesh” and the “noble” (1 Corinthians 1). The “foolishness of God is wiser than men,” so that “no flesh should glory in his presence” (also 1 Corinthians 1). A temporal, humanistic, naturalistic means should be rejected in light of a scriptural method.
If no method were given, as is very often asserted falsely by CT/MV, I would consider the “whatever methods we believe best” as a kind of Christian liberty or adiaphora. Those “reformed” people of whom Riley speaks were not holding their position in a vacuum though, like they were on paedobaptism. They were standing, immersed in scripture. Their grounds for their method were scriptural. The work of God toward an authoritative text didn’t end with inspiration. The Bible also teaches a work of the Holy Spirit in canonicity and in preservation.
A striking characteristic of CT/MV is its paucity of biblical underpinning. In essence, it’s founders are unbelievers, who reject orthodox bibliology. Not until recently have CT/MV advocates gone searching in hindsight for some biblical basis for what they do. It’s the wrong order. Most of the same advocates for CT support a translation philosophy (MV) that contradicts scriptural principles. Like with the text, its proponents have only recently began digging to find their “presuppositions” in the Bible, inventing new doctrines in the history of the church. I read this as a transparent attempt to persuade those who needed scriptural grounds for change and then to bludgeon opponents for sinning if they won’t change in response to first-time scriptural arguments.
The presuppositions for CT/MV versus ET especially distinguish the conservative ET position from the non-conservative CT/MV. The same category of presuppositions spoils most worship of CT/MV churches. Both lack in transcendence. The same debased foundation produces their bibliology and their worship. This is why RAM is such an outlier with the contradiction between and bifurcation of the two. RAM attempts to straddle the unstraddlable.
Kent, you've closely mirrored my thoughts on that article.
Michael Riley rightly argued that we believe credo-baptism because we believe it is Biblical, apostolic. Surely even the paedobaptists could understand why we believe that to be the case, even they disagreed with it.
Michael Riley is also correct that it is Biblical and apostolic to care about the very words of Scripture and to want to know what the original God-given text was and is. He is correct that it is Biblical — but the Critical/Eclectic Text view hardly holds a monopoly on that. The question is how we know what it is.
The distinction between the Traditional Text view and the Critical Text view is how we know which text is the true text. The view that the correct text was passed down by God using the churches is built upon applying Biblical doctrine. The view that it was lost by the churches and rediscovered in the late 19th century has no Biblical doctrine behind it.
There is nothing in Scripture that tells us to assume the shortest reading is better, or that the one written on an older piece of paper is more accurate. There is no doctrine that tells us to assume the more difficult reading is better. There is no Biblical doctrine that tells us to effectively discard the testimony of thousands of believers (those who transcribed the majority of manuscripts) based on an unproven and now mostly discredited theory that they are really only one voice. The apostles didn't tell us to build our approach to this question on the theories of a man (Hort) who relied on a grossly unbiblical view of the canon of Scripture to construct those theories.
My question for Michael Riley would be, "If you want to compare this to credo-baptism, you must construct a Biblical rationale (comparable to the one you would make for baptism) for the modern Critical Text methodology to arrive at the true text. I can explain from Scripture why I believe as I do in baptism, but never have I found anyone who will give me a Biblical explanation for why they think the Critical Text methodology is better."
By the way, Kent, did you notice Scott Aniol's very disappointing comments on part three? He just blew through the textual differences and said the NIV is more accurate to the original. He could have at least acknowledged that the KJV is an accurate translation of the text used — something that would be difficult to claim for the NIV.
If one didn't know the topic and read his comment, one would be left thinking the KJV translators just randomly inserted stuff into the text. I'm sure he knows better, and that's disappointing.
Jon,
I appreciate your additional writing on this in your comment. I agree with you, all of it.
I'm attempting to stick with the argument, like Riley, of whether it is "conservative." I don't get the biblical argument, yet, of Riley and RAM. They say they are going back to the apostles, but what did the apostles say about textual criticism, restoring a lost text? Where is the history of Christian teaching on this? It's never been there, just like there's never been for instance the teaching of "baptism for the dead" in Mormonism. You reject it as heresy, because it divides of off orthodoxy, goes into some form of apostasy. The lost Bible concept isn't conservative. It's not conserving anything. It is bowing to the lower story, the mechanistic, machine, physical, separated from the transcendence from which comes moral law, goodness, beauty, truth. At RAM, they've got to be able to see this, I would think, but they can't even utter it, which shows to me that it is some kind of third rail in evangelicalism and fundamentalism, they don't even want to touch.
I saw Scott's comment, and I wondered where he got the idea that the NIV is closer to the original languages than the KJV. He just stated it without proof. Maybe he just means the original, that is, the critical text is the original. I don't know. I would like to hear though.