Mark Ward and Ruckmanism

A friend of mine alerted me to a reference of me in a Mark Ward production.  It came under a click-bait title:  “10 Ways to Avoid Ruckmanism.”  I would contend I’m further away from Ruckmanism than Mark Ward himself, and I’ll explain that.

In his first few sentences of a youtube video, Ward asserted Ruckmanism as a fringe of a group that would include me.  What does this accomplish really, attempting to smear anti-Ruckman people with a label of Ruckmanism?  To start, I reject that assertion.  I repeat.  I reject the assertion of Mark Ward that Ruckmanism is a fringe of a group that includes me and others like me.

Ward asserts Ruckmanism to be a friinge of King James Onlyism, which associates Ruckman with the men who hold a standard sacred text or confessional bibliology.  I renounce Ward’s grouping.  Ruckman fits with a group that denies the original language preservation of scripture.  He is with their group.  Perhaps on their fringe.

Ruckman and now his followers take a rather exotic variety of rejection of the preservation of the original language scripture that God inspired.  Since God by His singular care and providence did not keep pure through all ages the scripture He inspired, He started over and reinspired new words in English.

Ruckman believed and taught that God breathed out an English translation long after the inspiration of the Old and New Testament books, something labeled “double inspiration.”  Ruckman denied God kept what He inspired, which was Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek words.  That cannot be a fringe of those who believe that God did keep what He inspired.  That is a total disconnect from what I and others like me believe.  I refuse the association with Ruckman that Ward makes to smear those with a biblical and historical position.

Deny God Kept Pure What He Inspired in Original Languages of Scripture

Who does not believe that God kept pure what He inspired?  Modern textual critics.  Multiple versionists.  Peter Ruckman.  Ruckmanites.  Bart Ehrman.  Daniel Wallace.  The group with whom Ward associates.

I would include Ward with the names in the last paragraph.  He should be in the list.  Ward, however, I anticipate would say that He believes that God did preserve every Word of God in the mulitiplicity of the manuscripts (hand written copies).  It is a nebulous position, because it never settles on what the words are that God preserved.  In a face to face debate, I think it would take less than a minute to find that Ward does not believe that God preserved all His inspired words in the multiplicity of the manuscripts.

I have argued with enough Ruckmanites to know that they are not a fringe of what I and others like me believe.  They reject what we believe because they do not believe in the perfect preservation of the original Hebrew and Greek text.  God preserved His Words through the churches in copies.  He inspired the original autographs (autographa) and then preserved them in the apographa.  Ruckmanites disavow that.

Straw Man or Red Herring Logical Fallacy

In the same production, Ward begins talking about me at the 25:51 mark, which continues until 31:14.  To equivocate our position with Ruckmanism, Ward uses an informal logical fallacy best known as either a “red herring” or a “straw man” argument.  He labels the point of this section:  “Don’t ascribe perfection to the King James translators’ text.”

At the end of the section Ward says that the vile Peter Ruckman ascribes perfection to the King James translation.  Ward swaps “perfection of text” for “perfection of translation.”  Ruckman does not ascribe perfection to the original language text of scripture.  Maybe Ward thinks his uncritical audience will not see or know the difference.   I assume Ward knows what he’s doing.

Are they really Ruckmanites who believe the following?

The Old Testament in Hebrew (which was the native language of the people of God of old), and the New Testament in Greek (which at the time of the writing of it was most generally known to the nations), being immediately inspired by God, and by His singular care and providence kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentic.

What’s Wrong with Ward’s Assessment of Thou Shalt Keep Them?

A translation is a work of men, but the preservation of scripture is the work of God.  What’s wrong with what Ward says in the section on perfection of the text?  Not necessarily in this order, but. . . .

• He compares the differences between editions of the textus receptus (TR) with the same significance as the differences between the TR and the modern critical text. 

This kind of comparison is deceitful.  The Wescott and Hort Greek New Testament (WH) is very close or about the same as the critical Greek New Testament of the Nestles-Aland 28th edition (NA), the most recent update of the critical text.  They are 99.5% the same.  There are 5,604 differences between the WH and Scrivener’s edition of the TR, which amount to 9,970 words. There are 190 differences between the Scrivener’s and the 1598 TR edition of Beza.  The quality of those differences is also vastly different.

• He says that no one answers why the original language text behind the King James Version is a standard sacred text instead of other language translations of the TR.

Perfection of Text Behind KJV

Ward says that he looks and he looks and cannot find anyone who explains why the text behind the King James Version gets treated with perfection and the Dutch and Portuguese do not.  When I hear Ward say this, I think he must be joking.  In the quotation he himself uses from our book, Thou Shalt Keep Them, we explained:

Although the words of the printed editions do vary, albeit seldom, there is a comprehensive testimony to the agreement among the churches over the canonicity of the Words as there was canonicity of the books.  At this time the English speaking churches became a large majority of the New Testament churches, and they agreed on the King James Version and the text behind it.  The obedient churches speaking the next most prominent languages also agreed on the Textus Receptus as the New Testament.

This paragraph, which Ward himself quoted, and the context of the chapter give the answer to Ward.  Many other biblical principles apply, which our book covers.  One was the reception of true churches.  Churches received the Words of God.  The Lord’s sheep hear His voice.  They have the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit.  Scripture promises that God would lead His saints into all truth, and that the Word, all of His words, are truth (Jn 16:13, 17:8, 17).  Preservation of words also meant accessibility, “kept pure in all ages.”  The Westminster divines did not view the original manuscripts distinct from the copies in their possession.

The Received Text

If churches expect a perfect text based on scriptural presuppositions, then they also receive that text.  Scripture also teaches a settled text (Rev 22:18-19).  Churches did not keep printing new editions of the TR in the 17th, 18th, and most of the 19th centuries.  They were settled on the text.

Other language believers other than English ones translated the TR into their language.  When we read the Westminster Confession and the London Baptist Confession, we are not reading Dutch or Portuegese confessions.  Christians today almost exclusively refer to English confessions. Those confessions reveal presuppositions for which we receive a perfect text of scripture.  I suggest that believers of all languages who translated from the TR would not quibble with a belief in a settled, perfect text.  Their reception of the TR came out of the same belief about divine preservation of scripture.

• He treats the editions of the TR and the unique edition of the TR behind the KJV as a product of modernistic textual criticism.

Distinct Methodology

The principles that distinguish the critical text from the TR differ from the principles that distinguish TR editions from each other.  Mark Ward knows this.  In an essay or video production, he treats their distinct methodologies as the same.  He knows they are different.  Copyists made errors in copying. That did not prevent perfect, divine preservation of scripture.  An error made in one copy was corrected by another copy.

Eclectic or critical text or modern version proponents don’t start with scriptural presuppositions, which is the basis of the difference in methodology for their text versus the TR.  The TR reveals its methodology in its name.  Received Text.  TR proponents are not attempting to restore a text as critical text advocates, never coming to the knowledge of a true text.  TR supporters receive what God preserved.  That is also the language they use to describe their method.  They started with scriptural presuppositions and applied theological tests to their work.

Logic of Faith

My friend, Dave Mallinak, wrote the following to me in recent days:

I believe that the words God gave – the “breathed-out words” He inspired – are perfectly preserved, despite the difficulties in demonstrating perfection (due to variants). I approach preservation the same way I approach inerrancy. I can’t clear up every difficulty. I don’t believe I need to in order to hold to the inerrancy of Scripture, and I don’t believe I need to in order to hold to an every word preservation.

Perfection is a presupposition.  The TR editions are homogenous unlike Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, old manuscripts the main basis of the critical text.  Hoskier famously counted 3,036 variations between those two manuscripts in the gospels alone.

Believers do not ignore variations.  However, these difficulties do not cancel the doctrine of preservation, just like difficulties do not eliminate inerrancy.  Ward does not refer to this element of faith.  Hills called it the “logic of faith.”

• He looks at inspiration as divine and preservation as human.

God used men to write scripture and He used men to preserve it.  Believers’ ascription of perfection to preservation of a text of scripture arises from their belief in biblical teaching on preservation.  In inspiration, “holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Peter 1:21).  Men spake.  Men wrote.  God used men for inspiration and preservation.  The Apostle Paul says in Romans 3:2 that to the Jews “were committed the oracles of God.”  Canonicity, a biblical doctrine, relates to God’s people agreeing by means of the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit what the books and the words were.

More to Come