A New Attack on Verbal Plenary Preservation of Scripture

Ross-White Debate

After the Ross-White debate, I saw one particular regular attack on the biblical and historical doctrine of the preservation of scripture.  This is the perfect or verbal plenary preservation of the original language text of the Bible.  Critical text advocates, who deny that doctrine, call the opposing position a “mystical explanation,” “omniscience,” the “Urim and Thummim,” or “Ruckmanism for all intents and purposes.”  The part about Ruckman hints at double inspiration thinking.  You say you believe the church possesses a perfect text of scripture in the original languages. They say that requires a work of God like inspiration or a mystical gift on the level of omniscience.

The historical doctrine of preservation says God preserved His Word.  That is a supernatural explanation.  God did it.  Something supernatural occurred.  Any claim of supernaturalism could be prey to the attack of mysticism, omniscience, saints possessing the Urim and Thummim, or the Ruckman charge.  If copyists make errors and manuscripts have variants, how do believers know what the words are?  Do they flop back into a trance-like state and their body moves like a puppet to the correct word?

The Imagery, a Mockery

The imagery painted by critical text advocates accuses men testing a variation between texts with a seer stone or divining rod.  Someone printing a New Testament edition swoons into a condition where his body becomes taken over by God in the decision of a correct word in a text.  It really is just a form of mockery, because none of their targets for this ridicule come close to this description.

The critical text advocates leave out a supernatural explanation.  They don’t like that criticism.  They don’t want theological presuppositions to guide, only the so-called science.  Someone might claim perfection, if it’s God working.   They rather defer to human reason as a tool.  That allows for the error they favor as an outcome. They won’t say it’s God.  At most, a few might say that God designed human reason like He did for the invention of a new vaccination.

The Providence of God

Used for Preservation of Scripture

The language used in the supernatural intervention in God’s method of preservation with and through His church is the “providence of God.”  The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) reads:

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 authentical.

You can read the language there, “God . . . by His singular care and providence.”  In 1680 preacher of the gospel, John Alexander wrote:  “seeing the Scriptures by the Providence of God kept pure . . . . seeing the Scriptures as they now are were transmitted to us by the Church, unto whom the Oracles of God were committed, and against whom the Gates of Hell shall not prevail.”  In 1721 Edward Synge wrote:  “Still it pleased God, by his overruling Providence, to preserve his Written Word, and keep it pure and uncorrupted . . . . by which means the Fountain, I mean the Text of the Holy Scripture, was kept pure and undefiled.”

Its Meaning

John Piper in 2020 wrote a very large book, entitled, Providence.  In the first chapter, he gives a lengthy explanation of the word, concluding that it means concerning God, “He sees to it that things happen in a certain way.”  He points to Genesis 22 as a classic description of providence, when in verse 8, Abraham says, “God will provide himself a lamb,” using “provide.”  Later, verse 14 uses the root meaning of that word “provide”:

And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovahjireh: as it is said to this day, In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen.

In the word “providence” is the Latin vide (think video), which means, “see.”  Notice in verse 14, “it shall be seen.”  The idea is that God sees, but even further, “He sees to.”  He saw the ram in place of Isaac and He saw to the ram for Isaac.

Heidelberg Catechism

As providence relates to scripture, God sees to it that every word is preserved and available to His people, just like the ram was provided and available to Abraham and Isaac.  The Heidelberg Catechism (1563) defines the providence of God:

The almighty and everywhere present power of God; whereby, as it were by his hand, he upholds and governs heaven, earth, and all creatures; so that herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meat and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, yea, and all things come, not by chance, but by his fatherly hand.

Providence is not by chance.  If God is keeping the original text of scripture pure by His singular care and providence, He is not leaving that to chance.  Since He will judge men by every word, which He says He will (Matthew 4:4, John 12:48), He will provide every Word.  He will “see to it.”  I know the question then arises, “How did God see to it?”

Providential Preservation

Spurgeon

Men who believe in providential preservation do not believe that God requires a trance-like state to accomplish perfect preservation of scripture.  If you asked, “How did the ram appear in the thicket to Abraham?”, you might find the answer difficult.  “He just did.”  He said He would provide, so He did.

C. H. Spurgeon in a sermon on the Providence of God says this:  “If anything would go wrong, God puts it right and if there is anything that would move awry, He puts forth His hand and alters it.”  This is how I read the description men who believed in providential preservation.

Capel

Richard Capel represents the position well (Capel’s Remains, London, 1658, pp. 19-43):

[W]e have the Copies in both languages [Hebrew and Greek], which Copies vary not from Primitive writings in any matter which may stumble any. This concernes onely the learned, and they know that by consent of all parties, the most learned on all sides among Christians do shake hands in this, that God by his providence hath preserved them uncorrupt. . . .

. . . . As God committed the Hebrew text of the Old Testament to the Jewes, and did and doth move their hearts to keep it untainted to this day: So I dare lay it on the same God, that he in his providence is so with the Church of the Gentiles, that they have and do preserve the Greek Text uncorrupt, and clear: As for some scrapes by Transcribers, that comes to no more, than to censure a book to be corrupt, because of some scrapes in the printing, and tis certain, that what mistake is in one print, is corrected in another.

You should notice that Capel uses the word, “providence.”  This doesn’t sound like the exaggerated, deceitful attacks of the critical text proponents.  I love the last sentence of that paragraph as an understanding.  I ask that you read it again:  “As for some scrapes by Transcribers, that comes to no more, than to censure a book to be corrupt, because of some scrapes in the printing, and tis certain, that what mistake is in one print, is corrected in another.”  These are not words you will hear from critical text, modern version men.

God Keeps His Words

I say God keeps His Words.  He uses His institutions to do it.  I also say God keeps the souls of the saints.  He uses many various means to do that.  It is difficult to explain how that He does it, but He does.  That too is supernatural.  Do the opponents of perfect preservation believe that God sees to that?  They do and they base that on presuppositions without resorting to words like “mystical explanation.”

The method God uses to preserve is a true one.  It is true like innermost machinery and function of a cell.  It occurs.  The DNA strands of a human being, designed by God, result in a fully grown, healthy person.  God did that.  He keeps working in His world as He sees fit.  His doing that with His words is also science.  It is supernatural and it is science.

More to Come