ANSWERING AGAIN THE “WHAT TR?” QUESTION
1. God Inspired Specific, Exact Words, and All of Them.
2. After God Inspired, Inscripturated, or Gave His Words, All of Them, to His People through His Institutions, He Kept Preserving Each of Them and All of Them According to His Promises of Preservation.
3. God Promised Preservation of the Words in the Language They Were Written, or In Other Words, He Preserved Exactly What He Gave.
4. God’s Promise of Keeping and Preserving His Words Means the Availability of His Words to Every Generation of Believers.
Introduction for Point 5, the Next Point
Long ago, I completed the answering of every question from opponents on the issue of preservation, versions, etc. Nothing new has arisen for many years. What keeps me writing is the accusation that our side does not answer questions. I have written long, very complete answers. The norm of the opposition focuses on one little piece of an answer and takes it out of context. This happens in a lot of debate situations, so I understand it.
This series of posts again tries to help someone understand, who still doesn’t. The writing through the years has helped some. They’ve testified of that. For most though, they don’t care. It seems like a waste of time to keep talking to them.
My Approach for this Series
My approach for this series of posts is presenting scriptural principles, presuppositions, or promises as premises to a conclusion. I could further show how that these points represent historical biblical doctrine, interpretation, or application, but I won’t for this series. I’ve done that many times. I want to keep it simple here.
What I’m writing for this series, I’ve never seen from the critical text and modern version side. I still have not read a work that attempts to lay out a doctrine or biblical defense of naturalistic textual criticism to prove it is the historical Christian position. None do that because it’s absent from scripture. I’m not a reconstructionist like him, but I agree with this statement by R. J. Rushdoony:
Consider what happens when the Received Text is set aside and scholars give us their reconstruction of the text. The truth of revelation has thereby passed from the hand of God into the hands of men. Scholars then establish the true reading in terms of their presuppositions…The denial of the Received Text enables the scholar to play god over God. The determination of the correct word is now a scholar’s province and task. The Holy Spirit is no longer the giver and preserver of the biblical text: it is the scholar, the textual scholar.
The critical text and modern version side just takes shots at our positions. They have written several books like this, among the notable by D. A. Carson, James White, faculty from notable Bob Jones University grads, and then the Central Baptist Theological Seminary faculty. They don’t show biblical presuppositions or a presence in historical theology, because they don’t exist.
Without further adieu, I continue.
5. God the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity, Used the Church to Accredit or Confirm What Is Scripture and What Is Not.
In 2017, I wrote the following:
Evangelicals and fundamentalists argue for the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit. This is important to them. With the qualities of canonical books present, how would the church recognize them? Because men are depraved, they couldn’t assess the divine qualities of canonical books except by the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit. This is not as private revelation, but to help people overcome the effects of sin so that they might distinguish actual scripture. Even evangelicals believe that the consensus of the church is a key indicator of which books are canonical.
Scripture has divine qualities characteristic of its author, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit indwells believers. Believers respond to what the Holy Spirit wrote, because He knows what He wrote. That’s how the argument goes. The Holy Spirit was not only at work in the origination of the Bible, but He also is at work within the people who receive the Bible. Donald Bloesch writes (p. 150, Holy Scriptures):Scripture is a product of the inspiring work of the Spirit, who guided the writers to give a reliable testimony to God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ. Its canonizing is to be attributed to the illumining work of the Spirit, who led . . . . the church to assent to what the Spirit had already authorized.
Spiritually Discerned
Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.
Unity of the Spirit
Saints of the first century knew the books the Holy Spirit inspired and the ones He didn’t. They copied the ones He inspired. They received those as the Word of God. The saints agreed on what the books and the words were. They copied and distributed them.
The agreement of the saints or of true churches resulted in a multitude of almost identical copies. As history passed the printing press era, they agreed or settled on the text of the Bible. One could and should call the agreement, “the unity of the Spirit” (Ephesians 4:3). What is that?
Every true believer possesses the Holy Spirit in him. He guides, leads, reproves, teaches, etc. The Holy Spirit will not on the inside of a believer lead, guide, or teach in a different way. He won’t contradict Himself. He is One.
The same Holy Spirit, Who inspired the Words of God, knows those Words still. He does not need to reinspire Words. Instead, He can direct His people to the correct one, when a copyist errs. The churches for hundreds of years did not agree on the critical text. That text did not make its way to God’s people. They received the, well, received text. They thought that the work of the Holy Spirit.
What I just wrote above is not mysticism. It is what we read in scripture. It is how we see the Holy Spirit work. Providence and the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit fulfilled God’s promise of preservation.
Historical Agreement
Related to the above, The Westminster Confession of Faith of 1646 reads:
V. 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 consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man’s salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God; yet, notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.
The Gallican Confession (1559) reads:
We know these books to be canonical, and the sure rule of our faith, not so much by the common accord and consent of the Church, as by the testimony and inward illumination of the Holy Spirit, which enables us to distinguish them from other ecclesiastical books.
Thiessen wrote in his Introduction to the New Testament:
The Holy Spirit, given to the Church, quickened holy instincts, aided discernment between the genuine and the spurious, and thus led to gradual, harmonious, and in the end unanimous conclusions. There was in the Church what a modern divine has happily termed an ‘inspiration of selection’.
All the above statements fall within the teaching of many different scriptures on the Holy Spirit and the Words of God. The Holy Spirit leads through the agreement of His people. This is a reason Paul tells Timothy that the church is the pillar and ground of the truth (1 Timothy 3:15).
How Does The Testimony of the Holy Spirit Work?
When believers recognize the work of the Holy Spirit, they attest to scriptural presuppositions, principles, and promises. Those will not contradict the Holy Spirit. This is the meaning of testing whether something is of the Holy Spirit. Naturalistic explanations don’t pass the test.
A true church is the temple of the Holy Spirit. The unity of Spirit is seen in the agreement of a true church. Churches received the received text (the textus receptus). At the end of an era, they agreed to stop publishing editions of the textus receptus. Was that the Holy Spirit testifying through the churches that believed and practiced the Bible? This fits the scriptural teaching and the model.
This principle, presupposition, or promise of the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit is not the only one of these. It is crucial though.
More to Come
Great piece, thank you for writing. I think Textual Critics get bogged down in the different TR editions. If I go to textus-receptus.com (great resource btw) and count the number of TR editions listed there, there is 27 from the Complutensian Polyglot through Scrivener. I think you can make a case the KJV is its own TR, only in English, making a 28th. I know Scrivener attempted to recreate the TR the underlies the KJV, but I’ve read there are some variations. This very small amount of ambiguity, I believe, is the wiggle room needed, and taken, by Textual Critics looking to undermine the perfect purity of God’s words. However, I also think this exposes their presuppositions, one that denies God kept His words perfect and pure through His omnipotent providential power here in our world. To your argument, even if there were some very small variations between different TR editions, it cannot be ignored that those words were still available and in circulation at the time they were collated into a TR edition. The same cannot be said for Aleph and B or any other MSS in their family, all of which were rejected and remained in obscurity until the 19th century.
I think you have written on this before too, but I also think this is why Textual Critics are so interested in the KJV preface and argue that the KJV Translators would agree with them, seeing themselves as a part of a greater scholarly, “big universal Church,” tradition of translation work. As I think you have said here before, it’s historical revisionism. I believe they do this to kind of bridge their theological gap between their position (lost, reconstructed text) and the one found in Scripture (historically available, perfect text). It is their attempt to make their position seem legitimate and historical, instead of what it is, a 19th century innovation to the Christian religion. Trying to get a Textual Critic to explain their position from Scripture is like trying to mix oil and water. Why they won’t, or cannot do it, should be the biggest clue to anyone with an honest heart searching for the truth in the Bible version debate.
Thanks Benjamin. I agree with all that.
” God the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity, Used the Church to Accredit or Confirm What Is Scripture and What Is Not.”
I been teaching that for over 30 years concerning the King James Bible.
Tom
Tom, so we both agree on that presupposition or principle, but the Bible still stands as the final authority and the King James Version falls short as what the Bible teaches for preservation of scripture. I’m not going to argue it with you, but that’s the difference. Your position is indefensible scripturally, in fact using the King James Version to do it.
Kent,
“Tom, so we both agree on that presupposition or principle, but the Bible still stands as the final authority and the King James Version falls short as what the Bible teaches for preservation of scripture.”
What do you mean that it “falls short” of teaching its preservation when the scripture is inspired (King James Bible) and has been proven by 400 years of the “ministration of the Spirit, through the body of Christ to all the world?
Has not all the world been exposed to English in the last of the last days rather than Greek or Hebrew?
Tom
God preserved the Words of God in the language in which they were written — that’s preservation — and then they are translated into other languages like English. But saying that English is what God preserved, that falls short, Tom. I have no problem calling the King James the inspired, preserved Word of God, but I mean it is an accurate translation of a perfectly preserved text.
You wrote, ” I have no problem calling the King James the inspired, preserved Word of God, but I mean it is an accurate translation of a perfectly preserved text.”
If the King James Bible is only an “accurate translations” and not inspired, it is therefore not scripture according to its own testimony.
Is that what you are trying to say?
Tom
It is inspired when He gave it and continues to be inspired as He preserves it.
Did God forget 1 John 5:7 since there is no proof that it was in the originals? The earliest form was by Cyprian in the 3rd century. The earliest known manuscript was an 8th century Latin manuscript (see Luke 23:38). The first known Greek bible to have it is Erasmus in the 16th century. I believe it was in a Greek miniscule in the 14th century.
I have many more proofs to prove inconsistencies in viewing this “Greek and Hebrew” only argument of preservation.
Tom
Tom,
Respectfully, your comment sounds like an argument from a critical text, modern version advocate, who doesn’t believe in preservation of scripture. You are saying, you know that God did not preserve 1 John 5:7 in the language in which it was written because of this information you give. That’s not a position true believers have taken. When you say proof, you don’t mean the evidence of things, as Hebrews 11:1 reads. The KJV translators translated from something. They were translators. You seem to be saying they made something up rather than translate from an actual Hebrew and Greek text.
Brother Kent,
Of course it is “preserved”. I know that because of the King James Bible which is the last bible that was inspired by the translation of the “preserved text”. It was the church, the body of Christ that confirmed the King James Bible text was “inspired text” that was translated from “inspired preserved text” no matter what and where that text was found (other English translations, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Syriac, etc.).
Is the Spanish, German, French or any other text inspired? When it now matches the King James Bible, it is. We know that because it is English that is known throughout the world.
I always begin with what I know the church, the body of Christ knows. There is no other bible in the world for the past 350 years that Christians believe is the inspired word of God, but the King James Bible.
Tom