Part One   Part Two   Part Three   Part Four   Part Five

Since relationship proceeds from and is modeled after the relationship within the Trinity between the members of the Godhead, all relationship should be and will be according to the Word of God.  Relationship is not just some arbitrary connection.  God must approve.  He doesn’t just approve, but cause and then judge. This reflects the hiearchical nature of relationship established in earlier posts in this series.  Relationship depends on pleasing God and pleasing God is being and living according to God’s Word.  There is no alternative to this.  It’s God or go home.

For instance, if you want to have a good relationship with another person, you have to have a good relationship with God. The former springs from the latter.  A single person on either of the two sides of a relationship can ruin it.  In the case of God and us, God is never the one ruining it.  It’s us.  Between people, however, it’s possible for either one out of two to be the problem, or it could be both.

Sin and Relationship

Sin impedes relationship with God.  A person must deal with his sin.  Tolerating sin forfeits the relationship.  Some sin against God also deters a relationship with a person.  For instance, lying to someone else is sin against God.  When David sinned with Bathsheba against Uriah, he sinned against God.  He wrote in Psalm 51:4, “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight.”  What might seem horizontal is actually vertical.

On the other hand, the horizontal affects the vertical, which means it’s also vertical.  James wrote in James 4:4, “Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.”  You have to make a choice.  You can either be a friend of the world of a friend of God.  You can’t have both.  If you love the one, you hate the other (Matthew 6:24).

You cannot maintain relationship in the world, because of the violation of the vertical.  To continue pleasing the world, you won’t please God.  You’ve got to make that choice.  Some are deceived into thinking or just allow some kind of straddling of the world with God, which is actually just the world. Some choose friendship with the world.  Is that relationship?  It isn’t what is between the Persons in the Godhead, because relationship in the Godhead is based upon righteousness and truth.  It is faux relationship or no relationship in the world.

Sinners and Relationship

Sin itself impedes the relationship with God.  It’s not just represented as that throughout the Bible. Not making the proper break with sinners also impedes the relationship with God.  That’s part of not having it both ways.  You can’t be cozy with unbelievers and close to God.  The classic communication of this is Paul in 2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1.  Paul corresponds pollution in the horizontal with that in the vertical in 2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1.  Does the problem with the vertical come from the horizontal or is every violation in the horizontal a fruit of the vertical?  2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1 reads like a person, who won’t make the break from unbelievers, isn’t a child of God.

Two of Paul’s questions are these:  “What fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness?” “What part hath he that believeth with an infidel?” He concludes (vv. 18-19): “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you,  And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.”  We shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that our relationship with people has nothing to do with God.

Lot’s wife couldn’t or wouldn’t separate from Sodom.  Her association turned her into a pillar of salt (Genesis 19:26).  With God’s warning, Lot himself left (19:29).  Peter reveals that his righteous soul was vexed with seeing and hearing their unlawful deeds (2 Peter 2:8).  I know of many people who call themselves Christians, but they aren’t vexed with seeing and hearing.  They lap it up and seem only to be angry when someone exposes their own unlawful deeds.

Christians often know Psalm 1, but do they take the point of relationship into its intended consideration?  The blessed man is contrasted with the ungodly in his end, the latter not standing in the day of judgment.  The blessed man is qualified more than any one thing by relationship:  he doesn’t walk in the counsel of the ungodly, stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of the scornful.  The clear conclusion is that those who go ahead and walk, stand, or sit in this company “shall perish.”

Peter writes in 1 Peter 3 that Noah and his family were saved by water.  How did the water save Noah and his family?  It saved them from the world, which had persecuted them while they preached for 120 years.  In the same way, Peter says baptism saves.  Baptism doesn’t save from “the filth of the flesh.”  It so identifies a believer with Christ and the church, that it separates a believer from the world.  It is a public manifestation of a relationship, like wearing a wedding ring.

Emptiness without True Relationship

What is it that attraction for professing believers to friendliness or intimacy with unbelievers, the ungodly, who reject Jesus Christ?  Sometimes professing believers want to keep a relationship with an unbeliever.  Sometimes it goes all the way to marrying one of them.  Rather than reproving the unfruitful works of darkness, they have fellowship with them (Ephesians 5:11).  Scripture reveals reasons for this behavior, the first being that they aren’t truly converted.  They love the world and the things that are in the world, because the love of the Father is not in him (1 John 2:15).

Without relationship, unbelievers experience emptiness.  God created them for relationship with Him.  Paul deals with this point in Colossians.  Paul says in Christ “all fulness dwells” (Colossians 1:19).  Fulfillment is found in the position in Christ.  He continues in Colossians 2:12:  “ye are complete in Him.”  The Lord Jesus Christ does solve emptiness.

It is possible still that believers will experience emptiness even though they are in Christ.  Believers are complete in Christ, but they will not experience that completion, that fulfillment, when they are not walking in the light or living in obedience.  Not experiencing fulfillment doesn’t mean someone is not saved.   At some point, if he’s a genuine believer, he can’t endure the lack of fulfillment.

Without fulfillment in Christ, people look elsewhere to find it.  Maybe they feel lonely.  They know they are missing something.  They struggle to give up the world, because of the emptiness.  It is a replacement, however, for an actual relationship.  This is not trusting Jesus Christ.  Like Lot, a righteous soul will also be vexed, an indication of the life of God in him. Quoting Proverbs 26:22, Peter compares looking for a worldly relationship to a dog returning to its vomit (2 Peter 2:2).  A believer will know it’s vomit compared to Christ and can’t persist with that.  The charm of the world will not hold him.  This is characteristic of a true Christian.

How could someone be saved, really know Jesus Christ, when he keeps choosing the world or unbelievers or sin over Christ?  Christ isn’t satisfying Him.  Christ satisfies.  It isn’t Christ who is the problem.  This is a person, if he continues, who doesn’t have that relationship.  That’s why he keeps choosing the replacements.

More to Come

Part One   Part Two   Part Three   Part Four

To review, people want to be happy more than anything and they think relationship is the top reason for that.  Taking this further though, when they say relationship, they don’t mean what God intended for relationship.  I heard a commercial the other day, that I discovered was using an audio clip from the British rock band, Queen, a movie about which was nominated for the Academy Awards this year.  Perhaps the Oscars and the usage in the commercial fed off each other. I looked up the lyrics and the refrain or chorus were the operative words, except with two preceding lines:

It ain’t much I’m asking, if you want the truth
Here’s to the future for the dreams of youth
I want it all (give it all I want it all)
I want it all (yeah)
I want it all and I want it now.

I wondered if those lyrics were intended to express irony, as if Queen were mocking millennials or the present generation, rather than admiring their point of view.  “I Want It All,” I recognize as a perfect millennial anthem.  Apparently band member Brian May wrote the words at the time he had left his first wife for a second, the words serving as a defense of the relationship.  Lead singer, Freddie Mercury (born Farrokh Bulsara), perhaps got what he wanted, but he also contracted the HIV virus, then full blown AIDS, something nobody would want, and died age 45 in 1991, two years after “I Want It All” was released.

What people want in relationship and what God designed or what scripture teaches conflict with one another.  You can’t actually “have it all,” even if you want it, unless you mean that you are committed to wait for it and then inherit all things in and through Jesus Christ.  That is usually not what people mean when they say, I want it all.  Maybe the key is, they want it, now.  They want the relationship that they want, even the one they have with God — they want that to be like they want it.  Nobody gets a relationship with God by subjugating God to his desires, what he wants, but by submitting his wants to God’s wants, just like Jesus did with His Father.

Horizontal Relationship

In part four, I alluded to the identification of the “horizontal relationship.”  Scripture evinces equality.  In Galatians 3:28 Paul writes:

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.

My brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons.

Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men.

Relationship of God with man hasn’t changed.  God sets the terms for the relationship.  Someone can conform God in His imagination to a God that accepts what he wants in a relationship with God, but that doesn’t mean it is a relationship with God.  This trickles down to the relationship of people with one another too.

More to Come

Part One   Part Two   Part Three

Relationship.  You can’t live without it.  You can’t live with it.  Bad relationship can be torture.  I don’t have to explain.  Everyone reading knows.  It can be great, fantastic, and enjoyable.  It can be infuriating, frustrating, or sad.  It can influence toward either righteousness or evil.  It mainly does the latter.  We need to know about relationship.  We need to know what God says about it.  We will be judged by God for and about relationship.

Relationship with God is priority and the basis of all human relationship.  Relationship starts with God, and that relationship is also the source and model for all successful and fulfilling relationship.  The desire for relationship that is inherent in every human being also turns every person into prey, using relationship as bait.  People want relationship to the degree that they will pursue inordinate relationship, instead of pleasing God in it.  Organizations, including churches, use relationship to pander to an audience.

To understand right relationship, everything fundamental to it can be found in the relationship between the Father and the Son in the Trinity, the Godhead.  Both the Father and the Son reveal in scripture various components of their relationship with each other in a way sufficient to explain the right kind.  Those characteristics of their relationship are teased out further in revelation in scripture about relationship between people.  What scripture says should be the guide by which we inform and the grid by which we judge our relationship with God and with people.

The relationship with God has been called, and in an accurate and helpful way, a vertical relationship.  The relationship with people has been titled, also accurate and helpful, a horizontal relationship.  It is also true and edifying to consider the horizontal relationship depends on the vertical relationship.  It is good then to see the association between the vertical and the horizontal.

Horizontal as a description of human relationship is a bit of a misnomer.  Almost all relationship divine and human is what could be called hierarchical, so much so that one should say that relationship is hierarchical.  This is also likely the most repulsive aspects of relationship to depraved humanity, and especially today.  People resist authority, starting with God.  Problem with most relationship is a problem with God, because relationship is hierarchical, as seen in several ways in scripture, not necessarily in this order.

One, in 1 Corinthians 11:3, the Apostle Paul writes:

But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.

This represents the most important relationships in existence:  Father to Christ to man to woman.  If hierarchy is in the Godhead, then it shouldn’t surprise someone that it is also crucial for humanity.

Two, the first words in God’s relationship to man are a command.  When God started talking to men, He commanded man (Genesis 2:16-17):

And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

The relationship of God to man is “God commanded the man.”

Jesus, the God-man, did not treat His relationship with the Father differently than what God expects of all men.  Three, more than any other gospel, John presents the relationship of Jesus with His Father, and all through the gospel of John, Jesus says He’s doing exactly what the Father wants Him to do.  The purpose of Jesus was to do the will of His Father, that is what sanctified the Son, and what the Son said sanctified people as well.

John 5:19, “The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.”
John 5:20, “For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself doeth.”
John 5:30, “I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me.”
John 5:36, “for the works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do.”
John 8:28, “I do nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things.”
John 8:29, “And he that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him.”
John 8:49, ” I honour my Father.”
John 10:18, “This commandment have I received of my Father.”

There is much more.  I often asked and still ask my own son, “Is there anything that I’m telling you to do as a son that either is not in the Word of God, or is against the Word of God?”  I’ve never heard, no, to that question.  Sons still often think that what the father says is optional or even harmful to them, albeit scriptural.  Relationship between the Father and the Son in the Trinity is hierarchical, and that is the model relationship.  Someone may say, “Well, the Father loves the Son, so it is easy for the Son.”  Here’s what the Son says (John 10:15-17):

As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep. . . . Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again.

I know many people who want “good relationships” and by that, they mean people treating them well.  The same people often have a problem with authority.  They don’t like hierarchy and don’t do well with it.  The problem, again and again, “are the people in charge” (their assessment).  This parallels the big issue for unbelievers.  2 Peter 2-3 speaks of the typical apostate “speaking evil of dignities.”  They don’t like having a boss and classically they nit-pick those above them.  They “walk after their own lust” and scoff at what clashes with their will.  They don’t deny themselves, aren’t thankful, and worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator.  All of this will sabotage relationship.

More to Come

Introduction to the Debate    Part One   Part Two

by Kent Brandenburg

Answer to Question 2


If Mr. Turk looked at his quote of the KJV preface in its context, he would see that the translators were arguing for translation contra Romanism, not approving of poor translations.  On the other hand, the KJ translators were linguistic scholars by most accounts, yet not quite as reliable themselves as a source for theology.  For that reason, I don’t ask WWKJTD (What Would the King James Translators Do?).   I do at times puzzle at ardor for a preface as far surpassing the translation of Holy Scripture it introduced.  Men as early as seventeenth century decided that both Jesus and the apostles quoted from a Greek version of the Hebrew OT.  Like any other historic tradition, we evaluate it with truth (John 17:17).

Exegetical reasons say Jesus quoted from the Hebrew text. Jots and tittles are Hebrew letters (Matthew 5:18). Jesus refers to the OT as the law and the prophets, the designation speaking of the Hebrew OT, not a Greek one (Luke 24:44).  James affirmed that the Torah was the text by which preaching was done on every Sabbath in every town of Judea, and elsewhere, in the synagogue (Acts 15:21). There is no question that Hebrew was a known and read language of the first century since Pilate required the title on the cross to be written in three known and read languages of the Greco-Roman world—Hebrew and Greek and Latin (Jn. 19:20). The Lord Jesus Christ spoke both Hebrew (“Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani”) and Aramaic (“Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani”) from the Cross, as the Gospels of Matthew and Mark testify (Mt. 27:46—Mk. 15:34).  The Apostle Paul, in his great apologetic speech, spoke to the Jews in Jerusalem “in the Hebrew tongue” (Acts 21:40).  The Lord also spoke to Paul “in the Hebrew tongue” at the time of his conversion (Acts 26:14). Nowhere do we find any similar doctrine of “Greek translation usage,” except to exegete the preface of translation.  This paragraph exemplifies how one gets a bibliology of preservation, something you will not see among the critical and eclectic.

This historic tradition creates a huge problem for one’s view of inspiration and inerrancy.  It says Jesus quotes an extremely flawed translation, especially textually, making error in Scripture “satisfactory.”  Then certain points debunk the historic tradition.  Many of these OT quotations in the New are significantly different from certain modern Septuagints.  Cumulatively a big majority of the quotations from Job, Zechariah, and Malachi agree solely with the Masoretic.  This same historic tradition today underlies denial of ipsissima verba of Christ for unorthodox ipsissima vox.

A high view of inspiration practices classic harmonization.  Often attacks on Scripture point at supposed conflicts with the various accounts to relegate the Bible to something only human.  Rather than capitulating to errors, our high view guides viable explanations.  In place of the one problematic historic tradition I offer two viable choices (or mixture of the two) that harmonize with God’s promises of perfect preservation.

1. Jesus targummed, that is, He quoted and commented as a rabbi would. Jesus knew the Hebrew and the Greek, so He could translate on a fly, imparting commentary as well, especially His being God Himself, speaking new Scripture based upon His own authority.  We witness this Jewish practice of targumming by Jesus in Luke 4:16-21: the teacher stands and opens scroll (vv. 16, 17), reads the OT with running interpretation or Targum (vv. 17b-19), rolls up scroll, hands back, and sits down, and then preaches his sermon (v. 21ff).  Several commentators affirm Christ’s employment of the Targum, including Geldenhuys who states (p. 167): “As far as we know, He read in Hebrew and translated into Aramaic, the common spoken language at that time…G. Dalman finds reflections of the traditional Aramaic paraphrase (Targum) in the present passage in Luke [4:18 ff.].”  Cf. also Robert H. Stein, The New American Commentary, Luke (Nashville, Broadman Press, 1992), p. 155; Craig A. Evans, New International Biblical Commentary, Luke (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publ., 1990), p. 73; and William Manson, The Moffatt New Testament Commentary, The Gospel of Luke (London: Hodder and Stoughton, Ltd., 1955), p. 41.
2.  “[T]he scribes who copied the surviving manuscripts of the LXX [which date after the composition of the gospels] were by and large Christians who would have been familiar with the NT writings.  When, in the process of producing a LXX manuscript, they came to a passage that was quoted in the NT, they sometimes adjusted the text, either inadvertently (because of their memory of the NT form) or purposefully (because they assumed the NT form was correct)” (p. 191, Invitation to the Septuagint, Moises Silva and Karen Jobes, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2000).

There was no “the Septuagint” that we know for sure of in the first century. Even today the textual scholars don’t know exactly what “the Septuagint” is. Jerome makes mention of three different versions of the Septuagint that already existed in his day:

Alexandria and Egypt in their Septuagint acclaim Hesychius as their authority, the region from Constantinople to Antioch approves the copies of Lucian the martyr, the intermediate Palestinian provinces read the MSS which were promulgated by Eusebius and Pamphilius on the basis of Origen’s labors, and the whole world is divided among these three varieties of texts. 

H. St. J. Thackeray, “Septuagint,” The International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia, Volume IV (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publ., 1939), pp. 2724-2725, writes:

The main value of the LXX is its witness to an older Hebrew text than our own. But before we can reconstruct this Hebrew text we need to have a pure Greek text before us, and this we are at present far from possessing…the original text has yet to be recovered…Not a verse is without its array of variant readings.

Must we abandon the plain teaching of Scripture, which evidences the Lord’s use of the Hebrew OT, as demonstrated by Strouse, for the bruised reed of the “evidence” from a reconstructed, hypothetical, non-preserved modern edition of “the” LXX?  Mr. Turk may do the latter, if he please; we will go with the “thus saith the Lord.”

I do wonder if Mr. Turk believes that the Septuagint is God’s Word in the places it comes from corrupt text or is translated incorrectly.  With that in mind, I also wonder if he believes that the modern versions are the Word of God when they, for instance, say that Isaiah wrote the book of Malachi (Mark 1:2-3).  If Mr. Turk kept reading a little further in the uninspired preface, he would have arrived at this—

[T]hey joined them together with the Hebrew original, and the translation of the Seventy (as hath been before signified out of Epiphanius) and set them forth openly to be considered of and perused by all.

—which explains the reason for the KJ translators’ Septuagint illustration.  Contradicting the Romanists, they believed in the translation of the Hebrew and Greek text into known languages.  They weren’t using their conjecture about the Septuagint to endorse a poor translation.  Neither the KJ translators, nor many others, would say that a translation in the places where it is faulty is the Word of God.  How would that point of their preface apply to modern translations?  The KJ translators would support translations into known languages, i.e., ones other than Latin.

Comments to A2

Perhaps Mr. Turk could just say what he believes about the preservation of Scripture, what God did preserve, and why, so we can stop speculating on what “grammatical promises” are.  If he means that God didn’t promise to preserve His Words; i.e. no verbal, plenary preservation, and so he enters this debate with that presupposition, it’s no wonder our conclusions differ.  Just saying that preservation isn’t in Scripture doesn’t count as debate—we could both say, “He’s wrong,” and we’d be done.

I asked if the Bible was evidence.  Mr. Turk implies “Yes” with “merely evidence.”  I ask if it is superior to other forms of evidence—no answer.  A “plain” answer would include a “yes” or “no.” “Ontologically reliable” and “metaphysically authoritative” aren’t plain.  Those two descriptions are about as nebulous as one could get, especially in light of what Scripture says about itself.  I think by “ontologically reliable,” he means that the reliability of Scripture is found in its essence and unique nature, but not in the actual, accessible words.  I think by saying “metaphysically authoritative” he separates Scripture from the available, physical text itself.  If the text of the Bible has no integrity of its own, then readers can have their own way with it—disregard what it says and say what it means to them.  Mr. Turk’s answers read like definitional gobbly-gook to allow belief in error in Scripture.

Mr. Turk should have seen that what I believe about preservation doesn’t contradict what Turretin said. Neither Turretin nor I believe that copyists were without error.  I even gave a Scriptural basis for errors in copies.  God said there would be errors.  Both Turretin and I believe that those errors were always corrected.  Both Turretin and I believe in perfect preservation based upon God’s promises, including a great defense of 1 John 5:7.

I still call on Mr. Turk to tell me what he believes about preservation of Scripture and to prove it.  While I’m waiting, here are references that among others promise the perfect, Divine preservation of Scripture: Deuteronomy 8:3; Psalm 12:6-7; 111:7-8; 119:152; 119:160; Isaiah 59:21; Matthew 4:4; 5:18-19; 24:35; Mark 13:31; Luke 3:3; 16:17; 21:33; John 12:48; 1 Peter 1:23-25; 2 Peter 3:2.  These cumulatively give a stronger testimony for perfect preservation than the Bible even gives for its own inspiration.  If you believe the latter, then you should believe the former.  In addition, among the above verses and others, we have testimony to the general accessibility of God’s verbally, plenarily preserved Words: Deuteronomy 30:11-14; Isaiah 59:21; Matthew 4:4.  Implied in the ability to keep all the Words of God is their availability: Deuteronomy 6:24; 10:2; 12:28; 27:26; 28:14; 28:58; 29:9; 31:12.  The Bible affirms that people will be held eternally accountable for disobeying the Words contained therein: Psalm 50:16-17; Luke 24:35; 2 Timothy 3:15-17.

In addition to Turretin, John Owen also wrote in the 17th century,

The whole Scripture, entire as given out from God, without any loss, is preserved in the copies of the originals yet remaining. . . .  In them all, we say, is every letter and tittle of the word.

G. I. Williamson, writes in his 1964 commentary on the Westminster Confession of Faith (pp. 14-17):

This brings us to the matter of God’s ‘singular care and providence’ by which He has ‘kept pure in all ages’ this original text, so that we now actually possess it in ‘authentical’ form. And let us begin by giving an illustration from modern life to show that an original document may be destroyed, without the text of that document being lost. Suppose you were to write a will. Then suppose you were to have a photographic copy of that will made. If the original were then destroyed, the photographic copy would still preserve the text of that exactly the same as the original itself (emphasis his). The text of the copy would differ in no way whatever from the original, and so it would possess exactly the same ‘truth’ and meaning as the original. . . .  How then could the original text of the Word of God be preserved? The answer is that God preserved it by His own remarkable care and providence.

Professor E. D. Morris for decades taught the Westminster Confession at Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio.  In 1893, Lane wrote for The Evangelist:

As a Professor in a Theological Seminary, it has been my duty to make a special study of the Westminster Confession of Faith, as have I done for twenty years; and I venture to affirm that no one who is qualified to give an opinion on the subject, would dare to risk his reputation on the statement that the Westminster divines ever thought the original manuscripts of the Bible were distinct from the copies in their possession (underline mine).

by Frank Turk

See: I like Kent’s questions in spite of their insinuations that brief, clear answers of only a few sentences are somehow evasive.

What is utterly fascinating about this current question is that Kent wants to imply that unless all the words are present, none of the words are validly considered God’s word — so for Kent, only the words which, for example, Luke wrote down when he scribed the phrase “Epeideper polloi epeceiresan avataxasthai diegesin peri ton peplerophoremenon ev hemin pragmaton” [my note:  English transliteration of Luke 1:1 in the Greek New Testament] (that’s Luke 1:1 as we account for it) can be God’s word.

Or can it? Because Luke 1:1 in the KJV reads, “Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us,” including the comma, which indicates that Luke 1:1 is not a complete sentence. Apparently, words are missing from that sentence — so citing that verse by itself, if we are to take Kent seriously in his argument so far, is not citing God’s word, but corrupting it.

Worse still for Kent is the gross problem that the phrase “Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us” is not what Luke wrote back in the day: that’s a translation of what Luke wrote. Since these are not the words that Luke wrote, they must be a corruption of the text.

And I say this because, frankly, I have met many ex-KJV guys who would say so — because they believe that since the KJV is not the original manuscript but some kind of transmitted text, it can’t be God’s word. It’s a common ploy for these men, who are usually atheists, to try to discredit the Scripture because it comes in translation. How can we possibly know those words are right?

So we have to decide something up front: is translation a legitimate pursuit when it comes to Scripture? The Muslim, for example, would say “no”. You can read the Qu’ran in English, but that’s not Scripture. But the clear fact is that the KJV translators believed that translation is a legitimate pursuit for the church of the text for the sake of the common man.

For those men, translation was in fact a necessary duty of the church in order to teach the Scripture — even if the words of the Greek and Hebrew were not perfectly handled.

Now, here’s the kicker — the place where we can answer Kent’s question without any stipulations. Is the question of translation a matter of making sure the right number of words are being used? In the example of Luke 1:1, Luke wrote 11 words — yet in English, the phrase is translated using 24 words! If what is at stake is that the very words must be transliterated, I propose that we must conclude that Scripture has been utterly adulterated by the KJV translators, and we must abandon that work because it uses more words than Luke did in Luke 1:1.

But that proposition is ludicrous on its face — because even the most novice of Bible students knows that New Testament Greek is a very different language than Renaissance English. Verbs are formed differently; tenses are built in a different grammatical way; Nouns operate differently; sentence structure is very different. It is inevitable that translating from Greek to English will render different words. That is actually the point of the exercise.

In that, it is transparently clear that any text is more than just a list of words. The text uses structures like idioms and metaphors to express meaning not evident in the mere words — and in many cases, those sorts of structures have to be handled carefully and not merely in a wooden literal sense by the translator to convey the meaning of the author.

So to answer Kent’s question plainly:

I reject the idea that Scripture is merely a list of words in a magical order which, when recited, somehow has an effect which one might call “perfection”. While we honor and revere the fact that God breathed out the very words of Scripture, I deny that the words, considered individually, are somehow so fragile that human operations like listening, reading, copying, translating or memorizing — which inevitably make errors in transmitting these words — will somehow invalidate what God has intended in this special revelation.

If that’s too complicated for Kent to receive as an answer, I’ll softball him this answer instead:

Because we receive the NT in translation (for example, in the KJV), we must insist that the perfection of Scripture today is found in the message and not the words. The words in which we receive Scripture (that is, English words) were never written by an apostle or prophet.

Since I have some, um, words left, let me reiterate my answers so far:
[1] God’s promises to preserve His word do not include any grammatical or scribal promises.

[2] Scripture is not merely “evidence” but in fact “testimony” — God’s revelation of Truth. Because of where those texts come from — not because of the words or the languages used — that testimony is not merely a report of truth: it is the authoritative statement of the truth.

[3] The text itself is not so fragile that it must be received as the original autograph; like any text, and as clearly affirmed by Turrentin, “an authentic writing is one in which all things are abundantly sufficient to inspire confidence”. This would include scribal copies of autographs which are not identical to the autographs and valid translations.

Here’s another Turretin quote:

Conformity to the original is different from equality. Any version (provided it is faithful) is indeed conformable to the original because the same doctrine as to substance is set forth there. But it is not on that account equal to it because it is only a human and not a divine method of setting it forth.  [underline supplied by Mr. Turk]

Although any version made by fallible men cannot be considered divine and infallible with respect to the terms, yet it can well be considered such with respect to the things, since it faithfully expresses the divine truth of the sources even as the word which the minister of the gospel preaches does not cease to be divine and infallible and to establish our faith, although it may be expressed by him in human words. Thus faith depends not on the authority of the interpreter or minister, but is built upon the truth and authenticity (authentia) of the things contained in the versions. 

Turrentin said this about translations into common languages.


Why can we not apply what Turrentin said here about translation and apply it to the human method of copying the text by hand? That is, why is this true for the more difficult work of translation, but not the less difficult work of scribal copyists? 

The excerpt above is from Wilhelmus a Brakel’s 4 volume systematic theology called The Christian’s Reasonable Service, which has been made available in an indexed form online. 

Part One, Part Two

Relationship originates with God.  He is the source and the explication or definer of relationship.  Relationship is what God both says it is and what it should be.  What matters is what God knows about relationship, not what someone thinks about it.  He has missed it if he is happy with his relationship, but God isn’t.  It isn’t about a person’s happiness, but about his pleasing God.

Threats to True, Biblical Relationship

If a person goes through a short 70-100 year life, less or more, and he doesn’t please God with relationship, then he has failed.  The eternal relationship with God supersedes all other relationship.  No relationship with a person can be right if, first, he doesn’t have a right relationship with God, and, second, if his relationship with people isn’t what God wants.  Someone might like either his relationship with God or with people, and yet God doesn’t like it. The first concern for anyone is who he is attempting to please with his relationship.

A second threat to relationship comes from how someone either informs or judges relationship.  Almost everyone judges relationship today based on what he likes and wants.  Then some conform the Bible to what they want as a means of justification of what they want.  Just because someone likes his relationships and they make him feel good doesn’t mean that God likes them.

“Relationship” Churches in Evangelicalism Fooling the Young

In the introduction to part one, I talked about how evangelicals today use relationship to pander to people.  They tolerate and even laud a wrong relationship that might please their devotees or demographic targets.  This audience becomes a victim of a ploy.  The apostle Peter portrays their method in 2 Peter 2:3:  “through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you.”  They are using “relationship” as part of a sham.

“Relationship” churches offer unscriptural relationship under the guise of biblical relationship.  People want relationship.  This is part of being made in the image of God.  Everyone has a vacuum, an innate emptiness, without relationship.  If it is filled with God, actual God, the only God, the absence of human relationship can be endured.  However, these churches use that desire, and the people who want to get that kind of a relationship are actually just getting gotten, taken advantage of by people.

The fraudulent relationship isn’t tested by scripture.  Testing the relationship is what isn’t acceptable.  It’s a “good” relationship because the adherents like the relationship.  It please them.  Relationship itself becomes the goal, having one, one that pleases those in the relationship.  They both like what they get from it.  It isn’t based on the Bible.  When someone does apply the Bible, that is what becomes the problem then with and for the relationship.

The churches that emphasize this “relationship” create opportunities or forums for “relationship.”  There is a Christian cloak to it all, to justify its existence, but the lure is the music and recreation and entertainment that the target audience would like.   “Love,” not a biblical love, is getting together and enjoying the same thing without judgment.  Everyone is tolerated and they all feel good because of it.  The feeling is assumed to be the Holy Spirit.  These churches strategically say their opposition cares more about rules than relationship.  God had rules for Cain when Cain wanted a relationship.  He resented God for it.  Rules are an enemy of this kind of relationship.

Tolerance in relationship has grown exponentially in “evangelical” churches. Dress how you want.  Dancing.  Even cursing.  The Bible doesn’t forbid a four letter word.  The saltiness in speech is just someone being genuine, not attempting to put on airs, as a modern Pharisee might.  The movement provides an ecstatic spiritual experience like what the Corinthians enjoyed.  More than anything, don’t judge.  Don’t give anyone disapproval.  What is not tolerated is disapproval, because that is poison to “relationship.”  God wants relationship, so the poison to the relationship, disapproval, must be rejected.

Evangelicals have deconstructed relationship like the postmoderns.  They’ve taken the terms and redefined them.  “Light” is no longer holiness or purity, obedience to scripture, but a kind of honesty about what’s really bothering you.  Sharing what’s a burden or a problem.  Someone might be judging you for doing something the Bible doesn’t forbid, like watching Game of Thrones.  These restrictions are just the painted on spirituality of hypocrites.  Authenticity is light.  This is a form of liberalism, where terms like “light” are allegorized, subjective and a-historical.  It’s actually what the cults do and the basis of new, false religions.

Social networking is perfect for faux relationship.  No one lasts online by rebuking bad behavior.  The only bad behavior is intolerance.  It’s all positive all the time.  It’s easy to join and keep racking up followers or supporters if you don’t judge anything they do, again, except the intolerance of those who point out something sinful and admonish it.

The relationship strategy is akin to a gym, which welcomes fat people and offers them pizza.  By creating a no judgment zone.  No one needs to improve or even work up a sweat.  Many of the same characters who appreciate the “relationship” churches would think those gyms are a joke.  When a worldview is wrong, it’s always full of contradictions like these.

“I love you” doesn’t really mean, “I love you.”  It means, I accept you like you are.  You don’t need to change.  You’re fine like you are.  Love rejoices in the truth and rejoices not in iniquity.  It speaks the truth.  The “relationship” church says, love casts out fear.  They don’t mean what the verse in 1 John means.  They mean that “relationship” means no fear, especially not the fear of authority, proceeding from God.  The fear of 1 John, the apostle John, the apostle of love, is the fear of the world.  If you love God, you’ll do right, even with the threat of the world, because you love God.  His commandments won’t be burdensome to you (1 John 5:3).  The “relationship” church says, you shouldn’t have to fear intolerance of your bad behavior.  Their teaching is a total perversion which is part of the perverted “love” of these “relationship” churches. The person who really loves you won’t approve of your sin and might bring fearsome confrontation, like God did on Mt. Sinai, because he loved Israel.

The Allure of “Relationship” Churches

What I’ve been describing constitutes a large and growing number of professing churches today.  They are especially sucking up millennials and gen-Zers who once attended more historical Bible believing and practicing churches.  There are a number of factors, as I see it, some far more negative than others.

First, young people want acceptance from their peers.  They don’t like the feelings of rejection from the world, which is worse than ever for biblical Christianity.  These “relationship” churches offer them what they want, the no judgment zone. Their own former churches are old and square, full of people who don’t really “get it.”  Very often these young people have to trash and scorched-earth those churches, their former churches, to justify moving ahead.  Most of them will regret it later.  The relationship churches encourage it.  Guiding others to reject historical Christianity, their old churches, they call spiritual help, which poses as helping others see the “light” (the Freudian light as described above).

Second, some of the young people that have flocked to the “relationship” churches also very often weren’t seeing much occur in their own church, perhaps were not being grounded scripturally, and they were getting a hard time from their parents and other authority in the church, often a combination of all three.  Parents may have “pushed them away” with some regrettable carnal weaponry, out of frustration and some anger.  The “relationship” church gives approval and “respect.”  It isn’t actual respect, because that requires a hierarchy that starts with the true God.  If the relationship was about God, it would be careful with scripture and care greatly about what God said about everything.

Relationship with Parents Forsaken

What is ironic for “relationship” people in their “relationship” churches is a bad relationship with parents, parents who want to reconcile with them.  In the second table of the law, the primary relationship is with parents.  Honor thy Father and thy Mother.  If you are not honoring your parents, then your relationship stinks.  You may think that your parents aren’t so hot.  That is typical of a lot of millennials and gen-Zers, who put respect of themselves above all others, and listen almost exclusively, like the very failed Rehoboam, to either people their age who approve of them or people a little older who are using them by giving them the approval they crave.  They are making merchandise of them, perhaps justifying their own view of the world by gaining a coalition of adherents (people who will drink their koolaid).

Read Proverbs and its agreement with the foundational relationship of parents to children.  Today’s generation of young people had a lot of expectation of parents, desirous of parents who will please them as children.  Likely the parents have sacrificed a lot for the children, even if they haven’t been the best parents.  They’ve not done more than God, but what have the children done for the parents?  And scripture doesn’t require much of the parents except to raise children to follow the Lord, to attempt to make them and help them to do right.  The requirement in the ten commandments is for the children to honor their parents, not vice versa, but children today act like the command is the reverse.  These are the most fruitful target audience of “relationship” churches.

It should be tell-tale to anyone with discernment, the control of the Holy Spirit or scripture, that churches that encourage conflict with Christian parents are false.  These relationship churches feed the discontent of the young to divide them from their parents.  The goal should be reconciliation and biblical relationship — honor thy father and thy mother.  Whatever gap in communication between parents and children should be mediated, giving a hearing to both the child and the mom and dad.  It is no kind of Christian counseling that excludes the parents and especially listens solely to a young person with no hearing of his parents.

In the last days, men shall be lovers of themselves and disobedient to parents.  This describes the era in which we live.  If you still claim to be a Christian, you should consider that, because that can’t be you if you are saved.  If it is you, then like Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 13:5, you should examine yourself whether you are in the faith.

Every person will stand before God and God will judge his relationship.  God is judging relationships.  Someone might have relationships and like them.  In the end, what matters is whether God was pleased by them.

To come back to my point.  Relationship proceeds from what scripture says about relationship.  It must be the authority for relationship.  It wasn’t with Adam in the garden, so he abdicated headship and Eve did what she wanted.  The relationship between man and woman became cursed.  The only way back is still a biblical way.  That’s what I want to write about relationship as we move forward in this series.  This Bible contains massive amounts of material about relationship and if relationship doesn’t conform to that, it isn’t relationship at all.

To Be Continued

Part 1

Happiness isn’t the goal in life and relationships don’t guarantee happiness.  I’m not saying that relationships aren’t important.  One can argue, and I said this in part one, that we are created by God for relationship — first with Him and then with one another.  We should explore what scripture says about relationship to learn what God wants with it.

God said that it was not good that man should be alone, but relationship is also fraught with possible pitfalls.  All relationship starts with God.  God commanded Adam and Eve not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  God commanded that.  That was God’s relationship with Adam and Eve.  They didn’t obey that command and we know that his and her relationship with each other influenced that.  Later Jesus said in Luke 14:26, “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.”  The relationship with God must supersede all other relationship.

The English word “relationship” isn’t in the Bible.  “Fellowship” is the biblical term, which is helpful here.  Fellowship is not about “getting along.”  Most people do fine in relationships when they get approval and acceptance.  Ephesians 5:11 says, “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.”  If you walk in the light as God is in the light (cf. 1 John 1:7), you don’t have fellowship with darkness.  I have seen relationship become the operative word so that fellowship continues with darkness.  Someone wants to be “happy,” so he continues a relationship with darkness.

The Greek word translated “fellowship” sometimes is translated “communion.”  Paul asks in 2 Corinthians 6:14, “what communion hath light with darkness?”  The assumed answer is “none.”  Actual fellowship isn’t happening for light with darkness.  Light and darkness are mutually exclusive.  Only light has fellowship (communion).

Regarding happiness, what Jordan Peterson said in a recent interview represents why he has been so wildly popular since the recent broad discovery of him:

It’s all very well to think the meaning of life is happiness, but what happens when you’re unhappy? Happiness is a great side effect. When it comes, accept it gratefully. But it’s fleeting and unpredictable. It’s not something to aim at – because it’s not an aim. And if happiness is the purpose of life, what happens when you’re unhappy? Then you’re a failure. And perhaps a suicidal failure. Happiness is like cotton candy. It’s just not going to do the job.

In his book, 12 Rules for Life, he writes this:

To treat yourself as if you were someone you were responsible for helping is, instead, to consider what would be truly good for you.  This is not “what you want.”  It is also not “what would make you happy.”  Every time you give a child something sweet, you make that child happy.  That does not mean that you should do nothing for children except feed them candy.  “Happy” is by no means synonymous with “good.”  You must get children to brush their teeth.  They must put on their snowsuits when they go outside in the cold, even though they might object strenuously.  You must help a child become a virtuous, responsible, awake, being capable of full reciprocity — able to take care of himself and others, and to thrive while doing so.  Why would think it acceptable to do anything less for yourself?

People say relationship is most important to happiness, but parents who are living with children score low on happiness.  Raising children decreases the happiness of parents.  Americans are having fewer children.   Polls show people are less happy with marriage and less are getting married.  Biblical marriage and parenting require unhappiness.  A child isn’t going to be happy when his parents don’t like what he did.  Christ loves the church by sanctifying and cleansing it (Eph 5:25-26).   That’s an example of the husband and wife relationship, which very often isn’t happy.

Ephesians 6:1 commands, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right,” not “for this will make you happy.”  Happiness is a byproduct, but it isn’t a goal, and it’s only a byproduct for people with the right goal.  If the goal is obedience, and you’re obedient, then you’ll be happy, like Jesus said in John 13:17, “If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.”

In Cain’s relationship with God, he wasn’t happy when God disrespected his offering.  He “was very wroth, and his countenance fell” (Genesis 4:5).  He wasn’t getting what he wanted and rather than adapt to what God said, He resented what God said and out of resentment, killed his brother.

The instinct toward relationship is good.  Relationship exists eternally in the Godhead.  God created man in His image.  God wants relationship between men like He has in the Godhead.  The Bible explains very clearly what that relationship is.

To Be Continued