On a fundamentalist blog comment thread, someone wrote this:

One set of words in one set order is the Bible.

Only one book is one set of words in one set order.

Therefore, the Bible is only one book.

All M is P,

All S is M,

Therefore, All S is P.

All men are mortal.

All Greeks are men.

Therefore, all Greeks are mortal.

Recently I preached for 3-4 years on Sunday mornings through the book of Isaiah. As I went through that monumental book of all human history, I got a feel for the problems that men have with God. What we read there can serve as a microcosm for men of all eras. A major issue for Israel in the book and for all mankind before and after has been the lengthy periods of divine silence. Israel had been surrounded by enemy nations seeming intent on her destruction. And she was not hearing from God. During those times, she looked around for another means to assure her. Of course, God wasn’t silent. He was speaking. They weren’t listening.

God has proven His faithfulness in the past, spanning two millennia. He formed Israel, grew her, and protected her. She was the apple of His eye. To do so, God often did what no one but He could do. He acted in a way that connected the past with the present, the present with the future, and the future with the past. God showed that He was working all things together for His glory.

After the contents of most of the first half of Isaiah, hearing and reading God’s destruction of Israel’s enemies, especially Assyria, Israel could find satisfaction that God had indeed done what she desired for her protection. She could feel safe. But at the end of the first half of the book, God introduces a new problem for Israel—Babylon. The second half of Isaiah answers the question posed by the presentation of this new enemy and her thoughts of a precarious future.

The Evidence of God

To comfort the hearts of His people, so that they would wait on Him, God presented evidence of His care and concern to them. This evidence would indicate that God was working during these periods they thought were silent. Sometimes men want more than what God has to offer, even though God gives men far more than what they deserve. God wants men to take Him into serious consideration in His credentials as God, even to make comparison with other potential gods that might be deserving of equal credit with Him. In Isaiah 41:17-20 God describes what He does that sets Him apart from all others:

17 When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I the LORD will hear them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them. 18 I will open rivers in high places, and fountains in the midst of the valleys: I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water. 19 I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, the shittah tree, and the myrtle, and the oil tree; I will set in the desert the fir tree, and the pine, and the box tree together: 20 That they may see, and know, and consider, and understand together, that the hand of the LORD hath done this, and the Holy One of Israel hath created it.

You may have skipped the text itself to get here. Go back and read it. The Lord does things about the needs of men. He alone can break into man’s box of space and time and rescue, because He alone stands non-contingent from the frailty and futility of an unredeemed universe. But God does invade this dimension to save. In doing so, He wants me to see His goodness and uniqueness, that there is none like Him and that He did create earth and men. This obviously wasn’t enough for many, if not most. They needed God to do more. God out of His mercy puts Himself to other possible gods in a contest, beginning in v. 21:

21 Produce your cause, saith the LORD; bring forth your strong reasons, saith the King of Jacob. 22 Let them bring them forth, and shew us what shall happen: let them shew the former things, what they be, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare us things for to come. 23 Shew the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods: yea, do good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold it together.

Again, make sure you read the verses. God asks for evidence and if He gets it, He will know that they are gods. He would give them credit if they could produce God-like proof. The evidence He asks for is prophetic. He wants these to show what will happen and how the things in the past relate to those things that will take place in the future. He wants that from them, because this is something God can do. Surely if one is god, it could do the same. Of course, these predictions would be about things that a god itself would be able to then follow through and make happen. God asks for something good or evil (in essence, nasty), that will blow everyone away, something that no one could miss. God not only predicts, but predicts events that are beyond human comprehension. He can do those types of acts. The assumption in v. 24 is that they could not produce such evidence:

Behold, ye are of nothing, and your work of nought: an abomination is he that chooseth you.

They couldn’t fulfill such criteria and win this contest, because they were nothing. They were not gods at all. Because of that, God says that those who choose them are an abomination. However, God could produce evidence, and at the end of chapter 41, beginning in v. 25, He makes a prophecy Himself to show that He had that ability. You can read the prophecy there to the end of the chapter.

God’s Words Are Evidence

So what God is saying is that He backs up what He says by fulfilling what He says that He will do. He can do that because He is God. That is a basis for believing in Him. If He says He will do something, He will do it. He providentially works. We look for Him working, even if He hasn’t announced how it is He is accomplishing what He promised.

Now sometimes God will say He is doing something or that He will do something and the evidence is not quite so evident. God still wants to be believed. Why? Because His Words themselves are evidence. If God says it, it counts as though it has already happened. This is the way that we place faith in Him. It doesn’t please God when we don’t believe what He said. We can see in several places in scripture that He is angered by those who need signs or some other tangible means to indicate the reality of what He has promised.

The history of God’s people is a chronicle that is peppered with men who acted on God’s promises and believed based upon Who He said He was and upon what He said He would do. He is pleased by that faith. He is not pleased when men require something more than that. This is not how He has chosen to operate, that is, where men keep requiring external evidence, over and above God’s promises.

Many of the truths that God expects us to believe, we have no means of believing except what He said. I’ve never seen resurrection. I’ve never seen ascension. I don’t know what God’s justification looks like. I don’t have the original manuscripts as a basis for checking on the copies to see if He actually did preserve the Words like He said He would.

Going door-to-door last week, I had a Roman Catholic who told me that he would take my King James Version and throw it in the fire. It wasn’t the Bible. Why? It didn’t have all of the books. It should include the apocrypha. He believed the Douay-Rheims Version, which was translated from the Latin Vulgate, was the only acceptable Bible. So why only sixty-six books? Because those are what the church handed down to us. Believers accepted only those sixty-six, no more, no less, even though God didn’t tell us what their names were. They received those books, therefore, they were His Words. God’s people receive His Words. That’s how they come to a knowledge of which ones are God’s.

God said He would guide His children into all truth. We assume that they would have accepted and then made copies of the apocrypha if those were legitimate books of scripture. Instead we think that those are imposters based upon the testimony of believers. Those books, besides containing error, maybe not enough to reject the gospel or Christ (but error nonetheless), also were not recognized by God’s people as the books of Scripture. Only sixty-six were recognized as such.

God Fulfills His Promises

The Holy Spirit works through righteous men for agreement upon what His Words are. They unify around truth. They believe He has preserved every Word. They believe that all the Words are accessible so that none that are not accessible could be His Words. They know of copying errors. They know of variants between manuscripts. But they believe that God’s promises override those issues—that what mistake may be made in one copy is corrected by another. This was established and settled in the sixteenth century. This is what men of God believed.

During the nineteenth century men left this standard based upon scripture. As part of the new enlightenment thinking, they were convinced that those promises weren’t good enough. The text received by the churches, led by the Spirit of God, based upon the promises of God, needed to be exposed to the correction of man’s reasoning. What God said, connecting the past with the present and the present with the future, that wasn’t good enough. And so rather than bow to the Bible as found in those promises, men submitted the Bible their own reasoning. Responding to promises was not good enough any more.

Are God’s promises evidence? Can we count on His providential working in history? When Israel couldn’t see what God was doing, she went out looking for her own solutions to give herself her own assurance. It was during those times especially that God wanted her to understand that He was working, accomplishing His will just as He said. And especially as it applies to His Holy Word, we should not question it or determine it based on man’s reasoning bereft of scriptural doctrine. We should trust that God would do what He said He would do. He did it in the past, so He can do it in the future too.

Does God do what He says He will do? Yes He does. And the just shall live by faith.

I was in a hotel in southern California last week and the USA Today newspaper showed up in the hallway in front of the door to my room. I paged through it until I got to an article in the opinion section, entitled Fightin’ Words. It was a positive review of Bart Ehrman’s book Jesus, Interrupted. I’m settled that Ehrman is scourge of the earth. What most sealed that for me in this column was this quote:

Ehrman’s central message is that the New Testament is a human book, written by different people in different situations with different audiences and different objectives. Is this a bid to disabuse believers of their Christianity? Absolutely not, Ehrman says.

What a bold-faced lie. He knows exactly what he’s doing. That’s all that he wants to do, that is, pull people away from Christianity, well, besides making money and being the beloved pseudo-scholar of the atheist and Islamic. He more than others, because of his background in evangelicalism, understands that he is trying to get people to forsake Christ. I’m thinking that his chair at UNC motivates him to say he isn’t trying to get people (college kids) to leave Christianity (that would be a separation of church and state issue too, wouldn’t it?).

With all that being said, a recent debate between James White and Bart Ehrman revealed only minutiae of differences between the two in their approach to the preservation of Scripture—they both have about the same view. They differ greatly as to the conclusions to be made, but their differences on preservation itself aren’t much. James White and Daniel Wallace are about the same too and here’s what Daniel Wallace said in an interview about textual criticism:

I have quite a few heroes! Colwell for his method; Metzger for his learning and insights; Fee for his ability to burst bubbles with data; Tischendorf for his dogged determination in search of manuscripts; Kurt Aland for his vision for INTF; Jerome and Origen for their handling of the textual variants in the pursuit of truth; Sturz for his humility. The list is endless, frankly. I could add Michael Holmes, Bart Ehrman, . . . .

Bart Ehrman is a hero to Wallace. He said it. There are some strong similarities between Ehrman and Wallace. Ehrman assumes the Bible must not be true if God promised preservation, because he’s looked at the evidence and that ruins everything about Christianity for him. Wallace has also shaped his view of inerrancy around evidence. Ehrman kept what he thought Scripture said, looked at evidence, and apostatized his beliefs completely. Wallace looked at evidence and then changed what he believed about Scripture. Both have allowed evidence to alter their beliefs. Wallace has said:

Up until the last few years, I would say—and have said—that the practice of textual criticism neither needs nor deserves any theological presuppositions. For example, I am not convinced that the Bible speaks of its own preservation. . . . As for the broader realm of the integration of theology and scholarship, . . . sometimes that pursuit seems to be in conflict with bibliology. My own views on inerrancy and inspiration have changed over the years. I still embrace those doctrines, but I don’t define them the way I used to. The evidence has shaped my viewpoint . . . . What I tell my students every year is that it is imperative that they pursue truth rather than protect their presuppositions. . . . When they place more peripheral doctrines such as inerrancy and verbal inspiration at the core, then when belief in these doctrines start to erode, it creates a domino effect: One falls down, they all fall down. . . . The irony is that those who frontload their critical investigation of the text of the Bible with bibliological presuppositions often speak of a ‘slippery slope’ on which all theological convictions are tied to inerrancy. Their view is that if inerrancy goes, everything else begins to erode. I would say that if inerrancy is elevated to the status of a prime doctrine, that’s when one gets on a slippery slope.

Since Wallace starts with evidence, which is in his case the textual variants and then the theories that he believes in, he submits his view of preservation and inerrancy to evidence to arrive at what he believes about the perfection of Scripture. He suggests that in order not to push the eject button on Christianity like Ehrman, everyone should dumb down their doctrine so as to spare themselves the falling away from the Christian faith, essentially adjusting Christian doctrine to external evidence.

What Wallace has done isn’t anything different than what Benjamin Warfield did to come to his view of an old earth and a day-age creation account. He also revised the meaning of the Westminster Confession because of similar concerns as those communicated above by Wallace. Warfield was also afraid that once men saw variants, they would sort of freak out theologically and not hang on any longer to what they believed. Warfield also had history to deal with, so like is often the case with modern historians, he revised the history of the doctrine of preservation and extrapolated new beliefs for the reformers and the post-reformation divines. We call this revisionist history (sometimes also called politically correct history). Now Warfield’s belief, altered by evidence, also had a “history.” D. G. Hart and John R. Muether write:

For a variety of historical reasons American Presbyterians throughout the nineteenth century were fully committed to the Enlightenment and scientific methods as the surest means for arriving at truth. Though still believing in the authority of Scripture, the best—or at least the most widely accepted—way of demonstrating the truth of the Bible was by appealing to reason and Scripture’s harmony with nature and the self-evident truths of human experience. Even though the Presbyterian theologians who taught at Princeton Seminary, such as Charles Hodge and Benjamin B. Warfield, believed in and defended the sinfulness of man, including human reason, their fundamental acceptance of the Enlightenment also produced apologetics that in many cases deemed the mind to be a reliable and authoritative guide to truth, including the truths of the Bible.

What Presuppositions?

James White in his debate with Ehrman decries Ehrman’s unbelieving presuppositions. The USA Today article makes mention of this:

One of Ehrman’s chief critics is the theologian and author James White, a leading practitioner of apologetics, the branch of theology devoted to defending and proving the orthodox faith. White denounces Ehrman as an apostate guided by deep anti-Christian bias. He charges in one Internet post that Ehrman has “moved far beyond the realm of his narrow expertise in his last three most popular books, all of which are designed to do one thing: destroy Christian faith.”

This was White’s biggest point in the debate. It was really all he had to debate, since they were both in such agreement on textual criticism. The key phrase from White in USA Today is “an apostate guided by deep anti-Christian bias.” He is saying that Ehrman shouldn’t be guided by theological bias in his view of the text. White and Wallace would say that they don’t have a theological bias at all, only Ehrman. I again point you to these words from Daniel Wallace:

Evangelicals tend to allow their doctrinal convictions to guide their research. It is better to not the left hand know what the right hand is doing: methodologically, investigate with as objective a mind as possible, allowing the evidence to lead where it will.

Wallace’s statement agrees with the idea of not having a theological bias in our approach to the text. Of course, this isn’t the historic position, the one recorded in the Westminster Confession and London Baptist Confession, but it is the view of textual critics. The biblical and historic Christian approach to the preservation of scripture, and, therefore, the identity of the New Testament text, has been guided by biblical presuppositions, so a presuppositional epistemology.

Bart Ehrman, even by testimony of White and Wallace, is one of the foremost textual critics in the world. Ehrman comes to his conclusions through evidence. Since they themselves do not rely on scriptural presuppositions, White and Wallace must rely on evidence to overturn Ehrman. Credentials are an important factor in modern textual criticism. White and Wallace aren’t as credentialed as Ehrman. That hurts any argument they make in a world that depends on credentials.

White and Wallace live and die by textual criticism, since they both hang on it so absolutely. Textual criticism, as a science, turns and shifts. New discoveries and then conclusions are made. Consensus is reached in the scientific community. We can see a new kind of paradigm being reached in the textual criticism world. The outstanding textual critics seem to be splitting from the evangelicals. It is obvious that something is driving this, and based on what White has plainly said and Wallace has intimated, it is their theological presuppositions that seem to be causing the split.

If one is guided by theological presuppositions, then those must be what we see in scripture. Wallace has done a couple of things to make sure that his textual criticism and his beliefs are compatible. First was this:

I am not convinced that the Bible speaks of its own preservation.

If you have a hard time believing your eyes, then consider what Detroit Baptist Theological professor, William Combs, wrote about Wallace’s position on preservation:

In an article entitled “Inspiration, Preservation, and New Testament Textual Criticism,” by Daniel B. Wallace, we find what is apparently the first definitive, systematic denial of a doctrine of preservation of Scripture.

But what is the epistemology of William Combs? Notice what he wrote as a comment to someone asking him about Matthew 5:18 and his approach to its interpretation:

I think perhaps you are correct–Matt 5:18 probably does deserve more attention than I gave it in the article. . . . As far as it being a hyperbole, I also cited Robert Stein in support, and there may be others, but I can’t remember. But I wonder how it could be anything else but hyperbole? Taken literally, it would seem to demand perfect preservation, which, of course, the evidence flatly refutes.

Even if the Bible does teach perfect preservation (which it does), Combs isn’t going to believe it, because “the evidence flatly refutes” it. Do you see how he is willing to make his interpretation of Scripture depend on external evidence? This is not presuppositionalism. It is the equivalent of Thomas not believing in the bodily resurrection until he could physically touch Jesus. Whatsoever is not of faith is sin (Romans 14:23).

We see Wallace go to a brand new “Christological-incarnational based” approach to the text, which is very difficult to understand and is a brand new doctrine. Wallace has said:

As for the broader realm of the integration of theology and scholarship, I would fundamentally disagree with Michael Fox’s definition of faith as having nothing to do with evidence. Genuine Christian faith is a step, not a leap. The driving force in my pursuit of truth is the Incarnation. Unfortunately, too many evangelicals make Christology the handmaiden of bibliology, rather than the other way around. But the Incarnation requests us and even requires us to investigate the data. And sometimes that pursuit seems to be in conflict with bibliology. My own views on inerrancy and inspiration have changed over the years. I still embrace those doctrines, but I don’t define them the way I used to. The evidence has shaped my viewpoint; and I must listen to the evidence because of the Incarnation.

Maybe you have a hard time wrapping your brain around that too. Shouldn’t evangelicalism be questioning this new position? I wonder why we don’t see other evangelicals criticizing something that has no historic basis, and I speculate it is the evangelical credentials of Wallace that are the reason.

On the other hand, White just attacks Ehrman’s anti-theological bias without mentioning that he himself has his own bias. Why? Textual critics aren’t supposed to have theological bias. It’s a science. You can see the problem. Do we have theological presuppositions or do we not? Of course we are supposed to and they are the basis for what we believe about preservation of the Bible and, therefore, the text.

Integrationism

One word that stuck out to me in Wallace’s quote was the word “integration.” It is quite fitting for him, “the integration of theology and scholarship.” Integrationism is a big problem in evangelicalism. Normally when we think of integrationism, we think of the integration of the “science” of psychology with biblical counseling. This is the new Christian psychology. The critique of this would be the same as for Wallace’s integrationism. He mixes his science of textual criticism with biblical doctrine. We will corrupt the Bible, in this case the teaching of God’s Word and its text, when we practice this integration. And this all relates to epistemology. Can we trust man’s observations in either of these fields? The consequence as related to the text of Scripture is a lack of certainty in the text of God’s Word.

In integrationism, there is an attempt to find truth in two places: in God’s revelation and in human observations. Often this act is justified by a misused mantra from history: “All truth is God’s truth.” This raises the level of man’s observations to “truth,” the same authority as scripture. Nowhere in the Bible do we see science to have a role in enhancing what God has said. We have no scriptural model for submitting the truth of Scripture to man’s findings or discoveries. Man’s discoveries do not even rise to the level of general revelation, let alone the truth of Scripture. By nature man doesn’t discover something that is authoritative.

Examining the Explanations

Examination of the explanations of Ehrman and White (Wallace would be like White) indicate the failure of being able to make a significant point of certainty about the text of scripture by means of evidence. I’ve been watching this closely and let me tell you what’s happening. To start, everyone knows that we have no original mansuscripts, so we’re all depending on copies for the preservation of God’s Words.

Both sides, White and Ehrman agree that the earliest even fragment of a hand-written copy of Mark dates to around AD 220, called P45, only eight chapters of the gospel of Mark. If Mark was completed as late as AD 70, P45 is 150 years after its original writing. P45 might be six generations of manuscripts after the original.

Both also believe that the worst copying and the greatest errors came into the earliest manuscripts. The explanation is that the copyists were not trained as scribes and neither did they have the right conditions for copying like men did three hundred years later, when scriptoriums were built. Therefore, the most errors came into copies in those early years. This theory is backed up by a comparison of the two oldest manuscripts of the New Testament, Vaticanus (AD 300) and Sinaiticus (AD 350). Those two manuscripts differ in thousands of places and yet they provide the primary basis for almost all of the modern versions of scripture. There are as many differences between them as there are verses in the New Testament. Despite the fact that most of the mistakes were made early on, according to their theories, they say that still means that the oldest manuscripts are the best, because more years equals more errors. Period. They speculate that the Byzantine manuscripts, those that are the basis for the textus receptus, come from one copy that dates around the same time as Vaticanus and Sinaiticus in a different family or line of manuscripts.

Since we don’t have the original manuscripts, we don’t know how much different the copies are from the originals. Hypothetically, they could be vastly different. We don’t have the evidence to make that decision. But we are talking about one bad copy being made from another bad copy, which is made from another bad copy, and so on. Even by the time they were trained in copying and had good resources to accomplish the task well, they were starting from poor copies with unknown numbers of errors because a lot of bad stuff happening before anyone knew what he was doing.

All the textual critics believe in everything I’ve written so far. White’s theory for what happened next is that by looking at vast numbers of copies with similarities and at translations that match up with those manuscripts, we can extrapolate what the original text was enough to give us assurance that none of the doctrines of scripture are lost. So we look at copies that look similar, have most of the same words, and we get attestation from that of what the original words likely were.

Ehrman says “no.” He says that we can’t come to that conclusion. He contradicts that with a few points. He says that the similarities between copies just mean that they were made from the same manuscript and probably the same very corrupt manuscript. He also says that we’re talking about books that were copied based on a bias of those copying. They had a particular view of Jesus that they wanted to support with the words that they wrote down. Their understanding of Jesus may be different than what we might read in the originals if we had them. Therefore, we can’t be absolutely sure what was even the content in the original copies, let alone the words. On top of that, Ehrman would say that other books written at that time and refused by the churches will give a fuller texture and description of the people and times than what we see in only the apocryphal books.

White says that Ehrman gets his position based on his own “anti-Christian bias.” Ehrman says again, “No, I got it from looking at the evidence, allowing the evidence to lead me, like the evidence leads all major textual critics. And who are you to criticize me? What have you done and who do you know?” Ehrman says that the bulk of the experts agree with him, their all reaching the same conclusions the same way that he did. And, therefore, Ehrman means that White’s position is based upon White’s own bias to give more accreditation to the Bible, because he needs what the Bible says in order to support his faith.

When White says that Ehrman is wrong, he says that Ehrman is holding the Bible to a higher standard of preservation than he does other secular writings. He says that the Bible has more textual attestation than Tacitus for instance. Ehrman retorts that all textual critics hold their particular texts, whether secular or scriptural, in a great deal of doubt, so they shouldn’t handle the books of the New Testament any differently. Ehrman goes further in his writings by saying that we’re not even sure that the gospels themselves are the true version of Christ’s life, but just the ones that made it through the scrutiny of some very biased followers who wanted to keep His story alive to give them hope.

So between White and Ehrman you get two interpretations of the evidence. Ehrman says we really don’t know what exactly Jesus said because there are so many variations. Based on this, he gets the title of his book, Misquoting Jesus. White counters by saying that, based on earlier textual critics, who came to different conclusions than Ehrman, we should think that there is great textual attestation for the Bible, enough to say that at the bare minimum all the teachings are intact. Both of the views depend on the interpretation of the evidence by men, irregardless of doctrine or the Holy Spirit.

No matter which side you believe in the battle of the textual critics, you get a 150 year period that we have no evidence whatsoever, a time from the originals to the first fragment. Both sides say that we should assume lots of corruption. One side says that it could be amazing amounts of alteration. The other says that we should conclude that it is very little change in content. Both are relying on naturalistic, humanly-derived process and analysis, probably coming at it from a certain bias, but both not admitting that they do so.

How Certain Are They in Their Science?

I’m going to use Ehrman for this, because he would be the one between White and him, who would be the most sure about his methodology. He’s the expert. He’s the one who other experts have on speed dial. Consider these lines from Ehrman in Misquoting Jesus:

It appears (emphasis mine) that Erasmus relied heaviy on just one twelfth-century manuscript for the Gospels and another, also of the twelfth century, for the book of Acts and the Epistle—although he was able to consult several other manuscripts and make corrections based on their readings” (p. 78, this last part, saying that he consulted other manuscripts, is often left out).

All of these texts, however, relied more or less (emphasis mine) on the texts of their predecessors” (p. 79).

Erasmus’s edition princeps, which was based on some rather late, and not necessarily (emphasis mine) reliable, Greek manuscripts (p. 80).

It appears that someone copied out of the Greek text of the Epistles, and when he came to the passage in question, he translated the Latin text into the Greek (p. 82).

One of the reasons that someone must say “appears” and “necessarily” and “more or less,” as well as other qualifiers, is because he isn’t completely sure. First, we don’t have the originals, so based upon evidence, we can’t say that a certain wording isn’t in there. If we aren’t sure about a text that has thousands of copies, then how can we be sure about a history that has far less validation? As a basis for textual criticism, the textual critic must perform the function of erasing what was the text received by the churches in order to create the new text received by the scientists, based upon their theories. They do this by attempting to break down what Erasmus, Bezae, and Stephanus did in the sixteenth century.

Normally in a dialogue between textus receptus believers and critical text supporters, we get a pushing match over Erasmus versus Westcott and Hort. I think this happens mainly because of the critical text side. Why? The method used by men is what they depend upon to come to their conclusions. To establish how good their work is, they start by bashing Erasmus. In response to that, the textus receptus side often smacks around Westcott and Hort. Then you get a tit-for-tat walloping of both sides. In the end, Erasmus played with silly string and Westcott and Hort were demon worshipers. This is the textus receptus side arguing on the same terms as the critical text side. It’s not good.

I don’t think I’ve ever written in all of my work one critical word about Westcott and Hort. I don’t reject the critical text because of who Westcott and Hort were. I reject it because it doesn’t fit the presuppositions that we read in scripture. I believe God would do what He said He would do.

The bigger problems should be that the position of the textual critics doesn’t fit what God said about the preservation of His Word. Instead, we should believe what God said He would do, not what men speculate had happened. Faith is what pleases God. Since everyone is in different degrees of doubt based on evidence and since no one can prove what happened between AD 70 and 220 anyway, we trust in the Lord as our evidence. This includes the intangible witness of the Holy Spirit. His truth is good enough.

Until the latest fiasco of James White with Bart Ehrman, and then his actions right afterwards, I didn’t know him. I had seen him in some video and heard some audio, but very little besides that. I don’t see from where the loyalty to him comes. He’s got a lot of followers, it seems. Or at least a few that make a lot of noise. Their connection with him doesn’t speak well of them. He needs help. Real help. That’s what they should be offering.

Shortly after he lost his debate to Bart Ehrman, he went to full court defense mode. His photo could be next to “defensive” in the dictionary, because he defines it by what he says and how he says it. He sounds like the kid you grow up with in school that tries to get done with his test first, and when he does, he slaps down his pencil and then looks around and exhales out loud so that everyone will know he’s done and so he can see who is looking at him. He got started on this in the debate itself during his closing comments by blaming Ehrman’s position on postmodernism. These are not the words of someone who has been able to defeat a man’s arguments. It might be true that Ehrman was motivated by postmodernism, but in a debate that is supposed to be about textual evidence, it comes up lame. “He, he, he, he’s a, a, a postmodernist. So there!” And then he blames everyone except himself. It’s not his fault. It was Ehrman. Little did everyone know, but Ehrman changed the proposition two weeks before the debate. Ehrman didn’t understand me. The moon was in my eyes. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Now I see this is what White does. He goes into all out spin as soon as a debate ends, at least one like this that he lost. He declares victory—in the words of McDurmon, “he steamrolled” Ehrman. “And I, ahem, read and listened to everything that Ehrman wrote or uttered since he came from the womb. Just letting you know, not to brag on myself.” Then he judges motives. And finally attacks the person. Besides that, he spends an incredible amount of time praising himself, attempting to reconstruct what he said in the debate, to make it sound bigger and better than what it was. And he solicits pity for himself as if he is persecuted—with all the melodramatic sighs and voice inflections. I’ve heard people call him inimitable. I’ve seen people similar to him, so I don’t think it’s the case. He is a caricature of an apologist, so he’s only inimitable in that way.

I wrote a review of the debate. I thought it might be nice for my readers. White had enough on his hands just in debating Ehrman. But isn’t it nice that he also had time to spend two blogs and one internet webcast (his Dividing Line program) going after me, judging my motives and attacking my character? He called me a “bigot” and a “liar.” Not once does he deal with my criticisms of him in the debate. That was the best he could do, go after me. And he actually does understand that this strategy will be good enough with the people who listen to him. It works. What does that say about them? They like that about him, that he goes immediately for motives (“bigot”) and character (“liar”). Just the fact that he has so much spin control in play to spend this kind of time on my blog review tells you a little about his state of mind. I do not know what his followers see in him to exhibit so much allegiance.

He comes across like a snake oil salesman, a wandering minstrel. He’s got his truck and products, just a little more hi-tech. He possesses the necessary hubris to shamelessly self-promote, it seems, without any compunction. Except he deals with Scripture and against deniers of the faith. It’s an activity that we can applaud, but by a person who behaves with a smugness strangely contradictory to the task.

I’m going to do a couple of things with this post. First, I’m going to clear up the “bigot” and “liar” thing. Second, I’m going to list a few James White-isms to show you what I’m talking about above. I don’t think I need to illustrate to anyone who has limited abilities of observation, but I’m not going to take it for granted.

Name-Calling

The term “bigot” or “bigotry” is a slander as applied to me. Even based on the dictionary definition it doesn’t apply, but especially with the modern connotation of “bigotry.” Do you think that White went into the Ehrman debate with any prejudice based upon reading his books and listening to his audio? Of course, he did. I might know what White’s position is on the text, but I believe I had far less prejudice toward White than I did toward Ehrman. I’ve read two of Ehrman’s books. I’ve never read White’s. I wrote a short tease for my analysis of the debate, that Alan Kurschner went wild over. They would do well to look at the criticism and take it seriously. It’s hard to defend against prejudice because it is a judgment of one’s motives for giving a negative opinion. I can assure White that if I had any prejudice, it was toward Ehrman and I stated such in my announcement of the debate. Bigotry should not be a word that someone just throws around.

Lies

White calls me a liar twice, but he doesn’t evidence one lie by me. I’m going to document and enumerate all the lies that Kurschner and White said about me. One, On his Dividing Line program he said that I evidenced my detestation of Calvinism. I wrote: “I think it is White’s Calvinism—God wanted errors in the text because of the greater good there would be (something like that).” I said “White’s Calvinism.” I never said anywhere that I detested Calvinism. So that’s a lie. After that, he says that I lied. That is lie number two by him. His example of lying was this paragraph:

As sad as it could get in the debate, White couldn’t muster up a defense of the historic position on preservation as seen in the Westminster Confession and the London Baptist Confession. He couldn’t explain a scriptural position on preservation, perhaps because he doesn’t even know what one is. He hasn’t given it enough thought. He has been so busy reading Bart Ehrman and Dan Wallace and Bruce Metzger and Kurt and Barbra Aland that he hasn’t sorted through the passages in scripture on preservation and their historical understanding, reading Turretin and Owen and others.

What about that quote is a lie? He doesn’t say. He just says I lied. I said “perhaps he doesn’t know,” etc. That isn’t a lie. He didn’t give any presentation at all on preservation. He doesn’t mention it, even though he did bring up theology. Then he says that since he has written a book, the King James Version Controversy, that I should know that, especially since “I had printed lies about it.” I’ve not read White’s book. I’ve read several books on this issue, but not his. I’ve never printed one thing about his book. So that is lie number three.

I go to his blog on February 4, 2009 for lie number four. He says that KJV only people like me believe this: “We need a variantless text, no matter what the realities of history are.” I believe there are variants. I don’t believe that preservation means no variants. That also shows his ignorance of the historic position. He manifests it right there. The divines, Turretin and Owen, both believed there were variants as did all the other men who take the same position as I do.

Now let’s go to Alan Kurschner’s blog, titled “Kent Brandenburg’s Myopic King James Onlyism,” February 3, 2009. Before I get into his lies, I have a question? Why write a blog about me? How does that fit into this whole issue with Ehrman? No one really knows what my presuppositions are based upon his statement that I’m a “King James Version Only advocate.” My presuppositions are what scripture teaches about its own preservation. I believe we have always had all of God’s Words. Of course, these guys use the KJVO label as a pejorative—they know it as should everyone else. And then you know that based upon everything else he writes, so this false presupposition is lie number five.

He quotes me as saying “the skeptic [Ehrman],” then keeps talking as if I was talking about the debate. I wasn’t referring to Ehrman or the debate there or I would have used a pronoun, not the generic singular noun. That is lie number six. When I write that “White reads Metzger to get his position,” I am speaking of his presuppositions. They come from textual criticism, from evidentiary apologetics, not from scripture. Kurschner misses that. The reason I didn’t cite any examples of White’s scriptural presuppositions (which is what presuppositionalism is all about) was because I haven’t heard any from him. I’d be glad to hear that he writes a presentation of the Bible teaching on preservation in his book. Does he? If he does, then it will be a first, because I’ve never read one by a critical text advocate.

Kurschner says that I believe in preservation in a “1611 Anglican translation.” That is lie number seven. I believe it is in the Hebrew and Greek text. As a side note, many Puritans worked on the KJV as well. This is lie number eight: “what is ironic is that Kent Brandenburg would agree wholeheartedly with the agnostic, skeptic Bart Ehrman who both agree together that there cannot be any inspired, preserved text if there exists variants in a text.” Lie number nine was his labeling me a fundamentalist. If he got out more, he would know that I’m not. He said several other nasty things, but they were all conclusions from these lies. The tenth lie is that I’m a bigot.

Those are the at least ten lies told about me by James White and AOM. I will be awaiting the repentance and retraction from White and Kurschner.

James White-Isms

In his latest video on his blog for February 5, 2009, he films himself explaining something about his debate with Ehrman (on conjectural emendations). So I’m not even cherry-picking. I’m looking at his last video. Let me break it down for you, so you have examples of White-isms. First, at about :24 he complains. That’s the first thing he does in the video. “I had hoped for a more focused topic.” Second, then sighs (at about :32), “Which is fine; it turned out very well.” If it’s fine, then why complain? Of course it wasn’t fine to him. He has complained and whined about it, including in his monologue to McDurmon (it wasn’t much of an interview). And it definitely didn’t turn out very well. Third, at :42 he says, “One of the questions that I asked in cross-examination, that hasn’t gotten any attention yet.” Attention? White thinks he won that point, so he wants it to get attention, or at least he’s sending out a notice to his followers that this is a point that they should be giving more attention. He’s begging for kudos, White sycophants; give them to him. Now! Fourth, notice around :50 the tone in his voice when he talks about Ehrman not providing any contradictory argumentation to this point he made. This is classic White. Fifth, at about 1:00, consider the look, that dismissive glance that he makes, eyes pointing upward, in response to his own comment about something that Ehrman had said in the debate. He does this all the time. Then sixth, watch his expression of incredulity at 1:40 and, seventh, his mocking impersonation at 1:52. He does these seven things in a matter of less than two minutes.

Listen to the start of his Dividing Line where he calls me a liar and bigot—the tongue snapping, the long sighing, the condescension, the ridicule, mocking tones, the throat-clearing, and the laughter. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” “like,” “uhhhh, yes,” “give me a break,” “pleeaaase,” and “I’m sorry, but….” He goes after Ehrman’s marketing of his latest book, but what about the kind of schlock that White starts his own program with? He sighs and complains about all the money it cost to have Ehrman come over to debate him. Do people really enjoy this?

With a sinister voice, he says, “Alan Kurschner mentioned this Kent Brandenburg fellow.” He laughs ridiculing. He says that the writing is rarely overly coherent (?), a “wild-eyed way of speaking” (??). I say it again, I would debate James White any time I’m free to do so on this topic.

Read this line that he ends his blog on 2/4/09 with: “one can only imagine what an encounter between one of these folks and Ehrman would look like, but that’s another issue.” How egotistical? He thinks so highly of himself. You could buy him for what he’s worth and sell him for what he thinks he’s worth, and you’d be a billionaire.

What topped this off was his conversation with Robert on Dividing Line. I don’t know Robert. Robert phoned in. His credentials: he wrote a comment on the puritanboard forum. That is the perfect KJVO person for James White to talk with. Then when Robert proceeded to flub up in his defense, should anyone wonder? I have to remember this strategy if I ever do my own webcast. Hand-pick your opponents and then say that they represent the typical advocates for a position. There are plenty of others on the puritanboard that would be able to do a great job against White, like Jerusalem Blade or Thomas Weddle (Thomas2007) or Matthew Winzer (armourbearer). Ooooh, feel that disdain for Calvinism pouring out? I’d like to hear you talk to one of these guys on Dividing Line, James White, and you probably won’t even have to pay for a speaking fee.

I don’t mind debating White. However, why would anyone want to? As soon as the debate is over, he puts all his combined resources to creating a story of the debate to affect the perceptions of readers of what really happened. You would just have to learn to put up with it. I guess this is the “gentleness” of James White coming out that is part of the introduction to his Dividing Line program. After he laughs and hisses and feigns incredulity, then he poses as a victim. This is the exact kind of thing that Bart Ehrman rolled his eyes at during the debate, not expecting to encounter these kinds of melodramatics. What I would rather hear about my criticism of the debate is real analysis of the criticism. That would come across as credible.

So that I don’t reinvent the wheel, here is a very typical argumentation from an eclectic text person or non-preservation person (to whom I’ll refer as NP, Non-Preservation Person). I’m Kent.

Kent: God preserved all His Words in the language in which they were written and they were generally accessible to every generation of believers. The King James Version comes from those Words that God preserved for every generation of believers.

NP: Did you know that you actually aren’t reading the 1611 King James, because it was revised several times after that? And that you are actually reading the 1769 Blayney revision of the King James?

Kent: What does that have to do with what I just said? I said God preserved all His Words in the language in which they were written.

NP: Even the King James translators in their preface said that no translation of Scripture could be said to be perfect. They believed that other translations could be called the Word of God, so you are going way beyond what even the translators intended.

Kent: I’ve not said anything about the translation except that the King James Version comes from preserved Greek and Hebrew words. The translators said nothing about that in their preface to the King James.

NP: Did you know that the defense of the King James only started with a Seventh Day Adventist, Benjamin Wilkinson? Almost all the arguments used by King James only proponents come from Wilkinson, a Seventh Day Adventist?

Kent: I’ve never read Wilkinson’s book, but the position I take is actually the same one found in the Westminster Confession of Faith of 1646, the London Baptist Confession of 1689, and that which you can read from men in the 17th century. It wasn’t invented by Wilkinson in the 20th century. I don’t even know what Wilkinson believed. Actually, it is your position, the one that says that God didn’t preserve every Word for every generation, that is the new position, dating back only to the mid to late 19th century. You won’t find a no-perfect-preservation position, except from liberals, before the 19th century.

NP: So what you’re saying is that everyone has always had a perfect copy of Scripture to read?

Kent: No, what I’m saying is that all of the Words of the Old and New Testament have been generally accessible to every generation of believers. I base that, like godly men through history, upon scriptural presuppositions about God’s preservation of Scripture.

NP: If God perfectly preserved His Word, then why isn’t there one single hand-copy of the New Testament identical to another?

Kent: First, I haven’t compared every single one of the manuscripts to see if any are identical to another. I don’t think there is anyone who has, but, second, from what I’ve read, there are a few manuscript fragments, which are mainly what we have—we don’t have many old complete hand copies of the New Testament—so, like I was saying, there are a few manuscript fragments that are identical to one another. Third, there are very few differences between the hand copies (manuscripts) that were a basis for the textus receptus. Fourth, of those copies, based on scriptural presuppositions we believe that every one of the Words were available, and then, fifth, that believers agreed on those Words during the period which those hand written words were amalgamated into one printed edition. The Bible teaches a settled text.

NP: But didn’t you know that no edition of the textus receptus was identical to the other?

Kent: Yes, I know that, but there were very few differences, and all of the Words were there. And by the end of that period, believers agreed on what the Words were. The Christians of the seventeenth century believed that they had a text identical to the originals in their printed edition. We know that by what they wrote.

NP: But even if there was one word that was wrong or missing, you can’t claim that there was a perfect text.

Kent: What I claim is that there was perfect preservation of every Word. All the Words were there and then the churches, guided by the Holy Spirit were led to a perfect text, so I don’t believe that there was one wrong or missing word, and that is based upon scriptural presuppositions.

NP: So you too believe in textual criticism, because that’s exactly what they were doing in the sixteenth century. That’s what Erasmus was doing.

Kent: To read textual criticism into the sixteenth century really is revisionist history. Textual criticism is completely rationalistic and long post-dates the sixteenth century. Actual textual criticism is not based upon any theological or biblical presuppositions. Textual critics, in fact, reject the use of scriptural presuppositions. The basis of textual criticism, as it is explained by the textual critics themselves historically, is ongoing, never settled, and based upon literary criteria that are the same rules applied to secular literature. The sixteenth century men responsible for the various editions of the textus receptus weren’t applying these criteria to the copies of the New Testament they possessed. And those manuscripts were very uniform compared to the manuscripts relied upon by textual criticism, which were not generally accessible until the 19th century.

NP: But didn’t Erasmus back translate portions of Revelation from the Latin Vulgate? Isn’t it true that some parts of the textus receptus have no basis in any copy of the Greek New Testament?

Kent: What I have found to be the case is that advocates of the eclectic or critical text have a strong belief in the preservation of historical data, including what they read about Erasmus, even greater trust in information God didn’t promise to preserve than in the Words of God that the Lord did promise to preserve. First, we don’t know all that Erasmus had as a basis for that first printed edition of the textus receptus. Second, Erasmus very likely was relying on manuscripts that had the Words he included in his printed edition of the book of Revelation in the Greek. Third, the churches didn’t settle on Erasmus’ edition of the textus receptus anyway, making this all a moot point.

NP: So then what is the perfect edition of the textus receptus? Which one is it?

Kent: It is the Greek text that is the basis of the King James Version of the Bible.

NP: When was that text printed?

Kent: We can buy a copy of it today from various sources. However, again, the scriptural position is that all the Words of God were generally accessible to every generation of Christian. The Words behind the King James Version come primarily from the textus receptus edition of Bezae in 1598 and those of Stephanus in 1550 and 1551. The number of differences between those three editions are very, very small. Christians settled on the Words behind the King James Version. Those are the ones that a large majority of believers, led and guided by the Holy Spirit, agreed upon. The Greek Words behind the KJV NT were printed in a single edition in 1894 posthumously by F. H. A. Scrivener. However, all of the Words in Scrivener were agreed upon by believers and churches. We can read sermons from preachers and pastors of the 16th and 17th century and see that the textus receptus was the text used by the churches. The men of God of the 17th century believed they had every single Word accessible to them. That is the historic Christian position.

NP: So it’s obvious that the text that you believe is perfect wasn’t available until the late 19th century, which isn’t anything different than the text of Westcott and Hort.

Kent: No, the Words were available and relied upon in the 16th and 17th centuries. Our position, the scriptural one, is that the Words were preserved and generally accessible. Those men that preached the King James in the 17th century were relying on the Greek Words behind the New Testament of the King James Version.

NP: So you believe that there was a second act of inspiration that took place in 1611 when the King James translators did their translation?

Kent: I don’t believe at all that it was a second act of inspiration. That idea didn’t come about, as far as I know, until Peter Ruckman is credited with espousing it in the mid to late 20th century. I don’t believe in double inspiration. What I’m talking about is providential preservation. God providentially worked to ensure that we would have every Word of God generally accessible during every generation.

NP: But what you are claiming is that a miracle took place, which is different than providence. A miracle utilizes primary supernatural causation and providence only secondarily.

Kent: I do believe that preservation has been supernatural. And we haven’t differentiated providence in the past as unmiraculous. Historically, providence was considered to be a miracle. James Orr in The Fundamentals in the chapter on “Science and the Christian Faith” writes of what theologians call “‘providential’ miracles, in which, so far as one can see, natural agencies under divine direction suffice to produce the result.” So whether God uses natural agencies or completely transcends those laws, it is a miracle. That is the historic understanding of providence. Inspiration itself is a miracle in which God uses natural agencies. He used men to write down scripture without error. If we can’t believe in preservation because of the natural agencies that God used, then we can’t believe in inspiration either.

NP: But God nowhere said that He would preserve His Word in a particular text type.

Kent: That isn’t the position that I take either. I believe He preserved all His Words and that they were generally accessible to every generation of believers. The Bible also teaches a perfect and a settled text. So do you believe that the Bible teaches the preservation of Scripture?

NP: Yes.

Kent: Where do you believe it teaches it? What is it that Scripture teaches about the preservation of Scripture?

NP: I don’t know. I haven’t really studied it out. But I believe God has preserved His Word.

Kent: So when you say that God preserved His Word, what do you believe that He preserved?

NP: I believe that we have enough of the Words to give us all the doctrines we need to be obedient to God. I believe He preserved His Word in general and that there are not enough errors to change doctrine.

Kent: And what is your scriptural basis for that?

NP: I guess I can’t believe that God did some sort of miracle at some point in time to make sure that all of the Words were in one place at one time.

Kent: But you believe all the books are there, all sixty-six, no more or no less?

NP: Yes, but that’s different. We have enough historical evidence to demonstrate that we have sixty-six books. It’s way different than believing that we have every single Word, especially since the manuscripts themselves don’t agree with each other. I’m sorry, but I can’t go that far. I don’t think it should be an issue that we should divide over and that is what King James people do. They are divisive about it, and I don’t think that’s right.

Kent: Do you think that errors in the Bible should be a separating issue?

NP: Errors in the original maybe.

I’m not going to keep going. There are more arguments, I’m sure, that the eclectic text people think are brilliant, and that they have on their side, such as their “Septuagint argument” and their “Beza’s conjectural emendation in Revelation 16:5” argument. What I do want to do is to point out the manner of operation of the eclectic text/no preservation side of this argument.

First, they don’t present a position themselves. They question yours only.

Second, they don’t listen to your position. They normally start arguing with a Ruckmanite or English preservationist, even if you’re not, and then they keep doing that after you have told them several times. On many occasions, I’ve found they will still come back to their arguments against these other groups long after you’ve corrected them several times.

Third, when their point is debunked or defeated, they don’t admit that you’re right in any way. They move on to the next point they want to make. This shows a closed mind and that they’re not interested in the truth, only in winning the argument. They like to argue from history (“Look! Hand copies vary!”), but when they find out that they have no historic basis for their position, that doesn’t matter to them at all. They don’t seem to care at all that their position was not what was believed or taught before the 19th century.

Fourth, they don’t rely at all on Scripture. On this one doctrine, they look away from the Bible to find out what they believe.

Fifth, their quest is a gotcha-game. They want to catch you in an error. They want to prove mistakes in Scripture. That will justify their use of the modern versions.

Sixth, even though they say they believe in the preservation of Scripture, they are trying to show how that God didn’t preserve it.

Seventh, when they ask questions, they expect answers, acting is if the burden of proof is upon our side. When we ask questions, they don’t give answers and they don’t think they have to do that. The burden of proof should be on the people who say that what actually happened is something different than what Scripture promised would happen. What’s difficult about that, of course, is that they would need to show the original manuscripts to prove that point.

These multiple version, no preservation people provide the foundation for postmodern uncertainty. If we don’t even know what the words are, then how can we be expected to know the meaning?