I’ve noticed critical/eclectic text guys wondering, if the text is really the issue, why the King James Version supporters don’t support the New King James Version. It’s supposed to be one of those gotcha moments. We’re bumbling and fumbling, exposed as the English inspirationists or preservationists that we must be. I’m sitting here at my keyboard looking at absolutely nothing to give me a basis for my answer. So this answer is for sure what I’m thinking on this. To start, it isn’t because of the text that I don’t use or support the New King James Version. I don’t like the New King James Version as a translation. When I think about certain aspects as to why I don’t like it, I feel angry. Here’s why.

1. The translators attack the King James Version.

How can you call the translation the New King James Version and attack the King James Version? Call it something else. Please. You shouldn’t be the ones doing the translation if you don’t like the King James Version yourselves. And don’t tell me that, “yes, you do like it very much,” when you don’t like the translation you’re doing as much as you like other versions.

2. The translators attack the text behind the King James Version.

What comes out on the footnotes is that the translators didn’t even like the text behind the King James Version. Since the NKJV was done, James Price, a big man on the translation committee on the OT, has authored a huge volume attacking the King James Version. They never loved the text anyway. It is rank hypocrisy to translate from a text that you don’t even believe in.

As opposed to stressing the importance of the text behind the KJV, the translators attack it. They say it is inferior and they attempt to make it look inferior. They weren’t attempting to keep people connected with the KJV. They were trying to get people disconnected from it. That strategy could work in an incremental way. You start with no longer using the KJV and then you are ready to move to some other version that comes from a different text.

3. The translators do not take the historic and biblical position on the preservation of scripture.

I don’t get that the preservation of scripture had anything to do with the project for the NKJ. These were not men that were seeing the text behind the KJV as authoritative, preserved apographa of God. It wasn’t a belief in these particular Words that motivated these men to translate from them. They knew that others loved the Words of the King James Version. They knew that people would find an interest in something called the New King James Version.

4. How can I support the NKJV when its footnotes cast doubt on its very Words?

The footnotes take away certainty concerning the text. It’s a way to get King James Version users to take a look and what they get are men telling them that they don’t even have the best text of scripture. That’s not what I want people thinking or supporting. I don’t believe it is a scriptural position either.

5. I don’t want to pad Thomas Nelson and its mainly new-evangelical and compromising translators’ bank accounts.

6. The NKJV plays KJV supporters for fools.

We’re supposed to think that we’ve got an easier addition of the KJV. And who are the men giving it to us? People who want to change the KJV. They want more than a change in the translation. They want a change in the text. And yet if we don’t support it, we’re some sort of double inspirationists or English preservationists. Wrong.

Next.

ADDENDUM

This is an announcement as far as my blog is concerned. I’m now convinced that despite saying that they used the same text as was used for the KJV, they didn’t. That is a lie. They used a different text and this was pointed out very clearly by someone who commented on the blog (read comments below).

He wrote (and this is his list not mine):

Jude 1:19, the LV/C text omits eautou (“themselves”), as does the NKJV.

Acts 19:39, the the NKJV follows the LV/C text in “peraiterw” instead of “peri eterwn”, subtle but different.

Acts 19:9, the NKJV follows the LV/C text in omitting “tinos”

Acts 17:14, the NKJV omits “as it were” (“ws” in the Greek) and thus once again follows the LV/C text.

Acts 15:23, the NKJV follows the LV/C text in omitting “tade”, or “after this manner”.

Acts 10:7 the NKJV follows the LV/C text in omitting “unto Cornelius” in the first clause.  (I wouldn’t use this one.  I think it is a translation issue, not a textual one.)

As far as I’m concerned, that lie has now been exposed. Some may say it out of ignorance, but some are flat out lying about this. The NKJV does not come from the same text as the KJV. It does not represent God’s preserved Words.

Phil Johnson, executive director of Grace to You, and owner/operator of the popular evangelical blog, Pyromaniacs, appeared on the Way of the Master radio program, hosted by Todd Friel. On the show, Johnson answered questions that were sent in by listeners.

The first question dealt with eschatology, one about the future of Israel. Johnson is premillennial and he defended, although not strongly, premillennialism versus amillennialism. His reason for not being too dogmatic, he said, was that this was, like is typical of Johnson, a tertiary doctrine. He’s not going to argue over eschatology, he says, because it’s peripheral in its importance. And after all, Peter said that these parts of Paul’s epistles were hard to be understood, so we shouldn’t be so hyper about last things. Paul himself didn’t treat it as unimportant, but Johnson says it is. Doctrines Johnson says are important are the ones that are important. We’ll discuss more about that later.

That very first question led Johnson and Friel into a little segue about doctrines that aren’t important but are talked about a lot anyway. Friel mentioned the King James Version. Johnson laughed. Then he asked Johnson if the debate over the King James had been a very profitable one. Johnson said yes and no. He didn’t tell why it was good, but he did say why the debate was bad. Why? The people doing the most discussion are the least prepared to do so.

They weren’t done talking about the King James issue at that point, but before I tell you what they said next, I wonder if you would know what is important to know in order to be one of those swamis who can discuss the issue of the preservation of Scripture. Johnson has bought into this notion that the people who know best about the identification of the true text of the Bible are the modern textual critics, those who spend a great deal of time in manuscript evidence, who use scientific rules they concocted to determine what are most likely God’s Words. What verse does Johnson base this upon? None, of course. It’s his opinion, and one that says that God did not preserve all His Words nor make them available to every generation of people.

To Johnson, if you think that what you need to know is what Scripture says about its own preservation, then you are one of those who shouldn’t be involved in the version debate. Johnson and the Grace to You people (John MacArthur, etc.) always claim to rely on the sufficiency of Scripture for their doctrine and practice. In this case, they don’t. Instead, they lean on textual critics, who are most often unbelieving.

Transcript of Friel-Johnson conversation on King James Issue

The discussion about the King James didn’t end there. Todd Friel comments:

OK, Well, But there’s a lot of people who would say, ‘Then explain why God would have the King James Version for centuries as really the only text that was being used. Then all of a sudden a bunch of new manuscripts, and now we’ve got these other ones. It doesn’t seem like God then would have been protecting His Word very well. I think that is a pretty strong argument.’

Phil Johnson replies:

It’s a good question. It is a valid question and it’s, it’s worth an answer. But it’s not worth all the energy that a lot of people put into it, because if you take…uh…the two versions, the two set families of manuscripts, and put them side by side and compare the differences, it really doesn’t amount to anything that’s fundamental or essential. It’s not gonna…uh…if you prefer one set of manuscripts over the other, it’s not going to create a totally different kind of Christianity.

Friel ends the mini-discussion interrupting Johnson’s last statement with:

Right, somebody’s not going to be a new denomination over this.

Johnson says this is a “good question” and a “valid question.” You heard it here. Johnson would usually ridicule something like this. He says it’s worth an answer. But it’s not worth putting a lot of time into it. And why? Because the differences between the critical text and the textus receptus (over 5,000 differences) are not going get rid of anything fundamental or essential in Phil Johnson’s opinion.

Observations about the Friel-Johnson Exchange on the King James Issue

First, usually Johnson would ridicule something like this, if it was even brought up. He doesn’t do it here with Friel, and he even says it is good and valid. To be consistent, he should have just laughed at it and mocked it, because from what I’ve experienced, that’s what he does.

Second, Johnson doesn’t answer the actual argument. Friel says it is “a pretty strong argument,” and Johnson doesn’t answer it. He gives an answer and it is essentially that whoever has that argument shouldn’t let it concern him. If I were to make a conclusion just from what I heard, I would say that Johnson doesn’t have an answer to the argument Friel presented.

Third, Johnson says that it’s not worth our time because the two families of manuscripts are similar enough that nothing fundamental is lost. What is the problem with this answer?

1. It denies what God said He would do (Isaiah 59:21; Matthew 4:4; 5:17; 24:35). Shouldn’t that matter to someone Who says He believes the Bible?
2. Errors affect authority. If we suggest that there are a few thousand errors in the words, despite the fact that fundamental doctrines aren’t affected, that still takes away the authority of what we do have.
3. There isn’t a place in Scripture that says that fundamental doctrines are sufficient to live for God successfully. Jesus says something different in John 12:48.
4. This clashes with what John MacArthur says about words. In a sermon I recently listened to, he made these statements:

In Matthew 24:35 the Scripture is very clear, “Heaven and earth shall pass away but My words…My words shall not pass away.” When God speaks He speaks with words and the Bible are the…is the representation in writing of the words that came from God…the words that God spoke.

It was Jesus who emphasized the importance of every word…every word and every letter when He said, “Not a jot or tittle will ever fail.” He said in Luke 18:31, “All the things that are written through the prophets shall be accomplished.” He even based His interpretation of the Old Testament on a single word…a single word. The words do matter. Jesus was answering the Sadducees in Matthew 22 and He said to them, “You are mistaken, not understanding the scriptures, or the power of God, for in the resurrection they neither marry…talking about the angels…nor are given in marriage but are like angels in heaven. But regarding the resurrection of the dead, have you not read that which was spoken to you by God saying,’I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob?’” He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. And His proof is that God said, “I am…I am the eternal living one.” And furthermore, He is not only the eternal living one but all will live eternally as well. They didn’t believe in a resurrection and He proved His point or certainly to our satisfaction proved His point by talking about the eternality of God in the verb to be in the present tense.

Perhaps Johnson doesn’t agree with MacArthur on this teaching on the Bible. I would guess that he does. That’s why the argument posed by Friel is actually a strong argument. I don’t know if it occurs to these that they contradict their stated view of Scripture with their position on the preservation of the Bible.

Related to the Tertiary-Primary Doctrine Issue

In a matter of minutes in the dialogue between Friel and Johnson, Johnson mentions a few times that certain doctrines aren’t that important. A major doctrine of his is that many doctrines are of minor importance. I know that this is how he gets around separating on doctrine. In order to keep the unity among evangelicals, Johnson reduces separating doctrine to a few essentials.

As you read Johnson and others, you find that the gospel is the only doctrine worth separating over. That’s the one that means the most to us. We are justified and saved from eternal punishment by the gospel. He says that premillennialism isn’t a doctrine that is worth separating over. I believe that the Apostle Paul would say something different. Johnson says he includes all eschatology, so timing of the rapture isn’t worth separating over either. Someone can deny imminence and that’s not a doctrine to cause a fuss, despite the fact that it is a major influence toward purity in the New Testament. God says it is a major motivator to purity, but it’s only a tertiary thing to Johnson.

My concern with the text issue is the inclusion of verbal errors in Scripture, despite what God said He would do. God’s veracity and the perfection of the Bible are at stake. Johnson, his cohorts at Pyromaniacs, and John MacArthur are leaders in the opposition of the emerging church. They decry the uncertainty produced by the emergents. The bedrock of that uncertainty is found in dozens of English translations, multiple texts, and a denial of the doctrine of preservation. The emergents are uncertain about meaning. Johnson is uncertain about the words. He’s concerned about their uncertainty, but not so much about his own.

Psychoanalysis Addendum

In advance, I predict the reasons people will give for this post:

One, I’m obsessed with the King James Version issue.
Two, I’ve got it out for Phil Johnson because he hasn’t treated me very well.
Three, I’ve got a chip on my shoulder.
Four, I’ve got too much time on my hands (or, I need to get out more).
Five, I’m attempting to try to increase my popularity by zeroing in on someone popular.
Six, I’m not a scholar but I can seem like I am when I target scholars.
Seven, Controversy increases readership.

Wrong.

Perfect preservation is the truth. It’s Scriptural. All the doctrines in the Bible are important. So Sigmund Freud Time is over.

For everyone’s information, James White yesterday dedicated the final third of his Dividing Line program to this series.  He covered three paragraphs, but he says he’s going to be dealing with everything.  I highly doubt that, but we’ll see.  He titles it “KJVO Deceitfulness.”  OK.  He starts at 40:30 here until the end, and promises to keep going on his Friday program.  I haven’t kept up with James White, but I got involved because someone emailed me about his ecclesiastical text video and thought I should watch it.  Then he did the July 28 program on the statement of Thomas Ross on the Logos forum.

Part One.  Part Two.

After the 1:13 mark, with mocking tone White asks, “What edition of the ‘texti recepti‘ is the one being referred to by the 1689 that I allegedly don’t believe as a reformed Baptist elder?”  The “which edition” question is sort of supposed to be the clinching argument against preservation for CT advocates (it’s the same one that Ruckmanite George is asking us here to buttress his position, by the way).  Of course those men in the late 17th century were well aware of the various editions of the TR, when they wrote that God kept His Word pure in all ages in the original languages.  Their theological predisposition led to a strong biblical presupposition of God’s preservation of His Words.  That’s what one will read in all of their writings.  They believed they had every Word and all of them available to them in their age, because God had kept them pure.

White wants to move this from the biblical and theological to the forensic.  I say “forensic” because as someone with a Christian worldview, I believe that theology represents total truth, so it is as scientific as gravity.  There is a science to theology.  God is real.  He is doing what He said He would do.  That is scientific, like I believe in creation and the flood.  The Bible is scientific.  The canonization of 66 books is scientific.  The Holy Spirit pointed those out by means of the unity of the Spirit in His people.  They agreed through the Spirit on those books.  Believers applied that same science, already established by God’s revelation, to the text of scripture.  That’s how it reads.  That is what they believed.  Their approach was theological, which is scientific.  White rejects that science for man’s reason and observations and documentation, superior science to him, and what can really prove something out there in his apologetical battlefield.

The authors of the confessions didn’t tell us what edition of the TR, but it was the TR, because the TR was what was available.  We can’t assume that they would choose something different, when their doctrinal statement says that God kept what they had pure in all ages.  What they didn’t have wasn’t preserved for them.  That is the science behind it.  It is a biblical and theological presupposition that can’t be and should not be infringed.  If you do, you’ve stopped believing in preservation, that is, you’ve stopped believing God, believing what He said He would do.  If this was the position of believers and you want to overturn that, you’ve got to do more than what White is doing.  You’ve got to show how that their scriptural presuppositions were wrong and then show yours.  He does nothing like that, because in his worldview, theology isn’t science.

White incredulously asks, “If you can’t produce ‘it’ [an edition the LBC to White had to be talking about], don’t put it in writing I don’t believe what the confession states.”  There are at least two fallacies.  One is simple.  He is arguing from a false premise, because LBC wasn’t referring to a printed edition, but to the Words themselves.  Second, it is non sequitur, that is, the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premise.  The LBC wasn’t talking about an edition of the TR.  We know that from reading what these men wrote.  The two fallacies interrelate.

From there, White asks, “What manuscript?”  He dangles his TR in front of the camera and says with a disdaining, sinister tone, “Because as you know, there is no manuscript in the universe that reads exactly as the textus receptus.”  I understand that these are pat, oft repeated modern arguments for a critical text, that bring no theological underpinning.  Their theology is an absence of theology — atheological. His statement is very loaded.  By “manuscript,” he means hand copy.  He says, “reads,” which is present tense, so the hand copy must exist in this generation to count as authoritative.  If it existed in the past to provide a basis for a TR edition, but it isn’t available today, for the sake of his argument that can’t be true, even if it is true.  “Exactly” means it could be only a very few words for this statement to be true.  All of that is why I say, “loaded.”

Over a hundred years elapsed for time to consider the questions White is asking, and yet those men still wrote those confessions based upon their biblical presuppositions.  The fodder White uses to discredit them does not overturn the doctrine.  The small list of words to which White refers that form the basis of his entire argument don’t overturn what God said about His Book.  The textual questions have sufficient answers to the one with scriptural presuppositions. Again, White must deal with the underlying doctrinal position.  He also  must consider the uniformity of that doctrine.  It was what everyone was writing and saying.  There were hundreds of years of this, and when it was replaced in the 19th century, it didn’t come with an accompanying exegetical basis.  There is no doctrine believed by Christians that should be supplanted without a thorough exegetical explanation to start, which provides a clear biblical antithesis to the false view. The exegesis should proceed the other reasons.

By the way, changing established doctrine could be called and usually is referred to as “heresy.”  It is dividing off the established, settled, believed teaching.  That is what is happening with White.  He’s desperate about the charge against him, but he isn’t dealing with it like he would other doctrines.  He doesn’t believe this doctrine the same as other ones.  This is no semper reformanda.

White says, “That’s the problem with this ecclesiastical text stuff (emphasis his),” mocking the biblical position of historic Christianity with purposeful slang.  It isn’t the problem or a problem, either.  It’s a doctrinal position that comes from proper exegesis of the text and then applying that right interpretation.  That’s how they did things then, and that is the problem for White.  He doesn’t like the LBC position, but if he’s going to overturn it, he needs to dig into the theological and biblical presuppositions, because that’s where they were coming from, unlike him.  Critiquing what they possessed is not enough.  He says this stuff can’t give us a text.  It actually did give us a text, as he knows.  They used the textus receptus. They settled on that.  He’s making a big deal about things that they didn’t, because he has an agenda he’s using that for.  That’s all it is.  These people were giants compared to James White and he’s ripping on them for his own purposes.

The minor differences between those editions were not enough for them, and, yes, the King James Translators settled on particular words as a basis for their translation.  I don’t accept that they didn’t have mansucript evidence, because I don’t know, but I do accept the scriptural presuppositions for the position.  That’s where my authority comes from.  Scriptural authority prevails over White.

White makes one outlandish statement or question after another and presents multiple strawmen in a kind of scorched earth methodology.  Shortly after the 1:14 minute mark, he squishes his face in the most foul way, and says, “Erasmus, the Roman Catholic priest (emphasis his) had to do textual criticism.  He had to, even amongst the small number of manuscripts he had, make choices, and at times he made choices based upon the Western text that was found in the Latin Vulgate.  You’ve got to live with that reality.”  This is a red herring.  It’s a smoke cloud.  It’s a fog.  Whatever metaphor you want to call it.  After almost 200 years, everybody knew about all that, and they all still believed what scripture said.  White throws in “Roman Catholic” and “Latin Vulgate” and “textual criticism.”  None of that changes what the men wrote in 1689, representing what people believed then.  Consider what Kurt Aland himself writes in two publications, The Text of the Church? and The Text of the New Testament:

It is undisputed that Luther used the Greek Textus Receptus for his translation of the German New Testament in 1522 and all its later editions (although the term itself was not yet in use at the time). . . . [So did] all the translators of the New Testament in the 16th century (e.g., the Zürich version). All the translations of the 17th century, including the King James version of 1611, the ‘Authorized Version, were also based on this text. Thus the New Testament of the church in the period of the Reformation was based on the Textus Receptus.  It is equally undisputed that in the 16th or 17th century (and for that matter well into the 18th century) anyone with a Greek New Testament would have had a copy of the Textus Receptus. . . . Finally it is undisputed that from the 16th to the 18th century orthodoxy’s doctrine of verbal inspiration assumed this Textus Receptus. . . . [The] Textus Receptus . . . in this period . . . was regarded as preserving even to the last detail the inspired and infallible word of God himself. . . . [T]his Byzantine text was regarded as ‘the text of the church’ . . . from the 4th . . . century.

Everyone knows that, including Kurt Aland.  That is what they believed in 1689.  Whatever cloud White wants to stir to further his agenda, this is all still true.  You can’t believe those confessions and also believe what White does.  He denies what they wrote.

More to Come.

Like the series I did two weeks ago, I’m going to keep writing here on this until I’m done with an analysis of the video last week by James White.  This is part two (part one).

At about the 1:09:30 mark, White says there are numbers of ecclesiastical text positions because the teaching is vague purposefully.  That is extreme overstatement.   White should know and I believe does know that the fundamentals of this position, which is biblical and historical, are found in the historic confessions of faith and in the writings of the contemporaries of those confessions.  These kinds of statements are strategic for his followers.  I believe he feigns this kind of incredulity.

It is true that of those who hold what is being called the ecclesiastical text position, not everyone will agree on every single word of the New Testament text translated by the KJV committee.  They all agree in the preservation of all the Words and that all the Words must have been kept pure in all ages like the confession says.  That narrows it down to very few differences.  They believe there is a settled text, one already established, given testimony by the Holy Spirit through the church, just like He did the canon.  They all agree every word is important, but disagreement over a few words is vastly different than post-enlightenment, rationalistic textual criticism.

There was a uniformity for numerous generations in the belief that God has preserved every word, all of them, and made them available for every generation of believer.  Among the very few differences over a very harmonious, homogeneous text, they agreed on the doctrine.  Even when there was a movement toward replacing this view, it started in academia, not in the churches, in the pew.  There still may be a majority of professing believers who think they have a perfect Bible and haven’t even grasped what is happening.  They are just thinking that someone has modernized the translation without knowing the underlying text was replaced — a bait and switch.

The few differences between words in TR editions couldn’t be and wouldn’t be spun into an ejection of the entire text for a new one and a wholly different approach.  That wasn’t faith in what God said.  That was doubt or uncertainty.  If this is going to be argued, those people and that position need to be represented in good faith.  White doesn’t do that.  He stirs up a dust cloud of confusion for people.

After 1:10, White says that “as far as we know” there was never a church counsel and that the Westminster divines didn’t examine manuscripts.  There’s a lot to unpack just in those few points.  If you listen to White other times, you know he doesn’t agree that canonicity of the books of the Bible comes out of church counsels.  He sees this as a Roman Catholic view.  I agree.  He says the canon is a theological issue.  With that belief, why does he apply a different standard here to the Words?  He will refer to the Protestant canon.  He doesn’t have a problem saying that.  They didn’t need a counsel, because there was agreement.  I don’t agree that these men didn’t look at manuscripts.  When you read John Owen, you know he looked at them.  White is conflating examination of manuscripts with rationalistic criticism of the text.  Consider what Richard Capel wrote in 1658:

[W]e have the Copies in both languages [Hebrew and Greek], which Copies vary not from Primitive writings in any matter which may stumble any. This concernes onely the learned, and they know that by consent of all parties, the most learned on all sides among Christians do shake hands in this, that God by his providence hath preserved them uncorrupt. . . . As God committed the Hebrew text of the Old Testament to the Jewes, and did and doth move their hearts to keep it untainted to this day: So I dare lay it on the same God, that he in his providence is so with the Church of the Gentiles, that they have and do preserve the Greek Text uncorrupt, and clear: As for some scrapes by Transcribers, that comes to no more, than to censure a book to be corrupt, because of some scrapes in the printing, and ’tis certain, that what mistake is in one print, is corrected in another.

That well states their thinking, thinking that is not held or agreed upon by White.  He rejects the historic and biblical position because he staggers at the promise of God through unbelief (Romans 4:20).  White chooses theological presuppositions for canonicity, when the biblical basis for those same theological presuppositions applies equally to the text.  Textual variants are too great a hurdle, a barrier, and he stumbles over them.  He rejects the historic and biblical position and is willing to make hundreds of years of believers bibliological apostates to justify his position.

If you want to talk about vagueness, shortly before the 1:11 mark, White says that the Westminster divines would not have known what the text looked like at the beginning of the medieval period, like we do today.  I’m speaking of the idea of “what the text looked like.”  How vague is that?  Are we talking about one hand copy, about the numbers of manuscripts that existed?  “What the text looked like”?  “The text”?  Like there was “the text” making it’s way through history?

What White does is extrapolate back from the 19th century some kind of ongoing textual criticism through history, rather than an ongoing faith that God has preserved every Word, the attitude that believers would have always had in the Bible.  We know they had the latter and White ridicules that. It’s as if in the 16th century after the advent of the printing press and a sudden explosion of publication of scripture that believers reached a bibliological dark age —  as if when they had more access to the Bible than ever, they were as dark on the doctrine of scripture as they had ever been.

White also talks at around 1:11 like he knows “what the text looked like” in the beginning of the fourth century and at the beginning of the sixth century.   He asserts that he knows and that those men didn’t.  But he doesn’t, at least through textual criticism. He doesn’t know that.  He’s only guessing.  White doesn’t know what they had or didn’t have then by some historical or documentary means.  We know by faith, but not by looking at what someone unburied.  Those are guesses, and that is vague.  I would say as vague as one could get, but one can get even more vague than White if he takes the same trajectory as White to its dubious end. White’s approach is highly destructive.  It is faith smothering.  It is also dishonoring to God.  As much as White would want to keep salvation 100% divine with almost no human intervention, he’s willing to throw the Bible into a test tube for man’s experimentation.  Sovereignty becomes ironically a very taffy-like concept.

Shortly before 1:12, White goes apoplectic over a strawman that he erects, at most an entertaining bit of theater on his part.  He holds up a Trinitarian Bible society copy of the TR and asks when did they take that and agree on that, then he grabs a Nestles-Aland in his other hand asks when did they reject that?  What are White’s assertions supposed to mean to someone?  He is ridiculing that entire several generations of believers as some kind of theological and intellectual neanderthals.  White is a tower, a monument, a giant, while they are rolling out the baby toys in the nursery.

White is making two points.  First, he doesn’t have record that there was an ecumenical counsel of believers that got together to vote on what the words were.  That is supposed to debunk an ecclesiastical text position.  There is no record of that happening because that isn’t what Christians believed.  They received what they had.  They believed they were in good shape. White is saying they weren’t, but he’s basing that on his presuppositions, that the text had been lost to them.

Second, they didn’t textus rejectus, that is, they didn’t again hold some counsel to reject the minority manuscripts.  The ecclesiastical position is that however that did occur, either that they didn’t have it or they did know about it and they saw it as inferior, it did occur.  What looks to White as unavailable was rejected because of its lack of availability.  God’s Words were kept pure through all ages, so if they didn’t have it, there was a reason.  If you believe in the preservation of scripture, then what you don’t have isn’t preserved. That’s kind of root to the idea of preservation.  If I look into the refrigerator for the jelly and there’s no jelly, then jelly wasn’t preserved for me.  I’m sorry I can’t go into physical incantations as you read this so that my entertainment value can trump White’s, because that is the best thing he’s got going, that is, if you like that kind of thing.

White also argues from silence.  He says they, the Westminster folks, would have known about Calvin.  Known what?  They would have known that Calvin said he believed that one particular word was the right one above another, both available to him.  That was not an “aha” moment to them, as White portrays it should have been.  They couldn’t figure that out?  The existence of a textual variant didn’t shake them.  That wasn’t a lack of preservation to them.  Not only would men make errors in hand copies, but they also know that there would be purposeful textual attack.  They still believe in perfect preservation of the Words, because they believed preservation was a divine task, like inspiration and salvation.  White believes God can save you from all your sins, He can preserve you through the heights and the depths, but He couldn’t do the same for His own Words.  That is in fact where White is in this.

Around 1:13, White says that in 1689 they would not have known about the Trinitarian Bible society printed edition of Scrivener.  Total strawman.  That’s not the position.  The translators translated from words.  They translated.  They were translators.  Those words were available.  They were kept pure in that age.  They believed that.  That’s the position.  This is a game White is playing.  Understand that. White is playing a game.  When I read the books from that era, they often refer to the original language text.  Did they not believe they had an original language text?  When they wrote the LBC in 1689, they referred to the original language text.  Was there one?  Of course there was.  This is again just rhetoric from White.  It’s not dealing with their doctrine, what they believed.  It’s just dramatics, a show really.  If you agree with White, you are at least in tacit compliance to him, and you are a subscriber to his show, really like a reality TV show with a false front town.

More to Come.  I know I’m going snail pace, but this matters.

Is it possible that Christians were wrong on the doctrine of preservation of scripture for hundreds of years?  Were they bibliological apostates?  That’s a big, serious charge, but it is the one that James White has been making again and again in recent videos to erase the record of biblical and historical beliefs on the preservation of scripture.

In every century, men will be wrong in doctrine.  It is an entirely other matter to say that the confessions agreed upon by essentially every believer were wrong.  The statements made about the preservation of scripture were repeated again and again, and no one offered an alternative.  It is much more likely you are wrong. To overturn the established doctrine, you better do a great job of exegesis to show that they were not true.  James White does not do that.  Like he deals with most of his contemporary detractors, he calls them names — “reformed scholastics.”

White gets a pass from almost all evangelicals, except for those to the far left of him, because they long ago capitulated on preservation along with a percentage of fundamentalism.  Most evangelicals relegate this issue to a non-essential with the biggest problem the division they say it causes.  White will mention this too on a regular basis.  However, it is a very serious problem because the Bible is a supernatural book.  It’s God’s Word.  When you subjugate it to the human laboratory for testing and twisting and probing, it takes on a different nature.  If it isn’t preserved perfectly, then it lacks in authority, something less than full authority.  These men know this. They know it.  White knows it.

White’s position is that a percentage of the words of scripture have been lost and are in need of restoring.  It isn’t a settled book to him.  More work needs to be done and post-enlightenment textual criticism, a rationalistic exercise, is the means.  In this new video and others, he implies that Calvin is an example of someone from the applicable era that was doing this.  He’s the historical go-to guy to establish that some of those men were doing the same thing.  This is called a spin.  He is spinning Calvin.

Everyone knows that errors were made in hand copies.  That’s all Calvin was writing.  The position of the day was that an error made in one was corrected in another.  Yes, they compared manuscripts, but it is a lie to say that’s the same as textual criticism and also ignore what they believed and taught.  To equate what they believed with textual criticism is a lie that in published form started with Benjamin Warfield, that we’ve talked so much about here.  The authors of the confessions did not believe that providential preservation was textual criticism.  They believed they possessed the Words in the apographa (the hand copies) in an identical form as the autographa (the originals). That was their belief, what we might call a presupposition.  That is also their point in the confessions, that the original language text was kept pure in all ages.  White denies all of that.  It was not kept pure in all ages to him.  There hasn’t been an age to White that it has been pure since shortly after its inspiration.  That age is off in the future, that is, unless we redefine pure, which is something less than Tide detergent.

What is the presupposition of White?  You don’t hear it. He doesn’t refer to scripture one time to reveal what believers should expect for preservation.  He doesn’t do this.  His kind do not do this. The only one I hear do this is Ehrman and Ehrman reports it, and then says God didn’t do it, explaining why he’s an apostate.  White just won’t say.  It’s painful.  Part of it is that he and people like him don’t believe their own position and they are fudging or spinning.  White will say he believes in the preservation of God’s Word.   It is Clinton-esque, because he means “Word” singular, not plural.  You know this.  He doesn’t believe we know what the Words, plural, are.  He doesn’t think that anyone can know what those are and the biggest exercise in his quest here is to show that we don’t know what they are either.  He uses a lot of ridicule to do this.  The antics don’t mean anything, but they work like the scoffers of 2 Peter 3 succeed with people about Christ’s second coming.

White’s entire manner of operation is to attempt to cause doubt to those who believe in perfect preservation by questioning particular texts of scripture.  He requires them to indicate to him an exact hand copy of the Greek text that has the particular wording of the textus receptus.  If you can’t do that up to his standard, then your entire belief must fall.  You must recant.  Recanting is denying the biblical and historical position for the critical text position, the modern version position.  There is no longer a settled text and the words are now in doubt.  He will only stop bothering you if you come to his position or call your position a preference alone.  It can only be a preference.  It cannot be a matter of doctrinal division.  You must be fine with his position or yours, but yours especially cannot be superior.

If White can get you to admit that you are unsure about even one word of scripture, that we don’t know what the exact wording is, you are now the same as him.  He will be satisfied with that.  If you say that you do know, then you are vague. Vague means that you cannot produce a hand copy or at least show it in microfilm.  Even if you could, White could argue against it.  None of this is based on scriptural presuppositions, so it is all faithless.  The idea of faithlessness is what grates on White.  He hates that.  I understand it, but it’s true.  And that faithlessness is what has produced the new understanding of inerrancy that continues on a sliding scale.

White’s modern opponents he smears with the idea that they are cloistered away with reformed theologies, reading one after another, while he’s out there fighting the good fight with the only method that will work in the real world.  None of what he says here is true, either because he doesn’t know what he’s talking about or he’s lying.  I’m not saying there aren’t a few people who just sit and read books without participation in any spiritual warfare, but you can’t broadbrush all the opposition like that.  It’s not true.

In the new video by White, he reads Thomas Ross’s giving of his credentials in answer to a baseless attack on a Logos forum that said that his kind could “care less what the original Greek and Hebrew said.” Thomas does care and he gave a brief synopsis as an answer to the inaccurate charge.  The absurd provocateur could not recognize that none of the books Thomas included were double inspirationists or English preservationists.  All of those books believe that preservation is in the original language.

White excludes the context for Thomas’s inclusion of his bonafides and proceeds to mock Thomas for including them.  That’s how he starts.  If Thomas was a “backwater” hayseed English-onlyist, White would have mocked that.  You can’t really have it either way with him.  This is how he operates though.  Evangelicals love it.  White blatantly lies about Thomas by saying that he started off a response like that.  This was not how Thomas started.  This was how he answered the man who said he didn’t care about original languages.  How else do you answer someone who says you don’t care about original languages?  Why did White need to mock Thomas for that?

White complains that he is always attacked when he provides a resume.  People don’t point out arrogance of White because he touts his credentials, which he does as much as anyone I’ve ever seen from a human being, but because of how he acts.  This is another example of it.

At 1:06:20, White says that he has “dealt with every strain of King James Onlyism.”  He uses “strain” as opposed to “type,” even as “strain” makes it sound like a disease he’s dealing with.  I would agree that White has dealt with every type of KJVO.  Thomas could have phrased this a little better.

I would say that White has not debated anyone who could debate him.  He might say that he takes them as they come, all of them, and maybe he’s right, but there are men that could do a much better job debating him than those he has chosen.  I’ve never seen him take on one of them.  D.A. Waite and Jack Moorman and Theodore Letis were very bad at debating, actually even at speaking.  Those who want to hear or watch a debate, at least want someone taking their position who can do the job.  I understand that someone like White will debate a Gipp or a Riplinger, because they do represent a sizeable group of revivalist fundamentalists, who take an indefensible and novel position. I can also see how White is bothered by the assertion, because he has debated many, many now.

White is also true when he asserts that the Ruckmanites cause most of the trouble and get the most attention.   I think White is right to say that Ruckmanites have caused many church splits.  I know this to be true, but taking on a different Bible than the King James has caused more church splits than the Ruckman position.  Many men have brought in a new Bible to a church and split it wide open.   Young people stay.  Old people leave.  Does White oppose those splits too?  Thomas wants to see a debate with White that will represent the biblical and historical position and argue it like he would want it to be argued.  I hope it happens sometime.

Just after 1:08, White gets to his main problem with Thomas’s comment.  Thomas wrote:

I wish Mr. White would agree with the 1689 London Baptist Confession of faith he subscribes to as an elder at a Reformed Baptist church and recognize that “The Old Testament in Hebrew (which was the native language of the people of God of old), and the New Testament in Greek (which at the time of the writing of it was most generally known to the nations), being immediately inspired by God, and by His singular care and providence kept pure in all ages,” and recognize that when his own confession of faith quotes 1 John 5:7, Mark 16, etc. it means the Textus Receptus is the Word of God, not a critical text that did not exist nor was in use by God’s people and thus was not kept “pure in all ages.”

I think that is a good comment from Thomas. That sets off a very important consideration for White, that I mentioned above.

White asserts after 1:09:20 that Thomas’s comment is “vague purposefully.”  I laugh.  It’s not true. I believe what Thomas is writing, and there isn’t an attempt to be vague.  That is a red herring.  White must do a little more exploration before he could make that conclusion.

By being “vague,” White means that someone must state his position on what each exact Word of the originals are.  If you just say that you believe in perfect preservation, that is vague.  You can’t say that you believe that believers were led by the Spirit to the proper wording, like the Holy Spirit indicated the 66 inspired Books.  No, you’ve got to tell him what those words are, and then there is haggling over how trustworthy was that particular hand copy and the degree of authenticity of the textual evidence, blah, blah, blah, blah.  Is it sure, likely, probable, possible, or doubtful?  We don’t know, so we are to get specific about applying terms like that?  Obviously, the Bible itself becomes vague and unsettled with White’s ideas.

White would argue, no, we’re more sure because we believe the science.  The science is sound.  We can’t say with certainty what the exact words are, but we are left with a high degree of certainty, higher than the writings of Plato — one handed applause for that.  Roar from believers, happy that Plato loses to the Bible.  This is not the historic or biblical way to deal with the Bible.

How we should deal with the words ironically is how White deals with the canon.  White goes totally presuppositional with the canon.  He rejects the Roman Catholic approach to the canon.  He says the canon is a theological matter.  Why? Why can’t the canon be historical and scientific?  The loss of a whole book is too devastating to White, so he chooses to go presuppositional, even though the textual critic world treats these, the canon and the words, the same.  This is what is vague.  Why the different approaches?

White uses a documentary type of method.  This the method of modern science.  If you can’t produce the document now, it didn’t happen.  You can’t say it happened.  Warfield brought this method back from Germany and thought he was saving evangelicalism by implementing it on the text of scripture.

The method of believers has always been to trust God’s leading through His Spirit.  That resulted in a settled text and established one from which one could not take away nor could one add.  Only a settled, established text, which is the nature of God’s Word, could be added to or taken away.  They assumed that God would do what He said He would do.  They believed that.  It was done.  Then believers just went about living what they trusted was perfect, until the enlightenment and the advent of modern rationalism.

More to Come