On August 7, James White gave a whole show over to one part of the first post I wrote dealing with White’s answer to a comment made by Thomas Ross on an internet forum.  I really don’t want to spend anymore than one more post.  I ask you to read everything I’ve written in the last three weeks on this, because it will give enough of an answer to everything White will say.

White begins again pointing out my meaninglessness — only two mentions on his blog, both by Alan Kurschner, one just linking to someone’s else’s post about Psalm 12.  White mentions my erroneous position on Psalm 12, and he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.  I’m very sure White does not know what I’ve said about Psalm 12, what position I take, or what arguments I’ve made.  That is sufficient for his audience.  There are two main positions on Psalm 12 — it relates the preservation of “the poor and needy” or the preservation of God’s Words.  Most who argue for the poor and needy do so, like the article to which Kurschner referred, based upon the gender of the antecedent to a pronoun.  It is a faulty argument.  I proved that and I’ve still never received an answer from that crowd.  They’re wrong.  Still.

White hasn’t dealt much with me and he does now.  Why do I deal with White?  White is now the most well known evangelical defender of the eclectic text and detractor from the King James Version for the modern versions.  If you are going to deal with the issue, you do deal with White.  I’m not saying that evangelicals should be proud of that.  It’s just the truth.  Several books have been written about this now, but White’s is probably still the most well known and highest regarded from that crowd. Including White’s book, here are other prominent ones, not in order:

James White, The King James Only Controversy
D. A. Carson, The King James Version Debate
James Price, King James Onlyism:  A New Sect
Central Seminary Faculty, One Bible Only?
Two Volumes by the Fundamentalist Text and Translation Committee — From the Mind of God to the Mind of Man, and God’s Word in Our Hands

Many articles have been written and a few other books, espousing the same position as the above books, but those are the go-to volumes for an introduction to the new invention of Warfield in the late 19th century.  There are others, but those are enough to get it done for you.  You’ll understand their new position by reading those books.  It is a new position in the history of Christianity, just like Ruckmanism or double inspiration is a new position.  Both of those positions originate from unbelief in the preservation of scripture.  I recognize White acts angry and rejects that accusation.  I really am not trying to get under his skin.  Preservation of scripture means something historically and biblically, and it is different than what White believes.  His position is new and changes the meaning.  His belief is actually a denial of biblical and historical preservation, while saying that he believes it.  You could hear that in what he said in all of this recent spate of videos on his website.

White says that he understands the attraction of a settled, traditional text and the association of an eclectic text with a collapsing evangelicalism.  I would wonder how much he really does understand it. The underlying philosophy, the presupposition, behind an eclectic text is the actual collapse with what we are witnessing being the physical manifestation of what already started.  It is true.  You can trace everything back to the shift from transcendent truth to immanent truth.  Truth comes from outside this world and is objective and absolute.  A change in thinking led to a malleable Bible, an eclectic one.

White acts like the idea of a settled, traditional, preserved text is of recent origin as a reaction to apostasy or liberalism.  He’s got the order out of wack.  You had the settled text, then you had liberalism, then you had an eclectic text.  The eclectic text wasn’t accepted by rank and file.  It took a long period of erosion like with so many doctrines to get where we’re at.  The rebellion even in churches, that I know White is concerned about, is because the churches lack in authority.  You can change the meaning of marriage, because people can’t be sure enough to say there is a meaning.

The belief in perfect preservation, a settled text, is not externally derived.  White says it is.  We’ve dealt with that.  He says it is the end of meaningful apologetic interaction.  He has a wrong view of apologetics.  We’ve dealt with that.  White says that the ecclesiastical text is vague.  It isn’t.  It is the textus receptus.  White says that is vague, because you have several editions.  We’ve dealt with that again and again through the years.

White slips up when he says that even if you take a Byzantine position, you get back to presuppositions.  He quickly says then, “I guess everybody has their presuppositions.”  What he does though is expose that he doesn’t start with a biblical presupposition for his position.  It came out just very naturally for him.  He briefly caught himself, but didn’t correct it.  There was nothing to correct for him, because that is what he believes, that is, that you don’t start with presuppositions.  Textual critics say, start with the evidence and let that lead you to the truth.

One tell-tale moment for White is when he is leafing through his book looking for his presuppositions.  He says he wrote a big book.  He acts like he’s telling you and then he says nothing. This is also when you can tell he is in trouble.  I’ve seen people like Governor Rick Perry when they are trying to tell you something that they don’t know.  It’s awkward and painful for him.  He paused very long and fails.

White brings up the LXX, saying Jesus quoted from it, and says that this is a problem and worthy of serious thought.  I have written again and again on that subject here.  I’m going to write on it again, maybe tomorrow.  How is that a presupposition?  The fact that it isn’t a presupposition is why he pauses so long.  That argument is an argument against preservation.  The LXX, as White knows, is corrupt.  He would be arguing for a corrupt Bible.  You can’t really take a propositional position from the Bible from that LXX argument.  Half of it is speculation, which is why White is so vague about it.

It really is not a good argument for White to bring up the LXX to me.  I’ve written on it again and again.  White has trouble himself if he’s going to take that argument.  Was Jesus really quoting from the LXX?  Does White believe that?  I’d be happy to have him deal with the “tough stuff”?  Do you understand that White is saying that Jesus quoted from a corrupt translation?  Where does Jesus say He’s quoting from the Septuagint?  Is that the correct view?  Does it hold up?

White says there is confusion about categories between canon and text.  We’re not confused about that, but we dealt with that too.  White brings up the uselessness of men who don’t take his position, but that’s not true.  It’s possible that some of the reformed men don’t get out much, but that’s not because of their text position.  White smears me as a Ruckman/Riplinger type who lies.  We’ve dealt with that.  It’s non sequitur.  He puts me into “the nastiest group.”  He says I’m right along with them. I’d be happy to find out the examples of my nastiness.  Please point it out.  I’d say lumping me with Ruckman is about as nasty as it can get.

Like most eclectic defenders, White says you can’t take the ecclesiastical text or traditional text type of position without pointing out the exact edition of the TR that is the preserved edition.  This is something he says right after a long riff on strawmen.  You have very much settled on the text of scripture if you settle on the TR.  He knows that.  The reason you don’t report what you think is perfect to people like White is because you’ll spend the next several hours hearing about the differences between the TR editions.  That doesn’t refute the position, so it is a red herring too, but it raises such a distraction that you just lost what is most important, that being, the focus on the presuppositions.  Creation of confusion on Revelation 16:5 is not a position.  It’s just a criticism.

The TR, traditional text, eclectic text is a defensible position.  That is what it has the most going for it.  It arises from biblical exegesis.  It originates from scriptural presuppositions.  You might not be able to answer every question to every eclectic text critic to his satisfaction — that is almost guaranteed — but you can defend the position from the biblical presupposition.  The other side doesn’t have a scriptural position.  They can’t get theirs from the Bible.  I’ve never read one biblical theology for an eclectic text.  Without a biblical mooring, it is faithless.  Again, criticism of the only defensible, biblical position is not an actual position itself.  It’s like an old-time preacher once said, “I like my position better than your no-position.”

White says that his position, that in his book, is that there isn’t anything that has ever been lost.  It doesn’t take much to see he doesn’t believe that.  The papyri wasn’t “found” until the 20th century, so it was lost.  And again, I ask about the manuscript for 1 Samuel 13:1.  I’ve never met an eclectic text position that believed that we have it all available.  They hope we will find it.  That’s why Dan Wallace is doing what he’s doing, because these men want to find something to reconstruct the text for them.

White attacks the idea that nothing was lost after saying that he believes that nothing was lost.  He says the Johanine comma was lost.  Those who don’t believe anything was lost don’t believe that was lost, but this is an example of the tit for tat discussion that occurs after saying you believe you have a perfect, settled text.  White rejects that presupposition, so there will always be discussions about what is in and what is out.  He wants it.  He likes it.

Can we debate Bart Ehrmans and the like?  We could.  I would debate him if I thought it would be helpful.  I don’t believe he’ll be persuaded if I can beat him on textual evidence.  I know Ehrman is lying about that, but he’s not going to be persuaded by a manuscript evidence argument.  This is another example of White’s apologetic problem.  I’m right next to California-Berkeley and Stanford.  I debate those people all the time almost every week out in evangelism.  The Bible holds up without starting with manuscript evidence.

White says people like me can’t answer an Ehrman’s questions.  White can’t answer our questions.  He can’t square what the Bible says with what he believes.  It’s pretense with him when you want to know how his belief is historical.  It isn’t.   White doesn’t understand what matters on this.

When White talks about the KJV translators and Erasmus, this is revisionist history.  They had a homogenous text.  We know that.  If you took all the differences between all the editions of the TR, there are very few.  This is nothing like the Grand Canyon between Sinaiticus and Vaticanus.

I’m going to end it there for the one hour video that he called Strawmanism. I’ve answered what he said there already in some place that I’ve written in the last three weeks.

James White came back in yesterday’s program, August 11, and spent about 5 or 10 minutes talking about how out of balance his critics are.  He, of course, is balanced, and he lectures us on lacking on balance.  I’ve always wondered about the word balance, used by Christians.  It’s not a word used in the Bible.  The point about me is that I’ve written way too much on this subject.  Before my flurry of posts the last three weeks, it was 10 months ago I’ve written on this.  If you look at the 450 or so sermons on the website of our church, I don’t think you’ll see one sermon on this subject.

I do more work on this than many others, because I was a biblical language major and have taught Hebrew and Greek.  We have written a book on this subject.  The way that I support my belief about the Bible is by preaching it.  I’m sure I’ll keep writing on this, when I think I need to.  It’s more important to me than numbers of other subjects out in the world.  It’s God’s Word.

Part One.

The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men.

Instead of providing background for this post, if you want to get up to speed, you can do seven things:  (1)  read my four part series last week (1, 2, 3, 4), (2) then read my five part series from two weeks ago (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), (3) to really get serious, read Thou Shalt Keep Them, (4) read everything I’ve written here and at Jackhammer on the preservation of scripture or the version issue, (5) read what Thomas Ross wrote at his website, (6) above all, read what the Bible says about its own preservation, including the methodology (which we talk about in TSKT), and (7) read the historical theology of the preservation of scripture between 1500-1850 (look here at Richard Muller’s book to get a good grasp,but there are many other places).  If James White would have at least read what I’d written before he made these last two videos, then he would have heard the answers to some of his questions or attacks (not that it would have mattered to him).

After Thomas Ross linked to my articles defending him at the Logos forum, James White started talking about them on his Dividing Line program, which you can watch live on his youtube channel. The first one is the last third of a show he calls, KJVO Deceitfulness.   A whole second video he titles, King James Only Straw Manism:  Kent Brandenburg.  Maybe there is more to come, but I wanted to begin on these first two.

It really is not my goal at all to win a debate here.  I want us to cut through the dust cloud to see the truth in this.  I hear and understand everything James White is saying.  I’m going to be very careful in looking at these first two sessions.  You are welcome to ask questions and even challenge, but please keep it on the topic.  I don’t want to deviate to Ruckmanism, double inspiration, English preservationism, or whatever one might call that, unless it is necessary.

I certainly don’t want to argue a straw man.  What reason would there be?  I have no intention in dealing with something James White is not really saying.  I am arguing with what James White does say, which is also what most critical  or eclectic text advocates say and write, and then some that is just pure James White, his own novel ideas.  I guarantee you that the one erecting a straw man is White.  Does anyone who reads here and has watched his words in the recent videos think that he represents what I believe and teach, or even what I wrote?

If James White and I did debate one another with a neutral moderator, which I would, and I’m sure our church would send me to do that, we could ensure that we understood each other perfectly and the games would end — of course, I mean his games.  I understand that a lot of professing Christians like White.  With the way the country is sinking, it’s just where we’re at, but I believe this could contrast the biblical and historical position with what White offers.

As I write this, I’m watching them completely through for the first time (the first one starts at 40:40). I will number every one of his falsehoods, bold and italicized and will also point out when he uses a form of personal mockery that is completely unnecessary.  Some of it with White, I believe is just normal for him. I’m saying a kind of ridicule comes natural to him, but I’m going to expose every instance of it.  I want you to know that I know, and that this is the means White uses.

My biggest issues with this particular teaching of White about scripture are that (1) it dishonors God, the Author of the Bible, by contradicting what God said about His preservation of scripture — that makes Him a liar, (2) it teaches and influences people away from a biblical position on the preservation of scripture, which leaves those people less certain, more easily swayed by false teaching and practice, and less faithful, (3) it revises a huge portion of history in order to justify the new doctrinal position and practice, and (4) it relegates the Bible to unsettled, open to further and further change, which results in a transference of human authority over scripture and diminished in its authority.  White becomes the enabler of doubt and weakness, until it reaches apostasy. He also perverts a biblical apologetic, elevating external, human documentation above the Word of God.  He thinks and then says the real spiritual battle is accomplished through spouting off manuscript evidence framed in the rules of textual criticism.  God is not glorified by that.  I could say much more here.

White begins in the first video by talking to himself, “What is this guy’s name again?  Uuuuh, yes, Kent Brandenburg.” My name is in the bibliography of his book (p. 342).  I’m not saying he did know my name, just that one highlights a lack of name recognition by saying such a thing.  How could he be ready to do a whole segment on someone and not know his name?  This strategy, by the way, acting like someone is a nobody, is what the religious leaders did with Jesus when they couldn’t undermine the authority of what He said (see John 17:15).  It is an ad hominem argument that characterizes a loser.

Next James White identifies me a “King James Only guy.”  You should know that title is still a pejorative, even more so, which is why White uses it again and again.  You use that title and you already drag it into the Gail Riplinger crowd, to whose position White is closer than me in his bibliological presuppositions. If she is KJVO, then I’m not.  We’re not close to the same. I’m saying that I’m more radically different than the rank and file KJVO than White is.

Falsehood #1:  At 40:50 White calls me a “reformed King James Only guy.”  I’m not reformed. He shouldn’t make that statement unless he knows.

At 41:29, White editorializes that “there is something about hiding behind a keyboard that they’re able to just speak in absurd ways.”  The implication here is that these people who write against White are cowards, who would never say it to his face.  I’m not afraid of White intellectually, spiritually, or physically.  White doesn’t inspire fear in me at all.  It really is not that hard for him to say things to a camera either.  I watched the Steven Anderson interview and White is about (literally) ten times more civil in person than he is when he’s alone in his studio.  Anderson believes a false gospel, something that White never mentions in his long interview.

At 41:50 White says that he “vaguely remembered Kent Brandenburg and some weird King James only thing that he had said.”  ‘It had to be vague because this guy is not someone that anyone would remember.  He’s a nobody, ya know.’  ‘He’s also weird.’  White being White.  A weird King James only thing in my case would be that the Bible teaches its own perfect preservation and availability.  Very weird.  There were two small posts written by Alan Kurschner that most today would call “drive-bys” or “trolling.” They were nothing substantive — just deceptive shots with the intention to hurt.  These comments by White serve no purpose except to poison the well before he gets started — ‘this guy is a kook, just know that to start with.’  He spends a long time on a backwater hayseed.

Falsehood #2:  At 42:20 and following White calls Thomas Ross’s claim that White’s position contradicts the 1689 London Baptist Confession an “abjectly ahistorical abuse of the writers, the framers, the 1689, and others.”  It seems that if you string together a lot of words that start with “a,” they have a better chance of being true.   I don’t know who he means by “others,” but White does not believe what the 1689 writers believed.  White in essence admits this right afterwards, but explains that it was because those writers didn’t have the same manuscript evidence then that White has today. We’re just talking about what they believed.  White doesn’t believe what they believed.

Pause here for a moment to think about White’s riff between 42:20 and 43:05.  Does the doctrine of scripture change because of new manuscript evidence?  That’s what White is saying.  Even Burgon didn’t have what we have today, he says, and if those earlier did have it, he is saying that their doctrine would have been different.  Like his.  Their doctrine though came from scripture.  That position in the confession came from a biblical presupposition.  They would interpret the outside evidence through an internal lense. This is critical that you understand what White is saying.

White then says after 43:05 that if you don’t approach history like he does, that is, interpret the Bible in light of new historical documentation, that you are one of these people who don’t “do history very well.”  This is a post enlightenment method in which the doctrine can only be true if it can be verified as historical.  This method necessitates a willingness to progress in doctrine.  If they had what we had today, he’s saying, they would have been different.  The London Baptist Confession at that juncture was what it was, but with new extra-scriptural evidence, it could progress.  This thinking was popularized in Germany in the 19th century and came to the United States from there through American professors trained in Germany.  It is a kind of rationalism.  It’s why our constitution can mean something new too as history progresses.

White’s method is also a two book approach.  You’ve got one book, the Bible, and the other book, history or science, which is what modern textual criticism is.  The two synthesize to a new truth. This is how doctrine progresses through history in White’s mind.  White is presenting this like it is the Bible, but notice that he doesn’t use the Bible to make the presentation.  Actually, based on what we see from him, White would just laugh and roll his eyes and mock the whole idea.

After 43:15, he says if you don’t use this historico-critical approach, you are using history as a bat. We are batting James White out of sheer sadistic joy.  Do you see what White does here?  It’s not that, and this is where White doesn’t understand or is lying or is deceived too.  The uniformity of Christian doctrine, the unity of the Spirit, testifies to the truth of the doctrine.  I have mentioned this two or more times in these posts.  If you can’t find your doctrine in history, you should be concerned, because not everyone is going to be wrong, especially when it is accompanied by exegesis.  For White to keep going with his fiction after 43:20, it is enough that I’ll call it Falsehood #3, that this guy (Thomas Ross) just wants to be combative, proverbially fisticuff with James White.

To equate me with the Riplinger types, next White says he’s surprised that my headline didn’t have more capitals and underlines and red blinking lights.  He meant it as an insult.  I’ve seen a few of those websites.  Ironically, White’s show itself has some characteristics like those websites, with the oddball props around him and the way that he uses them at times.  He has the plasma lamp in the back.  In his second video, he proudly pulls out his old, 1550 Stephanus and takes a long sniff of it. Before that, he talked about the safe that held the copy, looking all proud of himself.  He inserts regular short brags about his biking exploits at whatever elevation. I could go on (maybe later 😀 ).

At about 44:25, James White begins to read my first post, the first question that I ask, as to whether believers were wrong on the doctrine of preservation for hundreds of years.  This, he says, is the straw man.  He scoffs at that for the next few minutes, laughing, tickled with himself — “Just do that type of thing, um, I could put him on a little thing” — professing that you know it’s not going to be good when your first sentence is a straw man.  After that, you kind of wait for him to tell you how it is, ya know, a straw man, as he rocks back and forth, and his mouth opens, and he says, “And, um, that’s the way it is.”  Then he moves on.  We know it’s a straw man, because he says it’s one.

White doesn’t answer my first two questions.  He implies, “no,” because he explains why it’s no, because of what we know today about the character of manuscripts.  What that means, he says, “is that to try to drag them in and make them participants in the current debate is illogical and dishonest.” What?  That is falsehood #4, where White essentially is voiding the London Baptist Confession statement about preservation because they didn’t have the same manuscript evidence.  To bring up their statement (“drag them in”) he says is illogical and dishonest.  Illogical and dishonest.  He then says that is strawman number one.

A “strawman” is to give the impression that you’ve refuted someone’s argument, when you’ve set up a replacement, a straw man, that is an easier argument to knock over, and then say that you just refuted his argument.  To make even a straw man argument, you’ve got to make an argument.  Those first two questions haven’t even concluded an argument yet.  I’m arguing in that first paragraph that it’s a serious thing to reject the doctrine of the London Baptist Confession.  If White is doing that, it’s a serious thing.  Is that a serious thing to White?  It seems, no.  However, it isn’t a straw man.

At 46, White says I’m lying when I say he rejects biblical and historical preservation of scripture.  I will call that falsehood #5.  Let’s hear what White says in defense of his charge that I’m lying, because if I am lying, I really should stop that.  I know what those men meant about preservation.  I’ve read about everything we still possess from the period of the LBC and before about preservation.  Daniel Wallace says they were wrong about preservation.  White parks awhile, broadbrushing the lying King James Onlyists.

White holds up his book, and says people have read that book, King James Only Controversy.  White says he has defended the preservation of scripture.  That doesn’t surprise me.  I said biblical and historical position.  He says to make that absurd argument destroys credibility right off the bat.  OK. And?  “Why do you all do this?”  He asks, you all.  He takes time to talk about how that King James Only are liars.  He drops Sam Gipp and Steven Anderson, guys who don’t in fact believe in preservation of scripture.  He asks why I want to be associated with names like those?  Because I dream to be associated with liars?  Then he adds Peter Ruckman and Gail Riplinger.  We really have almost nothing in commong, but this is White.

I bring up how that about everyone believed those confessions.  And White says, which confessions? He lectures that there are differences between them that are important.  Oh really?  How are they different on the subject we’re talking about, the preservation of scripture?   They’re not actually.  And the Helvetic confession teaches the same.  Which confession teaches something different on that? None.

White says at 48 that “the issue as everyone who has honesty and integrity knows is not the issue of the preservation of scripture.  It is the methodology of that preservation.”  No, falsehood #6,  it really is preservation itself that is the issue too.  Were all the words preserved for that generation of believers?  White doesn’t believe that.  He believes we didn’t have all of them available until the papyri, for instance, were found in the 20th century.  Those were lost for at least 500 years.  That’s not just methodology.  Method is an issue too, and scripture and the confessions both also talk about that, and White doesn’t agree with those either.  So, putting aside his slander that I’m a liar without integrity (I thought it was only KJVO that called people liars…hmmmmm).  I never called him a liar or lacking in integrity.  I said he might be lying about this, but I didn’t know, because he could be deceived or not know what he’s talking about.

More to Come.

Part One (this one has the videos linked).  Part Two.  Part Three.  Part Four.


After the 18 minute mark, White says that the text handed down by the providence of God and received by His churches “is not just a narrow spectrum of the Byzantine manuscript tradition,” referring to the textus receptus of the New Testament.  Part of the doctrine of preservation, as taught in scripture, is general accessibility.  Something unavailable isn’t received, and that is another part of a scriptural doctrine of preservation, the reception by the churches.  God preserved His Words for His people to possess, use, apply, and live.  An inaccessible manuscript is not preserved.  Something buried for all of history until the 19th or 20th centuries is a text that God’s people have not been using.  There can be numbers of reasons why that didn’t happen, but those manuscripts cannot be now a source for altering what God’s people have accepted as scripture.

The person with whom White was debating on the social media, and he’s answering in this video, asks him a couple of questions.

Upon what basis do you have any confidence that 3 John is canonical, seeing that it was not mentioned until the middle of the third century and was debated up until the fifth. Number two, upon what basis do you accept that the Pentateuch as we now have it, looks anything like the work of Moses?

White says that those questions look like an abandonment of the actual subject.  I would say, how about just answering them?  You expect people to debate your specific examples of textual variation.

Then White says that, second, “it introduces connections and confusions that really worry me, because if I didn’t know who this came from, it sounds like it comes from Catholic answers.”

This is a non-answer.  It’s a strategy.  Again, he’s worried.  Stop that. And then stop equating someone with Roman Catholicism.

Rome believes in sola ecclesia, but does that mean that believers have no association with canonicity? The Bible itself doesn’t teach a canonicity of books.  It teaches a canonicity of words.  Books are an outgrowth of a canonicity of words.

The Spirit of truth would guide believers into “all truth” (John 16:13). The Westminster Confession says in the first section on scripture:

[O]ur full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.

The church of Thessalonica received Paul’s words as the Word of God (1 Thessalonians 2:13). Was the church at Thessalonica a counsel?  Paul’s epistles were circulating among the churches even during apostolic times (Colossians 4:16).  This is a means, a methodology, for knowing what scripture is. Peter recognized Paul’s writings as inspired by God and equated them with the rest of the Scriptures (2 Peter 3:15-16). Paul quoted the Gospel of Luke and called it scripture (1 Timothy 5:18).  The Words received widespread acceptance.  This is a fundamental principle for reception of God’s Words and it is scientific like science was accepted pre-enlightenment, an aspect of total truth, not the bifurcated truth, two book theory, of White.

The work of the Holy Spirit through His people in the acceptance of the Words He inspired is the means by which His people know what His Words are.  This is a method.  This is a means, a supernatural one in fitting with a supernatural book.  If you can’t trust this, which is taught in scripture, sola scriptura, then you can’t trust the Bible.  I believe this is also the theme behind the questions White was asked, that he mocked.

The sacral nature academia has taken on itself, standing above scripture, is a much better example of Roman Catholic type authority.  God’s people are taken out of the equation, and scholars and publishers, using a very subjective, non-biblical means, replace them, holding sway over God’s Word.  That’s what White sees as a tool of God’s providence.  No way.

The means or method we are required to accept is the biblical means or method, and textual criticism doesn’t look anything like what the Bible says is the method or the means.  This is not semper reformanda, always reforming.  This is deviation from the path God set for His people.  This is by far a trajectory to Rome than what White says.

Instead of answering the 3 John question, which seems to be a test question to flush out White’s thinking on the scriptural method for ascertaining scripture, White asks a question and in his typical suspicious, mocking manner.  He sets off on a few minutes of red herring — Carthage, Hippo — answer the question!  If he answers the question based on orthodox canonical thinking, he’s trapped. He also attempts to shame the guy (who has now linked to his answer in the comment section of this series).

White then goes off in admiration of the manuscript attestation toward the preservation of the Bible. Everyone is happy about that, but that’s not enough for a supernatural book.  It’s as if White applauds the existence of variants.  We have even more copies available.  The Bible was never up for question, and textual criticism has made it more so, giving new fodder for Muslim apologists.  If we question our own Bible, why shouldn’t they?  And White is one of the biggest questioners out there.  It isn’t settled with him.

White says at almost 23 that the strength of Christianity’s position is all of the manuscript evidence, which is sacrificed by the ecclesiastical text position.  Those who believe in supernatural preservation have manuscript evidence too.  If they want to rely on modern science, they’ve got that too.  For someone who doesn’t accept divine authority, which it seems White doesn’t, there is manuscript evidence, which means something, but it still leaves White and people like him with errors in their Bible.  Muslim apologists wonder rightfully how that a supernatural book written by a God Who created everything could allow it to fall into a degree of error.  That’s not what believers should be preaching or believing.  The church has capitulated on that, and now we have a world filled with doubt.

White says it is a completely different world talking about the Old Testament text.  That is an error.  Both Old and New are scripture and they were authenticated and recognized in the same way.  God gave the Pentateuch to the congregation of God in the Old Testament, Israel, and Israel received and kept.  That’s not all there was to it, but the basics are identical.  Why does White accept the Pentateuch?  He can’t answer the question.  The man asking the question for sure isn’t saying that it is by counting manuscripts or else he wouldn’t receive the TR.

The last two minutes are a flurry of bombasticity to put down the man he’s questioning, so there’s nothing there.  What one can see with White is that he doesn’t start with a biblical view of this issue.  I would hope he could change. I wish he would.  He should.  I don’t expect it.  He’ll double down, because he’s got too much at stake.  He is doing great damage in the nature that I have related in this series, spreading doubt and uncertainty about God’s Word.

Part One.  Part Two.  Part Three.

I left off this series, evaluating two new James White videos, at the ten minute mark of the second video.  Why should I do this?  It’s a good opportunity because you can sit and watch James White, and then get my analysis, which is a good learning circumstance.  It’s coming right out of his mouth from his face, right there in front of you, and then you read my comments.

If James White speaks the truth, I gladly agree with him, but he doesn’t here.  To me, he seems delusional on this issue.  He can’t even grasp the biblical position and he goes wholesale for the new and unscriptural one.  He’s not just against the right view, but he’s angry and insulting.  It’s odd, but let’s pick up where we ended the last post, where he assaults what has been called the Ecclesiastical Text view.

For about a minute, after 10 minutes, White lists off what he considers important knowledge to get this issue right.  As I hear each one, I don’t see anything there that deals with the issue.  He mentions the Westminster Confession and the London Baptist Confession and says sarcastically, “God bless every single one of them,” adding “but none of them were infallible.”  Let me mark this down.  None of them were infallible.  OK.  What’s the point?  The implication is that they were wrong here.  Sure, these men could be wrong, but it was a lot of people who wrote these, a lot who agreed with them, followed what they wrote, and they defended their confessions with scripture. If you are going to disrespect their conclusions, you should overturn it with more than just disdaining tones.

Then White asserts that John Calvin wasn’t ecclesiastical text, because he judged certain readings to be better than others.  That just shows that White doesn’t understand what he’s talking about.  It is true that the editions of the TR vary slightly.  That’s not enough to reject a scriptural position.  What did these men write about that?  What was a position of perfect preservation, a settled text, that knew that errors came into the hand copies?  I’ve answered that again and again here with the exact quotes of the men.  Something like the Ecclesiastical Text position is what people believed at that time.  It is the only historical and biblical defensible position.  I know that people want answers on specific texts, but there really are not that many and for a person of faith it should not be enough to push the eject button on biblical doctrine. I know it does with White and others, but to a destructive end.

No one is saying that the single state church leader, Calvin, represents historical theology.  I recognize how important he is to these reformed people.  However, saying that at that juncture in history he preferred one TR reading over another does not do anything to this position.  White says “not a one” believed the Ecclesiastical Text position, when in fact everyone did.  Perhaps a few didn’t, but so small a number did not (I don’t know of any) that it is accurate to say that everyone believed it.  It is the position that was written down that they believed.  White either doesn’t know what people thought and believed at that time about preservation of scripture, or he just ignores it so as not to undermine his own position.  White says “they didn’t seem to have that idea.”  No, that’s what they thought.

White then calls this “the infallibility of reformed scholasticism.”  The kindest thing I could call this is a “red herring.”  Their position wasn’t a scholastic position.  And they didn’t prove their position, like White, by talking like their mere support made it divine edict.  No.  This was historic, biblical belief.  This is what they saw scripture teach.  This is where the unity of the spirit comes in.  Could they all have been deceived at once?  Was this a total bibliological apostasy?  This is White’s position.  He doesn’t call it that, but it is what he is saying.  If you are going to upend established doctrine, you’ve got to go to the Bible, not naturalistic forensics, new archaeological finds.

Toward the end of the 11 minute mark, White says he believes in sola scriptura, but, but, “some of our forefathers didn’t have all the information.”  What doctrine is this?  Because I think it deserves a name.  It’s the didn’t-have-all-the-information doctrine.  Scripture is sufficient and they had scripture, but they didn’t have all the information.  In addition to scripture, you need information.  Does that contradict sola scriptura?  I’d say so.

You hear the typical postmodern quips from White.  “That very much concerns me.”  “That troubles me.”  Who cares?  What concerns you has no authority, more so than what Calvin wrote has no authority.  Your being troubled doesn’t give me the evidence necessary to show that my beliefs are wrong.  I need better than that.  All the facial twistings and squirming in the seat and the eye rolls — none of those persuade me.  They actually do the opposite to me.

At 12:20 and following, he says that the Ecclesiastical Text position sounds good in an online chat, but it “can’t answer questions about specific readings.”  This is how the debate goes.  You show the biblical doctrine, the historical doctrine, but that is overturned in White’s mind by textual criticism, which isn’t scripture.  The other side doesn’t have to show you a doctrine.  They don’t have one.  They don’t start with doctrine, and this coming from someone who says don’t be persuaded by scholasticism.  This is also coming from someone, when the textual criticism goes off the rails, returns to doctrine, as seen in his debate with Ehrman.  White likes to say, “I’m sorry, but,” when he’s not sorry.  I’m sorry, but you don’t get to pull the doctrine card, when you’re the ones who say that presuppositions don’t come into the equation.

White’s specific reading, which he had already mentioned twice in his video, is Revelation 16:5.  A text like that is the crack through which he can drive his Mack Truck of textual criticism.  White knows what Revelation 16:5 said in all the Greek manuscripts.  He knows that.  Does he?  Has White seen every manuscript available to every translator before printed editions came, and the printed English translations came?  You can’t prove a universal negative, which is why human discovery lacks as a basis for faith.

White then brings in Luke 2:22 as another specific reading and one that he asked Douglas Wilson about, which also indicated to me that he does think this is Douglas Wilson’s position.  This is the typical argumentation of the critical text person.  It is a textual variant gotcha game.  There aren’t very many of these, very few.  It’s like the exceptions for pro-abortionists — they want to know about incest and rape.  These exceptions become the basis of the belief instead of sola scriptura.  That’s how Christians should operate.  Elevating science above the theology was the rationalism and liberalism of the 19th century, and now we can’t say what marriage is.  The Bible is the truth.  What it says about itself is the final authority.

After 14 minutes, White says if you don’t have textual criticism, you can’t answer questions, which is what damages apologetics.  White has lived in his own mind of textual criticism, only answering questions with his view of the world.  Living in my own mind, I’m saying that you can answer the questions, except they have real authority unlike his.  He spouts off three verses where he says the TR reading is indefensible.  When he says indefensible, he intends for you to see it his way.  It is defensible, but he means that you can’t defend it with the rules of textual criticism, which were invented by men and essentially unbelievers.

At the 15 minute mark, he says someone has counted 1800 differences between the TR and the majority text.  The majority text, you may not know, is a recent invention also part of textual criticism.  When you say “the majority text,” you’re already wrong, because there is no “the majority text.”  Not every manuscript has been collated, so we still can’t say what’s the majority.  I call this “the math view,” and it isn’t a biblical position.  White himself says “the majority text,” which is either ignorant or misleading.

He spends 16-17 philosophizing about this, and lands on 1 John 5:7, which he says indicates that we don’t have the original text of the New Testament.  Anyone who defends 1 John 5:7 he says, despite it’s inclusion in the confessions, is an unhelpful zealot for this age in which we live.  I have no comment.

At 17:30, around there, White says he saw a very “troubling” combination of canon issues and text issues.  That sparked my interest, because that was one of my chapters in Thou Shalt Keep Them.  It also makes me wonder if this guy he’s arguing with has read that chapter.  White says that confusing canon and text leads back to the arguments of Rome and the more conservative forms of Islam.  So there, swatted that away with ease.

White attacks the idea of a received text, coming to the church by the providence of God.  He asks if the very recent finds of the papyri are not the providence of God.  That, of course, isn’t the point.  He either doesn’t get the point or he’s acting like he doesn’t get it.  I could say it’s the providence of God that I stuck my hand with a screwdriver two days ago, but there is no doctrine to derive from it.  Believers didn’t have the papyri for hundreds of years, so if you believe in providential preservation, you don’t believe that should “correct” what God did preserve.  That isn’t a belief in preservation.  It’s a denial.  It doesn’t surprise me that people find new manuscripts.  There are regular archaelogical finds that people, who operate like White, think should be used to correct standing doctrine.  They shouldn’t.  They should be interpreted in light of what we already know.  Christianity and the church are not in flux, not a flexible, meandering thing, changing based upon what new discovery might come about (18:40).

The next post will be the last.

Part One.  Part Two.

I do get how that certain bibliological error needs exposing and some of it is King James only.  A big swath of King James supporters don’t believe in the preservation of scripture.  They’ve invented double inspiration or a kind of edition of double inspiration that I call English preservation, that God preserved His word in the English, not in the original languages.  Then you have the liberals, the Bart Ehrman types, attacks on inspiration, and the now regular appearances of new, innovative perversions that diminish scripture, numerous of these.  False religions assault the Bible.  Continuationists often claim extra-scriptural revelation.  Everything I’ve written so far in this first paragraph could keep someone very busy without getting to the doctrine of perfect preservation and general accessibility of scripture to every generation of believers.

James White, however, dedicates himself to battle certainty in scripture.  He and others like him take the odd position that you are a danger if you believe there is a settled text.  Unless you are committed to some dilution of the biblical text, you are in trouble with them.   Anything that rises above preference for the text behind the King James Version must be eradicated by White and others.  If it really is fine with them, then it shouldn’t matter, but it does.  It does.  It’s very, very serious to them as seen in the time they dedicate to it.  White and others say so.  There are so many alternative Bible interpretations and positions that White tolerates. He doesn’t do repeated exposes and write books about those things like premillennialism or amillennialism.  Those don’t get on his radar.

Someone who believes there are already errors in scripture shouldn’t have a problem with someone having certainty in a Bible of which he himself approves.  On the other hand, I think that James White is dangerous, because he rejects the biblical teaching of preservation of scripture and spreads it to others, causing doubt.  I can’t believe in biblical and historical preservation and tolerate White’s position.  I can’t believe in more than one Bible, which itself isn’t even a Christian worldview.  He is in error, based on the teaching of the Bible itself.

As I’ve said, I’m sure there are those with a lower view of the Bible than White who are buoyed by his conservative evangelicalism.  I think I should rejoice when he’s true.  Hopefully I will, but he isn’t right here, so we continue with his two recent videos.  In the last paragraph I quoted in part two, White said this:

[W]e live in a day where the world is so opposed to our faith, that the days of my grandparent’s generation where you didn’t have to worry where you got the Bible and you didn’t have to worry about textual criticism and you didn’t have to worry about sexual ethics and marriage and everything else.  That day’s gone.

White speaks of a day when you didn’t have to worry about where you got the Bible and you didn’t have to worry about textual criticism.  Those were the days before James White and men like him, who say they’re doing such a great service to the church.  People assumed they had the Word of God in the King James Version.  Now they have doubts, and James White contributes to that.

At 15:15, when White is answering a question by Eric Hovind about people who say that the Bible was written only by men, he says this:

Of course, if you come to the issue of the Bible, um, I don’t want to ground the authority of the Bible in any example or story that I give to somebody else, because if I, if I put my hand on something and say I swear by this, I’m saying this has a higher authority.  The same way, we can point to evidences of the truthfulness and consistency of the Bible, but we have to be very careful that we don’t communicate to people that history, or manuscripts, or anything else, is a superior authority to the Bible.  Well, then the authority of scripture comes from the fact that it is theopneustos, it is God breathed, it is God speaking.  When you put your hand in front of your mouth and you speak, you cannot but help but feel breath.  That’s the intimacy of what the Word of God actually is.  Jesus believed that. . . . As a pastor, as an elder in a church, when I encounter someone who can in a flippant and easy way question the authority of scripture, I am immediately concerned about this person’s welfare, I really am.

I agree with everything that White said here.  He should not ground the authority of the Bible on a story about Erasmus or in the next manuscript that someone digs up or finds in a cave.  If God says He would preserve every Word and that every one would be available, that discounts anything that is different than what believers used for hundreds of years and many generations.  There should be no flippant or easy way for that to be dismissed, and yet is all the time, including by White, who places a higher degree of authority on the existence of textual variants in manuscripts than the testimony of God’s people.

White’s 27 Minute Video, Entitled, My Concerns With the Ecclesiastical Text Position


I am familiar with the terminology, the Ecclesiastical Text.  The first I heard it was over 20 years ago from the late Theodore Letis.  It was his position on the preservation of scripture.  As I consider what he wrote now, he was just representing the historical, biblical position on the preservation of the Bible.  This does not count as an endorsement of Letis, just that I think what he was saying on this was true.  In the past at least, what I heard espoused by Douglas Wilson sounds like this Ecclesiastical Text view.  Some today have hijacked Letis terminology, who don’t even believe his view.  Somebody must be careful not to argue a straw man on this position, if he’s going to oppose it.

White says he opposes the Ecclesiastical Text position, has “serious problems” with it, and in the above linked video, he speaks about it.  He says it is a subject that is very important to him, and he did the video, he explains, in response to a conversation someone had with him in a social network. At the very beginning White says that this position is the end of meaningful apologetic defense.  Big words.  One would think it’s got to be very bad with that kind of blasting.

White says in the second minute that the Ecclesiastical Text position is thoroughly inconsistent with reformed presuppositions, even though it’s the reformed that take it.  He says it is also inconsistent with “sola scriptura and things like that.”  In the third minute, White explains that he was motivated by statements that were very offensive and that he was shocked or at least disappointed by what a fellow reformed Baptist elder said to him.  The man said about White that the Muslims want White to debate in their mosques for a different reason than White thinks, that is, because they use again and again White’s defense of the critical text.

At about 3:25, White does a very typical for him type of mockery of this man and his audacity. You’ve got to be kidding White if you think that Muslims know what the Ecclesiastical Text is.  That is a red herring.  Muslims think the Bible is corrupted, something James White agrees with.  It is true that they don’t hear very often a position in defense of a settled, perfect text of the Bible.  It is probably also true that someone who took that position would not get into a mosque to debate, like White can.  That position, the historic and biblical position, contradicts the chief Muslim attack on Christianity.  They like a guy that plays right into their hands.

A little after the four minute mark, White says Ecclesiastical Text advocates must admit textual variants, just like he does, White ticking off the various editions of the textus receptus (TR).  He says Muslim scholars pounce on any admission of textual variants and both he and TR proponents must admit variants.  When I talk to Muslims, I don’t admit variants.  I go to scripture and show them verse after verse that teaches the perfect preservation of God’s Words, and that we trust what God said, that we have a perfect Bible, because God said so.  That is doing spiritual warfare, depending on theopneustos, the breath of God, to pull down strongholds, not getting into acceptable percentages. White can’t do that, because he doesn’t believe it.

Who are meaningful Moslem apologists?  I find that every Moslem I talk to, wants to talk, and is ready to talk.  They have various degrees of readiness, but more than any other pagan religion, Moslems will engage on their religion.  They want to persuade you.  Scripture is sufficient for whatever Moslem apologist you want to confront.

White says that’s the problem with the ecclesiastical text position.  He says it exists in the backwaters of reform-dom.  This is very typical type of speech of White, who says he was shocked and disappointed with how someone treated him, said, as normal, right up front.  Of course, he’s tooting his own horn, implying that he’s way down stream with the top Moslem scholars, and these guys are in their little reformed fiefdoms, away from the big time, like him.  It’s laughable.  He really does get me laughing out loud, all of his antics.

After spending a minute insulting his opponents, White lectures us that Moslems don’t know their own textual history, even outside of the backwaters, where White paddles, except for some of them.  And he means by that, of course, that he does know, because, ahem, he’s studied the history of their text, and can give them textual variants of the Koran.  This is White’s idea of being on an even playing field — the Bible and the Koran have variants.  They both have errors!  Neither know what the original text was!!  This is “meaningful” interaction, “meaningful” an important qualifier to White.

At 6 minutes, White asks, “What are we supposed to do?”  If he was serious, this is a very good question.  Men should know what to do.  He asks what the Ecclesiastical Text view will add to this.

Right before 7 minutes, White equates the Ecclesiastical Text view with the Moslem view of the Koran.  He says they take a theological position, and not a historical one, just like the Ecclesiastical Text.  This is another iteration of a typical critical text argument.  They use that same one with the Roman Catholic tradition of Jerome’s Vulgate, except that it’s not the same, because the Vulgate was a translation, and the Ecclesiastical Text view defends original language preservation.  The preservation of the Koran is not the same as the preservation of the Bible, because the Bible is in fact the Word of God.  It’s true that someone might not take the Bible, the actual breath of God, as an authority, but it is powerful to pull down strongholds, unlike White’s naturalistic arguments, meant to get debate points away from the backwater.

White says that there is no historical argument for an ecclesiastical text.  There is one.  And it’s better than White’s historical arguments, because it is true.  White says there is no means for an ecclesiastical text person for accomplishing anything in a conversation with a Moslem.  I haven’t found that to be the case.  If you know the Bible, you can show what’s different about the Bible from any other book.  The Koran can’t compare.  You can talk about the means of preservation, the biblical means, and accessibility, something that White doesn’t have in his naturalistic toolbox.  Those are powerful, because they are biblical, and the problem for a Moslem, like any other lost person, isn’t intellectual, but volitional.

An Ecclesiastical Text person will explain textual attack and how that we know what the Words of God are, just like we know we have 66 books.  That is all historical, but mainly it is biblical.  We don’t say the same thing as the Moslems.  That’s just a lie by White, and one to which he adds a lot of attitude with it.

White says after 8 minutes that he’s never seen the official ET, Ecclesiastical Text, rolling his eyes again and again, as he often does.  He said at the beginning of his video, that he had seen it.  He should become more educated then. He should perhaps go into the backwaters a little.  Or he could just read the Westminster divines, John Owen, Turretin, or Richard Muller’s volume on the history of bibliology after the printing press.  He could perhaps get out of the 19th century and get into the 17th and 18th centuries, before the enlightenment.

Right before the 9 minute mark, he’s got to do 20 seconds of “meaningless” ridicule, his face getting red, twitching and stroking his beard.  I get to the 9 minute mark, and can I believe it?  Yes.  He brings in the traditional Latin text of Rome. It’s like talking to an evolutionist, the same three or four same stories again and again.  He sees a subjugation of the text to an ecclesiastical authority, mocking “ET” again briefly, an obvious reference to extra-terrestrial. (You tell me what White looks like when he talks like this — be honest.  If he was in my church, I’d tell him to stop.)  White should read the Westminster Confession and the London Baptist Confession to get an explanation for what he mocks earlier as a “vibe” and here with the “church authority” argument.

Just an aside here.  The critical text people, including White, defy their own reasoning with their support of the Septuagint, a non original language text (and a corrupt one).  The big debate with Roman Catholicism was the superiority of the original language text above the Latin.  There is a biblical argument there.

Notice at the end of the 9th minute and into the 10th how that White argues for his position.  None of it is scriptural.  It’s 100% humanism and naturalism.  You hear him say “the Byzantine platform” as if those forensics are vital to believers.  They’re not.  He acts like they had no basis for their text in the 16th and 17th centuries.  He doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and it would be more sad, if he wasn’t so laughable.

More to Come.

As we continue analysis of James White’s Bible version videos, Eric Hovind asks again about folks who try to correct the original language text with an English translation.  Maybe he didn’t think White had answered that.  For his second round, White says the King James translators didn’t know the Granville Sharp rule, so modern translators are better equipped with this new rule to do a better translation, a way to disparage the translation used and trusted by most Christians for 400 years.   According to White, people had missed the meaning of Titus 2:13 until the arrival of Granville Sharp. White then channels the translators, speculating that if they were alive, they would support a revision utilizing new grammatical discoveries.  Of course, the bigger issue is the underlying text, since God inspired and preserved His Words in the original language.

Even though White’s reply didn’t answer Hovind’s question, everyone should agree that the KJV translators wanted as accurate a translation as possible.  Other factors exist though in deciding to change a translation.  There is a nonchalance about revising the Bible to “evangelical scholarship,” like the Bible is its personal plaything.  People think and should think of their Bible as settled and established, as heavenly, as divinely provided, the domain of God, not a work in progress. Men change to fit the Bible.  They don’t hold sway over the Bible.  The Bible isn’t a changing item.  It is finished, done, available.

As I evaluate White’s answers to Hovind, I want people to know that there is a silliness, a lack of seriousness, about the tone of the interview.  I would do better with something less reality show, that would elevate the subject matter, instead of attempting to make it more casual.  Regular exclamations of “wow” are over the top.  They too diminish the doctrines represented.

Beginning at about 5:15, Hovind asks White why there are so many translations?  This seems to relate to the question Hovind just asked.  White gives a good answer here. He says there are too many and that there are so many mainly for financial reasons. Publishers don’t want to pay to use another translation, so they do their own to save money.  White has a problem with the simplified translations too.  He says some very good things here.  He gives an excellent explanation of the various levels of Greek that should be seen in a good translation.  The books with the most complex Greek should reflect that in their translation instead of dumbing all the books down to the same level.  A translation of the New Testament should be at the level of the New Testament.  The funding used for new English translations should go to languages that have no Bible. This was good.

White finishes the second question at about the 9 minute mark, and then Hovind asks him about textual criticism, whether we’ve “beat this horse to death” so that ‘the Bible is dismantled to the degree that we don’t know what it’s saying’?  White says,

There’s two different kinds of textual criticism.  You have.  We need to differentiate them.  Uh, what I engage in is called lower textual criticism, where you actually have factual material to deal with.  So we’re talking about manuscript based textual criticism.  We’re actually talking about trying to reconstruct the original text, based upon having more manuscripts of the New Testament than any other work of antiquity, earlier manuscripts than any other work of antiquity, better manuscripts than any other work of antiquity.  OK.  So we have an embarrassment of riches.

And you’ve got people like Dan Wallace running around the world right now, running himself ragged, uh, with the center for the study of New Testament manuscripts, trying to digitize the entire world’s collection of Greek manuscripts and there’s a reason for that. Have you heard about what’s happening in the Middle East? Libraries being destroyed, things like that, if, and those manuscripts are gone, if they were not digitized, if they’re only on, on microfilm and that microfilm is next to impossible to read, uum, this has to happen.  And that, that, is the area of textual criticism that believers can engage in, because we are confident that in those currently 5771 catalogued manuscripts of the New Testament, uum, which that number is always changing all the time, that within all of those manuscripts, every original reading is still there.  It’s like having a 10,000 piece jigsaw puzzle.  And what we have, thank God, is 10,100 pieces, not 9,900 pieces.  You see, we have, we have to go through and examine those variants and see what has been added later, but we can have absolute confidence that we have the original readings. That’s, that’s a wonderful thing.

Now there is a quote-unquote textual criticism or form criticism that doesn’t depend upon having manuscripts to examine, where your trying to go, uh, into the construction of the original text, and, and uh, could it be that, that John wrote, uh, part of his gospel and then went back and edited and then there’s someone that edited that and it’s all hypothetical.  It’s all based on, ‘well, I sort of think that John initially would have thought this or initially believed that,’ and it’s, it’s, it’s pure, it’s pure theory, it’s not real and it’s all based upon the idea that whatever the Bible originally was, it can’t be what Christians thought it was.  And so that’s a completely different thing.

And I went to a, my first master’s degree was from a very even more today liberal seminary and I wondered why the Lord let me go through that.  Now I know why.  Now I know exactly why it was.  Now I can look at liberalism and say, ‘been there done that and got the t-shirt, and the degree for that matter,’ but that kind of criticism is not believing, it’s not believing criticism, but is based upon the idea that we simply cannot, uh, believe what the Bible, uh, says about itself.  We have to start with the assumption that Paul contradicted Peter and Matthew is off on his own thing over here someplace. And what it produces is always, always self-contradictory.  It can never give you any foundation for truth whatsoever.

But unfortunately that’s what you’re going to find in the most dangerous place for a Christian.  It’s called a Christian book store.  You’ve got to be, you’ve got to understand when you’re walking down the aisles of a Christian book store, you might as well think that there are vipers and pythons coiled on each side of you.  Because, for example, when you look commentaries of the Old Testament today, with a few glowing, thank-you-God exceptions, we gave the Old Testament to liberals a long time ago.  And so, people say, what, what commentary series should I, should I buy.  And I go, I can’t tell you, because in a commentary series, you might find one book that is just great, and the one sitting next to it might be just absolute poison to your faith, so we have to have discernment. 

I, I, I mean, we live in a day where the world is so opposed to our faith, that the days of my grandparent’s generation where you didn’t have to worry where you got the Bible and you didn’t have to worry about textual criticism and you didn’t have to worry about sexual ethics and marriage and everything else.  That day’s gone.  If we want to be salt and light today, then, uh, we have got to know these things.  It’s a tough calling, but if we want to be salt and light, we’ve got to do it (13:41).

White talks about “lower textual criticism” like it is an assumed, biblical activity.  If people could just stop and listen to what he’s saying, he’s telling us that we’re still recovering the original text of scripture, that is, we don’t have it.  The way we recover it, White says, is through this lower textual criticism.  White supposes errors in the present text of scripture.  How does he know that?

Do these men go to churches, their churches, and say, “The Bible has errors we’re still correcting.” That’s what they believe.  They don’t want people thinking that way, so instead they say, as White essentially does here, “We have an embarrassment of manuscript evidence and all the words of the originals are in there somewhere.”  The good news according to White is that we have far more words than what are in the originals, so it really is a matter of whittling those down to the actual number, and this textual criticism is the God prescribed method for that.  ‘Meanwhile, folks, live what you’ve got while we spend time at the drawing board to get this thing right.’

Does White believe that all the words of the originals in their proper order are found in the available manuscript evidence for the Bible?  Why?  He never says.  Is there some kind of scriptural presupposition for saying that all the right words are even in there somewhere?  What I have read and know is that these men say these things and they don’t really believe them.  They aren’t saying that we know we have 100% of the words in the manuscripts.  Twice White says we have all of them.  All.  I don’t think he means 100%.  What I’ve read and know is that most evangelicals don’t believe we have an accurate manuscript available with the actual text of 1 Samuel 13:1 in it.  They hope we’ll find one some time, but they believe there is an error there in search of the original reading.  So the most sure thing that they have to say, that all the words are all in available manuscripts, they say with fingers crossed or a bit of a wink.

I could say that all the right words in the Bible are available on planet earth.  Those words exist somewhere.  Is that the biblical doctrine of preservation?  I call it the buried text view.  They won’t say this, but many take the tack that God has preserved His Words, and He has preserved them both in heaven and then somewhere on earth possible still buried somewhere, ready to be unearthed in some future century perhaps.  That does not represent what scripture says about preservation.  Neither is it the historic view of preservation.

You don’t hear a biblical answer from White.  You hear his take on the condition of the biblical text, not that much different than Bart Ehrman’s. I watched the White-Ehrman debate and the two do differ, but not on most aspects of textual criticism, not on the nuts and bolts of it.  Really, the only difference between the two is their interpretation of the so-called evidence.  In both cases, their evidence is man-centered human discovery.  Both sides say that you can’t let biblical presuppositions effect your textual criticism, and Ehrman doesn’t at all.  White would say that Ehrman is dishonest with his interpretation, that if he applied the same scholarship to other books of antiquity, he would conclude to a high enough percentage what was in the original manuscripts of the Bible.  Ehrman, on the other hand, would say that we have something far different than what we should expect from a divine book that promises its own preservation.

The difference between Ehrman and White, even though neither will say it, is their presuppositions. White doesn’t take his presuppositions from scripture, but he also doesn’t abandon his faith in scripture even though he doesn’t believe we know what all the words are.  What I’m saying is that White relies on a kind of presupposition without saying he’s relying on it.  Ehrman knows he’s relying on it.  You can’t rely on scriptural presuppositions and stay in the textual critic club, so you just rely on them to the degree necessary not to eject from the faith and say that you are letting the evidence lead you to the truth.

Do we trust in the Bible as a supernatural book, as divine, because we can get a high degree of certainty based on manuscript evidence?  What is our basis for believing that?  If that isn’t it, we should at least hear from White and others like him what is the biblical basis for trusting what we do have, even though according to them, we know there are errors in it.  I understand if that doesn’t teach very well.  It’s a tough sell.  Nevertheless, despite evangelical admonitions not to trust in scriptural presuppositions for textual criticism, White relies on modified ones to preserve his faith in a Bible that he thinks has errors in it.  White calls that “providence” in the tradition of Benjamin Warfield, who read textual criticism into the Westminster Confession of faith.  It’s very similar to evangelical scholarship calling the evolution of a day-age theory, “creation.”  They redefine terms to fit human discovery.

Evangelical scholars should just be honest.  They’ve already caused tremendous damage, because young people are abandoning Christianity in great numbers in part because they can’t muster faith from a Bible with only a percentage, albeit a high one, of reliability.  They can’t stand in a world hostile to the truth on an unsure foundation.   Bart Ehrman will win most times, if we are left with a shade of certitude.

More to Come.

In the last couple of weeks, James White has shown up in a video and made one himself about the Bible version issue.  It’s important to consider, because the Bible is God’s Word and our sole authority for faith and practice.  James White purports to disabuse Christians of a very harmful position, and professes in doing so to be a significant defender of the Christian faith.  He has written a book about the Bible version issue, The King James Only Controversy, and he talks about it all the time, most recently in two videos he has posted on his website, the first he entitled, An Interview with Eric Hovind on the Transmission of the Text of the Bible, and the second, My Concerns with the Ecclesiastical Text Position.  It would be nice if White could be challenged in a fair setting.  I have never seen him in a legitimate debate on the Bible Version issue, where what he says could be challenged in an impartial way.

I’m going to use whatever number of posts necessary to deal with everything he says in the above two videos, starting with the Eric Hovind interview.  It is not an interview on the transmission of the text of the Bible, so that title, made at White’s website, misleads right away.  Hovind himself calls it, Eric Hovind Discusses Bible Translations with Dr. James White, and describes it with the following caption:

Did God re-inspire the writing of Scripture with the King James Version? Why do we have so many English translations? What is textual criticism and what should we know about it? Gain much-needed discernment as Eric Hovind and James White discuss standing on the authority of Theópneustos Scriptures.

Hovind first questions White about the double inspiration error of certain King James Version advocates, a doctrinal offense the equivalent of a high lob to swat down by a Bible expert, by someone who depends on the Bible as his authority for his beliefs.

White:  Well, (loud exhaling sigh), ya know, uh, the funny thing is, uh, the King James translators themselves really would have had a hard time with anyone using their work in that way.  I mean…

Hovind:  Wow!

White:  …If we just read the fff, the fff, preface to the readers that the King James Translators themselves wrote, uuuuh, we’d get a really good idea where they were coming from, and they in no way thought that their work was a reinspiration.  They recognized their dependence upon previous translations, upon Wycliffe, and Tyndale, and, and the Geneva, and so on and so forth, and they also recognized that there would be need for revision of their work in the future, uuum, and so what has happened since then in the discovery of sooo many manuscripts that have, that have shed sooo much light upon the earlier history of the text, both the dead sea scrolls as well as the, eh, historical, uh, light upon the early manuscripts of the New Testament. The, the King James translators themselves would have welcomed, uh, that, uhm, providential blessing from God, they really would have.  Unfortunately what has happened, and this is a rel, relatively new movement, this kind of, uh, radical perspective, because there are some others who will say, ‘well, for certain reasons we believe that the text upon which the King James is, was translated is better than the modern texts.’

Hovind:  Right!

White:  Ya know, I can understand those arguments, uuum, and, and, and, and have explained those arguments to people and I engage those types of arguments.  I can understand that, and I can even understand someone saying that they prefer, uh, the style and majesty of the King James translation.  I can understand preferences, but when it comes to a point where you’re basically saying to people, ‘if you use anything other than this, you’re not really getting what God would have you to get,’ and if you dare promote that, now you’re not even, uh, in the will of God, you’re rebelling against God, that type of thing, that’s when it becomes extremely dangerous, and, uh, unfortunately there are still those folks out there that say that, but it’s interesting, I never find them taking that argument out into the places where I go with the people like the Bart Ehrmans of the world or into mosques around the world, um, because the fact of the matter is that kind of claim is indefensible against the people that know anything about the history of the, of the New Testament whatsoever.  And so we want, we want, what we say in the church to be consistent with what we say in the market place of ideas…

Hovind:  Wow.

White:  …If we don’t have that kind of consistency, uum, we really can’t claim, uh, that we’re, we’re ff following He who is the truth, and so for me that’s why it becomes an important issue.

White is asked by Hovind if someone should use the English translation to correct the Hebrew and the Greek, and White’s answer is, first, the King James translators would not have liked that position. He then proceeds to bounce all over the place without referring to scripture itself to debunk that false doctrine, but instead to the preface of the King James translators.  He does not speak as the oracles of God (1 Pet 4:11).  Double inspiration and correcting the original language with English — those are unbiblical and can be repudiated from scripture itself.  God completed inspiration in the first century (Jude 1:3; Rev 22:18) and then preserved the words He inspired (Is 59:21; Matt 4:4; 5:18; 24:35), Hebrew and Greek ones, so that there was no need for re-inspiration of an English Bible.  In common with White, these with this “radical perspective” do not believe in the perfect preservation of scripture, so they compensate for their faithlessness with an unscriptural and novel doctrine of second inspiration.

Contrary to White, the KJV translators did not rely upon Wycliffe, who translated from the Latin. Their preface doesn’t mention his name.  They did believe in a future revision of their work, but we have no basis that they would have accepted other original language texts than those from which they translated.  They say nothing about that in their preface.  Assuming a revision of their translation doesn’t assume a revision from a different original language text.

White speculates that the translators would have welcomed the Dead Sea scrolls and older Greek manuscripts to correct the text they translated. He uses the terminology “providential blessing,” pointing directly to the language of Benjamin Warfield’s spin on the wording of the Westminster Confession, equating textual criticism with the providence of God.  That isn’t what the Westminster divines meant when they wrote, “by his singular care and providence kept pure in all ages.” Warfield also believed in the science of evolution and accepted Darwin as a providential enlightenment of the first three chapters of Genesis.  We could just as easily speculate that the KJV translators rejected older manuscripts as inferior to the text received by the churches.  That would by far conform more to the bibliology of the church and fit the evidence of  historical theology.

When White says “modern texts,” he means “older texts,” confusing it with “modern translations.”

Why would a doctrine of perfect preservation and general accessibility be dangerous?  How could trust in providential preservation, the language of the Westminster Confession and the London Baptist Confession, be dangerous?  Why would the doubt produced by never-ending criticism not be what is really dangerous?  How could certainty in the Word of God be dangerous?  Why is textual criticism not the radical perspective?  It is the historically new perspective on the doctrine of scripture, the post-enlightenment take on bibliology.  Only preference is tolerable to White.  What is the biblical basis for preference being the only acceptable view?

White’s only stated reason against certainty in a single text of scripture, instead of choosing preference, is that he himself has not witnessed any non-preferential people taking that position out into the world against the Bart Ehrmans and into the mosques like he does.  The setting of a formal debate isn’t the only or even the best place to confront the world in the “market place of ideas.”  In the San Francisco Bay Area, I talk to the liberals, the atheists, and the Muslims all.  The Muslims use the White position as a crucial component in their argument against Christianity.  I’ve heard it again and again.  They reject the preservation of scripture, and White would agree.

We’re not and neither should we be attempting to defeat the world in a market place of ideas.  We’re preaching the truth, and I’ve noticed that the Bart Ehrmans’ problem isn’t that our ideas aren’t defeating theirs.  The problem is a volitional one, not an intellectual one, and their strongholds will be defeated with scriptural arguments, not ones that point back to a preface by a translator.  What is indefensible are the natural arguments that White brings against unbelievers, and that coming from someone who says he advocates presuppositional apologetics.  A true presuppositionalist assumes what scripture teaches as true, authoritative, and powerful.  What I hear from White here treats discovery as neutral, even elevating his opinion to a higher level than divine revelation.  You can hear White’s thinking when he says, “the, eh, historical, uh, light upon the early manuscripts of the New Testament” and “the fact of the matter is that kind of claim is indefensible against the people that know anything about the history of the, of the New Testament.”  Historical light?

The only consistent position is one derived from the only supernatural source, the Word of God.  The only accurate view of history must adapt to scripture and not vice-versa.  He Who is the truth said His sheep hear His voice, live by every Word, and that not a jot or tittle will pass from the law until all be fulfilled.  If we love Him we will keep what He says.  A two book approach to Bible doctrine, man’s observations and divine revelation, will never be consistent.

More to Come.  This series may come faster than the usual two posts per week by me.  I’ll keep writing as I get the time to do so.

Frontline magazine, a publication arm of the FBFI, dealt with the Bible Version issue in its latest edition, which led to a so-far short discussion at SharperIron.  Our book is mentioned and referenced in one of the articles (you should buy and read the book).  When you read discussions such as these, the two most important facts about the Bible Version issue are either ignored or covered up in what seems like a conspiratorial manner.

Most people who use new or contemporary translations of the Bible think that the issue is readability. They think their churches use a newer translation, because they are easier to read.  They do not know that there is a textual issue, that their new Bibles are not the same.  They don’t know that, and the men in charge are glad to have them continue thinking under that delusion.  They don’t care.  And they will not bring in the doctrine of preservation.  That is left out of bibliology.  It would clash with practice.

The two most important facts about the Bible Version issue are the following two:

The Bible Teaches Its Own Perfect Preservation and General Accessibility

Our book expounds important passages that teach the preservation of scripture.  Our exegesis represents the passages.  You will find many, many men through history writing the same meaning that we say these sections of scripture or verses mean.  Still today, men looking at the passages in their context know they teach what we are saying they do.  It is easy to see that the Bible itself teaches that God would preserve every one of His Words to be accessible to every generation of believers. You will flesh that out from God’s Word.  And we could have brought in even more verses than we did, and probably will in a future second volume.

The average Christian, when he reads his Bible, will think that we have the Bible.  He will not come to the position from reading the Bible that he doesn’t have all the Words of God.  He will think that he does.  It will take someone from the outside to put a spin on that particular teaching, to have him think otherwise.  Your rank and file church member, who just reads his Bible, believes in this same position on the Bible.  The Bible is very clear about its own preservation.

You will not read anything coming from textual critics on what the Bible teaches about preservation.  It has only been recently and as a reaction to men who have published a biblical theology of the perfect preservation of scripture, that you have started to see some interaction to a bibliology of preservation.  Men are trying to figure out how to fit these passages in with textual criticism and having a difficult time.  The doctrine was not a basis of textual criticism.  The practice of textual criticism was atheological and even anti-theological.  The textual critics themselves say that you can’t go into figuring out what the words of the Bible with any kind of scriptural or theological presuppositions.  Instead, you have to allow the evidence to lead you to the truth.  And when they say that, they don’t mean to absolute certainty of what the words are.  They don’t think you will ever know, which flies in the face of what God says you will know.

What I read are attacks on the doctrine of preservation.  A common statement that has been answered many, many times, and is answered in our book is this bit of propaganda that the Bible says God preserved His Word, but He didn’t say how He would do it.  Since this has been written on and answered, at this point, all the forms of that statement are a lie.

The Bible tells us how God would preserve His Words.  It is all over the place in the Bible.  It’s not a matter of the Bible not saying, but of men not accepting what God said.  They won’t accept it, but it is part of the strategy for ignoring or covering up the doctrine of preservation of scripture.

The eclectic and critical text position, that denies perfect preservation, by the way, is the same position taken by Islam and the Jehovah’s Witnesses on the doctrine of preservation.  The major argument for Islam against the Bible is that it has not been preserved.  I don’t think that is the best argument against eclectic and critical text, but it should be tell-tale.

Some of the most vocal critics against the biblical position call it a stupid position.  They attack the intellect of it.  It isn’t intellectual just to believe what God said He would do.  It’s also not intellectual to believe in the miracles of the Bible, young earth creationism, and justification by grace through faith alone.  A faith position is often called the stupid position, but you should still take it, because when you believe what God said He would do, you are following wisdom from above, not the wisdom of this world, which is earthly, sensual, and devilish.

True Believers Have Also Taken the Position of Perfect Preservation and General Accessibility of Scripture

The Frontline article said that systematic theologies don’t have a doctrine of preservation in them.  To its credit, I believe the article was saying that was bad.  However, a true statement is that modern systematic theologies have left it out.  You will find it in the old theologies.  It is a major teaching of Francis Turretin and John Owen among others.

You will also find this position, the one we show is what the Bible teaches, is the one that Christians historically believed for hundreds of years.  That is left unreported.  People will not say that this is true.  Many will not.  This, my friends, is dishonest.  They at least should be required to deal with the arguments made for centuries and they don’t.  They act like history started in the late 19th century. If anything is stupid, that is.  And then they have to think we’re all stupid to think the way they do.

You can find many, many men who have written the perfect preservation position.  It was the only position taught.  Daniel Wallace has admitted that, to his credit, unlike fundamentalists.  Bart Ehrman knows the Bible teaches preservation like I’m saying and he knows that this is what people believed. He, however, wasn’t willing to believe it, because his “evidence” told him otherwise, so he pushed the eject button on the Christian faith.  Wallace doesn’t want that, so he comes up with a new position and even a new doctrine of inerrancy.  And many fundamentalists and evangelicals will defend him on that.  This is how important it is to them to keep people away from the true doctrine of preservation.

I have written about the history here many times.  I have debunked all these things here.  I don’t get answers.  You won’t get answers.  You get ignored and ad hominem attack.

However, these two facts, the two in bold print above, are the most important to the Bible Version issue.  If you know and believe these two, then you are left with the King James Version.  That’s why.  It is not out of loyalty to the English or to King James or to tradition.  It is because it is the conclusion you are left with.

I noticed that one person commented that the KJV side has been badly defeated in debates on the issue.  I would agree that the debate is cherry picked against the most inept debater.  I slam dunked over a little person.  There hasn’t been a good debate on this.  I’ve also said I would be glad to debate the issue.  I did debate Frank Turk at his debate blog.  You should read that debate.  If he had won the debate, you would have been hearing it all over the internet.  But, alas, crickets. It would be proclaimed far and wide.  The fact that you hear nothing about it is because he lost that debate. Granted, he isn’t the best to debate the other side, but I don’t think it would go much different if it were James White, Daniel Wallace, or Bart Ehrman.  The truth will win out.  Others could fog or red herring a little more, but they don’t have the truth on their side.

So again, what I’m saying here, and what we teach, is what the Bible teaches.  And, it is what Christians have believed for hundreds of years.  It’s all you read as a position until post textual criticism.  Were all those people wrong?  Was this a total apostasy of the true doctrine of preservation?  Which is what?   The other side hasn’t produced their treatment of preservation.  They didn’t start with what the Bible says.  What does that say about their position?  Hopefully, that is bad to you.

These are the two most important facts about the Bible Version issue, and they are either ignored or covered up.  I say that it seems conspiratorial. Why?  If you are not sure what the words of God are, then you will not believe them and practice them.  This is an attack on God and His Word, on the faith once delivered.

Part one (which includes the link to the interview).  We left off at minute 46:40.