Home » Posts tagged 'canonicity'
Tag Archives: canonicity
What Is the “False Doctrine” of Only One Text of the Bible? (Part Five)
Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four
So, no apology is necessary for saying there’s one Bible. Why? There’s one Bible. Is that Bible the King James Version? It is the underlying text. I recently heard someone say, the underlying text for the King James Version text didn’t happen until 1881. That’s someone not telling the truth. He’s at least not speaking to those who don’t believe that. He’s talking to his echo chamber or those who know little about the underlying text. It is not steelmanning the opposition, but purposeful misrepresentation — a work of the flesh. Call it what you want.
I’ve said again and again, the King James translators translated from something. They translated. The King James translators weren’t making the words up. The many English commentators for those centuries after the King James Version didn’t treat the translation like a text didn’t exist. They commented on that text, because they possessed it.
Men who didn’t write commentaries knew the original languages and they were preaching from a text they believe was kept pure through all the ages. They believed that because God promised it. So it wasn’t? By faith we understand that it was.
Recognition of Textual Variants
A fourth concern I’ve heard is the reality that church men have long recognized textual variants and acknowledged their existence. I don’t know who doesn’t know this. Since we know that variations exist between printed editions of the Greek New Testament, then we know scribal errors were made in hand copies. Come on! This is a red herring!
Our scriptural presupposition is not that individual manuscripts or printed editions are perfect. It isn’t even the ink or parchment, one perfect physical manuscript that survives from the beginning. The opposite. We believe in the perfect preservation and availability of the words of scripture. That’s what the Bible talks about. Godly church leaders called this, an error in one copy is corrected in another.
Error in One Copy Corrected in Another
Richard Capel wrote:
[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.
Another presupposition is attack on scripture. Sometimes errors are purposeful. It took the providential handiwork of God to ensure preservation occurred through the means revealed in scripture.
Gaslit Arguments
Critical Text New Consensus, Voice of Holy Spirit
Certain various arguments seem like gaslighting to me. Here’s one: the critical text is or could be the consensus text among believers now, and this is the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking. I don’t think anyone really believes this. What’s wrong with it though, if anyone even takes it seriously?
Preservation means availability. A text not available isn’t preserved. The critical text isn’t a text that ever existed. It’s a “Frankentext” with hundreds of lines of text with no manuscript evidence. It was not available.
The church believed in perfect preservation and agreed on the text. It was settled. Modernism came up with a new text based on rationalism. That wasn’t the Holy Spirit or the church.
You don’t have something preserved, that’s the Holy Spirit, and then men replace it and now that’s the Holy Spirit. A close parallel would be restorationism. That means something is lost and the Holy Spirit returns it to what it was. The modern text doesn’t proceed from preservation or agreement of the church. It is an invention used just for what seems like gaslighting from people who don’t believe in any of what they’re saying.
English Prejudice?
Another faux argument considers an accused English prejudice. Again, these are all just reactions to already established scriptural presuppositions. Reformation era Dutch, German, Spanish, and French translations come from slightly different TR editions that some say belie a settled text or perfect preservation. Why English and not these other language translations?
Other major world languages have the similarity of all with long-time translations from the Hebrew Masoretic for the Old Testament and Textus Receptus for the New. None of them translated a critical text. That narrows it down to essentially the same text, but it’s true that each of them does not translate from an identical text. For some critical text supporters, this apparently opens a gap to drive through a critical text. To them, this must needs indicate some level of eclecticism or acceptance of it.
Again, I don’t think the critics are serious when they make the accusations of English prejudice toward an apparent bias toward the King James Version. English speaking people are embracing the King James Version. Those supportive of the King James Version also celebrate the availability of these Reformed era translations from essentially the same underlying text. They are happy about the similarity and the availability. They’re all much better than a modern critical text. There isn’t fighting between these various language translations all from the similar text.
Critical text supporters and King James critics are the ones highlighting the few differences in underlying text. They’re doing this only to undermine a doctrine of perfect preservation. They’re also trying to make it an issue of English prejudice, which there isn’t.
Why the King James?
I hate answering this question, because I doubt the sincerity of those asking. They don’t believe in the same presuppositions or even the same source for the contradictory presuppositions. I’ve been asked many insincere questions, especially teaching jr. high for decades in our school. Those kids liked asking the same type of questions to attempt to pit the teacher against their parents.
Maybe some KJV supporters have an English bias. Myself and many, if not most, don’t have one. I am just reading and calling what happened. Biblical Christianity took hold through the English and then the English sent missionaries to the whole world. English in fact became the lingua franca of the whole world. It would be like saying that there was a Roman bias for a thousand years. No, the Roman Empire ruled the then-known world. It’s just reality. The dollar is the world reserve currency. Neither is this an English bias.
Scriptural presuppositions require a settled text. To believe what God said on this, people have to bite down on what occurred. It’s like acknowledging fulfilled prophecies. What God said would happen did occur in the real world. Believing requires accepting this. If acceptance or reception (the canonicity argument) and the testimony of the Holy Spirit through believers direct to the very words, then there must be those words. It really isn’t a hard call to say it’s the English. This isn’t a prejudice. It is a conclusion. Faith requires a conclusion. Rejecting that is faithless.
More to Come
New List of Reasons for Maximum Certainty for the New Testament Text (Part 6)
ANSWERING AGAIN THE “WHAT TR?” QUESTION
Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Five
1. God Inspired Specific, Exact Words, and All of Them.
2. After God Inspired, Inscripturated, or Gave His Words, All of Them, to His People through His Institutions, He Kept Preserving Each of Them and All of Them According to His Promises of Preservation.
3. God Promised Preservation of the Words in the Language They Were Written, or In Other Words, He Preserved Exactly What He Gave.
4. God’s Promise of Keeping and Preserving His Words Means the Availability of His Words to Every Generation of Believers.
5. God the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity, Used the Church to Accredit or Confirm What Is Scripture and What Is Not.
6. God Declares a Settled Text of Scripture in His Word.
THE APPLICATION OF THE PRESUPPOSITIONS, PRINCIPLES, AND PROMISES OF AND FROM SCRIPTURE (Part Two)
In five parts of this series, I first declared the scriptural presuppositions, principles, and promises that buttress the historical and biblical position. Then I stated the positive conclusion of the provided model, paradigm, or template that followed the six truthful premises. The underlying original language text of the King James Version is, as Hills asserted, its own “independent variety of the Textus Receptus.” It is essentially Beza 1598, but not identical to that printed edition. This conclusion fulfills the model, the biblical premises.
The Other Side Does Not Follow Scriptural Presuppositions
The other side, the critical text and multiple modern version position, does not follow scriptural presuppositions. It proceeds from naturalistic and relativistic ones. This is especially seen in the hundreds of lines of Greek text for its New Testament with no manuscript evidence. Critics pieced together lines of text that never existed in any copy anywhere and anytime. On the other hand, they commonly still make the claim that the underlying text behind the King James comes from just a “handful of manuscripts available at the time.”
A very common attack, which I anticipate again on this series, will skip all the presuppositions, principles, and promises and go directly to and then quote the concluding statement out of context. It would sound something like this: “Kent Brandenburg says, The perfect preserved text of scripture is ‘the underlying original language text of the King James Version.'” I took that from the above first paragraph of this post.
The opposition then treats that statement like it stood alone with no explanation. The enemies of the scriptural and historical position will provide strawman arguments. They won’t be the actual ones in these posts, and if they provide any of them, they’ll misrepresent them. You can count on this. I take this bow shot or preemptive strike as a warning.
Scripture reveals presuppositions, principles, and promises about God’s preservation of scripture. I could faithlessly ignore those. Instead, I could focus on the existence of textual variants and the relatively few variations between the printed editions of the textus receptus. Also, I could obsess over a couple individual words that critics say have little manuscript evidence. Those challenge the presuppositions, principles, and promises. I consider those minor challenges outweighed again by the presuppositions, principles, and promises.
Faith and the Model of Canonicity
Two verses that mean a lot to me related to the perfect preservation of the Greek New Testament is Romans 4:20-21:
20 He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; 21 And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform.
The same type of challenge occurs with the belief in twenty-seven books. No verse says, “Twenty-seven books are in the New Testament,” just like no verse says that Noah’s ark is still on Mount Ararat. Do I have faith that Noah’s ark is up there? I believe it landed there and stayed.
Why the twenty-seven that we call the New Testament? Some disagree. Other opinions exist. The presuppositions, principles, and promises are the same for twenty-seven New Testament books. These were the ones the churches accepted, a testimony of the Holy Spirit through believers.
The Unacceptable Alternative
The alternative to this position I espouse here is unacceptable. It rejects these presuppositions, principles, and promises. Also, it leaves the church without verbal, plenary perfection of scripture. The position I take, as I see it and very strongly, is the best and really only position for a perfect scripture, what believers should expect. Because of that, I take it.
Through the years, I have considered the arguments for the other side. What I’ve seen is a regularly changing, morphing attack. It’s as though they just throw anything and everything, the proverbial kitchen sink. Their conclusion is the same: uncertainty, doubt, the denial of scriptural and historical teaching, loss of authority, an ever changing and mutating scriptural text, and the ultimate apostasy that goes along with what they consider reality.
Certainty Versus “Confidence”
You can hear professing evangelicals attempt to fortify against the problem they create. They can’t say “certainty,” and even mock “certainty.” I hope you have a hard time even imagining this. It does happen and is happening, but they ratchet down expectations with words like “confidence.” It’s not even scriptural confidence, just confidence falsely so-called. They create uncertainty and can’t be certain, so they adjust people’s mindset to a form of probability at a higher level of probability that they falsely label “confidence.” It should be sued for false advertising.
From where does this confidence come for professing evangelicals who embrace confidence rather than certainty? It comes from naturalism. Yes, naturalism. They think they can give a high level of proof from naturalism and rationalism. It’s like trying to convince people that the vaccination is safe. Yes, they rushed it out, but look, they’re even vaccinating the president. Evangelicals mock certainty in a nasty manner and then they focus on confidence.
Compare again confidence to a vaccination drive. Can you get confidence from something at 95 percent? We know God wants jot and tittle obedience. Jesus said that in Matthew 5:17-20. These evangelicals don’t offer jot and tittle certainty as the grounds for jot and tittle obedience. This is also why they accompany their confidence with scaled down obedience. Since their adherents can’t be sure of scripture, they emphasize non-essentials. No one should separate over eschatology, ecclesiology, and a mounting stack of teachings. Why? No one can or should ensure certainty. That’s not who we should roll with God’s Word.
What God Desires
The alternative to the truth also evinces the truth itself. The truth stands. Scripture teaches perfect preservation, availability, a settled text, and all the other of the six principles I listed in this series. These form the basis for a sure, certain text of scripture that results in the kind of obedience God proposes and desires.
Is what God desires extremism and dangerous? The side of uncertainty and doubt uses this kind of tactic, name-calling, labeling faith in scriptural teaching as extremist and dangerous. Don’t worry. That’s what they said about Jesus and the Apostles too.
I call on everyone reading to reject a critical, naturalistic text of scripture and the substandard probability, called “confidence,” that it engenders. Those pushing that view are part of the downward trajectory, the steady decline, seen everywhere today. They are part of what’s not getting better.
Church Perpetuity, Sola Scriptura, and Roman Catholicism Versus Protestantism: Candace Owens Show
Many political conservatives and conservative Christians appreciate Candace Owens and Allie Beth Stuckey. Until one recent show, the subject of this post, I had never seen a whole Candace Owens program, just clips here and there. I had seen whole interviews by Allie Beth Stuckey on her podcast. She deals with some unique subject matter. Both are very popular, the former on Daily Wire and the latter with Blaze.
For a show episode included on youtube, Candace Owens invited her husband, George Farmer, a Roman Catholic, to debate Allie Beth Stuckey, a Protestant. I watched all of part one and thought it would be helpful and informative to provide an analysis of their interaction. Farmer grew up in England and attended Oxford. He tells this story in the episode. His dad converted to Christ from atheism, became an evangelical, and raised George this way.
Under the influence of a Roman Catholic scholar, George doubted the veracity of evangelicalism for Roman Catholicism. Before he married Owens, he became a Roman Catholic. Owens claims still to be a Protestant evangelical, leaning now Roman Catholic, attending Catholic church with her husband and children.
Allie Beth Stuckey grew up Southern Baptist, told the story that her family traces back Baptist in America for 300 years. She remains Southern Baptist, but now claims to be a Reformed Baptist. She considers herself a Protestant, Reformed, Baptist evangelical.
Perpetuity of Christ’s True Church
The Question
Farmer communicates his greatest conflict for staying Protestant and evangelical, a historical matter. To remain Protestant, he would say that Christianity was lost before 1500, essentially no one was converted or a true Christian when the Reformation began. In part one, Stuckey never addresses this seminal concern of Farmer. Farmer never explains this conflict. To start the debate, Candace Owens directed the debate by asking Stuckey what bothered her the most about Roman Catholicism, so they never doubled back to deal with the perpetuity of the church.
Before I move to what bothered Stuckey the most and Farmer’s answer to that concern, let me address perpetuity. I would like to know how Stuckey would answer Farmer’s perpetuity conundrum. I would join him in finding a problem with Protestantism or for Baptists, an English Separatist view. Is Protestantism a restorationist movement, like the Church of Christ, Latter Day Saints, Apostolics, and Charismatics assert?
The perpetuity question also becomes one of authority. How does the authority of God get passed to state church Protestants with their rejection of Roman Catholicism? If Roman Catholicism represents an apostate body, how do they call themselves Reformed or Protestant? Shouldn’t they make a clean break and repudiate Roman Catholicism as a true church?
The Answer
Protestants receive their authority from Roman Catholicism. They must see Roman Catholicism as a true church through which God passed His truth. By doing so, Protestants, including professing Baptist ones, also affirm a state church. I couldn’t be a Roman Catholic or a Protestant. Farmer exposes a major flaw in Protestantism. There is a better way, really a biblical, right way — the only way. Stuckey either doesn’t know it or doesn’t believe it.
The biblical, right way says true churches always existed since Christ, separate from the state church and known by different names. The true church is not a catholic church. It is a local, autonomous one. Those churches did exist and passed down the truth. They became known as Baptist churches. By not taking that position, professing Baptists and Protestants play right into Roman Catholic hands.
Baptist perpetuity is mainly a presuppositional position. Scripture teaches it. The gates of hell would not prevail against Christ’s ekklesia, His assemblies (Matthew 16:18). No one should expect a total apostasy until the saints of this age are off the scene, snatched up into the clouds to meet the Lord in the air (1 & 2 Thessalonians). Until then, only some depart from the faith (1 Timothy 4:1). True believers should just believe this happened. They did until modernism crept into the Southern Baptist Convention and invented a different view of history for Baptists.
Sola Scriptura
What Verse?
Stuckey says her biggest bother with Roman Catholicism is the pope and the authority issue. She asserts sola scriptura, the Bible as the only or final authority. How does Farmer answer her? He asks her for a verse or passage to prove sola scriptura. She can’t do it. She gives Farmer zero scriptural evidence.
I sat chagrined watching Stuckey’s non-scriptural support for her biggest bother. Ironic. Roman Catholicism doesn’t rely on scripture for its only authority and Stuckey has no scripture saying that’s wrong. She said she recognized the circular reasoning with providing scripture for sola scriptura. No way.
Farmer put Stuckey on the defensive and she tried to weave together some poor argument for sola scriptura from history. Was Stuckey right? Was there no answer to Farmer’s challenge?
Biblical Arguments for Sola Scriptura
What verse would you use? I thought of four arguments instantly. First, I thought 2 Timothy 3:16-17:
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.
Scripture (1) throughly furnished unto all good works and (2) is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness. Every good work comes from scripture, no more or no less. It is sufficient, that is, profitable for all of what verses 16-17 mention. Doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness should come only from the Bible.
Second, nothing should be added to scripture. It is the faith once and for all delivered unto the saints (Jude 1:3). Revelation 22:18-19 commands to add nothing to God’s Word. Adding to scripture brings severe warnings of terrible judgment from God.
Three, only faith pleases God and faith comes only by the Word of God (Hebrews 11:6, Romans 10:17).
Four, man lives by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God (Matthew 4:4). The converse is true. Man will not live from something not the Word of God. That includes the pope, tradition, what someone might call the wisdom of men.
I don’t know why Stuckey could not give this as evidence to Farmer. She says she grew up in church and that the Bible is her authority, yet she couldn’t produce one scriptural argument about what bothered her the most about Roman Catholicism.
The Canon
As part of his argument against sola scriptura, Farmer used canonicity. He said the canon came from Roman Catholic Church authority in a late fourth century council. Stuckey sat there nodding, like she agreed. Conservative evangelicals are not today agreeing with that assessment of canonicity. I can say, however, that it was a typical Bible college and seminary presentation of canonicity thirty or forty years ago, maybe still today.
Farmer includes a separate church authority, making room to add the Pope and tradition as authorities with the Bible. He uses this view of canonicity, an unscriptural presentation of canonicity. Stuckey though sits and accepts this, by doing so encouraging viewers to turn Roman Catholic. Owens should have recruited a better representative for evangelicalism than Stuckey. She fails at her task, leaving viewers in greater confusion than when they started.
God used true churches, biblical assemblies after the model of His first church in Jerusalem and the early churches that one spawned, for recognition of the canon. They immediately recognized the true, authoritative New Testament books, even as seen in Peter’s endorsement of Paul’s epistles in 2 Peter 3:15-17. They hand copied those manuscripts and only those as a plain indication of their faith in them. Councils were not necessary. Today evangelicals often give too much credence to the Catholic councils as a perversion of biblical ecclesiology.
The Roman Catholic canon includes the apocrypha. When someone sits silent to these additional books, that helps undermine true scriptural sufficiency and authority. Accepting that Roman Catholic position of canonicity hurts sola scriptura.
The Blue Trinitarian Bible Society Greek New Testament or Scrivener’s Greek New Testament
Someone said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. When I hear a critique of the perfect preservation view, standard sacred text view, or verbal plenary preservation view, it almost always focuses on ‘which text is the perfect text of the New Testament.” In the White/Van Kleeck debate, White asked this kind of gotcha question, which Textus Receptus edition is identical to the autographs? A person then waits for the answer.
In the Van Kleeck/White debate, White asked Van Kleeck whether Scrivener’s TR is the perfect Greek text. He said, “Yes.” I’m not saying it’s a good argument, but it works well with a certain audience.
I watched a critical analysis of Van Kleeck in the debate, and the podcast started with the moment White asked Van Kleeck that question. The critical analysis is essentially ridicule of the most inane variety. The young man in the podcast with three other men simply repeated Van Kleeck’s answer and then summarized it with a mocking voice. They didn’t explain why Van Kleeck’s answer was wrong. It just was. Why? Because it is so, so strange and ridiculous.
The critical text side does not have a settled text. If the question were reversed, that side would say it doesn’t know, unlike it’s proponents might say about knowing the 66 books of the Bible. They would say that’s knowable, even though the oldest extant complete twenty-seven book manuscript of the New Testament dates to the fourth century. Books are knowable. The words are not. Why? No biblical reason, only naturalistic ones. The same reasons could be used to debunk any doctrine of the Bible.
I believe Van Kleeck said that Scrivener’s or the blue Trinitarian Bible Society Greek New Testament is identical to the autographs of the New Testament because that corresponds to His bibliological position. If someone says he believes the biblical and historical doctrine of scripture, his saying there is a perfect text conforms to that belief. If he did not know what the text was, he would also admit that he doesn’t believe what the Bible says about itself or what churches have believed about what the Bible says about itself. An alternative is to change the historic and scriptural doctrine of bibliology to fit naturalistic presuppositions.
A biblical methodology that proceeds from a biblical bibliology must fit what the Bible says about itself. Because of this, it believes that the agreement of the church is evidence. This is the unity of the spirit. I’m not going to continue through every aspect of a biblical bibliology but all of those components combined lead to an agreement on one text. Van Kleeck had the audacity to utter it with confidence. I’m assuming that his confidence and assertiveness comes from faith that comes by hearing the Word of God.
Van Kleeck attacked the presuppositions of White in the White/Van Kleeck debate. He wanted to expose the naturalism. White wouldn’t answer the questions and the moderator would not require an answer. White also took the offensive by saying that the audience also was offended by the questions. It’s a common tactic of the left, when they “channel” everyone in the United States by speaking for “the American people.” Van Kleeck asked if there was even a single verse of the New Testament that was settled, guaranteed never to change with a future find of older manuscript evidence. White would not answer.
A vast majority of the opponents of the biblical and historical view on the preservation of scripture say the Bible doesn’t say how God would preserve scripture. I like to say that the whole Bible describes how God would do it. The Bible is very clear about how God said He would preserve what He said. If He told us how, that castigates all the means other than how He said, which includes modern textual criticism.
Very often, even among the standard sacred text proponents, they will not say what the perfect edition is. They anticipate the reaction. They ready for the ridicule. If it isn’t that blue Trinitarian Bible Society textus receptus, then what is it?
Recent Comments