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Most talk about the text of the Bible focuses on the New Testament. The Old Testament is much larger and yet there is less variation in extant copies of the Old Testament than the New. As well, more Christian scholars know the Greek than the Hebrew, and when they know the Hebrew, they also know the Greek better.

Scripture teaches the preservation of all of scripture in the original languages, the languages in which scripture was written. Even if the conversation mainly centers on the New Testament, God preserved the Old Testament perfectly too. In recent days, some are talking more about the Old Testament again. Our book, Thou Shalt Keep Them, addressed the preservation of the Old Testament and the variation of a Hebrew critical text.

No Translation Above Preserved Hebrew Text

I think you would be right to detect hypocrisy in many of those who wish to alter the preserved Hebrew text of the Old Testament with a Greek, Latin, or Syriac translation. Not necessarily in this order, but, first, it flies in the face of “manuscript evidence.” It’s not because there isn’t evidence — around three hundred extant ancient handwritten copies of the Hebrew Masoretic text exist. Second, critical text advocates savagely attack those who identify preservation in a translation. I don’t believe God preserved His words in a translation, but they actually do in their underlying Old Testament text for the modern versions.

In a related issue, the same critical text supporters most often say that Jesus quoted from a Greek translation of the Old Testament, “the Septuagint.” As someone reads the references or mentions of the Old Testament by Jesus in the Gospels, he will notice that there are not exact quotations of the Hebrew Masoretic text. Even when you compare the English translation of the Hebrew in the Old Testament passage and compare it with the English translation of the Greek in the New Testament, they won’t match exactly most of the time. What was happening in these passages? Is this evidence that we don’t have an identical text to them?

View of the Septuagint

It is a popular and false notion that Christians in the first century used a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, called the Septuagint, as their scriptures, so they quoted from it. All the New Testament “quotations” of the Old Testament have at least minor variants from the various editions of the Septuagint in all but one place: a quote in Matthew 21:16 is identical to a part of Psalm 8:3 in Ralf’s edition of the Septuagint.

When you read the New Testament and find the 320 or so usages or allusions to the Old Testament in it, you will see that they are not identical. Some might explain that as a translation of a translation, that is, the Old Testament, Hebrew to English, and the New Testament, Hebrew to Greek to English, differences will occur by a sheer dissipation of a third language. Online and in other locations you can compare an English translation of the New Testament quotations of the Old Testament with an English translation of one edition of the Septuagint and one of the Hebrew Masoretic to compare the latter two with the first.

I see value in the Septuagint, whichever edition, since there are several. Those various editions give larger sample sizes of Greek usage for meaning and syntax for understanding the Greek biblical language of the New Testament. They can help with the study of both the Old and New Testaments. As an example, Jewish translators translated the Old Testament Hebrew word almah in Isaiah 7:14 parthenos, which is the specific Greek word for “virgin,” not “young woman.” All of this answers the question, “How would people have understood the word, phrase, or sentence who heard it in that day?”

What Did New Testament Authors Do?

The mentions of the Old Testament in the New are most often not verbatim quotations of the Hebrew. That’s not what the New Testament authors were doing. They were serious about the preservation of the Old Testament as seen in the regular use of the words, “it is written.” This is a perfect passive verb that says passage continues written. The writing of the passage was complete with the results of that writing ongoing. This communicates the preservation of scripture.

The New Testament authors knew the Old Testament well, so they didn’t need a Greek translation of it. The New Testament writers could do their own translation of a Hebrew text. They most often, however, did a “targum,” some quoting and some paraphrasing from memory and also deliberately using the words of the text to make their theological or practical point from the Bible. Preachers continue to do this today, sometimes quoting directly from a translation and other times making an allusion or reference to the passage.

Reliance on the Septuagint?

What I’m explaining about “targumming” is the explanation of John Owen and others through history as to the variation between the Old Testament Hebrew and the Greek or English translation. Some references to the Old Testament are closer to an edition of the Septuagint than the Hebrew Masoretic text, sometimes almost identical. Were the scriptural authors relying on a Septuagint, which predated the New Testament?

If New Testament authors relied on what we know of the Greek Septuagint today, then they depended on a corrupt edition or version of scripture. Some give this as an argument for the validation of a corrupt text. They say that God doesn’t care about the very words of the Bible, just its message. Instead, God kept the message very intact, but not the exact words. In addition, they often say that the Septuagint is evidence for the acceptance of something short of a perfect text. These approaches to the Septuagint are mere theories founded on faulty presuppositions.

John Owen also referred to this similarity between the usages of the New Testament authors with a translation of the Greek Old Testament, such as the Septuagint. He said that the likely explanation was that Christians adapted the text of the Septuagint to the New Testament quotations out of respect of Jesus and the New Testament authors. Others have echoed that down through history. Owen wasn’t alone. It is a possibility.

John Owen

In Owen’s first volume in his three thousand page Hebrews commentary, he spends a few pages speaking on the Septuagint and the concept of quotations from it. Owen writes (pp. 67-68):

Concerning these, and some other places, many confidently affirm, that the apostle waved the original, and reported the words from the translation of the LXX. . . . [T]his boldness in correcting the text, and fancying without proof, testimony, or probability, of other ancient copies of the Scripture of the Old Testament, differing in many things from them which alone remain, and which indeed were ever in the world, may quickly prove pernicious to the church of God. . . .

[I]t is highly probable, that the apostle, according to his wonted manner, which appears in almost all the citations used by him in this epistle, reporting the sense and import of the places, in words of his own, the Christian transcribers of the Greek Bible inserted his expressions into the text, either as judging them a more proper version of the original, (whereof they were ignorant) than that of the LXX., or out of a preposterous zeal to take away the appearance of a diversity between the text and the apostle’s citation of it.

And thus in those testimonies where there is a real variation from the Hebrew original, the apostle took not his words from the translation of the LXX. but his words were afterwards inserted into that translation.

Theories of Men Versus the Promises of God

Theories of men should not upend or variate the promises of God. God’s promises stand. He promised to preserve the original language text. We should believe it. No one should believe that Jesus or one of the apostles quoted from a corrupted Greek translation. That contradicts the biblical doctrine of the preservation of scripture. Other answers exist.

Whatever position someone takes on the Septuagint, it should not contradict what God already said He would do. There is no authority to historical theories based on no or tenuous evidence at best. The best explanation is one that continues a high view of scripture. One should not rely on one of the editions of the Greek Septuagint for deciding what scripture is. It should not correct the received Hebrew text of the Old Testament. Instead, everyone should believe what God said He would do and acknowledge its fulfillment in history.

The Validity and Potential Value of a Liturgical Calendar (Part Four)

January 2, 2024 / 2 Comments on The Validity and Potential Value of a Liturgical Calendar (Part Four)

Part One Part Two Part Three

Being Intentional

When you intend to do something — some people today call that “being intentional” — you might plan it or schedule it. Does scripture regulate or legislate intentionality? This thing of being intentional even has a definition: “making deliberate choices to reflect what is most important to us.” King David begins Psalm 101 with intentionality:

1 I will sing of mercy and judgment: unto thee, O Lord, will I sing.

2 I will behave myself wisely in a perfect way. O when wilt thou come unto me? I will walk within my house with a perfect heart.

3 I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes: I hate the work of them that turn aside; it shall not cleave to me.

When you intend to do it, you might schedule it. That’s good. It’s how you ‘redeem the time’ (Eph 5:16). How do you seek something first? You’ve got to move it up in priority on purpose. You will and then do of God’s good pleasure. This is sanctification. It’s how you keep something holy.

If I want to ensure I do something, I put it on a “to-do” list. For the year, I write those actions on a calendar. For an entire church, as a church leader, I have a church calendar. What goes on that calendar? I could put a “Jumper Day” on the calendar with intentionality. Jumpers are those inflatable fun houses, serving as a kind of trampoline. Let’s say instead, I intentionally schedule into the year of the church a spiritual emphasis. Let’s call it a “liturgical calendar.” Every year the church emphasizes scriptural events in the life of Christ and other biblical themes.

Using the Calendar

The Psalms are a guide for writing hymns. The prayers of the Bible are a guide for what to pray. In the Old Testament, God weaves into the year a means by which Israel will remember what God did. This included the weekly Sabbath and then festivals. This is a model, not for continuing to follow a Hebrew calendar, but for what to do with a calendar.

Israel began to observe also an event the occurred after the completion of the Old Testament, the Feast of Dedication. It celebrated an event in the intertestamental period. Israel then added that Feast to the Hebrew calendar. Jesus too observed the Feast of Dedication (John 10:22ff). Like the other Feasts, the Feast of Dedication helped Israel remember what God did in saving Israel during the time of Antiochus Epiphanes and the Macccabees.

The New Testament church schedules services on Sunday. Scripture doesn’t say how many, but many churches meet three times on Sunday: Sunday School, Sunday morning, and then Sunday evening. They might hold a midweek time too. Through example, scripture regulates a Sunday gathering for the elements of New Testament worship. It does not regulate how many meetings.

Keeping Holy

A believer can keep his speech holy. He can keep his deeds holy. A true Christian can keep his thoughts holy. He can also keep his motives holy.

Paul says the believer can yield his members, his body parts, as instruments of righteousness unto God or yield them as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin (Romans 6:13). Yielding his body parts as instruments of righteousness unto God is how he presents his body holy unto God (Romans 12:1). Someone can “worship God in the spirit” (Philippians 3:3) or not do that.

Sanctification in the Truth

Sanctification in the truth starts with thinking and understanding what God says in His Word. More than a hearer, he must also be a doer. This requires volition, a readiness of will. It also means a delight in what God said, a holy affection.

Sanctification in the New Testament follows the example of Jesus. In John 17:19, Jesus prayed to God the Father:

And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.

Jesus provided the perfect example to follow, and the Apostle John writes in his first epistle (2:6):

He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked.

Walking as Jesus walked is not arbitrary. It is looking to the scriptural example of Jesus. Also as John Owen wrote:

To see the Glory of Christ is the grand blessing which our Lord solicits and demands for his disciples in his last solemn intercession, John 17: 24.

The Glory of Christ

In 2 Corinthians 4:6, regarding sanctification, the Apostle Paul writes:

For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

A church centers on the Person of Jesus Christ and Christ changes the church by its seeing of Him. To conform to the image of the Son a church must see the image of the Son.

I’m contending for purposeful, intentional seeing, thinking, and understanding the glory of Christ. The New Testament emphasizes certain events in Christ’s life. To be sanctified by the example of Jesus, to walk as He walked, and to see His glory, you must focus on Him. Jesus appeared on earth in real history in real time. He was here. In His time here, He accumulated important events in His life. The gospels, Acts, the epistles, and Revelation talk all about them. Put those on the calendar.

Keep Your Year Holy

Validity and Value

Don’t emphasize the events of Christ’s life according to their traditional dates on the calendar. Do emphasize them on their traditional dates. I like my emphasis on the calendar better than your no emphasis.

Putting the events of Christ’s life and other important biblical themes on your calendar is a way to keep your year holy. I’m saying there is a value to it. It is a means by which to accomplish many requirements for the believer from the New Testament. It’s not the putting it on a calendar that accomplishes the seeing, thinking, and understanding of the truth. It is the actual doing of seeing, thinking, and understanding.

Words mean things. The keeping in keeping something holy means something. This year I handed out a Bible reading calendar. Scripture doesn’t regulate the calendar I handed out. The calendar is how someone might keep things holy. Someone can have a calendar and remain unholy. I’m saying a calendar is valid and of value.

Remember and Emphasize

I didn’t hand out a fun-time-a-day calendar to our church. Our calendar did have one verse for each week for scripture memory. Scripture doesn’t regulate that. Does scripture regulate scripture memory? I’m guessing people won’t be arguing over a Bible reading calendar and a scripture memory calendar. Neither are in the Bible.

Believers should assume that they can keep something holy. They are told to keep things holy. Yes, in the Old Testament God instructs Israel to keep the Sabbath holy (Exodus 20:8). By what I read some people write, you might think that I’m writing this series for the purpose of keeping the word “Christmas” holy or keeping a date for Christ’s birth holy. I’ve not written anything like that.

I believe it’s been clear what I’m advocating. Some argue against it with what seems to be red herrings and straw men. I say, let’s be purposeful about remembering or emphasizing the events of Christ’s life during the year. A church can schedule more than that, but I support the use of a liturgical calendar to keep the church year holy.

The Doctrine of Inspiration of Scripture and Translation (Part Four)

September 20, 2023 / 9 Comments on The Doctrine of Inspiration of Scripture and Translation (Part Four)

Part One Part Two Part Three

In the history of Christian doctrine, true believers through the centuries have been in general consistent in their position on inspiration. When reading historical bibliological material, homogeneity exists. Changes emerged with modernism in the 19th century and then many novel, false beliefs sprouted up. In many cases, men invented new, wrong positions on inspiration in response to other erroneous ones, a kind of pendulum swing.

Summary

To begin here, I will summarize what I have written so far in this series. God inspired sacred scripture over 1600 years, using 40 human authors. John Owen wrote concerning human authors:

God was with them, and by the Holy Spirit spoke in them — as to their receiving of the Word from him, and their delivering it to others by speaking or writing — so that they were not themselves enabled, by any habitual light, knowledge, or conviction of truth, to declare his mind and will, but only acted as they were immediately moved by him. Their tongue in what they said, or their hand in what they wrote, was no more at their own disposal than the pen in the hand of an expert writer.

God breathed a product of almost entirely Hebrew and some Aramaic Old Testament and completely Greek New Testament letters and words. Then He used His institutions, Israel and the church to keep those words, preserve and distribute them. The London Baptist Confession reads:

The Old Testament in Hebrew (which was the native language of the people of God of old), and the New Testament in Greek (which at the time of the writing of it was most generally known to the nations), being immediately inspired by God, and by His singular care and providence kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentic; so as in all controversies of religion, the church is finally to appeal to them.

Immediate Inspiration

And Remain Inspired in Copies

The inspiration of the “original manuscripts” believers called “immediate inspiration,” to distinguish from ongoing inspiration of preserved words and accurate translations of the preserved words. The preserved words and readings, “the original texts,” remained inspired. Francis Turretin wrote:

By the original texts, we do not mean the autographs written by the hand of Moses, of the prophets and of the apostles, which certainly do not now exist. We mean their apographs which are so called because they set forth to us the word of God in the very words of those who wrote under the immediate inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

“Apographs” are the copies of the original manuscripts or the copies of the copies. What about a translation from the preserved, inspired original text? Is that inspired?

And Remain Inspired in Accurate Translations

In the last post (the third one), I showed 1 Timothy 5:18 among other places in the New Testament indicates that an accurate translation is scripture. An accurate translation as sacred scripture remains inspired. This is seen in Peter’s preaching in Acts 2 on the Day of Pentecost. Peter used Psalms 16, 110, and Joel 2 in the sermon. The audience heard those translated to Parthian, Mede, Elamite, Mesopotamian, Cappadocian, Pontus, Asian, Phrygian, Pamphylian, Egyptian, Libyan, Cyrene, Latin, Cretan and Arabian (Acts 2:9-11).

Supportive Materials

Rather than quote and write about the same thing that Jon Gleason already wrote, I point you to his post on the subject of the continued inspiration of a translation. I will, however, reproduce two quotes from A. W. Pink he used:

The word “inspire” signifies to in-breathe, and breath is both the means and evidence of life; for as soon as a person ceases to breathe he is dead. The Word of God, then, is vitalized by the very life of God, and therefore it is a living Book. Men’s books are like themselves—dying creatures; but God’s Book is like Himself—it “lives and abides forever” (1 Peter 1:23). . . . .

The Holy Scriptures not only were “inspired of God,” but they are so now. They come as really and as truly God’s Word to us, as they did unto those to whom they were first addressed. In substantiation of what I have just said, it is striking to note “Therefore as the Holy Spirit says, Today if you will hear His voice, harden not your hearts” (Heb. 3:7, 8); and again, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says (not “said”) unto the churches” (Rev. 2:7).

He also refers to a journal article, written in 1982 by Edward W. Goodrick that mirrors Pink and others who predated B. B. Warfield. You should also read the article by Thomas Ross, entitled “Thoughts On the Word Theopneustos, “given by inspiration of God” in 2 Timothy 3:16, and the Question of the Inspiration of the Authorized Version.” For many biblical reasons, one should consider an accurate translation of the preserved original text to be inspired and sacred scripture.

Conclusion

Because of erroneous views of double inspiration and English preservationism today, I advocate the terminology, “immediately inspired,” and just for more clarity, “derivative inspiration.” Perhaps best, one should say “given by inspiration of God” and then continued inspiration in preserved original texts and accurate translations of those texts. I consider the King James Version the inspired Word of God.

The Biblical Presuppositions for the Critical Text that Underlie the Modern Versions, Pt. 3

August 28, 2022 / 7 Comments on The Biblical Presuppositions for the Critical Text that Underlie the Modern Versions, Pt. 3

Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Five

I have never heard a critical text proponent care about the biblical and historical doctrine of preservation. Most just ignore it. It doesn’t matter to them. Others attempt to explain it away, as if guilt exists over denying the obvious. Professing theologians, pastors, and teachers deal with this doctrine differently than any other and in many varied ways. Circumstances and experience should not engineer the interpretation of scripture.

Serious About Words of God, Plural

Many years ago, I listened to a sermon by John MacArthur, titled, “The Doctrine of Inspiration Explained.” At one point, he took off against “thought inspiration” of scripture by saying:

This is a denial of verbal inspiration. If this is true, we’re really wasting our time doing exegesis of the text because the words aren’t the issue. Like the gentleman said to me on the Larry King Show the other night, which I mentioned, “You’re so caught up in the words you’re missing the message of the Bible.” That’s a convenient view. The idea that there’s some idea, concept, religious notion there that may or may not be connected to the words, but the Bible claims to be the very words of God.

First Corinthians 2:13, “We speak not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches.” Paul says when I give the revelation of God, when I write down that which God inspires in me, it is not words coming from man’s wisdom, but which the Spirit teaches.

In John 17:8 Jesus said, “I have given unto them the words which You gave Me and they have received them.” The message was in the words, there is no message apart from the words, there is no inspiration apart from the words. More than 3800 times in the Old Testament we have expressions like “Thus says the Lord,” “The Word of the Lord came,” “God said,” it’s about the words. There are no such things as wordless concepts anyway.

When Moses would excuse himself from serving the Lord, he said, “I need to do something else because I’m not eloquent.” God didn’t say, “I’ll give you a lot of great ideas, you’ll figure out how to communicate them.” God didn’t say, “I’ll be with your mind.” God said to him this, “I will be with your mouth and I will teach you what you shall say.” And that explains why 40 years later, according to Deuteronomy 4:2, Moses said to Israel, “You shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall you diminish ought from it that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you.” Don’t touch anything I command you because this is from God.

He continued later:

In fact, the opposite is true. Bible writers wrote down words they didn’t understand. In 1 Peter chapter 1 we are told there that the prophets wrote down the words and didn’t understand what they meant. The prophets, verse 10 of 1 Peter 1, who prophesied of the grace that would come made careful search and inquiry, seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow. Here they are writing about the sufferings of the coming Messiah, writing about the glory to follow the suffering of the Messiah, and then they’re searching what they wrote. They’re inquiring in the very words which they were inspired to write, to figure out what person and what time is in view. They couldn’t even interpret fully the meaning of the words they were actually writing. God did not give ideas without words but in some cases He gave words without complete ideas.

Taking Matthew 24:35 honestly, he says:

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

In the same sermon, he later preaches:

It was Jesus who emphasized the importance of every word…every word and every letter when He said, “Not a jot or tittle will ever fail.” He said in Luke 18:31, “All the things that are written through the prophets shall be accomplished.” He even based His interpretation of the Old Testament on a single word…a single word. The words do matter.

Jesus was answering the Sadducees in Matthew 22 and He said to them, “You are mistaken, not understanding the scriptures, or the power of God, for in the resurrection they neither marry…talking about the angels…nor are given in marriage but are like angels in heaven. But regarding the resurrection of the dead, have you not read that which was spoken to you by God saying, ’I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob?’” He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. And His proof is that God said, “I am…I am the eternal living one.” And furthermore, He is not only the eternal living one but all will live eternally as well. They didn’t believe in a resurrection and He proved His point or certainly to our satisfaction proved His point by talking about the eternality of God in the verb to be in the present tense.

MacArthur teaches like the very words are important, because they come from God. As part of the emphasis, he stresses the vitality of the words to faith and obedience to God, down to the very letters. He’s just taking these passages at face value, not thinking of how he might devalue or diminish them to smuggle in a critical text view that speaks of generic preservation of the singular Word of God and not the Words, plural.

History of Preservation of Words

The doctrine of inspiration comes entirely from scripture. The doctrine of preservation should too. We walk by faith, not by sight. In his volume 2 of Post Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, Holy Scripture: The Cognitive Foundation of Theology, Richard Muller writes concerning John Owen and Francis Turretin:

He (Owen) had not, it is true, predicated his doctrine of Scripture as Word on his ability to prove the perfection of the text. Rather, like Turretin and the other orthodox, he had done precisely the opposite: he assumed the authority, infallibility, and integrity of the text on doctrinal grounds.

This is the historic approach to the Bible, relying on scriptural presuppositions, and in contrast to modern textual criticism. Later Muller writes:

The case for Scripture as an infallible rule of faith and practice . . . . rests on an examination of the apographa and does not seek the infinite regress of the lost autographa as a prop for textual infallibility.

He continued:

A rather sharp contrast must be drawn, therefore, between the Protestant orthodox arguments concerning the autographa and the views of Archibald Alexander Hodge and Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield. . . . Those who claim an errant text, against the orthodox consensus to the contrary, must prove their case. To claim errors in the scribal copies, the apographa, is hardly a proof. The claim must be proven true of the autographa. The point made by Hodge and Warfield is a logical leap, a rhetorical flourish, a conundrum designed to confound the critics—who can only prove their case for genuine errancy by recourse to a text they do not (and surely cannot) have.

The ease at making an honest interpretation of preservation passages, as relating them to the autographa, represents a new and faithless position. Honesty should be shown all of the bibliological texts. Instead of taking the logical leap, rhetorical flourish, to confound critics, like every evangelical modern textual critic, believers should believe what God says.

In the third of seven videos in The Textual Confidence Collective series, Mark Ward criticizes E. F. Hills and Theodore Letis for their attack on inerrancy. He either assumes his audience is ignorant or he himself is ignorant. Warfield and Hodge did what Muller says they did. They invented inerrancy as a term to characterize an errant text. This conformed to their naturalistic presuppositions on the doctrine of preservation against the doctrine passed to and from Owen and Turretin. It is a careless smear on the part of Ward to discredit men believing the historical and scriptural doctrine of preservation.

Matthew 24:35

In Thou Shalt Keep Them, I wrote the chapter on Matthew 24:35. Get the book and read it. I cover the verse in the context of Matthew and the Olivet Discourse in which it appears. It reads:

Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.

The Textual Confidence Collective said that Jesus here guaranteed the fulfillment of the promises He made in His discourse. They also explained that Jesus isn’t talking about perfect textual transmission, when He said, “My words shall not pass away.” You read earlier that John MacArthur preached concerning this text: “When God speaks, He speaks with words and the Bible is the representation in writing of the words that came from God, the words that God spoke.” How MacArthur explained Matthew 24:35 is how the believers in the churches have taken the verse too.

“Perfect textual transmission” is loaded language that serves as a kind of strawman argument. The doctrine of preservation does not argue for perfect textual transmission. It argues for the divine preservation of God’s words, like Jesus promised.

The plain reading of Matthew 24:35 compares the survival of heaven and earth to that of the words of God. The former, which exude permanency from a human standpoint, will pass away, but His Words will not. Words are not tangible and they’re relatively small, so they seem less enduring than heaven and earth with their sheer immensity. However, God’s Words last. This is what Jesus said. The durability of them mean something.

At the end of 1 Corinthians 13 Paul elevates love above faith and hope because of its permanency. This isn’t unusual in scripture. This is also similar to Matthew 4:4. Men survive not with bread, but with the Words of God.

Biblical eschatology foretells the destruction of heaven and earth. Someone investing in heaven and earth will end with nothing. Those trusting in God’s Words, which include what Jesus said in His Olivet discourse, invest in something eternal. The eternality of God’s Words tethers them to the nature of God. They are eternal because God is eternal, making the Words then as well different in nature than just any words. One can count on their fulfillment.

Scripture teaches the perfect preservation of God’s Words. Matthew 24:35 is another one of the verses that do so. The existent of textual variants do not annul Christ’s teaching on the preservation of God’s Words. We should trust what Christ promised. It is more trustworthy than a group of men devoted to naturalistic textual criticism.

Changing Meaning to Conform to Naturalistic Observation or Experience

God’s Word is truth. Whatever God says is true. If He says His Words will not pass away, they will not pass away. Someone responds, “But evidence shows His Words passed away.”

Hebrews 11:1 in God’s Word says, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” There is that word, “evidence.” Mark Ward may say, “Evidence is a false friend.” The way we understand “evidence” today still fits what the King James Version says about faith. What God says gives us the assurance to say His Words do not pass away. In other words, they’re available to every generation of believer. This is a principle from scripture for the preservation of God’s Words.

One of the worst actions for anyone is to change the Word of God based on circumstances or experience. This accords greater with the beginning of cults than work to respect as believers. Through centuries doctrines change based upon men conforming to conventional wisdom or popular norms. Scripture doesn’t change, but doctrines to be derived from scripture can change when men adapt them to their own experience or circumstances.

Would men change the interpretation of scripture and the derived doctrines to fit a personal preference? Men start new religions by doing this. The proponents of modern versions have a lot at stake. When men twist scripture to fit a presupposition, it corresponds to a motive. They defy plain meaning. They have a reason.

If the Perfectly Preserved Greek New Testament Is the Textus Receptus, Which TR Edition Is It? Pt. 1

July 18, 2022 / 15 Comments on If the Perfectly Preserved Greek New Testament Is the Textus Receptus, Which TR Edition Is It? Pt. 1

The Bible claims that God wrote it word for word. God also promised to preserve it word for word in the same languages in which He wrote it. Through history, Christians believed this, even with the reality of copyist errors, what men now call textual variants. Professing Christian leaders today challenge the assertion of the perfect preservation of scripture.

Kevin Bauder wrote, Only One Bible?, the answer to which is, “Yes.” Of course there is only one Bible. His assumption though is, “No, there is more than one.” To Bauder and those like him, the answer to the title of the book is obvious “No.” In their world, within a certain percentage of variation between them, several Bibles can and do exist. Bauder wrote:

If they are willing to accept a manuscript or a text that might omit any words (even a single word) from the originals, or that might add any words (even a single word) to the originals, then their whole position is falsified. . . . If preservation does not really have to include every word, then the whole controversy is no more than a debate over percentages.

The “Which TR?” question also deals with Bauder’s point. Are any of the editions of the TR without error? If so, which one? When you say “Scrivener’s” to Bauder and others, you are admitting a type of English trajectory to the perfect Greek text. When you say, “One of the TR editions is very, very close, but not perfect,” then you surrender on the issue of perfection. That’s why they ask the question.

The TR never meant one printed edition. Even Kurt and Barbara Aland the famed textual critics, the “A” in “NA” (Nestles-Aland), wrote (“The Text of the Church?” in Trinity Journal, Fall, 1987, p.131):

[I]t is undisputed that from the 16th to the 18th century orthodoxy’s doctrine of verbal inspiration assumed this Textus Receptus. It was the only Greek text they knew, and they regarded it as the ‘original text.’

He also wrote in his The Text of the New Testament (p. 11):

We can appreciate better the struggle for freedom from the dominance of the Textus Receptus when we remember that in this period it was regarded even to the last detail the inspired and infallible word of God himself.

His wife Barbara writes in her book, The Text of the New Testament (pp. 6-7):

[T]he Textus Receptus remained the basic text and its authority was regarded as canonical. . . . Every theologian of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (and not just the exegetical scholars) worked from an edition of the Greek text of the New Testament which was regarded as the “revealed text.” This idea of verbal inspiration (i. e., of the literal and inerrant inspiration of the text) which the orthodoxy of both Protestant traditions maintained so vigorously, was applied to the Textus Receptus.

I say all that, because Aland accurately does not refer to an edition of the TR, neither does he speak of the TR like it is an edition. It isn’t. That is invented language used as a reverse engineering argument by critical text proponents, differing with the honest proposition of Aland, quoted above. They very often focus on Desiderius Erasmus and his first printed edition of the Greek New Testament. That’s not how believers viewed what the Van Kleecks call the Standard Sacred Text, others call the Ecclesiastical Text, and still others the Traditional Text.

Neither does Bruce Metzger refer to an edition of the Textus Receptus; only to the Textus Receptus (The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, 4th ed. [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005], pp. 106-251):

Having secured . . . preeminence, what came to be called the Textus Receptus of the New Testament resisted for 400 years all scholarly effort to displace it. . . . [The] “Textus Receptus,” or commonly received, standard text . . . makes the boast that “[the reader has] the text now received by all, in which we give nothing changed or corrupted.” . . . [This] form of Greek text . . . succeeded in establishing itself as “the only true text” of the New Testament and was slavishly reprinted in hundreds of subsequent editions. It lies at the basis of the King James Version and of all the principal Protestant translations in the languages of Europe prior to 1881. [T]he reverence accorded the Textus Receptus. . . [made] attempts to criticize or emend it . . . akin to sacrilege. . . . For almost two centuries . . . almost all of the editors of the New Testament during this period were content to reprint the time-honored . . . Textus Receptus. . . . In the early days of . . . determining textual groupings . . . the manuscript was collated against the Textus Receptus . . . . This procedure made sense to scholars, who understood the Textus Receptus as the original text of the New Testament, for then variations from it would be “agreements in error.”

The Textus Receptus does not refer to a single printed edition of the New Testament. The language of a received text proceeds from true believers in a time before the printing press in hand copies and then leading to the period of its printing. Belief in perfection of the preservation of scripture comes from promises of God in His Word. The Critical Text advocate responds: “Yes, but we see variations between hand written copies and even the printed editions.” What do they mean by this response?

Critical Text advocates are saying that in light of textual variants, those preservation passages must mean something other than perfect, divine preservation of scripture. They say that they can’t be used to teach perfect preservation of scripture anymore, like historically true Christians have taught them, because textual variants show that teaching can’t be true. What divinely inspired or supernatural scripture says is then not the truth, but apparent natural evidence is the truth. When they talk about the truth, they aren’t talking about scripture. They are talking about the speculation of textual criticism by textual critics, mostly unbelieving.

Bruce Metzger wrote in The Text of the New Testament (the one quoted above and here in p. 219 and p. 340): “Textual criticism is not a branch of mathematics, nor indeed an exact science at all. . . . We must acknowledge that we simply do not know what the author originally wrote.” He and Bart Ehrman say much more like that quotation, but this is why I called modern textual criticism, “speculation.” Critical text advocates should not call their speculation, “truth.”

You might ask, “So are you going to answer the question in the title of this post?” Yes. God preserved the New Testament perfectly in the Textus Receptus, not in one printed edition. This has always been my position. Here is how I (and others, like Thomas Ross) would describe this.

First, Scripture promises that God will forever preserve every one of His written words, which are Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek ones (Ps 12:6-7, 33:11, 119:152, 160; Is 30:8, 40:8; 1 Pet 1:23-25; Mt 5:18, 24:35). God promised the preservation of words, not ink, paper, or particular printed editions. They were specific words, and not a generalized word.

Second, Scripture promises the general availability of every one of His Words to every generation of believers (Dt 29:29; 30:11-14; Is 34:16, 59:21; Mt 4:4; 5:18-19; 2 Pet 3:2; Jude 17). Yes, the Words are in heaven, but they are also on earth, available to believers. This does not guarantee His Words to unbelievers, just to believers. If the words were not available, those were not His Words. The Words He preserved could not be unavailable for at least several hundred years, like those in the critical text.

Third, Scripture promises that God would lead His saints into all truth, and that the Word, all of His words, are truth (Jn 16:13, 17:8, 17). True churches of Christ would receive and guard these words (Mt 28:19-20; Jn 17:8; Acts 8:14, 11:1, 17:11; 1 Thess 2:13; 1 Cor 15:3; 1 Tim 3:15). Believers called the New Testament Greek text, the textus receptus, because the churches received it and then kept it. Churches of truly converted people with a true gospel and the indwelling Holy Spirit bore testimony to this text as perfect. Many, many quotes evince this doctrine, including this one by John Owen from His Works:

But my present considerations being not to be extended beyond the concernment of the truth which in the foregoing discourse I have pleaded for, I shall first propose a brief abstract thereof, as to that part of it which seems to be especially concerned, and then lay down what to me appears in its prejudice in the volumes now under debate, not doubting but a fuller account of the whole will by some or other be speedily tendered unto the learned and impartial readers of them. The sum of what I am pleading for, as to the particular head to be vindicated, is, That as the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament were immediately and entirely given out by God himself, his mind being in them represented unto us without the least interveniency of such mediums and ways as were capable of giving change or alteration to the least iota or syllable; so, by his good and merciful providential dispensation, in his love to his word and church, his whole word, as first given out by him, is preserved unto us entire in the original languages; where, shining in its own beauty and lustre (as also in all translations, so far as they faithfully represent the originals), it manifests and evidences unto the consciences of men, without other foreign help or assistance, its divine original and authority.

This reflects the position of the Westminster Confession of Faith and the later London Baptist Confession. Professor E. D. Morris for decades taught the Westminster Confession at Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio. Philip Schaff consulted with him for his Creeds of Christendom. In 1893, Morris wrote for The Evangelist:

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

Richard Capel represents the position well (Capel’s Remains, London, 1658, pp. 19-43):

[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.

Perfect preservation admitted scribal errors, but because of providential preservation, “what mistake is in one print, is corrected in another.” Critical text advocates conflate this to textual criticism about which foremost historian Richard Muller wrote on p. 541 of the second volume of his Post Reformation Reformed Dogmatics:

All too much discussion of the Reformers’ methods has attempted to turn them into precursors of the modern critical method, when in fact, the developments of exegesis and hermeneutics in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries both precede and, frequently conflict with (as well as occasionally adumbrate) the methods of the modern era.

Muller wrote on p. 433:

By “original and authentic” text, the Protestant orthodox do not mean the autographa which no one can possess but the apographa in the original tongue which are the source of all versions. The Jews throughout history and the church in the time of Christ regarded the Hebrew of the Old Testament as authentic and for nearly six centuries after Christ, the Greek of the New Testament was viewed as authentic without dispute. It is important to note that the Reformed orthodox insistence on the identification of the Hebrew and Greek texts as alone authentic does not demand direct reference to autographa in those languages; the “original and authentic text” of Scripture means, beyond the autograph copies, the legitimate tradition of Hebrew and Greek apographa.

These biblical presuppositions are true. For the New Testament, only the textus receptus fulfills those presuppositions. Those words were preserved in the language in which they were written, koine Greek. They were the only words available to the generations of believers from 1500 to 1881. They are also the only words that believers ever agreed, received, and testified were God’s preserved Words in the language in which they were written.

To Be Continued

Righteous: Declared in Romans 4:17 and Made In Romans 5:19

February 9, 2022 / 10 Comments on Righteous: Declared in Romans 4:17 and Made In Romans 5:19

“Justification” is a scriptural term, one used very often, but not as much as the term, “salvation.” When someone is justified, he is saved, but that doesn’t explain his entire salvation. It’s the first part of salvation. When someone is justified, he is said to be “declared righteous.” That is the language of justification. John Owen wrote in 1797:

[I]t is the righteousness of Christ, and not our own, on account of which we receive the pardon of sin; acceptance with God; are declared righteous, and have a title to the heavenly inheritance.

He also wrote:

For the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, unto a person in himself ungodly unto his justification, or that he may be acquitted, absolved, and declared righteous, is built on such foundations, and proceedeth on such principles of righteousness, wisdom, and sovereignty, as have no place among the actions of men, nor can have so, as shall afterwards be declared.

John Gill differentiated between justification and pardon, when he wrote in 1750:

I readily allow that there is a very great agreement between justification and pardon, in their efficient, impulsive, and procuring causes, in their objects, or subjects, in their commencement, and manner of completion: the same God that pardons the sins of his people, justifies them, or accounts them righteous; the same grace, which moved him to the one, moved him to the other; as the blood of Christ was shed for the remission of sins, so by it are we justified; all who are justified are pardoned; and all who are pardoned, are justified, and that, at one and the same time; both these acts are finished at once, simul & semel, and are not carried on in a gradual and progressive way, as sanctification. But all this does not prove them to be one and the same, for though they agree in these things, in others they differ; for justification is a pronouncing a person righteous according to law, as though he had never sinned; not so pardon: it is one thing for a man to be tried by law, cast, and condemned, and then receive the king’s pardon; and another thing to he tried by the law, and, by it, to be found and declared righteous, as though he had not sinned against it.

Gill also wrote in 1778 in a tract:

Divines generally make justification to consist in the remission of sins, and in the imputation of Christ’s righteousness; which some make different parts; others say, they are not two integrating parts of justification, or acts numerically and really distinct, but only one act respecting two different terms, a quo & ad quem; just as by one, and the same act, darkness is expelled from the air, and light is introduced into it; so by one, and the same act of justification, the sinner is absolved from guilt, and pronounced righteous.

Many theologians continue to use the term “declared righteous” or “pronounced righteous” as the definition of justification. Does the Bible use this terminology? Certain translations (NET Bible) of Romans 5:1 translate, “being justified,” as “being declared righteous.” If that’s the translation it’s in there, but if you look at the Greek words, those aren’t the Greek words. The Greek words sound like what you read in the KJV: ” Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

DECLARED RIGHTEOUS

Don’t get me wrong, I think “declared righteous” is fine for justification. It could be a logical conclusion to the doctrine of imputation. If we are “counted as righteous” like Abraham was, God is doing the counting, so He must be declaring believers righteous. Does scripture say it? I’m saying that the closest thing to the Bible saying, “declared righteous,” is in Romans 4:17:

(As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations,) before him whom he believed, even] God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were.

The language of “declared righteous” could be found in the words, “God. . . calleth those things which be not as though they were.” The verse doesn’t use “declared righteous,” but being “declared righteous” is ‘being called a thing which be not as though it was.’ This is a verse that says God does this. Imputation of righteousness is God declaring someone righteous. A few verses later, Romans 4:22-25 say:

22 And therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness. 23 Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him; 24 But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; 25 Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.

Roman Catholicism has taught and still teaches that no one is righteous until he is found to be just. He is not just through imputation. He is just by cooperation with infused grace. It’s still up to what that person does whether he will make it to heaven. This false doctrine that entered Roman Catholicism came because of the Latin word for justification, iustificare. Ficare in Latin means “to make.” The Greek word for “justification” is God’s pronouncing someone righteous regardless of what he did. The idea of “being made” righteous for justification came from the doctrine that man’s righteousness came by his cooperation, the wrong meaning of the Greek word. The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913, says concerning this:

Although the sinner is justified by the justice of Christ, inasmuch as the Redeemer has merited for him the grace of justification (causa meritoria), nevertheless he is formally justified and made holy by his own personal justice and holiness (causa formalis), just as a philosopher by his own inherent learning becomes a scholar, not, however, by any exterior imputation of the wisdom of God (Trent, Sess. VI, can. x). To this idea of inherent holiness which theologians call sanctifying grace are we safely conducted by the words of Holy Writ. To prove this we may remark [on] the word justificare.

Louis Berkhof wrote about this in his Systematic Theology:

Our word justification (from the Latin justificare composed of justus and facere, and therefore meaning “to make righteous”), just as the Holland rechtvaardigmaking, is apt to give the impression that justification denotes a change that is brought about in man, which is not the case. In the use of the English word the danger is not so great, because the people in general do not understand its derivation, and in the Holland language the danger may be averted by employing the related words rechtvaardigen and rechtvaardiging.

MADE RIGHTEOUS

Perhaps you have considered whether justification is “being made righteous,” versus “being declared righteous.” “Made righteous” is found once in the Bible and it is in Romans 5:19:

For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.

Being “made righteous” is different than being “declared righteous.” Being “declared righteous” is justification and being “made righteous” is sanctification. Someone justified will also be sanctified. Man cooperates with God in sanctifying righteousness, but not in justifying righteousness. He is made righteous in sanctifying righteousness.

Romans 5:19 uses the future tense of the verb, “shall many be made righteous.” Romans 5:1, “Being justified” is an aorist participle, completed action. In the past someone has been declared righteous and as a result in the future he shall be made righteous. Through believing in Jesus Christ someone is justified, declared righteous, and he will be made righteous. Sanctification is a process that continues until glorification. Sanctification is actual transformation, metamorphosis.

Think two verses. Romans 4:17, declared righteous, justification. Couple with that verse, Romans 4:22-25. Then, Romans 5:19, made righteous, sanctification.

WHAT IS TRUTH