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Romans 5:1 As a Consideration for Taking a Scriptural Position on the Preservation of Scripture
The Apostle Peter in 2 Peter 1 shows that attack on the authority of scripture is a major explanation or reason for apostasy. The authority of scripture proceeds from the supernatural nature of the Bible. It is inspired by God and then preserved by God. When someone attacks scripture, the first wave is that it was only written by men and the second, that it isn’t preserved. Leading away from a doctrine of preservation is evacuating divine and supernatural preservation for something naturalistic.I received an advertisement for the Center of the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, written by Daniel Wallace, and it read like a bit of a cliffhanger, using a manuscript presently residing for view at the National Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, the oldest known, surviving hand copy of Romans 5:1. He writes:
Among the many ancient treasures held by The Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, there is a tattered fragment of parchment containing the oldest known text of Romans 5:1. Most modern translations render the verse, “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Some scholars believe, however, that the underlined portion should read, “let us have peace,” because many of the best manuscripts do, indeed, bear this text.In biblical Greek, the difference comes down to a single letter within a single word. And the difference of that one letter makes all the difference.The manuscript fragment in Washington, known to scholars as GA 0220, is dated to the 3rd century (between AD 200 and 300.) Unfortunately, the critical letter in question has been obscured by a fold in the parchment and a hole in the very worst place. Nevertheless, traces of the letter appear to remain, and we believe that our high-resolution, multispectral imaging equipment can reveal the truth.
He doesn’t tell us why certain manuscripts are “the best manuscripts,” but especially here he doesn’t reveal which edition of Romans 5:1 is in “the oldest known text.” I would surmise that he would never use this as an example if it didn’t agree with the King James Version. He doesn’t support the King James, but here seems like he is supporting the traditional text and seeing this theological presupposition on justification by faith as tied to his conclusion. By not giving us his conclusion, he can also please both sides on this issue.Most of the oldest manuscripts of Romans 5:1 support “let us have peace” rather than “we have peace,” as if justification by faith may not result in peace with God. However, to spoil the cliffhanger, the oldest surviving manuscript of Romans 5:1 agrees with the traditional text on this one letter, that results in “we have peace” rather than “let us have peace.”Textual critics have changed on this one word over the years, because Wescott and Hort in 1881 said exwmen and not exomen, so they opted for “let us have peace.” Now the critical text says the opposite and part of the “evidence” is the find of this manuscript fragment, called Uncial 0220 or the Wyman Fragment from the third century AD. Even though as a whole, the manuscript apparently agrees with the Alexandrian text type, according to this one word and letter, it agrees with the textus receptus or the Byzantine text type. Good news for eternal security and the doctrine of justification by faith. Is this providence? Is it an accident? Do we have peace about the manuscript evidence?The find of a new manuscript doesn’t add to the doctrine of preservation of scripture. I can’t be happy about the Wyman Fragment agreeing with the received text, God’s preserved Word, for this one word, when I know it doesn’t agree with text already received by God’s churches in other places. We already knew that the word was exomen, “we have peace.”God’s churches believed the doctrine of perfect preservation and then they believed that text of the New Testament was the one passed down by the churches. What was possessed in the apographa (the copies of the originals) by the churches was identical to the autographa (the original manuscripts of the New Testament). God promised to lead His people to all truth. His people would and could live by every word that proceeded out of the mouth of God. God preserved through His churches every Word for every generation of God’s people. There was a settled text of scripture. This was the means by which God preserved His Words, using His churches, the Holy Spirit bearing witness to His Words.The Wyman Fragment didn’t offer anything new. It contradicted many other old manuscripts on this one letter or word, but finding old manuscripts isn’t the way scripture is preserved. If an even older manuscript of Romans 5:1 is finally found, and it disagrees with Uncial 0220, that won’t mean that we have to tweak or change that verse. It’s already settled.On the other hand, God did preserve His Words in the original languages of the Old and New Testaments. The King James Version is a translation of those Words. Preservation of scripture did not occur in the English. If that were the case, men didn’t have a perfect Bible before the King James Version and the origination of the English language, which was long after the inspiration of scripture. Preservation of scripture is the preservation of what God inspired in the originals. Those words and letters (jots and tittles) are preserved. God promised that He would.Preservation is supernatural. It is divine. God used the churches, just like He used men in the inspiration of scripture to write the Words down. They were His instruments. The church is God’s instrument of preservation, but He did preserve perfectly every word in the language in which it was written. Every generation of true saints has had accessibility to every Word of God. Embracing a translation over the original text is a denial of the preservation of scripture just as much as the embrace of the critical text. Both views deny preservation of scripture and should be rejected.
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