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How Evangelicals Now Move the Goalposts on Bibliology (part three)
Somebody kicked a field goal from the fifty yard line. That’s a sixty yard field goal, except that someone moved the goalposts to the thirty. In the same manner, evangelicals say, “This is scriptural bibliology,” but it isn’t. The goalposts were moved. Evangelism has moved on bibliology, first on the doctrine of inspiration.
Ipsissima Verba and Ipsissima Vox
Precise Words
Ipsissima verba, Latin, means, “the precise words.” On the other hand, ipsissima vox is more Latin, meaning, “the very voice.” Ipsissima verba says that the words of Jesus in the gospels were recorded verbatim. Vox says that the gospels capture the concepts of what Jesus said.
Vox says that when the gospels say, “Jesus said,” these are not necessarily the words of Christ. He probably didn’t say them according to many evangelicals, just the essence or general content of what He said. The gospels say, “Jesus said,” 65 times. Many times, speaking of Jesus, in the gospels, “the Lord said.” Sometimes, literally the gospels say, “these words spake Jesus.”
Who dares say that Jesus did no speak the words that scripture says He spoke? The Holy Spirit would not inspire a “Jesus said” and not provide the very words of Jesus. Matthew 24:35 says:
Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.
That statement by Jesus about His own Words is false if the gospels do not record His Words. Several years ago now, a blogpost here said:
God’s people must hear the Words of the Son (John 12:47), receive His Words (John 12:48; 17:8), keep His Words (John 14:23), have His Words abiding in them (John 15:7) and remember His Words as from the Father (John 14:10).
Concepts
Daniel Wallace in his “An Apologia for a Broad View of Ipsissima Vox,” paper presented to the 51st Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society, Danvers, Mass., November 1999, wrote:
[T]he concepts go back to Jesus, but the words do not—at least, not exactly as recorded.
I wrote these lines on this blog in the not too distant past:
His colleague, Darrell Bock, wrote a chapter in Jesus Under Fire [ed. Michael J. Wilkins and J. P. Moreland (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995):73-99], defending the vox position, entitled, “The Words of Jesus in the Gospels: Live, Jive, or Memorex.” Bock’s chapter tries to defend the historical reliability of the Gospel writing of Jesus’ Words from the destructive criticism of the Jesus Seminar. He writes, “The Gospels give us the true gist of his teaching and the central thrust of his message,” but “we do not have ‘his very words’ in the strictest sense of the term”. . . .
Wallace and Bock approach Jesus’ Words in the Gospels from a naturalistic viewpoint. The apostles forgot the Words like historians often do and so presented the Words the best they could, considering their shortcomings.
Verbal Inspiration
Donald Green in an essay on this subject, published in The Master’s Seminary Journal (Spring 2001), wrote:
Jesus’ promise of the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit placed the Gospel writers in a different realm in which different standards of memory would be operative. They would be supernaturally enabled to recall Jesus’ words in a manner that freed them from the human limitations of secular historians.
The great high priestly prayer of the Lord Jesus Christ in John 17, begins with the words: “These words spake Jesus.” Ipsissima verba, a high view of scripture, says that Jesus said these very words in His prayer to His Father. Later in the prayer itself, Jesus says in verse 8:
I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them.
This is what Jesus says, that He has given to the New Testament writers through inspiration very words, not just concepts or ideas.
Redaction Criticism
Is redaction criticism acceptable or accommodated by evangelicals? Timothy Berg, a member of an evangelical group called the textual confidence collective, says, “Yes.” Redaction criticism says that several biblical authors were very often if not most often mere editors of source material. This clashes with the doctrine of verbal, plenary inspiration. Berg in an article, “Matthew 5:17-20 and the KJV,” published on his kjbhistory.com website, writes:
It would be irresponsible to deal with any text in Matthew without at least briefly mentioning the synoptic problem and its relation to the exegesis of the text. While there are some recent dissenting voices, the majority of evangelical scholarship today holds to Marcan priority. That is, that Mark wrote first, and that Matthew and Luke independently used Mark. Further, because Matthew and Luke have a large amount of material that they share in common yet which is not present in Mark, it is likely that they had both had access to a source Mark was unaware of. This source is referred to as “Q.”
He writes then specifically about Matthew 5:18:
The passage at hand in verse 18 is clearly “Q” material, or material which Matthew and Luke draw from a common source unknown to Mark. It is worth noting how Matthew has uniquely shaped this material for his Jewish audience.
Redaction criticism says that biblical authors reworked an already written text, taking it and putting it somewhat in their own words. This is not either a biblical or historical view of the doctrine of inspiration. It acquiesces to modernism or theological liberalism in a denial of verbal inspiration.
More to Come
Modernism Is Not an Acceptable Alternative to Postmodernism: Jordan Peterson
Early Experience with Modernism
Growing up in small town Indiana, no one exposed me to modernism. Without anyone telling me, I read the Bible as literal. Everything happened in it just like it read. When I was twelve, my dad took us all off to Bible college in Wisconsin when he was thirty-five years old, but he was never some theologian.
I interacted very little with modernism in college or graduate school. When I wrote papers, I provided alternative views to my position, so I read a little modernism then. Faculty did not assign modernist books to read in a fundamentalist college. The modernist books, I must admit, I used to pad my bibliographies, quoting them in selective fashion.
My theological separation divided the saved from the unsaved. People either received or rejected Jesus Christ. I did not categorize someone a modernist. He just rejected the truth, an unbeliever. Modernism held no attraction to me. If someone was a modernist, through my lens he was just an unbeliever.
More Mature Understanding of Modernism
In graduate school, I took a class, History of Fundamentalism, taught by B. Myron Cedarholm, because the normal teacher, Richard Weeks, was ill. In that class, I heard how that fundamentalism began as a movement in response to modernism or liberalism pervading and then controlling religious institutions. Modernism invaded Southern Baptist seminaries and the Presbyterian, Princeton Theological Seminary. None of this still mattered much for me. It registered as something written on paper, because I had no experience with it.
After marriage and a move to the San Francisco Bay Area to evangelize and then start a Baptist church, I came into recognition of modernism in a personal way, listening to a liberal radio talk show. I listened to the Ronn Owens Show and his interview with Uta Ranke-Heinemann, a female liberal theologian from Germany. She wrote, .Putting Away Childish Things: The Virgin Birth, the Empty Tomb, and Other Fairy Tales You Don’t Need to Believe to Have a Living Faith.
On a regular basis, I then encountered modernists in the San Francisco Bay Area. They went to modernist churches in almost every religious denomination. They often didn’t reject the Bible. Instead, they viewed scripture in a mystical way, not taking it literally. Modernists likely denied the supernatural aspects of scripture. Many times they allegorized the Bible to make it more malleable for their liberal cultural and social causes.
The Arrival of Postmodernism
As years passed, progressivism turned from modernism to postmodernism. Now postmodernists can make modernists seem at least moderate, if not conservative. Postmodernists rejected modernism. Rather than reinvent the wheel, I ask that you consider what I wrote in 2021:
Modernism then arose and said revelation wasn’t suitable for knowledge. Modernists could point to distinctions between religions and denominations and the wars fought over them. Knowledge instead came through scientific testing, man’s observations, consequently elevating man above God. Man could now do what he wanted because he changed the standard for knowledge. Faith for sure wasn’t good enough. With modernism, faith might make you feel good, but you proved something in naturalistic fashion to say you know it. Modernism then trampled the twentieth century, producing devastation, unsuccessful with its so-called knowledge.
Premoderns had an objective basis for knowledge, revelation from God. Moderns too, even if it wasn’t valid, had human reasoning, what they called “empirical proof.” Postmoderns neither believed or liked scripture or empiricism. This related to authority, whether God or government or parents, or whatever. No one should be able to tell somebody else what to do, which is to conform them to your truth or your reality. No one has proof. Institutions use language to construct power.
Postmodernism judged modernism a failure, pointing to wars, the American Indians and institutional bias, bigotry, and injustice. Since modernism constructed itself by power and language, a postmodernist possesses his own knowledge of good and evil, his own truth, by which to construct his own reality. No one will any more control him with power and language.
Dangerous New Acceptance of Modernism
Jordan Peterson
Modernists today very often stand with conservatives on certain principles. When I hear him talk about the Bible, and he does very much, Jordan Peterson sounds like a modernist. In recent days Peterson appeared in a new series on the Book of Exodus and apparently he wrote a book soon published on the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. He talked about that in a podcast. In his conversation on Exodus, his interpretation of Sodom and Gomorrah, and in a talk about the book of Jonah, Peterson in recent days pushes his modernist position on tens of thousands of especially young men.
What excites many about Peterson’s talks is that he even talks about the Bible at all. He acts enthused about scripture. Peterson thinks the Bible is very important. He puts great effort into communicating his modernist position and interpretations of the Bible. Almost five years ago, I already warned about Peterson, still hoping he might change. He hasn’t and today he’s doubling down on his modernistic approach.
Modernism Versus Divine Verbal Plenary Inspiration
Jordan Peterson does not comment on the Bible like God inspired it. When I say inspired, I mean verbal plenary inspiration. God breathed out every word and all of them in the Bible (2 Timothy 3:16-17). Perhaps I will put more time into exposing the false interpretations and teachings of Jordan Peterson sometime in the future. In the meantime, please know that Jordan Peterson does not expose what Genesis, Exodus, or almost anything in the scripture actually says. He leads people astray with his false doctrine.
Don’t get me wrong. Peterson says many good things. You and I can rejoice in that. I’m happy he agrees with freedom of speech. He rejects a cancel culture. Peterson accepts a patriarchy. He does not, however, proclaim an orthodox view of God or the Bible, even though he refers to scripture all the time.
God and the Bible Are Dispensational (Part Three)
The Bible did not come in one neat tidy package. God delivered it progressively through men over a period of 1500 years during history in real time, even using forty different men as human authors. As God revealed scripture, it did not come with a separate interpretive handbook and glossary for defining terms. He expected and presumes people will get it through plain reading.
As God imparted scripture through inspiration, people understood who were hearing in that day. The Old Testament audience did not need the New Testament to ascertain the writings. When He delivered more, past writings become better understood in a fuller way, bringing even greater knowledge of God’s message.
God’s Word has one meaning, yet many applications. People knew the meaning as God revealed scripture. He required the original audience to believe and practice what He wrote.
Satanic Attack on Dispensationalism
From the very beginning, Satan directly and then through the world system attacks scripture in several ways. He does this in one key manner by corrupting the meaning of God’s Word. Satan twists and also confuses the meaning. He does not want people to know with certainty what God says. Change of meaning abolishes or invalidates the authority of scripture.
Satan wants people to think and act in a different way than what God said. He does this in an incremental fashion, where people drift or move further away from scripture. The doctrine and practice of the Bible changed over the centuries through a modification of its meaning. By changing its meaning, it becomes at first a slightly different book and finally a very different one. This fulfills what Satan wants, but also satisfies the innate rebellion of man.
Changes in the meaning of the Bible relate to contemporary events and movements in history. Rather than adapting to what God said, people conform what God said to their desires or will. In a plain reading of the New Testament, churches were autonomous assemblies under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ through His Words. Satan and his system attacked them in vigorous and violent fashion.
Individual churches were vulnerable to fear of the fierce opposition of the Roman Empire. This disposed them toward reorganization favoring extra ecclesiastical hierarchy. Many moved toward greater cooperation and confederation. Prominent churches took on more dominance and authority for their leaders.
Philosophies of Men
In Colossians 2:8 Paul warns against philosophies. The New Testament addresses various heresies arising from human philosophy. Preserved early Christian writings trace the invasion of extra-scriptural thinking into the church. Doctrine and practice changed through intertwining neoplatonic philosophy with scripture. The church became something bigger than local.
The church at Rome at the center of the Roman Empire took on enormous prominence. Emperor Constantine I gave Christianity legal status in the Empire with the Edict of Milan in 313AD. When Constantine became the sole emperor of the Roman Empire in 324, Christianity became its official religion. Christianity became a state church for the Roman Empire when Emperor Theodosius I issued the Edict of Thessalonica in 380AD. This is the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Empire was Catholic or Universal, so its state church became Catholic too.
Allegorization and Spiritualization
For a true church, local only, to become universal, allegorization or spiritualization of scripture must occur. This developed over three centuries with a unique influence, it seems, from a theologian, Origen of Alexandria. This allowed for modification of meaning to allow change in doctrine and practice. About a hundred years after Origen, Augustine further systematized allegorization of scripture, now known as covenantal theology. The Bible could become a vessel in which to pour ones own doctrine and practice by allegorizing it.
Allegorization or spiritualization gives a lot of leeway with interpretation, making it highly subjective. Someone can read what he wants into the text of scripture. This affects the authority of the Bible.
The Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century was led by men raised as staunch Roman Catholics. They reformed Roman Catholic doctrine, however, still preserving much allegorization and spiritualization. More than Augustine, they composed a hybrid of allegorical and literal interpretation, now still referred as covenant theology. The immediate spiritual offspring of the Protestant Reformers further systematized an approach to the interpretation of scripture. Their system of interpretation justified a state church, something not seen in the Bible. They could find it by spiritualizing the church.
Amillennialism
In the main, the church could become an actual kingdom through spiritualization, a view of the future called amillennialism. The theologians of Roman Catholicism removed the distinctions by unifying Israel and the church. The church replaced Israel. They adapted the Old Testament prophecies of Israel and the kingdom for fulfillment in the church. Instead of a future fulfillment of the New Testament prophecy of Revelation, they spiritualized it as fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD.
Liberal theology easily proceeded from amillennialism. Liberals take the same approach even further, making almost everything in the Bible to mean what they want. They see now and in the future a spiritualized kingdom, a progressive social order. Jesus, the cross, the resurrection, and the gospel all take on their own meaning, most often related to advocacy of social issues. Modernism dovetailed easily and nicely from covenant theology.
Growing In and Out of Favor
Even though God and the Bible are dispensational, dispensationalism grew out of favor in mainstream teaching. In recent times, institutionalized theology portrays dispensationalism as of recent origin, arising with Darby in the 19th Century. Premillennialism, a literal interpretation of Christ’s kingdom, traces to the first century with the apostles. However, believers responded to covenant theology with a systematization of a literal interpretation of scripture in the 19th century. The Protestant system of covenant theology itself is of historically recent composition.
I contend that the rising popularity of covenant theology above dispensationalism traces to its allure to human pride. Men ascertain from God’s writings their secret meaning. This allows for a wide variety of contradictory belief and practice. Men like it when they’re free to do what they want, justified by what “God said.”
More to Come
The Trinitarian Bible Society and Its Position on Scripture
Four days ago the Trinitarian Bible Society launched this video, called, “Upholding the Word of God.”
I appreciate their stand on scripture. What they present is what, I believe, many Christians across the world say they believe. What the above video explains is also why they believe it.
Scriptural Presuppositions
The Trinitarian Bible Society starts with scriptural presuppositions. Their practice of Bible publication arises from their biblical beliefs about the Bible. This is how it should be. It’s also what we do not see with those on the critical text side. They do not emphasize or most often even teach at all what is the scriptural basis of their position. Their position does not have a biblical mooring.
Someone who appears and speaks often in the above video is Jonathan Arnold, who is also pastor of the Westminster Baptist Church in London. My wife and I visited that church twice on trips to England. I appreciate this younger man’s stand on the Word of God in a time of much attack on the doctrine of scripture. He is now the General Director of the Trinitarian Bible Society.
Many pastors across the world use the Greek New Testament, textus receptus, printed by the Trinitarian Bible Society. They also print an entire original language Bible in the received text of the Old (Hebrew) and New (Greek) Testaments.
Separatist Heritage
The Trinitarian Bible Society is by history and, therefore, by definition a separatist organization. It started from a split from the British and Foreign Bible Society over spreading Unitarianism, hence, Trinitarian, and over scripture, therefore, Bible. As an indication of how significant people thought that was, two thousand gathered for the first meeting at Exeter Hall in London in 1831. Could they get that many to gather for that separatist purpose today?
The British and Foreign Bible Society allowed a Unitarian as an officer. Unitarian at the time became the doctrinal position du jour. It’s a familiar theological term now, unitarian, but it really does encapsulate almost every major theology error in the history of heresy. It was essentially Socinianism, which taught works salvation and anti-Trinitarianism. Unitarians denied not only the deity of Christ but also the miracles of the Bible. They did away of the authority of scripture.
For a long period of time, we would call Socinianism or Unitarianism theological liberalism. Most liberal churches in whatever denomination are Socinians or Unitarians. In many ways, we would say they don’t believe anything. They are drawn together by their denial of scriptural and historical doctrine, which is to say, they deny the truth.
Overall
I have attended many churches affiliated with the Trinitarian Bible Society (TBS) in England. Some strong churches exist who would not fellowship with the Trinitarian Bible Society, but very few. A majority of the strongest churches in England, where the best representation of New Testament Christianity exists, associate themselves with the TBS. This says much about the outcome or consequences of the received text of the original languages of scripture and the King James Version, which these churches support and propagate.
I differ from most of these Trinitarian Bible Society affiliated institutions in ecclesiology, eschatology, and dispensationalism versus covenant theology. That saddens me, but it does not take away the joy I have for what they do believe. I rejoice in that. I have more in common with these churches than I do most other Baptist churches today.
The churches affiliated with the Trinitarian Bible Society believe an orthodox, true position on the Trinity and about the Lord Jesus Christ. They preach a true gospel, including repentance and Lordship. TBS type churches utilize reverent worship. They are active in their evangelism of the lost. Their churches are not worldly churches. Their preaching of scripture is dense and thorough. They rely on scripture for their success. I am not saying these doctrines and practices are all that matter, but they do distinguish the Trinitarian Bible Society affiliated churches.
Machen, Liberalism, and the Language of Liberalism Now So Common
J. Gresham Machen (1881–1937) is not a name, I would think, most readers would know, even though Wikipedia gives him a long biography. It’s worth reading. He’s an outlier in that he went to Germany for post graduate education and rejected liberalism for conservative theology. He was a professor for 23 years (1906-1929) of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary, then led a revolt against liberal theology there, and left to start Westminster Theological Seminary. He was a Presbyterian and usually called a fundamentalist Presbyterian.
As you would know, I am Baptist, and reject Presbyterianism and Protestantism in general. I respect though what they mean for history. I am happy about a conservative Presbyterian. I like him obviously better than a liberal Baptist and even a moderate Baptist. Sometimes I like a conservative Presbyterian more than a conservative Baptist, who is pragmatic, revivalistic, and a soft continuationist. Enough of those comparisons. I’m in part writing this because of a quote I read from Machen. Here it is:
In order to maintain themselves in the evangelical churches and quiet the fears of their conservative associates, the liberals resort constantly to a double use of language.
It comes from his classic book, Christianity and Liberalism. Carl Truman, Presbyterian historian, wrote this summary of the book:
The thesis of the book is devastatingly simple: Christianity, built on the authoritative, divinely-inspired, inerrant revelation of God in Scripture, embodying a robust supernaturalism, and focused on the exclusivity of salvation in the person and work of Christ, is a different religion to that liberalism that repudiates each of these things.
Machen uses as an example, a liberal saying, “I believe Jesus is God,” but the words meaning something entirely different. He uses the words to comfort the heart of a young one who has questions. Machen says he “offends against the fundamental principle of truthfulness in language.”
I see more offense than ever against this fundamental principle of truthfulness in language. People want to play both sides. They want acceptance from liberals and still maintain an audience with the conservative, bridge that gap.
Talking to a woman in evangelism, I said that Jesus wasn’t a rorschach ink blot, that we can look into and see whatever Jesus we want to see. She said she believed in Jesus, but she also believed that He really was like that ink blot. He was intended to be whatever people needed Him to be. This was what she meant by ‘she believed in Jesus.’
Perhaps with regard to truth, men still believe a large percentage of orthodox doctrine at least on paper, but they cave on beauty and goodness. They say they follow Jesus, but they don’t like what He likes. They do something different than what He did. They love the world.
Ambiguous words become vessels for whatever meaning someone wants to give them. They give liberty to those who hold them. They can live what they want, expecting in the end to play a word game. “That is what I really meant, what you said.” No, you didn’t.
When I took ethics, we imagined casuistry, which was called Jesuit casuistry. Casuistry comes from the Latin casus, which means “case.” It started out being a means of evading a difficult case of duty. “Were you there?” I was. It is the Clintonian, it was all a matter of what “there” means. I was “there,” just not where you’re talking about.
False religion is full of imprecision and fuzziness. The hermeneutic is speculative and mystical. With this use of language, man easily worships and serves the creature rather than Creator. The creature still calls it Creator though. Machen called it “the double use of language.”
Shabir Ally / Thomas Ross Debate over Jesus and the New Testament with Reviews now on Rumble
The videos of my debate with Shabir Ally, and the reviews of the arguments made, are now on my new channel, KJBIBLE1611, on the video sharing platform Rumble. I created the channel on Rumble because I am concerned that YouTube might be censoring or reducing the viewership of the debate now, and if that is not taking place now that it might do so in the future. Please feel free to subscribe to my Rumble channel, which will help other people to see the video. It also helps if you subscribe to my YouTube channel. I intend, at this point, to keep posting content on both the KJB1611 YouTube channel and on the KJBIBLE1611 Rumble channel, Lord willing; Rumble because it does not censor Biblical or conservative content, the way YouTube tends to do, and also YouTube because so many more people watch YouTube at this point. I have also added links to the Rumble videos on the Shabir Ally debate post at FaithSaves. The evangelistic Bible studies are also going up on Rumble.
–TDR
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