Part One

Confidence, Absolutism, or Skepticism?

A recent panel of friends decided on three categories of faith in the text of scripture:  confidence, absolutism, and skepticism.  They chose “confidence” and determined the other two to be false.  Further explained, our present text of the Bible has what they consider minimal errors, which yields overall maximum confidence.

Absolutism posits zero errors, relying on a presupposition from a biblical and historical doctrine of preservation.  The panel said no one can be, nor should be, absolute or certain with the text of scripture.  The Bible may say that the text is certain, but the facts or the science say otherwise.  Scripture may say that God preserved every Word, but since He didn’t preserve all of them, those passages must mean something else.

Those just confident in the text, but not certain, foresee a sad future for absolutists.  In their experience, they witnessed other absolutists go right off the cliff after the awareness of errors in the text of scripture.  They love those people.  They are trying to save them.  The key is to manage expectations.  By encouraging the expectation of only minor errors, but overall stability (what is often called “tenacity”) of the text, they will prevent a doomsday mass exodus of future absolutists.  This reads as a kind of theological pragmatism, using human means to manipulate a better outcome.  Remaining fruit requires human adaptation.

Skepticism, like absolutism, the panel of friends said also was bad.  There is no reason to be skeptical about a Bible with minor errors.  Not only do we not know what all the errors are, but we do not know how high a percentage there is.  The confidence collective says, “Don’t be skeptical and don’t worry either, it won’t affect the gospel; you can still go to heaven with what’s leftover from original inspiration.”

Faith in Preservation of Scripture Not Arbitrary

The words of God are not arbitrary in their meaning.  If scripture teaches that God preserved every one of His words for every generation of believers, then He did.  You must believe God.  You do not say you believe Him and then put your head in the sand.  Let me further explain.

If someone asks, “So what were the words that God preserved?” you give an answer.  If you will not (and I mean “will not”) give an answer, then you do not believe what He said He would do.  Denying is the opposite of believing.  You also don’t answer with something like the following:  “I know God preserved every word, but I don’t know which words they are.  I just hope that at some time in the future — ten, a hundred, a thousands years from now — I can say I do know what they are.

Furthermore, if you say that you believe what God said about His preservation of His inspired words in the language in which He inspired them, your position must manifest that belief.  Standing, as Mark Ward did in his latest video production, and saying, “I do not have a perfect copy of the Greek New Testament” [I typed that verbatim from his latest production (at 48 second mark)], does not arise from faith in what scripture teaches on its own preservation.  For the believer, the teaching of scripture forms the standard for his expectation of what God will do.  This is his presupposition.

No Percentage of Preservation Less Than 100 Percent

Scripture does not teach the moderate preservation of scripture.  It does not teach a high percentage of preservation.  The Bible does not reveal nor has historic Christianity believed that God preserved “His Word,” an ambiguous reference to the preservation of something like the message of God’s Word.

When you start reading the New Testament, it refers to Old Testament predictions of Jesus.  Based on those presuppositions, you receive Jesus.  The Old Testament presents the correct ancestry.  Jesus fulfills it.  It prophesies a virgin birth.  He again fulfills it.  And so on.  Then in the real world, you receive Jesus Christ.  This is a model for faith.  This is how Simeon and Anna functioned in Luke 2.

If you read Daniel 11 and the predictions there of future occurrences, as a believer you would believe them and then start looking for their occurrence in the real world.  Faith follows a trajectory that starts with scripture.  Scripture does not say how many books the Bible would have.  Various truths in scripture guide the saints to the sixty-six canonical ones.

The Scriptural Expectations of Churches

The church, so the historical belief of true churches, expected a standard sacred text, a perfect one, based on scriptural principles, despite the existence of textual variants.  Then they received that text.  They believed those principles, the doctrine which proceeded from scripture, during an era of slightly differing printed TR editions.  They still believed in one settled text.

In Mark Ward’s orbit, the bases for rejecting a perfect text are the variations either between manuscripts or early printed editions.  That is enough for him and others to say that we do not have a perfect copy of the Greek New Testament.  They mock those who believe in a single perfect Bible.  They only accept multiple differing Greek New Testaments and multiple differing versions.  Scripture doesn’t teach this.

As I wrote earlier, the doctrine of preservation is not arbitrary.  An actual single Bible in the real world comes with it.  When you don’t believe the latter, you don’t believe the former.  Not believing the latter is akin to saying you know (so believe in) God and then not as a practice or lifestyle keep His commandments (cf. 1 John 2:3-4).  John says this person is a liar.

Mark Ward can mock the fact that I and others believe the perfect text is the one behind the King James Version, but that belief proceeds from all the various truths in scripture about preservation (which we explicate in Thou Shalt Keep Them).  We start with scripture.  Ward starts, like a modernist, with sensory experience or what one might call empirical evidence.  This approach to knowledge brings constant revision.  It is why James White will not rule out future changes in the text based on potential new manuscript discoveries.

A New Line of Attack on Scriptural Doctrine of Preservation

A new line of attack from Ward is pitting the King James against an early Dutch translation of the textus receptus.  He imagines a Dutch believer offended when an English one calls his Statenvertaling (translated in 1635) “corrupt.”  The translators of that Dutch version attempted to produce a translation for the Dutch like the King James Version.  English believers applaud that.  They haven’t and they wouldn’t call it corrupt.

Ward is correct in pointing out that the two translations come from a slightly different TR edition of the New Testament.  That means they cannot both be right.  Both could not represent perfect preservation.  One is slightly wrong.  Ward puts “corrupt” in the mouths or minds of King James Version advocates against the Statevertaling.  They wouldn’t call it corrupt anymore than they would any TR edition.

I don’t know of any angry Statevertaling supporters, standing on its differences from the King James Version.  No Dutch reaction to the English exists, such as that when Peter Stuyvesant stomped his wooden leg upon New Netherland becoming New York in 1664.  Instead, the Dutch followed a Christian belief in the received text and its faith in divine preservation.

Abraham and Bonaventure Elzivir were Dutch.  Their printings of the textus receptus (1624, 1633, and 1641) were essentially a reprint of Beza 1565.  Their printings were elegant works, a grand possession for a Bible student.  They wrote in Latin in their preface:  “Therefore you have the text now received by all in which we give nothing altered or corrupt.”  That sounds like textual absolutism to me.

Hints at English Supremacy?

Ward suggests a charge of English supremacy in a sort of vein of white supremacy or English Israelism.  Advocates of capitalism do not proceed from Scottish supremacy.  Majority text supporters do not arise from Eastern Roman supremacy or Byzantine supremacy.  Beza and Stephanus were French.  Are TR onlyists French supremacists?  I don’t follow a French text of scripture.  Or maybe better, Huguenot supremacy.  This is another red herring by Ward.  It’s sad to think this will work with his audience.

I do not see the trajectory of true churches passing through the Netherlands and the Dutch Reformed.  I don’t trace it through the Massachusetts Bay Colony either.  Each has a heritage with important qualities.  Ward tries to use this argument to justify errors in the Greek New Testament, the mantra being, “various editions differ with errors found everywhere.”  This is not what the Christians of that very time believed.  They did not believe like Ward and his textual confidence collective.  These 17th century believers were absolutists.

False Equivalents and Historical Revisionism

Ward calls the differences between the Dutch Bible and the King James Version with their varied TR editions, “text critical choices.”  He uses another informal logical fallacy called a “false equivalent.”  He takes modern critical text theory and projects it back on the textual basis of the Statevertaling.  The translation proceeded from the Synod of Dort as a Dutch imitation of the King James Version.  The point wasn’t changing anything.

Labeling the differences in TR editions “text critical choices” is also historical revisionism.  Ward revises history to justify modern practice.  Modern historians deconstruct the past to challenge the status quo.  History does not provide the desired outcome.  They change the history and construct new meaning in the present.

I see modern textual critics undermine a true historical account by exaggerating certain historical details or components.  Two examples are the so-called backtranslation of Erasmus in Revelation and then a conjectural emendation of Beza.  Advocates of modern textual criticism latch on to these stories and construct them into a revision of the historical account.

While men like Ward and others use false equivalents and historical revisionism, it does not change what the Bible, perfectly preserved for believers, says about its own preservation.  Everyone will give an account for their faithfulness to what God said.  He will make manifest the damage teachers do by creating or causing doubt or uncertainty concerning the text of His Word.