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AI Friday: “Did God Perfectly Preserve Every Word of the Bible?”

August 9, 2024 / 4 Comments on AI Friday: “Did God Perfectly Preserve Every Word of the Bible?”

I asked Artificial Intelligence this question: “Did God perfectly preserve every word of the Bible?” It answered with the following.

Understanding the Doctrine of Preservation

The doctrine of preservation is a crucial aspect of Christian theology, which asserts that God has perfectly preserved every word of the Bible. This doctrine is rooted in the Bible itself, which provides numerous assurances of God’s sovereignty over His Word.

The Importance of Preservation

The preservation of Scripture is essential for the Christian faith, as it ensures that the Bible remains a reliable and authoritative source of truth. If God’s Word has not been perfectly preserved, then its authority and reliability are compromised. The Bible’s authority is only as great as our confidence in its reliability.

God’s Promises of Preservation

The Bible contains numerous promises of God’s preservation of His Word. For example, in Psalm 12:6-7, God declares, “The words of the Lord are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O Lord, thou shalt preserve them from this generation forever.” Similarly, in Matthew 24:35, Jesus affirms, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.”

The Extent of Preservation

The Bible teaches that God has preserved not only the general ideas or thoughts of Scripture but also every individual word. In Matthew 5:18, Jesus emphasizes the importance of every jot and tittle of God’s Word, stating, “For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.”

Conclusion

God has perfectly preserved every word of the Bible. This doctrine is rooted in the Bible’s own promises and assurances of God’s sovereignty over His Word. The preservation of Scripture is essential for the Christian faith, ensuring that the Bible remains a reliable and authoritative source of truth.

New List of Reasons for Maximum Certainty for the New Testament Text

May 13, 2024 / 1 Comment on New List of Reasons for Maximum Certainty for the New Testament Text

ANSWERING AGAIN THE “WHAT TR?” QUESTION

Sixty-Six Books

Many evangelicals claim maximum certainty on sixty-six books of the Bible. “Are you certain there are sixty-six books of the BIble?” “Yes.” “What verse in the Bible says to expect sixty-six books?” “None.” “So what is your basis for sixty-six books of the Bible?” Many of their reasons would match what I would give for certainty on the text of the Bible, certainty on what the exact words are.

The reasons for certainty on both the books and the words relate to biblical principles for canonicity. Nothing in the Bible states how many books one should expect though. And yet these evangelicals still declare maximum certainty about “sixty-six.” Sixty-six came from God. No verse saying that, but they still rely on scripture for their certainty. They don’t have mere confidence for sixty-six books. They have certainty.

Very often the same evangelicals’ direct inquiries to me about where the Bible says God would preserve the textus receptus, those particular Latin words. In addition they ask for a verse with the exact words, “King James Version” in a scriptural promise somewhere. They consider these to be “arguments.”

The question arises, “How do we know, for instance, the epistle of James is in the Bible or Galatians or any other single book?” What gives the certainty for inclusion of particular books? How do we know when we’re reading Hebrews that it is in fact the Word of God, more than a mere ancient, naturalistic book?

The Preservation of Words

On the other hand, does God promise to preserve His Words perfectly in a single printed edition of the New Testament? This gets to the crux of the “which TR” question. Scripture teaches perfect preservation of scripture, but how do we know what the words are? How do we know what the books are? The answer is the same to those last two questions. In fact, scripture talks about words and not about books. It’s easier to prove the preservation of words from scripture than it is books.

The Bible doesn’t provide naturalistic rules for deciding on the words of the Bible, ones like shorter or more difficult reading and older manuscript. Men made up those rules and with them, they added, “You can’t be certain.” God’s Word though says you can and should be certain. You expect certainty based upon scripture. The Bible also provides criteria not in the nature of rules, but in presuppositions, promises, and principles. Scripture provides a template, paradigm, or model for what to expect from God and His preservation of scripture.

I want to review the right presuppositions again. Again. I’ve done this a lot, but here we go again, because based on information from my critics, no one answers this. [Not liking the answer does not qualify as not answering.]

I’m going to give a list, because obviously lists are greater click bait. And if I don’t have a list, I shouldn’t say “list” in my click bait title.

1. God Inspired Specific, Exact Words, and All of Them.

Not Just the Gist

Someone named Eugene Peterson did a paraphrase of the Bible, called The Message. That’s very often how people want to deal with scripture. It’s a message and so the very words don’t matter so much, as long as you get “The Message.” What’s God saying to you? Here’s the gist of it, that’s all that matters. And part of the gist, of course, comes from Eugene Peterson’s brain.

I say, get the gist of scripture. It’s important. But that’s not all that matters. God gave words. Every one of them matter. You don’t get the gist without words and God said this in many different passages. I’m not going to review those with you on this point, but it is true.

Some people miss the gist, and that’s too bad. They need to and should get that too, but God first gave words. Christians have believed that every word matters. God gave specific, exact ones. He delivered them to His institution. They received them (think Textus Receptus here).

All of Them

I added, “and all of them,” because God’s Word, the Bible, or scripture is not 50 percent of the exact words or even 95 percent. It is all of them. I’m happy to have 10 percent of them, but He gave 100 percent. I should expect 100 percent. God even uses the word, “all.” He gave each Word and then all of them.

God inspired only one Bible. There are not two. People don’t have options as to what the Bible is. It isn’t a multiple choice. The question, “Which Bible do you use?” does not reflect what the Bible says about itself. This kind of idea, which is prevalent now in evangelicalism, is destructive and it comes from unbiblical presuppositions about the Bible.

2. After God Inspired, Inscripturated, or Gave His Words, All of Them, to His People through His Institutions, He Kept Preserving Each of Them and All of Them According to His Promises of Preservation.

Expectations

One can and should expect this second point in the list because God said He would do it. He promised it. Evangelicals or modern version proponents very often say God didn’t say “how” he would do it. But He also did say how he would preserve His Words. Believers should have those scriptural expectations. This is part of living by faith.

Preservation of scripture means God keeping each of the words and all of them that He gave. Keeping them then means their being available to every generation of believers.

The preservation of scripture means what the Bible says that preservation of scripture means. It does not mean keeping every word in one particular physical handwritten copy that makes its way unblemished down through the following decades, centuries, and millennia or the annals of history. Every word and all of them would remain available for God’s people. There isn’t a peep about variants and manuscript evidence.

Not Naturalistic

Before someone goes anywhere else in answering questions about manuscripts, printed editions, and translations, he must settle on the first two points of this list. He should start with what the Bible says. He should not begin with an observation of history, “external evidences,” and naturalistic occurrences to which to conform his belief. The Bible explains its own inspiration and preservation in a very clear way. It’s not hard to understand. Everyone will get the text and version issue wrong if he does not get these first two points of this list right.

What I’ve witnessed for decades now exclusively with modern version and critical text adherents is the absence of a biblical presupposition about the preservation of scripture. They don’t want to touch that. If that is their basis for how they approach their outcome, they know it will contradict what they’re saying. What I’ve seen instead is that they start with a criticism or refutation of what has already been published and propagated on the doctrine of preservation through church history.

Presuppositions

Instead of starting with a scriptural position themselves, modern textual criticism proponents begin with naturalistic presuppositions like modernists of the 19th century did. Based on those, they saw we can’t believe perfect preservation, because it didn’t happen. They know it didn’t happen because variants exist between manuscripts. It’s far worse than that even. Their position starts with tests normally applied to secular literature, which have no promise of preservation because they’re solely of human origin.

Some critical text and modern version proponents straight out deny preservation. Others don’t have a theology of no preservation of scripture. They’d be too embarrassed to say that. Instead they leave their audience with ambiguity, leaving their listeners confused on the subject, playing a shell game. God’s Word doesn’t teach that. Anything they call their biblical position arises to criticize someone who starts with a biblical doctrine with the purpose of either denying it, confusing it, or muddling it.

The elimination of a biblical doctrine of preservation affects the authority of scripture. Critical text and modern version proponents are eradicating the doctrine or preservation ironically to preserve their preference. In so doing, they cause people to take the Bible less seriously. When people are not sure whether those are the actual words of God, they are less likely to believe and then keep what they say.

More to Come

The Effect of Leaving Out Just a Couple of Words of Scripture

March 18, 2024 / 3 Comments on The Effect of Leaving Out Just a Couple of Words of Scripture

Proponents of.modern English versions of the Bible very often talk about the minimal or negligible effect of word differences between the received text and the modern critical text of the New Testament. These men might show a side by side of either of the two texts and their translation to show how few changes appear. They very often say that few doctrines change or no doctrine is lost. Do the differences between the Textus Receptus and the Novum Testamentum Graece matter?

Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount

In the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:18, Jesus says:

Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

I’m not going to tell you what that means about preservation. I’ve written about it already and it’s also self-evident. Instead, I want you to go down to Matthew 5:43, really the same context of 5:18:

Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.

Jesus here talks about what the Pharisees did and that He found from religious leaders in their tradition. In 5:44, Jesus continues: “But I say unto you.”

The “but” is a strong adversative, a strong contrast. The Pharisees did something, but Jesus did not and would not. He did not come to destroy the law like they would have done. The Pharisees did change the meaning of scripture and they also did that by changing a few words. Look back at 5:43 above. What did they change?

The Subtraction of Two Words

The Pharisees subtracted just two words. Those two words would not have stood out in the comparison of a proponent of the modern critical text. “Thou shalt love thy neighbor” quotes Leviticus 19:18, which says: “thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” What two words did they subtract?

The Pharisees in their tradition left out the words, “as thyself.” Perhaps you remember what Jesus taught in Luke 10, defining neighbor. They changed the meaning of neighbor that permitted them not to love their neighbor.

The strategy or technique of the Pharisees was reduction or minimization. They reduced God’s Word to something they could keep on their own. Part of how they did that obviously was the removal of few words, like two of them from Leviticus 19:18.

Jesus promised that not even letters would pass from the law, but two words is what textual critics might call a small amount. One way to reduce what God said was leaving words out. Today modern textual critics will say something like only two percent difference between the Nestles-Aland and the Textus Receptus.

“As thyself” wasn’t teaching, “Love thyself.” No, everyone already loves himself or least knows how he wants treated. Paul wrote in Ephesians 5:28, “So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies.” No one wants reduction of the love for himself, so that descriptor maximizes love, gets it to where it is actual love. This is very similar to all the other illustrations that Jesus uses in verses 21 to 48 to explain righteousness that exceeds that of the Pharisees (5:20).

Two Words Do Matter

If two words don’t matter, then “Thou shalt love thy neighbor” is probably good enough. However, those two words do matter, because they bring the love to something exceeding that of the Pharisees. The Pharisees could easily reduce love to their own understanding of it without those two words.

Let’s say that we start by saying that the very Words of God are perfect Words. Subtracting words matter if the very words are perfection. Even if only “the message” matters or “all the doctrines” matter, two words will matter to God.

Supreme Court and the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights

I was listening briefly today to the Louisiana Solicitor General argue before the Supreme Court for a proper interpretation of the United States Constitution on the freedom of speech. His particular case was new. No one had argued about freedom of speech regarding censorship of social media. This Solicitor General told the nine justices he was a free speech absolutist and a free speech purist.

Freedom of speech in the United States comes down to two words really, “abridging the.” The next three words are “freedom of speech.” The government cannot abridge the freedom of speech and maybe they did that by coercing or encouraging social media companies to censor. Did that violate that right in the Bill of Rights? Not much language exists on that right, so one or two words is important.

Jesus Himself made the point of the importance and effect of two words with their subtraction in Matthew 5:43.

The Horrific Distortion of the Lord Now in Matthew 5:17-20

March 4, 2024 / 5 Comments on The Horrific Distortion of the Lord Now in Matthew 5:17-20

Perfect Preservation

You required payment from me on a certain future date and I had no money except the exact change for the payment in a large jar. You needed full payment and I had it in the way of coinage. It was all in one large jar, and I said to you:

I truly say to you, until the specified future required date of payment, one dime or one penny shall in no wise pass from this large jar, till the fulfillment of the whole amount of payment.

Anyone hearing this statement could and should acknowledge a promise of preservation of every coin in the large jar until the completion of the payment. One could call this a promise of perfect preservation of the coins. Every coin and all of them will survive or continue within the jar. Of course, the fulfillment of the promise depends on the trustworthiness and veracity of my words. In Matthew 5:18, Jesus says:

For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

That sounds like a guarantee to me, and a strong one. When you read the previous and following verses (17 and 19-20), they do not diminish from what Jesus guaranteed in verse 18.

The Veracity of Jesus

The promise of Jesus extends to heaven and earth passing away, which has still not occurred. That event will transpire, but it remains in the future. At this date in the year 2024, heaven and earth continue. With that the case, what would one expect related to the promise of Jesus in Matthew 5:18? Of course, the perfect preservation of every jot and tittle of the law. The context says the law here was (so is) all of scripture. The words “jot” and “tittle” indicate the preservation of all of scripture goes to the very letter.

In my hypothetical for illustration, I promised the perfect preservation of every coin in a large jar. I thought the illustration would enhance an understanding of what Jesus said. The major difference between the two statements, mine and Jesus’, is that what Jesus says is the truth, always. My guarantee even for one generation is not as sure as Jesus’ is. When He promises preservation, you can count on it. He always fulfills His promises.

Jesus is truth, so what He says is always true. He also can make guarantees or promises based upon His divine attributes. He has the power to fulfill what He promises. Because of His omniscience, He also knows already He will fulfill the promise. The quality of what Jesus says depends on His attributes. Since I don’t have those attributes, my promises or guarantees are of a lesser quality than that of Jesus.

Again, in my hypothetical, let’s say that I did lose a few of my coins, so I did not fulfill my promise of perfect preservation of every coin. If that happened, it does not change the meaning of what I promised. Those words continue to mean what they meant when I said them.

High View of Scripture

Perhaps you’ve heard the terminology, “a high view of scripture.” Someone has a high view of scripture when he sees scripture elevated above feelings, man’s thinking, philosophy, tradition, and all other authority. A high view fits within the Apostle Paul’s statement in Romans 3:4: “yea, let God be true, but every man a liar.” It follows that scripture is inspired, inerrant, infallible, authoritative, perspicuous, and sufficient.

Someone with a high view of scripture will not and does not change its meaning based on circumstances. God said it, that settles it. That kind of thing. With a high view of scripture, when he reads Matthew 5:18, he takes it at face value. He explains the fulfillment based on what Jesus said and not on what he think may happen. He conforms what happened to what Jesus said and not vice versa. This also means not later changing the meaning to have it fit with how he interprets what happened.

Adapting Circumstances to What Jesus Said

John Lightfoot first wrote From the Talmud and Hebraica between 1658 and 1674. In that book, he writes about Matthew 5:18, and he already considered the repercussions of circumstances of which I speak, saying:

A second question might follow concerning Keri and Kethib: and a suspicion might also arise, that the test of the law was not preserved perfect to one jot and one tittle, when so many various readings do so frequently occur.

Do variant readings nullify what Jesus said? Instead of conforming what Jesus said to the circumstances, which is a low view of scripture, Lightfoot explained variant readings of the text to what Jesus said. John Lightfoot was not questioning or changing the meaning of Matthew 5:18. The teaching on perfect preservation was so indisputable to him, that it need no mention. That is how it reads. Bravo Lightfoot.

What we see occur today horrifically distorts what Jesus said to deprive it of its original meaning. In so doing, men eliminate a promise of preservation in lieu of textual variants. I’ve noticed they even distort much of the meaning of what Jesus said even in the entire sermon, it seems, just to eradicate a promise of perfect preservation of scripture in Matthew.

More to Come

The Shell Game Played With Words About the Bible

November 23, 2021 / 3 Comments on The Shell Game Played With Words About the Bible

You know right now the concern about the gender of pronouns used to address the sexes. The controversy revolves around calling a biological male, “him,” or a biological female, “her.” People change the meaning of the words and expect us to play along. You know it’s a man, but you call him, a her. You call he, a she.

Let’s say we’re talking about the words of scripture. Inspiration applies to words. God inspired words. And then someone says, I believe in the inerrancy of scripture in the context of words. We think he means, no errors in the words. I think he even knows that we think he means words. However, he doesn’t mean words. He’s not saying that there are no errors in the words.

Someone holds up a Bible and calls it the inerrant Word of God. He doesn’t mean words. He means something different. It’s hard to say what he means, but it’s probably the following. Inerrancy means that you can trust that the teachings of the Bible are without error. He doesn’t bring up inerrancy in the context of the teachings of the Bible. He brings it up in the context of words. He’s playing a shell game, moving those shells around very quickly. You thought he meant words, but he didn’t.

You think the bead is under the shell. That’s what someone wants you to think. The bead is words, but you see a shell. Words aren’t under the shell. It’s teachings, and even that is ambiguous, because even with that, he doesn’t mean teachings.

When someone says the teachings of scripture are inerrant, if that’s even what he means, because that can become very ambiguous, he doesn’t mean that you can’t find errors in the Bible. You can. However, all things considered, if you take all the combined passages of the Bible to come up with those teachings, all the right teachings are available in the Bible.

Men don’t even agree on what the Bible teaches, let alone on what’s right that it does teach. Two different men can say they believe in inerrancy and then disagree on ten different doctrines of scripture. It’s a hypothetical inerrancy. Let’s just say it. It isn’t inerrancy. I can agree to an ambiguous, hypothetical inerrancy, and then agree that the Bible is inerrant. I can hold up the Bible and say, this is the inerrant Word of God.

When I say the Bible is without error, I mean that it is without error. Every Word that God inspired has been preserved in the language in which it is written. Since inerrancy relates to what God inspired, if there are missing words, then it isn’t inerrant any more. I believe that and not in a hypothetical way. I’m not going to say that we both agree the Bible is inerrant, fully realizing that when you say “inerrant” you don’t even mean “inerrant.” You mean something that allows you to believe the Bible is inerrant without believing that it is inerrant. This is like calling him, her.

If the Bible is perfect, then it can’t be given extra perfection. There are those who do not believe it is perfect. They also don’t believe that scripture says that scripture is perfect. They believe that it is inerrant, but it isn’t perfect.

I would say, don’t call the Bible perfect if you don’t believe it. Also, don’t call it inerrant, if you don’t believe it is inerrant. Don’t make perfect and inerrant mean something different than what they obviously mean in light of what the Bible says about itself.

I can go through my Bible and show you a doctrine of its inerrancy and perfection. Then I ask, “Does the Bible teach that it is inerrant and perfect?” You say, “Yes.” So then I ask, “Okay, so which Bible is the inerrant and perfect one?” You say, “None are.” So is the teaching of the Bible inerrant and perfect?

I believe the Bible is perfect and inerrant because the Bible says so. Then you start peppering me with individual words, phrases, verses, and even larger passages. I explain every one of those texts based on the presupposition that I have. I can do it. Now let me get into your presuppositions, how you came to having them, or whether they are reverse engineered.

You say, I can see that there isn’t a perfect Bible. So now when you look at the passages that teach the Bible is perfect, they’ve got to mean something else. Where do those presuppositions come from? How did you get those presuppositions? How is that conservative?

I’m not playing a shell game when I say the Bible is inerrant and perfect. Many others are.

An Orthodox View of Our English Bibles? Considering Fred Butler’s KJVO Book and the Doctrine of Preservation

September 21, 2021 / 11 Comments on An Orthodox View of Our English Bibles? Considering Fred Butler’s KJVO Book and the Doctrine of Preservation

Whenever I read the word, “Bibles,” I get a bit of a chill down my spine. Which Bible is the right Bible if there are plural Bibles, not singular Bible? Isn’t there just one? Why are we still producing more and different Bibles? How many are there? What I’m describing is the biggest issue today with translations, not the King James Version, but now it gets little to no coverage compared to other so-called problems.

Many anti-KJVO books have been written, most often, and this continues to be the case with Butler’s book, calling KJVO (King James Version Onlyism) “dangerous.” It’s true that many KJV Onlyists do not believe a scriptural bibliology. I would contend that most are sound, but it’s true also that many are not. That would be a worthwhile criticism of KJVO, confronting those who do not believe in the preservation of scripture, who do not believe God preserved His Words in the original languages, apparently necessitating God’s correction of them in an English translation. This happens to be the same doctrinal position as Fred Butler. He just deals with the consequences of that belief in a different way.

I don’t know how “dangerous” it is to believe in a single Bible of which translation for English speaking people is the King James Version. How will that get someone in trouble? What’s the danger? Even though Butler calls the position dangerous, he doesn’t explain why anywhere in his book, which I find is most often the case with books of this kind. In general, KJVO take the general position that there is only one Bible, which there is. That is a biblical, logical, and historical position: one Bible. Several Bibles is not.

In his preface, recounting his own personal journey away from the King James Version, Butler says,

I found myself helping them [speaking of others also departing] think critically through KJVO argumentation, as well as develop an orthodox view of our English Bibles.

Why and how is it orthodox to refer to the Bible in the plural, “Bibles”? Again, there is only one Bible, and historically Christians have believed in only one. Some type of multiple-versionism, I believe, creates far more confusion and danger. Usually orthodoxy refers to doctrine. Is the doctrine behind multiple versions and textual criticism orthodox? It’s popular today, but not orthodox.

I’m not going to debunk most of the arguments of Butler’s book. His book is exploring zero new territory others cover much more than he. He mainly addresses KJVO advocates of either double inspiration or English preservationism, very low hanging fruit. He barely to if-at-all distinguishes one view from another. He lumps Peter Ruckman and Gail Riplinger with Edward Hills, D. A. Waite, and David Cloud. He uses a very broad brush. I would not anticipate his persuading one person to his position.

One unique argument I had never read was that KJVO are not Calvinist. The idea here is that if you’re not a Calvinist, then you must be wrong in this position on the Bible. The biggest movement of those who exclusively use the KJV as an English translation are Calvinists. The Westminster Confession and London Baptist Confession, as well as many of these Calvinist confessions, hold to the perfect preservation of scripture, which is a one Bible position.

An orthodox view should be a scriptural view. Butler doesn’t establish any kind of biblical and historical view of the preservation of scripture. Butler writes this:

It is true God calls us to have faith, but our faith is grounded upon objective truth.

What is objective truth? Is textual criticism objective truth? No way, and he doesn’t make that connection. It can’t be made. Scripture is the truth on which bibliological positions stand. Butler takes the view agreed by modern evangelicalism, not based upon scripture. He has not faced a bit of criticism from the evangelicals who interview him. He should sit down for a talk with someone who does not take his position to see how his arguments will stand up.

Most people who use the King James believe that it is an accurate translation of a preserved original language text. Obviously, the King James Version itself has changed since 1611. KJV supporters know that. This indicates that they believe that the preservation of scripture occurs in the Hebrew and Greek text. Butler writes:

The Bible never claims God’s Word is only found in one translation. KJV onlyism is unsupported by the Bible itself.

Maybe that confronts Ruckmanism, but I’ve never heard a single person attempt to defend single-translationism from the Bible. The French, Spanish, Russian, etc. can all have a translation from the same text as the King James Version. Butler knows this, but he makes this claim anyway, and it’s a strawman. It doesn’t help anyone. More than anything it gives fresh meat to evangelical friends in an evangelical bubble. On the other hand, he never lays out what the Bible does claim.

There are varied views on preservation among evangelicals. I don’t know of one modern version supporter, who believes in perfect preservation of scripture. Daniel Wallace doesn’t believe scripture teaches the preservation of scripture and he has many supporters. That is now a very common view. He believes in the preservation of the Word, but not the Words. Butler takes a view that might be the most common for evangelicals. Most evangelicals in the pew don’t know this position, but perhaps the majority of conservative evangelical leaders take the position Butler describes:

Yes, I believe God preserves His Word, but I believe it is in the totality of all the available manuscript evidence, variants and copyist errors included.

Try to find that in historical bibliological literature. You won’t find it. It really is a reactionary position to textual criticism among evangelicals. It isn’t a biblical position. Nowhere does the Bible teach it. It’s very much like what you might read on creation today. Confronted with science, professing Christians invent a day age theory for old earth creationism.

Almost all of what Butler finds are theologians, often unbelieving ones, willing to admit that there are copyist errors, which produce textual variants. He and others act like KJVO don’t know that or don’t believe it happened. The history of God’s preservation of scripture is not the same parchment and ink making its way down through time in a pristine condition. God preserved His Words. This physical copy view is not taught in the Bible and it’s only made up as a straw man to create a faux argument.

When you read Butler’s view in his above quote, look carefully at what he says. First, he says God preserves His Word, not God preserved, completed action, like Jesus said, “It is written,” in the perfect tense. He doesn’t say “Words,” because He would never say that. It’s God’s Word in a very ambiguous sense. Jesus said, my words shall not pass away (Matthew 24:35). Where does the Bible or even history present this “totality of available manuscript evidence” position?

For Butler the text isn’t settled, like the Bible speaks about itself. He doesn’t know what the Words are. He doesn’t know all of the ones by which He is to live by. I would contend he doesn’t even believe the position he espouses. How would he account for new evidence, which is still coming? What does he do with a passage like 1 Samuel 13:1? I’ve never read an evangelical, who takes his position, who believes that we possess a manuscript with the very words of that verse.

What motivated me to write this post was one aspect of Butler’s book and that is his attack on the teaching of preservation in scripture. Among everything that he writes, I want to deal only with Psalm 12:6-7, mainly to show how men like him deal with these preservation texts. He writes:

The one passage that nearly all KJVO advocates use for establishing the promise argument is Psalm 12:6,7. . . . The immediate antecedent for the plural pronoun them is the plural pronoun, words. Thus, it would seem to make sense that we can conclude God has promised to preserve His words in a physical text.

The Hebrew language, however, is sharply different from English in that it has grammatical gender, something not common to English. In Hebrew, the pronouns will match the antecedent nouns in both number and gender. Here in Psalm 12:6, 7, the two thems of verse 7 are masculine in gender and with the second them being singular.

The closest antecedents in our English translation, the two nouns words found in verse 6, are feminine, so they do not match the masculine thems.

Butler goes on to say that “them” refers to the poor and needy back in verse 5 because they’re feminine. Butler’s argument here has been thoroughly debunked. He’s wrong. First, however, there are many verses in the Bible that teach the perfect preservation of every Word of God. Psalm 12:6, 7 are two of many. There is a great chapter on these verses by Thomas Strouse in Thou Shalt Keep Them, our book on the preservation of scripture. I’ve also written a lot on it (here, here, and here).

Here’s the short of it. Repeatedly in the Old Testament, and as a part of Hebrew grammar, a masculine pronoun refers to a feminine Word of God. You see it again and again in Psalm 119, the psalm entirely about the Word of God (verses 111, 129, 152, 167). There are many other examples. You can find this very rule in Gesenius’s Hebrew grammar, which I used in second year Hebrew in graduate school.

The number argument doesn’t work either, which is why the KJV translators translated the pronoun, “them,” the second time. That’s also Hebrew grammar. It is very common after a plural pronoun for a singular to follow in order to particularize every individual in the group. A collective plural is suggested by the singular. This is also why the NKJV translators, who are not KJVO, translated it “them.”

The Hebrew grammar says just the opposite of what Butler writes. Critical text and modern version men continue to trot out this argument, when they should well know that it’s been answered many times. I’ve never had one of them attempt to deal with it, because it is irrefutable. It’s why many, many preachers and theologians through the centuries, including Jewish scholars, have said that “them” in verse seven refers to God’s “words” in verse six. The gender disagreement argument is a moot point. Without gender, the rule reverts back to proximity, and “words” is the closest antecedent to “them.”

Either Butler didn’t know the gender disagreement argument or he assumed that his readers wouldn’t know any better. Knowing the Hebrew grammar and reading what he wrote, it reads like he was just borrowing from the writings of other people. I’ve read this argument from Douglas Kutilek online. He’s been confronted with the Hebrew grammar and he’s never answered me or anyone else on it. He does not know what he’s talking about.

So much more could be said in review of Fred Butler’s book, but rest assured that God has preserved every one of His Words in the language in which He inspired them, and made them available for every generation of believers. The King James Version is an accurate translation of those Words.

Romans 5:1 As a Consideration for Taking a Scriptural Position on the Preservation of Scripture

June 13, 2021 / 2 Comments on 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.

WHAT IS TRUTH