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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.
The Biblical Presuppositions for the Critical Text that Underlie the Modern Versions, Pt. 2
Modern textual criticism advocates and contemporary version proponents have fractured churches and caused division between professing Christians over the last one hundred fifty years. They brought the new and different view, a modernist one, in the 19th century to undo the one already received. English churches used the King James Version, believed in the perfect preservation of the original language text, and in the doctrine of the preservation of scripture. Starting with academia and especially influenced by German rationalism, doubt took hold and grew through the professors of seminaries to their students and into churches.
Through history certain men have come along who provoke even greater division that invokes a bigger response. They undermine faith in the authority of the Word of God. My writing arises in answer to men who attack scriptural and historical bibliology, whether it be Ruckmanites or critical text supporters. I would rather consider doctrines and biblical subjects other than this one, such as the gospel, but Satan uses both witting and unwitting subjects to attack God’s Word.
I rarely hear a gracious style or tone from multiple version onlyists. They mock, jeer, speak in condescension, misrepresent without retraction, roll their eyes, vent out with anger, employ heavy sarcasm, and shun. They use these tactics constantly. At the same time, they talk about the poor behavior of their opponents without ceasing in the vein of calling Republicans “fascists” in the political arena.
It continues to be my experience that modern critical text and English version defenders never begin with biblical presuppositions for their position. They say the Bible says nothing about the “how” of preservation, when the entire Bible records the how. Perfect preservationists of the standard sacred, ecclesiastical, traditional, or confessional text view elucidate the how in many essays, papers, and podcasts. The “how” leads to the received text of both the Old and the New Testaments.
Men calling themselves The Textual Confidence Collective become the latest iteration of naturalist influence on the text of scripture. As part of their profession of delivering people from their contention of a dangerous extreme of textual absolutism, they attempt to undo the historical, exegetical teaching of verses on preservation. They address Psalm 12:6-7, Matthew 5:18, 4:4, and 24:35, concluding that these four verses at the most imply preservation of scripture and in an unspecific way. It is a superficial and incomplete representation that runs against historic and plain meaning of these texts.
Our book, Thou Shalt Keep Them, covers all four of the above references, each in their context. No textus receptus advocate would say that any single one of these verses alone buttresses the doctrine of preservation. The doctrine does not rise or fall on one verse. Many times I notice that men such as those of The Textual Confidence Collective treat each verse as though it is the one verse supporting the biblical and historical doctrine of preservation. If they can undermine the teaching of preservation in one verse, the doctrine falls. The Bible contains a wealth of fortification for the doctrine of perfect preservation of scripture, equal or greater even than its teaching on verbal plenary inspiration.
For all of the following passages, I’m not going to exegete them all again, when that’s done in our book in a very suitable, proficient manner. I’ve referred to them many times here at What Is Truth. I will make comments that address the attacks of others.
Psalm 12:6-7 (Also See Here, Here, and Here)
Thomas Strouse wrote our chapter on Psalm 12:6-7. Yes, the title of our book came from those verses, “Thou Shalt Keep Them.” Mark Ward rejects that “words” in verse 6 is the referent of “them” in verse 7. “Them” in “Thou shalt keep them,” he says, is not “Thou shalt keep ‘words,'” but “Thou shalt keep ‘the poor and needy'” of verse 5. If you look at commentaries, they go both ways. Commentaries often differ on interpretation of passages.
Some say “words” and some say “poor and needy” as the antecedent of “them” in verse 7. In a strategy to see if commentaries provide a historical, biblical theology, it’s best as historians to find the original commentaries to which other later writers referred. Ward doesn’t do that. He leaves out the earliest references in the history of interpretation, such as one attributed to Jerome by Luther and those by two preeminent Hebrew scholars Abraham Ibn Ezra (1089-1164) and David Kimshi (c. 1160-1235). In his commentary, John Gill refers to Ibn Ezra’s explanation.
John Gill makes an error with the Hebrew, supporting his point with the fallacious gender discord argument. Scripture uses masculine pronouns to refer to feminine “words,” when the words of God. Gill doesn’t seem to know that, so he misses it. This construction in the Hebrew scriptures is a rule more than the exception. I can happily say that Ward at least barely refers to this point that I’ve never heard from another critical text proponent. I can’t believe these men still don’t know this. Ward should park on it, and he doesn’t. It’s rich exegesis when someone opens to Psalm 119 to find repeated examples. Ward points only to arguments he thinks will favor a no-preservation-of-words viewpoint. This strategy will not persuade those on the opposite side as him, if that is even his purpose.
God uses masculine pronouns to refer to feminine words, when they are the “words of God.” A reader could and should understand the singular to point out the preservation of individual words of God. It’s not assumed that “him,” a masculine, must refer to people. That’s not how the Hebrew language works, and it is either ignorant or deceptive on the part of Ward and others to say it. They also refer to a notation from the KJV translators as if they’re making that point, when that’s sheer speculation. Ward says in mocking tones that a masculine pronoun, “him,” cannot refer to words. It’s a Hebrew rule. Masculine pronouns refer to words. I’m sure Ward knows that “she” can refer to a ship. Everyone knows that a ship isn’t a woman! Come on men! Please.
The “poor” and “needy” are both plural so someone still has a problem of a lack of agreement in number. A masculine singular suffix, however, coupled with a previous masculine plural suffix provides two points of preservation. God will keep all of His Words, plenary preservation, and He will preserve each of them, verbal preservation.
Neither does Ward mention once a rule of proximity. Proximity guides the antecedents of pronouns. Pronouns normally refer to the closest antecedent. It’s an exception not to do so. If gender discord is the rule when referring to God’s Words, then someone should look for the closest antecedent, which is words. That’s how the verses read to, which is why believers and Hebrew scholars from the medieval period celebrate the promise of God’s keeping and preserving His Words.
I don’t doubt that Psalm 12 teaches the preservation of God’s people. We should believe God would keep His people, because we can trust His Words. The chapter contrasts the untrustworthiness of man’s words versus the trustworthiness of God’s. If God can’t keep His Words and doesn’t, how do we trust that He would keep His people?
God’s people believe and have believed that His Word teaches perfect preservation. It’s not an ordinary book. It is supernatural. God’s Word endures. It is in character different than man’s words. Why do men like those of The Textual Confidence Collective labor to cause doubt in this biblical teaching? They do it to conform to their naturalistic presuppositions in their trajectory of modernism, where truth must conform to man’s reason. You should not join them in their journey toward uncertainty.
When I write the word, “modernism,” I’m not attempting to take a cruel shot at men who do believe in the deity of Christ and justification by grace through faith. I’m saying that they swallowed among other lies those spawned by the modernists of the 19th century.
More to Come
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