I’m going to take a quick break from my Christianity in America series to briefly address a topic related to the textual discussion. There are so many errors with the modern doctrine of Scripture, this being one of the most significant. This doctrinal statement comes from Article X of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.
“We affirm that inspiration, strictly speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture, which in the providence of God can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great accuracy. We further affirm that copies and translations of Scripture are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original.
We deny that any essential element of the Christian faith is affected by the absence of the autographs. We further deny that this absence renders the assertion of Biblical inerrancy invalid of irrelevant.”
This statement sounds great, until you begin to understand what it is saying. In the first place, the original manuscripts (autographic text), are no longer extant. So the first line of Article X is utterly meaningless. It would be the same as saying, “We affirm that unicorns have rainbow horns, which can be ascertained from historical account with great accuracy.” That is to say, that Article X is purely an assertion to which some undefined number of people agree is correct. The second part of this sentence declares the parameters that support this assertion, “available manuscripts” in addition to the level of confidence, “great accuracy.” The impact of this doctrine, according to the Chicago Statement, is that all copies and translations should be considered the Word of God to “the extent that they faithfully represent the original.”
Let me insert this statement into reality.
- Inspiration only applies to the original Scriptures, which have not survived, and we do not possess
- The autographic text of Scripture should only be ascertained from surviving (extant) manuscripts
- Manuscripts are destroyed and lost every year, we are only to use that which we have access to right now
- We can only attain the level of “great accuracy” from the extant manuscript tradition
- “Great accuracy” is not defined, but commonly means, “above average”
- The Chicago Statement does not describe how to handle passages which are uncertain, other than to say that “essential elements” are not affected
- The Chicago Statement does not define the “essential elements” of Christianity or the “non-essential elements”
As my reader can see, the Chicago Statement is not a meaningful doctrine. Further, if we consider what the foremost scholars have said in the past decade, we see the frivolity of the statement, “Can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great accuracy.” First, let’s examine what the credentialed textual scholars have said regarding what can be ascertained.
“We do not have now – in any of our critical Greek texts or in any translations – exactly what the authors of the New Testament wrote. Even if we did, we would not know it. There are many, many places in which the text of the New Testament is uncertain” (Elijah Hixson & Peter Gurry. Myths & Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism. xii. Quote by Dan Wallace.)
“I do not believe that God is under any obligation to preserve every detail of Scripture for us, even though he granted us good access to the text of the New Testament.” (Dirk Jongkind. An Introduction to the Greek New Testament. 90.)
“The New Testament philologist’s task is not to recover an original authorial text, not only because we cannot at present know on philological grounds what the original text might have been, nor even because there may have been several forms to the tradition, but because philology is not able to make a pronouncement as to whether or not there was such an authorial text” (DC Parker. Textual Scholarship and the Making of the New Testament. 27.)
“We are trying to piece together a puzzle with only some of the pieces” (Peter Gurry. A New Approach to Textual Criticism: An Introduction to the Coherence Based Genealogical Method. 112.)
All of these statements point to the reality that the modern Scriptures are viewed by the scholars as an above average representation of the authorial text. Since this doctrinal statement uses a surprisingly casual definition for how the Scriptures are preserved, I will use a casual interpretation and determine that great, or above average, equates to something along the lines of 80-89%. According to the Chicago Statement, there is not a single translation or copy that shares above 89% consent with the authentic original. If we consider the words of textual scholars, that number could be interpreted to be much lower.
Of course this reality is addressed by simply asserting that, “No major or essential doctrines are affected.” This is an absurd assertion due to the fact that there is no way of actually knowing that to be true. It is more accurate to say, “We believe that no major or essential doctrines is impacted by our uncertainty.” In colloquial English, one might say, “Just trust me, bro.” The bottom line is, we must believe the doctrines and the scholars at face value. If they say, “We only have 80-89% of Scripture,” believe them. I cannot count the amount of times I have been accused of slander for simply pointing to the words and doctrinal statements of the modern scholars and church. Ironically, these doctrines are offensive enough to be considered “slander,” unless they are presented by a man in a bow tie. As a side note, bow ties should only be adorned if you are in a barbershop quartet or are wearing a tuxedo, and do not actually lend to credibility. I could write an entire article (let me know if there is any interest in this) on how informal bow-tie use is an analog for the decay of Western culture, but I digress.
These are the doctrinal structures for the statement, “Inerrant in the original.” Just like modern Christianity, it has the veneer of something true without any of the substance. What exactly does this statement mean if we do not have the original? It means that we must rely on our verification method to demonstrate the quality of our modern texts. According to the scholars and the Chicago Statement, that verification method is capable of certainty up to 89%. That is a lot of missing Scripture at the highest estimate. When you hear, “greatly accurate,” it is important that you hear, “above average.” This is not a Christian doctrine. It is a secular view of Scripture dressed up in Christian language.
You will often hear that the Bible has “more manuscripts than the Iliad,” but scholars accept that we have the full text of the Iliad. Do not be fooled by these modern apologetic lines. Once you realize that the vast majority of New Testament manuscripts are partial copies or come much later in the timeline, you will realize the misrepresentative nature of modern apologetics. The bottom line is, the modern doctrine of Scripture can say, at most, that we have the original to an 89% degree of accuracy, though modern scholars would never put a number on it, because they aren’t even that certain. Abandon this secular doctrine, dear Christian, and embrace your Christian heritage and tradition.
The Young, Textless, and Reformed 
Reading this latest article prompted me to run to my shelves and pull my copy of the Westminster Confession of Faith. Am I ever glad that I did! The Westminster Divines wrote about the Holy Scriptures in the first chapter. These modern scholars could stand to read that, slowly and with particular attention to the Biblical references, of which there are many, and, what the divines have to say about the Hebrew and Greek, as well as the final authority being the Holy Spirit. Not bad for a document written and published 379 years ago in 1646! Also, the article regarding the use of the bow tie sounds fascinating! I hope you write it.
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I am not entirely sure of the point you are making, or if you are simply throwing something out there to stimulate thought and conversation.
The Article X the Chicago Statement regarding the autographs is logical and undoubtedly true, but as you suggest, of no practical use. Yet, whatever its limits, it reflects the confessional position of all major divisions of Christianity – Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, Baptist etc – that scripture, in the form in which it is preserved for us, is inspired by the Holy Spirit, true and trustworthy.
While we do not have the autographs, we do have many, many (indeed thousands) of partial or complete fragments of the NT which date to before AD500, and they represent a number of types – Alexandrian, Byzantine, etc. Notwithstanding minor variation, within types they demonstrate is an extraordinary (completely unable to put a percentage on this) level of congruence. And even between the text types, no significant (again no percentage can be offered) impact on doctrine is afforded. That variations are large in number (quantitatively variant), than substantial (qualitative variant). Similarly, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1940s demonstrated a high level of correspondence to the (medieval) preserved copies of the Masseteric texts, which are the source documents of our Old Testament. This is evidential of the stability, or providential preservation, of the pre-incarnation revelation, and should offer us assurance in our bibles.
I am not sure what else there is to be said, unless the argument is offered that one particular manuscript has been providentially and miraculously preserved, and that all others are in error. And if that is the argument, I am not sure either how this text can be identified, and how the case for its primacy can be proved.
What I do believe, though, is that scripture is divinely inspired, true, and has been preserved for us providentially, even with minor (and inconsequential) variation. Accordingly, it is the trustworthy rule from which the doctrines of our faith (as opposed to the distinctives of our various denominations which, while they need to be consistent with scripture, must NOT be confused with doctrine), need to be derived.
Ultimately, the real issues of scriptural limitation within the faith is not related to text variation, but to underuse.
P.S. Intentionally, I avoid the words ‘inerrant’ or ‘infallible’ because, while they sound clever, I am not convinced I know what they mean. I am more comfortable with words I use regularly and understand, such as ‘true’ and ‘trustworthy’.
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“ “Great accuracy” is not defined, but commonly means, “above average” accuracy” is not defined, but commonly means, “above average” “
Well put. We need to call out these weasel words for what they really mean.
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The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy was a very clever ‘sleight of hand’ switch to conceptualism, the theory that universals (e.g., ‘the Word of God’) exist only in the mind as concepts, rather than in reality. It’s using ‘the Word of God’ as a label for a collection of words that exist ‘somewhere’ and yet ‘nowhere.’
As you have said, no one ascribing to modern textual criticism can produce a copy of the Word of God that a believer in the pew can hold in his hand, read for himself, and know confidently he is reading the actual words of God, and no apologist for the Critical Text is willing to identify any verse they are 100% certain is the Word of God and wouldn’t change based on a new manuscript find. (Instead, they dodge the question and dismiss such a possibility as highly unlikely—once again dealing in the realm of possibility and likelihood as opposed to certainty, which an absolute universal standard of truth necessitates.)
Instead, the believer in the pew is regularly reminded, either by brackets and footnotes in his Bible or by his pastor mentioning the presence of a textual variant during a sermon to explain why everyone’s Bibles do not read the same, that there is some amount of uncertainty on which words are the actual words of God. Yet they are assured in the same breath, ‘It doesn’t matter.’
But it does matter. Conveniently, using the term ‘the Word of God’ conceptually enables those espousing a modern textual view that the Bible needs to be “restored” to continue to sound orthodox, when what they have actually done is redefine what the Word of God is. It’s not just a matter of defining preservation differently. Whether they realize it or not, the reconstructionist paradigm is a wholesale rejection of the Word of God existing as a universal real entity and the embracing of conceptualism.
Embracing conceptualism has enabled scholars, theologians, and pastors to continue to make orthodox sounding statements about the Word of God while permitting scholars to indefinitely shuffle between the substantively different variants which can change with another manuscript discovery.
It also permits scholars, theologians, and pastors to continue to have their own autonomous opinions about which variants reflect the originals because there is no ultimate standard to measure their decisions against. In this paradigm, each individual decides what they think is authoritative truth. Man determining his own truth is at the heart of postmodernism.
This attitude toward the Word of God is no different from each of us having our own rulers, Eleven inches match, but that last inch is different on each of our rulers. We both call it an inch, but it’s not the same distance; however, to avoid controversy and “live in unity,” evidently we’re supposed to only measure things that are “important” by those first 11 inches and ignore that last “inch” when measuring things in public, but we can each measure things by that last inch privately because the different standard by which we are measuring “doesn’t matter”? Shouldn’t we be concerned that Christians can have two different standards for truth? And two different ways of arriving at that standard?
Orthodox theologians have historically denied conceptualism by affirming the existence of universals based on:
The Bible’s attribution of universal attributes to God (e.g., holiness, justice, love), which are not mere names or concepts, but real qualities inherent to his nature.
The character of God, whose rational principle and order underlie the universe because the divine Logos created all things and holds them together (Jn. 1:1–14; Col. 1:16,17).
The grounding of universals in God’s eternal nature and decrees, since God is the ultimate source of all truth and order in creation (Pr. 3:19; Ps. 147:5).
The creation by God of distinct kinds of creatures, each according to its kind (Gen. 1).
The embedding of universals in creation to reflect God’s nature, rather than making them contingent on human thought (Rom. 1:20).
The establishment of universal moral standards for all humanity through the giving of the moral law (Ex. 20).
God’s Word is not a created concept in man’s mind. On the contrary, God decreed his written Word as a universal reality. It is an expression of himself, as the God of truth, which he created and holds together (Col. 1:16,17). As creatures created in God’s image, we are capable of apprehending universals, but we cannot create universals in our minds. Rejecting realism and embracing conceptualism in one’s Bibliology is not a minor matter of ‘preference’ or ‘opinion;’ it is a substantive departure from doctrinal orthodoxy, and we need to continue to press this point in our arguments. Bravo.
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