Author: The Young, Textless, and Reformed

The TR, Exegesis, & Hermeneutics

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Introduction

The most difficult bridge to gap with participants in this discussion is convincing them that this is more than just textual science. I have always emphasized this on my blog, that this is topic is deeply theological. In the tradition of my spiritual forefathers, all loci of study must not only be theological, but also practical. We do not needlessly debate the quantity of angels that can dance on the pin of a needle. One of the greatest errors of many Modern Critical Text advocates is to partition this part of the discussion into science and faith. Often, the discussion is made to seem like the textual scholars are doing hard science which is then handed over to Christians for interpretation and application. This is why many advocates of the modern text do not understand when those in the TR camp begin the debate with theological foundations rather than text critical ones. As a result of the “scientification” of the text in its creation, the same sterile techniques seem to have been transferred into the handling of the Word.

Mishandling of the Text Through Atomization

Perhaps it is the case that these things are not connected, but it is true that modern methods of textual scholarship have arrived hand in hand with modern exegesis and hermeneutics in the seminaries. This is why, in my opinion, modern reformed and reformed adjacent preaching is dry and difficult to understand. It is also often alienating to the layman. The method often taught at seminaries today is called the “historical grammatical” approach. An internet search will tell you this is a “Protestant” method of exegesis, though I would argue that there is nothing historically protestant about it. This method attempts to steer the exegete towards the true meaning of the text by focusing on grammar, syntax, and historical context. At face value, this sounds great, but in it’s application it often falls short. Such is the case with many well-meaning efforts to adapt scholarly methods for the church. I will say, it does do a wonderful job in steering pastors away from sports references or sermons filled to the brim with anecdotes and analogies.

First, I want to point out that this method has a historical critical trojan horse built into it at the outset. While the faithful minister would never think of doing this, a man pulled by the academy might consider “historical context” a license to inject critical perspectives into the text. Historical context, for example, might be a new perspective on Paul, or perhaps applying modern gender theory to the pericope adulterae as we see in Jennifer Knust and Elijah Hixson’s book “To Cast the First Stone.” Even if the exegete does not consider such extreme examples, the method itself opens the door to changing historical perspectives on the text. I will admit, this exegetical error is far more common in the less conservative corners of the Reformed world, but it is present in more benign applications.

What is far more common in conservative circles are exegetical errors produced in the grammatical portion of this method. While it is true that understanding the text properly requires accurate analysis of the grammar and syntax of a text, the way that this is applied is oftentimes harmful to the text. The primary error that many exegetes make is to handle the words of the text outside of the text itself. I remember vaguely in my early Christian years being amazed by a pastor who preached an entire sermon on the Greek word, “The.” I look back on that now, thinking how absurd that is. This of course is the most extreme possible example, but many such cases exist as it pertains to words like love, finished, and so on. This happens when the exegete doesn’t treat Greek and Hebrew like a real language, but a mystical one. I cannot count the number of times I’ve heard a pastor in a Reformed church say something along the lines of, “In English, this word means this, but in Greek, it means THIS THIS.” In almost every case of this happening, the pastor is merely taking a synonym of the Greek word, and emphatically presenting the word to the church as though they don’t understand how synonyms work. One egregious case of this is when John MacArthur famously translated the word, “run” to “glide” and gave the impression that somebody was gliding along the ground.

This kind of exegesis occurs when the exegete fails to understand what language is in the first place, not just Greek or Hebrew. The reality is, most adult Americans read at a 3rd or 4th grade level, so this kind of error is not unsurprising. What must be corrected is the idea that there is magic in the middle of translating one language to another. It is often said that two languages can never be perfectly translated from one to the other. This is true, if we are saying that every word must be translated to an equivalent word in the target language. I recently got into a heated debate with one of my friends who knows Japanese and English. He told me, “It is impossible to translate Japanese into English perfectly.” So I said, “I bet you’re wrong, give me an example.” He brought up a word that had a complex meaning, but he was able to perfectly articulate it into English for me such that I now understood what the word meant. After he described what the word meant, I responded, “See, it can be translated.” What he actually meant was that the word did not map to a single English word, but it definitely could be translated. This is why “word for word” translations use a flawed translation methodology because translation is not simply “word for word.”

This type of realization is obvious to anybody who has actually learned a second language, especially if the language uses conjugations and declensions to change the word into different forms, like Greek. Much of these types of errors occur because seminary students do not study Greek as a language. Seminary students learn just enough vocabulary to use language tools, but could not go to Greece and order a meal. Daniel Street proved this when he tested seminary Greek professors on 10 basic vocabulary words, and they all failed. Seminaries are not teaching Greek as a language, and it is damaging the pulpit. The reality is, the Bible is not written in “ancient Greek,” it is written in a form of Greek that is about as far from modern Greek as King James English is from us today. You can take a Greek New Testament, open it up in Greece, read it out loud, and every single elementary school child will be able to understand what it is saying. They may think you sound funny, but they will understand you.

The point in saying all of that is to say this, the grammatical portion of modern exegetical methods sounds great, but it falls apart if the exegete does not understand Greek as a language, or even language learning in general. I will say this, if the exegete cannot go to Greece and have a conversation with the people there, he is not learned enough to utilize the Greek of the New Testament without falling into unfortunate errors. Believe it or not, you must know a language to engage with that language in literary form. Let me provide an analogy to drive my point home. Imagine you take a Spanish speaker, teach him English for 1-2 years, and then tell him to do advanced literary analysis of Shakespeare in English. That is what our Seminaries do for Greek language studies.

The end result of this method is that pastors, who have less understanding of Greek than a 2nd grader in Greece, are doing grammatical and syntactical analysis in a language they barely understand, and coming away with meanings that are often nonsensical or exactly the same as the English. This is why when pastors appeal to the original languages in a sermon, they often mysticise the text, as if the true meaning cannot be discovered in the English translation. Even more common, is for a pastor to simply say the Greek word (often incorrectly or in a pronunciation that nobody in history would recognize), and then say the definition in English, which their translation has already done for them! They do this because they don’t understand how translation from any language works, and they also do not really know the language they are trying to translate. The effect of hyper focusing on grammar and syntax is that it forces men into language analysis in a language that cannot be learned in 4 semesters. It would be ridiculous to ask such things from somebody learning English as a second language, so why do we impose this upon those pursuing the pulpit?

Unless the exegete actually knows Greek and Hebrew, he should be analyzing the grammar and syntax of the translation he has before him in the language he can understand. I will say, in every single case I have ever heard of a pastor doing Greek or Hebrew analysis from the pulpit, the same meaning could have easily been derived by simply analyzing the text in English and using an English dictionary. Now, I do think it is incredibly important for pastors to learn Greek and Hebrew, but that effort takes more than what your seminary has to offer. What is unfortunate about all of this, is that men who do not know Greek are taught to use Greek in their sermons. The effect is that the average layperson now believes that their translation is inadequate to understand the Word of God. Every Greek word is made to seem as though it has 50 meanings, and only the pastor truly knows what it means. It is, ironically, a modern practice of having secret knowledge, and a chief example of private interpretation. There is a correct way to use the Greek in sermon preparation, but that involves actually knowing the language.

The modern method of exegesis teaches pastors to look at a text in a language they do not know, pull words out of the sentence, look at those words individually, and place them back into the text pregnant with meaning. They then take this meaning and present to the congregation in a sermon, and the people of God are impressed that their pastor used a Greek lexicon or dictionary or language tool. More importantly, the layperson believes that in order to understand the Bible, they must wait for the man of God to tell them what it says, or go back to the Greek themselves.

What does this have to do with the TR?

One of the reasons that people take the TR position is that they see it as a logical consequence of returning to the old paths. While many people turn back to Rome, or perhaps the Eastern Orthodox church, those that wish to stay “reformed” see the TR view as a historical artifact of the Reformation. In many ways, this view is a rejection of modernity that extends beyond the textual debate. Perhaps it is as simple as people being tired with the chronological snobbery of the scholar class. In any case, there is value in doing things the way our spiritual fathers in the faith did them. In my opinion, instead of the historical grammatical approach, the seminaries should be teaching Perkins and Puritan preaching. Instead of teaching diagrams of Greek syntax, seminaries should be teaching students how to exegete the text in their mother tongue. Instead of focusing on two years of Greek vocab and grammar, seminaries should teach students conversational Greek with the eventual goal of mastery.

In any case, I am an advocate for returning to the old paths. We, as Reformed people, have treasures upon treasures in our spiritual heritage. There is no need to reinvent the wheel every decade.

Modern Scholarship, Textual Variation, and the Received Text

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Dr. Peter Gurry published a short article entitled Cole on Preservation and the Westminster Divines’ Sermons back in January of this year. This is an addendum to his academic article posted in the Midwestern Journal of Theology called “Textual Criticism in the Reformation.” This is a part of the continued effort to support the claim that modern textual scholars are doing the same thing as the Reformed during the Reformation and post-Reformation era, “These arguments are the all-important context for understanding the practice of textual criticism in the Reformation” (pg. 20). He notes correctly that this is not a term the Reformers used, which is of course true because the concept of critical studies was yet to be born. He also does a great job of pulling from Milne, Muller, and Turretin to give appropriate context, which many of his colleagues avoid. He cites Muller, saying that the Reformed did not “seek the infinite regress of the lost autographa as the prop for textual infallibility” (pg. 27). He rightly notices that the Reformed considered the copies of Scripture to be authentic as the originals.

Here is where, I think, the modern textual scholars get the argument confused. The tendency seems to be to anachronistically apply the term, “Textual Criticism” to the efforts of the Reformed and post-Reformed. Where many popular level apologists go wrong is to make the claim that the giants of our tradition were ignorant of textual variation in the manuscript tradition. Gurry does not make this error as his peers often do. He says, “None of this means that scholars and theologians in this period were unaware of variants within Greek manuscripts. One can find discussion of them in Erasmus and Beza, of course, and in plenty of other scholars’ too” (pg. 29). This of course is true, and these discussions continue all the way through Turretin, Owen, Gill, and more. Dr. Gurry even invokes Jan Krans correctly in his analysis of Erasmus, noting that Erasmus was engaging in some proto-genealogical method. An important addition is to remember that this actually distinguishes Erasmus from Beza, who was far too theologically motivated for Krans’ liking.

One important observation here is that Dr. Gurry invokes one of Turretin’s questions, “Are the sources so pure that no fault has crept into the sacred manuscripts, either through the waste of time, the carelessness of copyists or the malice of the Jews or of heretics?” (Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Vol. 1, 106). He correctly characterizes the Reformed position via Turretin, which is to answer, “no.” This is where Dr. Gurry gets off the Reformed boat. He points out that modern evidence makes such claims such as the inspiration of the vowel points, “impossible to make” (pg. 33). He uses this as a starting point to argue that the Reformed could not have had a complete theology because they did not have a complete set of evidence.

This is the crux of the difference between the evangelical textual scholars and the non-evangelical textual scholars – the evangelicals appreciate the work of the Reformed and take their words into consideration. However, at the end of the day, they ultimately conclude that modern evidence has discredited the Reformed conclusions. Yet the question remains as to whether or not the Reformed would have consented to the conclusions of modernity. The modern scholars obviously say, “yes, how could they not?” Those in the Confessional Text camp say, “I don’t think they would.”

Would the Reformed have valued the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls as highly as modern scholars do? Would they likewise value Vaticanus and Sinaiticus as highly as modern scholars do? Dr. Gurry acknowledges that the Reformed were aware of textual variation, and yet they denied corruption, unlike modern textual scholars. The reason this is important, is because if the modern textual scholars are correct about the evidence discovered in the 19th and 20th centuries, the first chapter of the Reformed confessions must be understood in a different light and even reformulated. The evangelical textual scholars understand this, as they have produced several treatises and statements on the doctrine of Scripture in the last several years (Jongkind, Wallace, Brash). If chapter 1 of the confessions were adequate in light of modern evidence, there would be no need to add to the formulations produced in the Reformation and Post-Reformation period.

The reality is, most modern Reformed have already adopted the conclusions of modern textual scholars regarding the vowel points, the textual evidence, and the doctrinal statements regarding Scripture. The question that I always ask myself is this, “Would the Reformed have understood this evidence differently than our modern scholars?” My answer of course is, “yes.” Ultimately, this work by Dr. Gurry indicates a shift in the modern textual argument from, “The Reformed agree with us” to “The Reformed laid the foundations, but were ultimately betrayed by their lack of evidence.”

I see this as a welcome update to the conversation, which has been difficult to navigate due to modern scholars claiming the Reformed as their own for the past several years. The impact of this debate proliferates down to the layman quickly. The Reformed believed that their translation of the Hebrew and Greek to be inspired, literally God’s Word. The moderns believe that every translation is imperfect, and the Hebrew and Greek must be consulted at every turn. The Reformed believed that there were no places of corruption, meaning that every jot and every tittle had been preserved and made available. The moderns believe that some passages and words have indeed fallen away, yet what we have is “good enough” to ascertain all important doctrines. The pastor who believes the modern conclusions will preach in a manner which aligns with the modern textual scholars. The layman who believes the conclusions will read their Bible in a manner which aligns with the modern textual scholars.

While it may be true that this is an “open handed issue” as it were, it nevertheless has a significant impact on the Reformed and non-Reformed churches in the world. It changes preaching, reading, and practice. For that reason, this remains an important debate. Every pastor preaching through the Bible verse by verse will eventually have to side one way or another on this issue. Every Christian reading through the Bible will eventually have to do the same. Unfortunately, that debate is not easily settled, as it more or less comes down to answering the question, “Does modern evidence disprove the conclusions of the Reformed?” Those that answer, “Yes” will adopt the methods of Dan Wallace, Andrew Nasselli, Mark Ward, and Dirk Jongkind in Bible reading and preaching. Those that answer, “No” will retain the translation of the Reformed, say “Jehovah” instead of “Yahweh,” and so on. My point is this – whatever conclusion a believer lands on will impact the practice of their faith in a very noticeable way.

It is for this reason that this conversation continues to come up. You can be unaware of your brother’s doctrinal views on a number of issues, but not this one. It is inevitably going to come up, because it impacts the Bible translation you carry around, the words you use to pray, and the way a pastor preaches. It is unavoidable, and it is my hope that the modern day Reformed are at least more friendly to those of the Textus Receptus position than they have been in the past decade or so. It is my opinion that it is absolutely the position of the Reformed tradition, even if that tradition is considered wrong according to the modern perspective.

Book Now Available

The Young, Textless, and Reformed5 Comments

Dear Reader,

I have published a book through Kept Pure Press entitled, The Received Text: A Field Guide. It can be found here. There is a discount available for readers of the Text & Translation blog.

The purpose of this book is not to be a deep dive into the topic, or an utter refutation of individual textual variants. I set out to detail as best as I could the scope of the conversation for newcomers and lay people. One of the issues I often see is lofty language and credentialism which are barriers to entry for the average person. So I put together a short book which outlines clearly the theological and methodological frameworks of the most commonly held positions. Once I establish the boundaries of the conversation, I offer a hefty critique to the methods and beliefs of the critical text establishment and provide a somewhat unique approach to defending the Received Text position.

God Bless,

Taylor

Addressing The Intelligibility Argument

The Young, Textless, and Reformed2 Comments

There is an argument against the KJV which says that because the translation has archaic words, it is sinful to either read or tell people to read it. This argument is presented by Mark Ward in his book Authorized: The Use and Misuse of the King James Bible. Many people who respect and enjoy Ward’s other work are not aware that he makes this claim. It is even the case that his fans will deny that he has made this claim when it is presented. In this article, I am going to demonstrate that Ward does make this argument, and why it is incorrect.

The Argument

I have addressed this argument before in the context of my chapter-by-chapter review of Authorized, but I wanted to give it some more attention here. Ward states that while the KJV is not unintelligible as a whole, it contains words which are archaic or “false friends” and therefore violates 1 Corinthians 14. This is likened to putting a “stumbling block in your own path in order to increase your resilience and skill” (Ward. Authorized. 120). He concludes that to hand somebody else a KJV is to “stand in their way” and to put a stumbling block in front of them (Rom. 14:13). Ward’s entire premise is that these “false friends” are landmines of sorts, and that the reader is not aware of an archaic word when he encounters it. In other words, when you read the KJV or convince another to read the KJV, you are causing them to stumble because it contains words which have evolved in meaning or are otherwise archaic.

Based on the verbiage and context of 1 Cor. 14, the argument is that the archaic words in the KJV are the same as somebody speaking an unknown tongue. This is a purely novel interpretation that has never been understood from the text by anybody other than Mark Ward. If you have been around in Christian circles for some time, you know that this passage is talking about spiritual gifts and their use (or lack thereof) for edification of the saints. In fact, this passage is used as a proof text for the cessationism debate frequently. It has never been used as a proof, until now, for the intelligibility of bible translations.

Let’s for a moment grant this is the interpretation of the passage. The key word here is that the language being used is so unintelligible that it is not useful for edification. Is it the case that any word in the KJV is unknown? Clearly the answer is “no.” Every single word and phrase found in the KJV can be adequately defined and understood by people today. There aren’t any words in the KJV that have been lost to us. Therefore, even if 1 Cor. 14 was in any way applicable to Bible translations, it wouldn’t even apply to the KJV.

In order for this argument to be true, Ward would have to find a word that could not be defined in the KJV. Of course he won’t, because he’s already found all of the “false friends” and defined them for us. I have made this point before, but the thrust of Ward’s work disproves his primary thesis. That is to say, in order for his argument to work, the KJV would have to be unintelligible to the degree that 1 Cor. 14 describes. This is where the average layperson might be fooled by Ward’s apparent doublespeak. On one hand, Ward states that the KJV is not overall unintelligible (pg. 118), and on the other hand says that it is a totally different language (pg. 79). In order to understand Ward’s argument, we have to understand the soft language in which he couches a rather harsh argument.

A Harsh Argument Seated in a Soft Couch

On page 79 of Authorized, Ward articulates his argument in a list.

  1. We should read the Scripture in our own language
  2. The KJV is not in our language
  3. Therefore we should update the KJV to be in our language, or we should read vernacular translations

He concludes, “I therefore do not think the KJV is sufficiently readable to be relied upon as a person’s only or main translation, or as a church’s or Christian school’s only or main translation” (pg. 85). I want to make this clear for my reader, Ward’s argument is that people should not use the KJV as their main translation, and that it is a stumbling block for those that read it. This is an extremely harsh perspective. Yet, you will see people online claiming that “Mark Ward loves the KJV! You’re slandering him!” It may be true that Ward has an appreciation for the KJV. We can see this in chapter two of Authorized, where he makes note of the KJV heritage. The salient point here is understanding in which way Ward loves the KJV. We have already seen that he does not love the KJV as a translation that should be used. The entire thesis of his book is to discourage Christians from reading it, after all. What we see in Authorized is Ward’s apparent appreciation for the KJV’s place in church history, and that’s all.

This is where you will see a sort of bait and switch by people defending Ward. One will say, “Ward does not think reading the KJV is sinful, he loves the KJV!” Sure, we can grant that Ward loves the KJV as an artifact or a museum piece, but certainly not as a translation that should be used. This is where many people become confused. When somebody says, “I love my ESV,” they typically mean, “I love using my ESV.” So when people hear Ward say, “I love the KJV,” they assume he means, “I love using the KJV.” We know this is not true because he wrote an entire book explaining why the KJV should not be used. Mark Ward does not love using the KJV. This is confusing, because it allows him to couch a harsh argument in soft language. He is saying, “Yes, I love the KJV, but it is a different language and a stumbling block for those that use it.” Ward is advocating for absolute abstinence from the KJV. It’s like saying, “I love drinking alcohol, but you shouldn’t drink alcohol lest it become a stumbling block for you.” The strange part is, Ward is not arguing that the KJV is a stumbling block for some, he is arguing that it is a stumbling block for all.

Of course, Ward’s argument hinges on the established fact that the KJV is a different language which is unintelligible to the English Christian. This is the point of 1 Cor. 14. Even though he says that the KJV is not altogether unintelligible, his argument demands that it is. Let’s just say we were to take Ward’s novel interpretation of 1 Cor. 14 as true, it still would not apply to the KJV. Since these archaic words are not unknown, the simple answer is to learn what these words mean just like we learn words to read any book. This is why the argument is actually incredibly dumb or incredibly dishonest. The argument really just says, “We shouldn’t have to learn new words to read the Bible. We should be able to read the Bible with the words we already know.”

Reading Comprehension, or the KJV?

This is the spirit of nearly every single author on the topic today. They say the Bible should be comprehensible by the average reader. Now, I agree with this principle, but not in the way that these men mean it. What is meant by the average reader? Are we talking about the average adult? Ward has said that it is a sin to hand a child the KJV, so perhaps he means, the average child. What reading comprehension level are we saying is the standard for a translation in order for it to be intelligible? According to the Nation’s Report Card, the average reading level in the US is between 7th and 8th grade, with over 54% reading below a 6th grade level. Nationwide, 21% of adults in the US are illiterate. California boasts the lowest literacy rates in the country, with 23% of adults having little to no proficiency in reading skills. This means that over half of the US would find every translation except the Message unintelligible by Ward’s standards, and 21-23% of the US having zero valid translations available to them. I wonder if Ward would put his money where his mouth is and break ground on producing The Golden State Authorized Interlinear (GAI) for our neighbors in California.

This highlights a strange feature of this argument, that the KJV is a stumbling block because of lack of reading comprehension. But we see that over half of US adults read at below a 6th grade level, which means the ESV is equally a stumbling block by this logic. This means that Ward, presumably, would prescribe the same antidote to them for the ESV as we do for the KJV – learn the words. This idea that we should not learn to read the Bible because it has difficult words cannot be justified by any historical or biblical principle because it is essentially saying “People shouldn’t be competent readers.” I have said this before, but most public schools teach Shakespeare, which demands the same task. That is to say that American public schools demand more from the students then Ward would demand of Christians.

The American Church is not facing a KJV crisis, it is facing a reading comprehension crisis. Ward’s solution is to hand half of America The Message and ignore the 20% who simply cannot read at all. That is why Ward’s problem is one that could only be concocted in the ivory towers of the academy. He has taken on the opposite spirit of Tyndale, who said, “I defy the pope and all his laws…If God spare my life ere many years, I will cause a boy that driveth the plow, shall know more of the Scripture than thou dost.” Tyndale believed the illiterate plowboy could learn to read for the sake of God and the Scriptures. Ward believes that the words of Tyndale cannot be understood, even by the most learned men of our society. He believes such things because he thinks you are stupid. Do not fooled by such silly arguments any longer, dear Christian, we have work to do.

Evangelicalism, Post-Protestants, and Scripture

The Young, Textless, and Reformed1 Comment

The term Evangelical as a description can be traced back to the time of the Protestant Reformation and can be found in writings of men such as William Tyndale and Martin Luther as a way to distinguish Protestants from Catholics. As time passed, the Protestant movement split into many, distinct denominations which divided over doctrines such as infant baptism, free will vs. determinism, the importance of the free offer of the Gospel, the role of works in the Christian life, and so on. After the Evangelical departure from Rome, the Protestants functioned in a much more unified manner than we see today. There were councils, creeds, and confessions which Christians united around.

As we move further away from the Reformation, however, the Evangelical Protestants became more divided. There were serious doctrinal battles over when and how baptism should be instituted (Westminster Assembly vs. London Baptists), the role of man in the order or salvation (The Synod of Dort), the Marrowmen vs. the Moderates, and so on. Eventually, we arrive at the Great Awakening (mid 1700’s), where we see conversionism take its dominate place in the Evangelical model. By the end of the century, the so-called Second Great Awakening solidified the Evangelical practice of conversionism as a feature of the Protestant tradition. Conversionism describes the sudden and often emotional experience of hearing the word of God preached and converting immediately to Evangelical faith.

In the Second Great Awakening, we saw the use of the “anxious bench,” which I suppose could be called the proto-altar call. Now, it is commonplace for Evangelical sermons to end with an offer to raise a hand or to come to the front of the church to be converted to Christianity. This is a totally different model of evangelism from the standard confessionalism of the past. Historically, the Evangelical Protestants, especially the Puritans, would test the faith of a new convert against a theological confession. In other words, there would be a catechetical process prior to somebody’s faith being recognized as genuine. Fathers would be expected to conduct daily family worship, which included doctrinal teaching, singing, and Scripture reading. The historical Protestant model of evangelism was conducted through the ordinary means of family discipleship. The children of Christians were considered Christians.

It can be argued that the conversionism model rose out of necessity, and that’s probably true. Fathers had abrogated their responsibility to their children by neglecting family discipleship. This has not only amplified in the last century, but has become Evangelical dogma. Children are expected to have their own, personal, emotional, religious experience wherein they accept Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior. This has become so severe, that many Evangelicals do not catechize their children and take a severely libertarian approach to the religious beliefs of their children. We see this model dogmatized in the “Vipers in diapers” mindset propagated by men like Voddie Baucham. This idea essentially says that children are not Christian, and in fact are something akin to devils, until they have their own personal religious experience. This is a massive departure from historical Evangelical Protestantism, where children are essentially guilty until proven innocent. Protestants had widely adopted conversionism as the standard practice of evangelicalism, even in conservative circles.

This is the key feature of what I call “post-Protestantism.” The ordinary evangelical practice of family worship and church attendance has been replaced by various forms of the altar call. Now, many conservative denominations and independent congregations reject the altar call in practice, objecting to the hand raising model, while still believing in it at a fundamental level. Even churches that reject the altar call will require new members to read their testimony of salvation, which is a recording of the exact moment the person had their religious experience. Simply stated, one requirement for church membership is to recollect one’s “altar call moment.” Now, I am not saying that religious conversion does not occur in a moment, nor am I downplaying the importance of the religious experience where one comes to faith, I am simply pointing out that the model for evangelicalism has shifted from a catechetical model to a conversionist model in nearly every single modern church. It is a shift from the idea that one can say, “I have been a Christian my whole life” to “This is the exact moment I became a Christian.”

Now, I am not saying that people do not have emotional, religious, conversion experiences. That is in fact how I was converted. What I am saying is that the new post-Protestant Evangelicalism has changed its model to this as an ordinary practice, even for the children of believers. When my wife and I were married, and joined our first church together, we were required to present written testimonies of our conversion experience as a part of the membership process. My wife struggled with this, as she had not known a time where she was not a Christian. I had no problem producing this document, as I was not raised in a Christian home. Her conversion was that of the ordinary means of family discipleship, whereas mine was that of extra-ordinary evangelical experience. The conversionist practice of post-Protestant Evangelicalism can likely be explained as an adaptive response to a more secular country. Nonetheless, it is a departure in methodology from the historical Protestant Evangelicals.

You’re probably wondering what this has to do with Scripture and the modern day battle for the Bible. I will posit that this has to do with the classical liberal instinct that the west has towards individualism. At a societal level, this ethos says that the individual has no responsibility to his neighbor. In the religious context, the Christian has no responsibility to the church. One’s faith is between him and God. This is encapsulated in the “only God can judge me” mentality of modern evangelical Christians. Historical Protestantism took place in the context of the church body. Post-Protestantism takes place in the confines of one’s heart and mind. Religious conversion is a deeply personal experience, who are you to judge it?

This is the framework upon which modern bibliology rests. Notice that according to modern bibliology, the only purpose of Scripture is to lead one to salvation. Despite 2 Timothy 3:16 clearly stating that the Bible’s purpose is not only to convert, but to instruct converts on religious faith and practice. The latter purpose of Scripture is completely ignored by modern bibliological doctrine. This is exemplified when James White, or Dirk Jongkind, or Richard Brash detail that there is no impact to the core gospel message across all translations. This is the outworking of post-Protestantism, where the purpose is an individualistic transformative religious experience which results in salvation. Post-Protestant Christianity is a religion of the individual.

Now, I am not saying that conversion is bad, or unnecessary. I am simply saying that the Protestants viewed it as a function of the church body, not a function of the individual. The Puritans wrote volumes upon volumes regarding personal religious experience. The key difference here is that post-Protestants remove the context of the church body from this religious experience. The effect of this is that all matters of doctrine, faith, and practice are now divorced from the historical and religious Protestant tradition, which is why I believe I am right in identifying modern evangelicals as “post-Protestant.” As modern evangelicals stray further from the guard rails of their theological forefathers, they lose more and more of what make them Protestant in the first place. There is no unified faith and message, there is no unified translation – there is only the individual with his personal religious experience.

This is further demonstrated by how modern evangelicals teach their congregations to study the Scriptures. Some go as far as to say that one must consult Greek and Hebrew lexicons to ascertain the “true meaning of the text.” More common is that Christians are told to study the Bible with several different translations and a study bible and commentary. Every modern evangelical has been tasked with becoming a lone theologian, discerning what the text says and means. This is why D.C. Parker says that there are an infinite number of bibles, because every time a person returns to the original language texts and opts for a different reading, he in effect creates a new bible. So not only is faith an individual ritual, so is one’s bible. This is a feature of post-Protestantism.

So, what is my purpose in creating this new category of “post-Protestant?” The reason I think it is important is because modern evangelicalism has departed so severely from historical Evangelicalism that it is an entirely different religious movement. It explains the ethos of modern Christianity as an individualistic religion, and exposes the presuppositions which have led to an “every-man-for-himself” religion in the west. Every man has his own Christianity, and every man has his own Bible. This is distinct from historical Protestantism, which acknowledges the role of the church in Christian faith and practice. This is a thought I have been developing for some time now, I’d love to see what my reader thinks of my concept of post-Protestantism.

Sola Scriptura Not Compatible with Modern Bibliology

The Young, Textless, and Reformed9 Comments

In recent years, I’m sure my reader has seen, like I have, a mass return to more traditional sects of Christianity such as Orthodoxy or Catholicism. One of the claims both of these churches make is the antiquity of their religion and the authority of their counsels. This is one of the counter-reformation arguments that still rings loud today. A church without centralized authority is subject to the whims of cultural decay and depravity. Now I can’t speak for evangelicals, but Protestants and other conservative independent denominations both hinge their arguments of authority on a doctrine known as Sola Scriptura. In other words, Scripture alone determines the authority of what the people of God believe and how they practice Christianity.

This doctrine is founded on 2 Timothy 3:16, which states, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” Modern bibliology, often called the doctrine of ” biblical inerrancy” is historically different than the doctrine of the protestants as defined in the 17th century confessions and catechisms (WCF 1.6-7). Both 2 Timothy and WCF 1.6 assume that “scripture” is a defined object. The protestant and post-reformation theologians also considered the original texts to include the copies or apographs. “By the original texts, we do not mean the autographs written by the hand of Moses, of the prophets and of the apostles, which certainly do not now exist. We mean their apographs which are so called because they set forth to us the word of God in the very words of those who wrote under the immediate inspiration of the Holy Spirit” (Francis Turretin. Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Vol. I, 106.)

The Chicago Statement, and thus the doctrine of biblical inerrancy, does not assert that the scriptures available today are inspired. Only the autographs were inspired, and the material we have today is greatly accurate. “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” (Chicago Statement, article X). In other words, the bibles that we have today are only considered scripture insofar as these texts can be ascertained from extant manuscripts.

At the time of writing the Chicago Statement, the authors deemed the process of textual criticism “greatly accurate.” If we take the standard definition of this phrase, it means “correct in all the details, exact.” There is not a single biblical or textual scholar alive today who would say that the text of scripture is “exact” or “correct in all the details.” In fact, the scholars say precisely the opposite. Let me list several examples for my reader.

“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.)

So we see clearly the evolution of modern bibliology. When the Chicago Statement was penned, there was a strong belief that textual criticism had produced a greatly accurate, or exact text. Yet the theological wording of the statement left the door open for this to change based on the effort of textual scholarship. As we can see above, it is not just one lone scholar who believes that scripture is not exact. Scholars who share this opinion are Dirk Jongkind, editor of the Tyndale House Greek New Testament and senior research fellow in New Testament Text and Language at Cambridge. I do not share these quotations to bash these men, but rather to highlight that this is the mainstream evangelical position and not some fringe ideology. The opinions of men like James White, Mark Ward, Dan Wallace, Richard Brash, and every person who advocates for the modern critical text are informed by these men and their cohorts. Nearly every seminary espouses this view of Scripture, and this is irrefutably taught in pulpits and classrooms everywhere.

The main concern with this view is that it is completely incompatible with the doctrine known as Sola Scriptura. In order for Christians to have authority in their doctrine without a pope or centralized church, there must be an infallible source of doctrinal truth. That is the premise for Sola Scriptura. The Reformers claimed that counsels and popes can fail, but God and His scripture cannot. Therefore, all matters of faith and practice should be founded on infallible scripture, not the authority of men. If it is the case that scripture cannot be accurately ascertained, then this doctrine crumbles. It is evident for all to see that the modern evangelical church has no authority. Churches teach whatever they want, ordain whoever they want, and organize however they want. There is no regulating principle around which evangelical churches organize, because there is no authority. There is no Sola Scriptura without scripture, and therefore churches that believe in modern bibliology are without authority.

In order to have authority as a post-Protestant church, that church needs to reject modern bibliology and embrace the sound doctrine of the Protestant Reformation or return to Rome. That is why I have come up with new terminology for those who believe in modern bibliology, post-Protestants. Post-Protestants, commonly called evangelicals, do not believe that the bibles we have today are completely inspired, and therefore have no authority. They believe that the ideas are inspired, but that is a post-Protestant doctrine found nowhere in scripture. In order for the churches to be healthy and authoritative again, post-Protestant bibliology must be rejected.

TurretinFan Attempts to Make an Argument

The Young, Textless, and Reformed2 Comments

Introduction

On Monday, anonymous blogster TurretinFan published an article titled The “Stable Text” King James Version Argument which can be found here. The point of the article is to say that the “misleadingly labeled” Confessional Bibliology position is the same position that the KJV translators had to respond to, and is essentially the position of the Roman Catholics. I want my reader to notice that this article is about 10 sentences worth of assertions, and the rest citations which he claims prove his point. TurretinFan hasn’t actually made an argument in this article, nor has he addressed the material I have written. Let’s break down his assertions and see if we have anything to engage with from the article.

Confessional Bibliology is Misleadingly Labeled

In the first sentence of the article, TurretinFan asserts that the label “Confessional Bibliology” is a misleading label. He does not explain why or how it is misleading. He continues to say that Confessional Bibliology “seems to recognize the authority of the original languages” but “seems to conform to whatever Greek or Hebrew was followed by the translators/revisers of the King James Version.”

Apparently it is news to TurretinFan that the King James Version translators used the base text which we now call the Textus Receptus to create the King James Version translation. Again, no argument provided by our anonymous poster, simply an assertion as to what “seems” to be the case. In other words, there is nothing we can reasonably engage with here.

The Stable Text Argument is a Roman Catholic Argument

TurretinFan’s major blunder here is a common error that Critical Text advocates make, which is to confuse an argument for the text with an argument for the authority of a translation. He references Clement VIII who is making an argument for the stability of the Latin manuscripts, which are translations. This is a common argument made by James White, and not original to TurretinFan. This is not the argument I am making, nor have I ever made. Perhaps if TurretinFan understood the moniker “Confessional Bibliology,” he would know that the position I defend is simply the position of chapter 1 of the 17th century confessions, which state, “The Old Testament in Hebrew, (which was the native language of the people of God of old,) and the New Testament in Greek, (which, at the time of writing of it was most generally known to the nations,) being immediately inspired by God, and by his singular care and providence kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical; so as in all controversies of religion, the Church is finally to appeal unto them. But, because these original tongues are not known to all the people of God, who have right unto an interest in the scriptures, and are commanded in the fear of God, to read and search them, therefore the are to be translated into the vulgar language of every nation unto which they come, that the word of God dwelling plentifully in all, they may worship him in an acceptable manner, and, through patience and comfort of the scriptures, may have hope” (Westminster Confession of Faith, 1.6).

TurretinFan ends by stating that my objective is to move from manuscripts to a single, stable text. This is arguably the strangest assertion he has made in the article, as this is simply what happened in time and space. Is he arguing that the church uses manuscripts today? Do Christians carry around various manuscripts to church? It is already the case that the form of the Bible has moved from manuscripts to printed texts and translations. This is true for both the Critical Text and TR position. The question is not whether we should migrate from manuscripts to printed texts, that has already occurred as a matter of history, not my opinion. The question is what those printed texts represent, and which of those printed texts and translations should be used by the people of God.

Interestingly enough, in his critique of me, TurretinFan has critiqued the nature of his preferred text. If my desire is a single, stable text, and this is the “wrong priority,” then he is really saying that the Critical Text is not a stable text, and “it is a mark of wisdom to revise when we discover errors.” TurretinFan has no basis for determining what an “error” is, however, because his preferred textual methodology cannot say what is an error. His methodology can only determine what is most likely the oldest reading, which is an evaluation that is agnostic to the idea of original or authentic. The concept of error requires the idea of verity or authenticity, which the Critical Text methodology does not claim to provide.

Turretin Vs TurretinFan

So if TurretinFan’s critique of my position is that I am wrong to desire a single, stable text, then it is clear that his position is the opposite. The only history repeating itself is for gainsayers such as TurretinFan to question the authenticity of Scripture, such as 1 John 5:7, Mark 16:9-20, and John 7:53-8:11. Ironically, Turretin himself agrees with me in my doctrine of Scripture.

“By the original texts, we do not mean the autographs written down by the hand of Moses, of the prophets and the apostles, which certainly do not now exist. We mean their apographs which are so called because they set forth to us the word of God in the very words of those who wrote under the immediate inspiration of the Holy Spirit” (Turretin, Francis. Institutes of Elenctic Theology. Volume 1. p. 106). In other words, Turretin rejects the idea that the Bible is inerrant in its autographs, but rather that it was kept pure in all ages via the copies or apographs.

Turretin continues by defining the difference between a textual variant and a corruption, “A corruption differs from a variant reading. We acknowledge that many variant readings occur both in the Old and New Testaments arising from a comparison of different manuscripts, but we deny corruption (at least corruption that is universal)” (Ibid., 111). In other words, Turretin does not agree with the modern critical text idea that there are variants which should be marked with a diamond, indicating corruption.

Turretin finishes by defending the passages that TurretinFan himself rejects, “There is no truth in the assertion that the Hebrew edition of the Old Testament and the Greek edition of the New Testament are said to be mutilated; nor can the arguments used by our opponents prove it. Not the history of the adulteress (Jn. 8:1-11), for although it is lacking in the Syriac version, it is found in all the Greek manuscripts. Not 1 Jn. 5:7, for although some formerly called it into question and heretics now do, yet all the Greek copies have it, as Sixtus Senesis acknowledges: “they have been the words of never-doubted truth, and contained in all the Greek copies from the very times of the apostles” (Bibliotheca sancta [1575], 2:298). Not Mk. 16 which may have been wanted in several copies in the time of Jerome (as he asserts); but now it occurs in all, even in the Syriac version, and is clearly necessary to complete the history of the resurrection of Christ” (Ibid., 115).

Here is the most entertaining conclusion that we can arrive at by actually reading Turretin:

  1. Turretin lots TurretinFan in with the heretics in his rejection of 1 John 5:7
  2. Turretin was aware of the manuscripts TurretinFan prefers (Jerome’s referenced manuscripts)
  3. Turretin details how doctrines are impacted by the removal of passages as found in the Critical Text (the history of the resurrection of Christ)
  4. Turretin rejects the notion of corruption (indeterminate readings, which are found in the ECM)
  5. Turretin rejects the reframing of the WCF by Warfield and the Chicago Statement

In other words, Turretin disagrees with TurretinFan on nearly every point as it pertains to Scripture, both textually and theologically. It is interesting that TurretinFan accuses me of making a Roman Catholic argument. This is a little known fact, but the Textus Receptus was actually the text of the Protestant Reformation. It makes no sense that defending such a text would be considered…Roman Catholic. I suspect the reason for such shoddy and inept argumentation is due to the fact that this is simply a regurgitation of assertions made by James White. Let me remind my reader that assertions are not arguments, and you actually have to explain why a quote supports your argument. This is persuasive writing 101. What we have to recognize is that a community college English 101 professor would send this article by TurretinFan back for revision because he hasn’t made an argument, he’s simply made assertions in between citations.

Conclusion

The greatest condemnation of this article is not it’s poor structure and lack of persuasion, it is the fact that Turretin himself disagrees with TurretinFan so fundamentally that he should really consider changing his moniker. Perhaps he should consider Dr. SpyOptics, the bargain bin version of Dr. Oakley.

Future Plans

The Young, Textless, and Reformed6 Comments

Recently, I posted to gauge interest in starting up the blog again. Thank you all for the comments and support. Based on your feedback, I started writing a book. Now, I had already written a sizeable book on the topic, but it was poorly organized and I didn’t feel I had gotten it right. So I started from scratch, and wrote something new. The book is my attempt to “shotgun blast” the conversation to the average Christian. I frame the discussion into four categories: Theological, Text Critical, Concerning Translations, and Practical Application. I use these four categories to describe the nuances of The Textual Discussion and end the book with an argument in favor of the Masoretic Hebrew and Greek Textus Receptus, in addition to the use of the King James Version. The book is also fairly polemic in nature as I deconstruct the claims of the Modern Critical Text to demonstrate how it is lacking as a legitimate Christian framework. I’m in the final edits now and have had two pastors review it already. That’s what I’ve been working on the last couple of weeks. I am still figuring out if I am going to self-publish or if anybody is willing to publish it, so it may be a while before you can get your hands on a copy. If publishing doesn’t work out, I will make the book available for free as a PDF.

As for the future of this blog, it is clear based on your comments that there are still topics that deserve coverage. I most likely will not cover all of them, as I prefer to stick to what I am knowledgeable on. A handful of these topics require a fair bit of reading and research, and I won’t be able to hard commit to covering those until I have more time. I have spent a lot of time and money getting my hands on and reading works produced by the Modern Critical Text camp, and it makes sense to publish more reviews of that material. A lot of the source material related to this topic is locked behind $100-400 books that I have access to, so I want to do more analysis on those for you. That is the goal as of now, but we will see if I have the appetite to dive into that. One thing that I learned from writing on this topic for so long is that these academic works are dark. The flippant nature with which these men write about the text of Holy Scripture is soul sucking.

That is where I am currently at right now. I have read all your comments and I will see if any of them fall into areas that I am comfortable talking about with some authority. If I do not cover your topic, it is most likely because I either cannot put the time into researching the topic, or that I feel the topic has already been covered better elsewhere. Once I finish final edits on my book and figure out the publishing situation, I plan to resume writing regularly again. There are pockets of revival all throughout the world right now, and I believe it is deeply important that believers have confidence in the Bible they read. That said, I appreciate your support and I’m looking forward to hearing from you all.

Update

The Young, Textless, and Reformed24 Comments

Dear Reader,

As you have noticed, I have posted significantly less in the last year. I have thought of starting the blog and YouTube channel up again, but I often think that most of the conversation has been discussed at length. If I were to re-launch, I would want to have an idea of what direction I want to take the content. That being said, I wanted to ask my audience what you all want to see. What questions or conversation topics would you like to see covered? If you have been following my blog since the beginning, you know that the main focus of my blog is the theological and philosophical approach rather than looking at individual variants, and I’d like to stay in that lane. That being said, feel free to comment on this post and let me know what you want to see, and if there’s enough demand, I may do a series on the blog and on YouTube.

Thank you all for your support over the years, I appreciate all of you. As always, may the Lord bless you, and keep you.

The Young, Textless, and Reformed

Death of Logic

The Young, Textless, and Reformed7 Comments

Welcome to the new year, reader. In 2024, I fully expect that we will find ourselves debating the same arguments and talking points afresh. The reality is that many of the theological controversies prevalent today are already resolved. Consider topics such as soteriology and eschatology. These have been discussed at great length by men much more capable than anybody alive today, yet modern men exhaust themselves, thinking that they have come up with some clever argument. Despite this, Christians will descend upon internet forums to cast their thoughts into the void, regardless of outcome. Such is the nature of debate disconnected from the real world.

Many, if not all, of the popular debates can be resolved by logical rules as simple as the law of noncontradiction or excluded middle. In other words, two things that cannot be true at the same time or one of two things must be true, given the claim requires it. The entire textual discussion can, at the very least, be reframed by evaluating foundational claims by these two laws of thought. For example, if our primary claim is “Scripture exists”, then we can exclude any claim which posits that “Scripture does not exist.” By “exist” we mean here that the Scriptures exist in such a way that we can access and use it. Many modern views of Scripture attempt to redefine the term “exist” to mean that the words are out in the world, somewhere, we just don’t have access to them. Yet, this is an illogical claim, for this view also allows for the possibility that the words are not out there in the world. This is why textual scholars hedge their claims with words such as “possible” and “likely.” In short, if it is “possible” that a text is original, it is also possible that a text is not original. Using this type of language violates the law of noncontradiction if we are trying to defend something which is said to “exist.” Something cannot exist and “possibly exist” at the same time.

Herein lies the nuance which muddles the debate. If you are a Christian, your premise is that Scripture exists, not that it “possibly exists.” This is a requirement for all Scriptural truth claims. We do not say in evangelism that, “It is possible that God so loved the world..” and so on. When we present the Gospel, we do so assuming the premise that the words exist, and that the words we have in front of us are correct. There is not a scenario where a Christian can confidently present the free offer of salvation given that the words on the page could be inauthentic. Yet, if you inspect the average claim of the modern bibliology camp, this is how they argue for Scripture. In one context, they read their Bible, listen to sermons, and debate theology with absolute confidence in the words on the page, and in the text-critical context, they argue with varying degrees of “possibility.” We know that this is not logically valid.

If we investigate what it means for the Bible to “exist,” we find that this concept is captured within the doctrine of preservation. To the traditional camp, the Bible exists because we have always had it, despite attempts at corruption. To the modern camp, the Bible exists insofar as we have it today. The first group has, at the very least, logical consistency because the definition of “Bible” has not changed over the years. The second group has a serious problem because in order to make the claim that the Bible exists, they must change the form of the Bible to mean something different in every age. The Bible, in other words, is more of a concept than an object. This is the primary difference between the two groups, as far as I can tell.

The traditional group sees the Bible as an object with a defined number of words, whereas the modern group sees the Bible as an object with a defined number of ideas. This is the explanatory mechanism the moderns use to describe how the words can be added, removed, or changed, and the thing (Bible) still be the same. According to this model, so as long as the core ideas are preserved, the Bible is preserved. This is a clever formulation, but unfortunately it has no explanatory mechanism. It cannot be demonstrated to be true, which means it is purely conjectural. This is due to the fact that literary ideas are derived from words. A text cannot preserve an idea without words. So if it were the case that a text can change while the ideas remain constant, one would have to actually demonstrate that additions, subtractions, and substitutions do not alter the substance of the text. This of course cannot be demonstrated to be true because any addition, subtraction, or substitution must, by definition, alter the substance of a text. This is how words work. Unless a modernist is willing to make the claim that all omitted portions of text are void of meaning, or all substitutions are merely synonymic, this must be the case. Ultimately, this claim is evaluated true on the simple merit that it has been said out loud.

We see that the textual debate is really a matter of definitions. In order for the modernists to be correct, they must employ a functional definition of “Bible” and “exists” and “preserve” in a different sense than the traditionalists. This is how they use historical writings such as the Westminster Confession to defend their claims. “If by Scripture they mean this, and if by preserved they mean this, then the Scriptures are indeed preserved!” Yet we can all agree that simply changing the definition of words does not win an argument, it simply means that the argument itself is different. This is my main point, the modern position of bibliology is comprised of claims which are substantially different than that of the traditionalists. That is to say, when these two groups collide in debate, they are using different functional definitions of key terms such as “Bible” and “preserved.”

This is important to recognize the next time you engage in a debate over a text such as 1 John 5:7. The textual modernist views his Bible as a collection of concepts and ideas, not a defined collection of texts. That is why a primary argument against the importance of the Comma Johanneum is that “the idea is contained elsewhere.” What I want my reader to understand is that this is actually an argument in support of a different definition of “Bible.” Take time to notice when somebody argues that, “1 John 5:7 isn’t even about the Trinity” or “It wasn’t even quoted at Nicaea in defense of the Trinity.” They are arguing this because in their mind the Bible isn’t defined by the texts contained within it, but the ideas. Yet we have already established that in literature, ideas are derived from words. Thus, adding, removing, or altering the words necessarily adds, removes, or alters the ideas.

Herein lies the primary logical problem with the modernist position on Scripture. In order for the text to mean something in itself, the ideas must be derived from the text. If it is the case that the ideas themselves are preserved apart from the text, then it is the case that the ideas have another preserving mechanism. Let us return to the argument related to the Trinity and 1 John 5:7. One of the chief arguments presented by textual modernists such as James White is that the doctrine of the Trinity can be derived elsewhere. Note the framing demands that the doctrine exists, and it can be found in the text. The doctrine is assumed first, and collected from Scripture as it exists to the modernist. In other words, the doctrine is preserved apart from the text. In this view, the reader brings a fully built out doctrine of the Trinity into Scripture. This is the implied assumption of this argument against the Comma Johanneum.

So we see the foundational logical problems that exist in the current iteration of the textual discussion. The modern side must redefine historical terms in order to fit their view into the Protestant frame. That is why some textual scholars avoid referring to Scripture as “The Bible” and instead opt for “bibles.” This is because at the core of the Critical Text position, the assumption is that “bibles” exist, but “the Bible” hasn’t existed since the first or second century. This is obviously problematic for Christian bibliology. The answer the modernists give is that, “we don’t need the Bible, as long as the ideas are preserved in the bibles.” One of the main problems in the textual discussion is that when a textual modernist employs the term “Bible” or “Scriptures,” they mean, “the bibles.” This demonstrates one of the foundational disconnects in the debate, both sides are using different functional definitions.

This is why the debate will continue into 2024 the same as it has since I have been involved. There are two theologies of the text, two logical foundations, two sets of definitions. My prediction is that 2024 will continue to highlight the differences in the positions with each discovery and evolution of the textual scholars. Happy New year and may the Lord bless you and keep you, reader.