James White – The Young, Textless, and Reformed

The Battle Against Onlyism

June 29, 2021 The Young, Textless, and Reformed2 Comments

Introduction

One of the biggest victories of postmodernism in the church is the demonization of objectivity. Subjectivity is celebrated and put on a pedestal so often that Christianity has all but lost its identity. This is abundantly clear if you have been following the SBC in recent years or have had a conversation with the average person about Christianity recently. There are as many forms of Christianity in 2021 as there are Bible translations. New translations and paraphrases have flooded the market with essentially no real pushback. So called “reformed” men have written textbooks endorsing the MSG.

Rather than fighting against the absurdity of having over 500 English Bible translations, “Conservatives” have labeled this an “embarrassment of riches” and encourage believers to read a smattering of translations. The problem, according to the modern church, is not that there are four different versions of the ESV, or that the MSG exists. The issue, they say, is against the people who decide to read one translation – the “Onlyists”.

It is clear that the battle that mainstream conservative wants to fight is onlyism rather than pluralism in Bible translations. This being the case, I want to examine what is being set forth by a pluralistic view on Bible translations. I have summarized it in a list below.

There should not be unity over Bible translation
There is not one translation that is better than the other
Bible translations should be viewed as tools to access the Word of God, not the Word of God itself
Changes to translations or new translations demonstrate that the words themselves do not matter

Unity in Bible Translation

The battle against the “Onlyists” is launched from the place that there is not one translation that is better than another, and that unity should not be had in one translation.. This points to the reality that the pluralists understand translations as a tool to access the Word of God, not the Word of God itself. This of course is stated plainly in the theological statement, “There are no perfect translations.” What this actually means is that there are no perfectly accurate translations. Every translation has errors, and therefore all must be used as a tool to understand Scripture. They claim that this is because language cannot be translated perfectly into another. In other words, translations are tools that imperfectly point to the Word of God.

Now this raises an important questions then, if translations are tools, what exactly is Scripture? What exactly are we looking at when we open up an English bible translation? Since a translation cannot be perfectly accurate, the translation itself is not “the very Word of God,” it is something that estimates or perhaps approximates the very Word of God. This must be true, seeing as the pluralists take no issue with any of the four versions of the ESV that exist. Using just one translation as an example, we can clearly see that the exact material of the translation does not matter.

That means that theologically speaking, the modern view understands the original language texts as “The Word of God,” and that translations are tools that point to it. Since there are no translations that accurately set forth the original, we must then look to what they say about the original language texts. According to them, we do not have the original in any original language texts or in any translations. In summary, not only does the original not exist today, if it did, we wouldn’t know we had it, and further, we couldn’t translate it accurately. That is to say that if you are at a church that holds to the modern doctrine of Scripture, your doctrinal statements mean absolutely nothing.

What is peculiar is that this is not seen as an issue, despite it clearly contradicting even the most simple orthodox statement of faith on Scripture which says, “The Bible is the very Word of God.” If by “the Bible” these statements mean “The Bible we use here at this church,” then the statement itself is actually contradictory because that Bible is just an imperfect approximation of texts that are not original. Despite the fact that this view voids the majority of doctrinal statements found in Church charters and doctrinal statements, the real problem is seen to be the “Onlyists.” That is the fight the modern church wants to take in the 21st century.

Conclusion

As much as conservatives in 2021 want to think that they have a sturdy theology of Scripture, the reality is that they do not. Recently, a pastor stated in a sermon that, “We can get back to what the autographa or original documents said via the transmitted text; it’s truly incredible.” This is quite common, even though there is not a single textual scholar who believes that or says that. If any pastor has done this, he should probably produce that original so that the textual scholars can close shop. The above quote demonstrates the disconnect between what the textual scholars are actually saying and what the average pastor thinks has been said. The problem is that these very same pastors can listen to a Dan Wallace lecture, hear him say that we do not have the original, and somehow come away from the lecture believing that we have the original.

Now the truly paradoxical thing about all this is that the very same people who advocate for this view present the discussion as though the “onlyists” are the problem. Further, the average pastor believes that we have truly found the original while appealing to men who adamantly state the opposite. I invite my reader to come to a conclusion. Does the person who upholds the pluralistic view have any ground to object to any other view of Scripture? Is the battle against the “onlyists” warranted? I will suggest, in conclusion, that the pluralists are sailing in a burning boat, shouting at a boat that is not on fire.

No, The KJV Translators Would Not Be Okay With the ESV

March 17, 2021 The Young, Textless, and Reformed3 Comments

Framing the Argument

One of the most common pieces of misinformation is the belief that the KJV translators would be okay with the form of our modern bibles. I see this claim made all the time on the internet, so I figured I’d address it here. The argument is first framed in terms of “KJV Onlyism,” by which is meant people who only use the KJV. This includes everybody who reads a KJV regardless of the reason they do so. Then it moves on to quote the KJV translators, who do indeed praise the work of other translations that they consulted when creating the KJV. The argument concludes by saying that because the KJV recognized other translations as valid, they would not be KJV Onlyists. So far, the argument is valid. It is a low-tier argument against people who think the KJV translators believed they were re-inspired while creating the KJV. The problem is that this argument, as I have seen it, is used to then say that the KJV translators and Christians during that time would have accepted modern translations such as the ESV, NIV, or NASB.

If you read the above argument, you will notice a serious flaw once it is applied to justify the use of modern translations from the words of the KJV translators. Just because the KJV translators were fine with other translations available to them at the time, does not at all mean they would be fine with an ESV, or any other modern translation for that matter. That would require actually understanding what these men believed about Scripture and applying that to translations such as the ESV, NASB, and NIV. It is illogical, a non-sequitur, to say that because the KJV translators appreciated other translations, which they did, that they would then appreciate the translations that were made well after their time. All the argument has set forth is that they were not “KJV Onlyists,” which as far as I’m concerned isn’t exactly controversial or in any way compelling against the use of the KJV. Most “KJV Onlyists” fall into the category of believing that the KJV is simply made from the correct text, and is the best translation of that text. I’m sure the KJV translators were happy with their work as well, for what it’s worth. The whole world certainly was, and in large part still is.

The Argument and its Refutation

You may disagree with the claim that the KJV is the best available translation, but the argument that the KJV translators weren’t “KJV Onlyists” is utterly irrelevant to the claim that the KJV is the best available translation today or that the KJV translators and those that came after would have read a modern translation.

This is why I severely dislike the arguments produced by the Critical Text crowd. In the first place, the argument smuggles in an overly broad and intentionally vague term – “KJV Onlyism.” Then it asserts that the KJV translators would not fit into this category of “KJV Onlyist.” At this point, there hasn’t been anything particularly controversial set forth. The problem is what comes next.

This same argument, which has already started and ended, is miraculously applied to assert that because the translators were not “KJV Onlyists,” they would be perfectly happy reading an ESV, NASB, NIV, MSG, etc. This simply does not follow and is by no means a refutation of any form of “KJV Onlyism.” One could easily say, “The KJV translators didn’t know and couldn’t have known at the time what they were doing.” There, argument refuted. Even if we assume that we are talking to somebody that follows after Ruckman or Gipp, you have still produced a bad argument.

The Hidden Argument and its Refutation

In order to make the leap that because the KJV translators weren’t “KJV Onlyists” they would read modern translations, you would actually have to present a separate argument that supports the premise that the KJV translators would be happy with the text and translation of modern Bibles. This argument has not been made and cannot be made, because they wouldn’t.

They would not read a Bible without the ending of Mark or the Pericope Adulterae. They would not read a Bible that pulls from the Vatican manuscript every time it disagrees with the Received Text. In what world would men read such texts, who wrote that only the “enemies of the faith” performed such surgery on the text of Scripture? The argument is so remarkably absurd and anachronistic it bewilders me. This argument supposes that men who would battle for the authenticity of 1 John 5:7 would adopt Bibles that excluded far less controversial passages such as Acts 8:37 and Mark 16:9-20.

Unlike what is chronicled in the textual-criticism-fan-fiction that is The King James Only Controversy, the reason Erasmus included the Comma Johanneum is that he feared nobody would read it if he excluded it. It is likely that the only reason they are making such an argument is due to the fact that scholars also make this argument, not by any supporting evidence from the historical record.

As we commented on before, the argument that the KJV translators would not be “KJVO” is irrelevant and bad. The issue is the severe logical disconnect that happens afterwards when respectable men make the ridiculous claim that not only would the ESV last more than five minutes in the halls of Westminster in the 17th century, but that they would put down their King James for it. I challenge anybody to try and substantiate that claim. What most people do not realize is that the Reformed and Post Reformation divines would have written treatises against the ESV, because they did so for far less error than the ESV contains. The argument the Critical Text advocates are looking for is that they believe the translators of the KJV, the Reformed, and the Post-Reformed were wrong about their Scriptural convictions. That is a perfectly acceptable argument that one could try and substantiate. But to say that these men, who wrote treatises over far less, would actually adopt a modern translation is incredibly obtuse.

Conclusion

One might argue that with “newer and better” data the King James translators, Reformed, and those who came after wouldn’t hold such convictions, but that again is another argument, and a hypothetical one at that. What we have is solid historical evidence that the KJV translators, the Reformed, and the Post Reformed would not have accepted a Bible that excludes the passages that modern Bibles exclude. They even comment on the lack of quality of the manuscript, Codex Vaticanus, that the modern Bibles are generally based off of! Not only that, but the general opinion that these men held was that manuscripts that excluded such passages as Mark 16:9-20 were produced by enemies of the faith or perhaps careless copyists. So the argument that our data would have impressed them enough to change their mind is based on a smattering of incomplete manuscripts that looked just like the ones they often critiqued quite harshly.

I’ll end by quoting John Owen, who I think can be said to represent the orthodox view of the time well.

“(9.)Let them also be removed from the pretense, which carry their own convictions along with them that they are spurious, either,[…] Arise out of copies apparently corrupted, like that of Beza in Luke, and that in the Vatican boasted of by Huntley the Jesuit, which Lucas Brugensis affirms to have been changed by the Vulgar Latin, and which was written and corrected, as Erasmus says, about the [time of the] council of Florence, when an agreement was patched up between the Greeks and Latins; or, (10.) Are notoriously corrupted by the old heretics, as 1 John 5:7.”
^] John Owen, The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold, vol. 16 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, n.d.), 366–367.

Sure, let’s set forth the absurd opinion that men who considered the form of modern bibles akin to those “notoriously corrupted by the old heretics” would have been just fine reading an ESV because they were fine with reading multiple Bibles. This is not a serious argument, and nobody that takes themselves seriously should make it.

The problem for most “KJV Onlyists” is not that Bibles exist other than the KJV. Sure, there is definitely a subset of people who we can all agree are in error that fall into the category of “KJVO,” but this argument isn’t just directed at them. The problem that the average KJV reader has is that modern translations have issues first with the underlying text. A modern translator could produce a translation that is as beautiful as the King James and the problem would still be there. That is not to mention that there are many translations that are simply not worth the paper they are printed on, even if you accept the base text as valid. There is a reason modern scholars advocate for reading all the translations, because none of them get it 100% right.

The only reason I can possibly imagine for this argument becoming so widespread is a long pattern of men intentionally misrepresenting the views of the Christian people during and after the time the KJV was produced. If you take anybody as your source for textual criticism and translation who makes this argument seriously, I would consider finding a new source of information, because people who make such claims are severely underinformed. The historical record shows, that even if the KJV had not attained such uniform adoption and perhaps some other translation rose to the top, the people of God at the time the KJV was translated would still reject modern translations. So if you wish to make the argument that the KJV translators weren’t “KJVO,” continue doing so I suppose. Just know it’s not particularly convincing and it certainly doesn’t support the use of modern translations.

Guest Article: Pastor Dane Johannsson Addresses Spurious Claims About Doctrine Not Being Affected

March 8, 2021March 13, 2021 The Young, Textless, and Reformed2 Comments

I invited Pastor Dane Johannsson to write an article for my blog as an appendix to this article that I wrote about 1 John 5:7 and unbelief. He demonstrates not only that doctrine is affected, but that all texts of Scripture are fair game for revision and removal.

Introduction

Greetings and felicitations in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. I would like to thank Taylor for allowing me to write a guest post on his blog. After reading his article, titled, “1 John 5:7 And Unbelief”, a striking example was brought to my mind which demonstrates the veracity of what Taylor puts forward in that article. Confessional Text advocates have long pointed out that the views of both the men who are compiling the new editions of the critical text (the completed volumes of the ECM and their corresponding handbooks, most recently the NA28) as well as the “conservative evangelical” men working in the field (Dr. Wallace, Dr. Gurry, Dr. Hixson etc.) do not match the views of the vast majority of reformed and evangelical Christians and pastors who utilize either translations of the handbooks or the handbooks themselves.

The average reformed/evangelical pastor who may consult an NA28, and the average Christian sitting in their pews with an ESV or NASB, do not share the theology of the men who gave them their New Testament texts. In most cases, they are completely unaware of what those men believe. For instance, as has been cited by Taylor himself on this blog countless times, “evangelical” scholar Dr. Daniel Wallace, who professes to hold to both the inspiration of the Bible and its inerrancy, in the introduction to Drs. Peter Gurry and Elijah Hixon’s book, “Myths and Mistakes”, writes,

“We do not have now – in our critical Greek texts or 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.”
Gurry & Hixson. Myths & Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism. xii.

Granted, Dr. Wallace also flat out denies the doctrine of preservation (specifically as articulated in the Westminster Confession 1.8, that the Scriptures were “kept pure in all ages” by God’s “singular care and providence”). But most Pastors and Christians who appeal to Dr. Wallace, as any kind of an authority, are completely unaware of this. Hence the problem. If you survey the average evangelical/reformed Christian or pastor, they will likely say that they agree with the statement, “We know with great certainty that at least 99.9% of the text of the New Testament is certain and settled.” They would reject as problematic and unorthodox the assertion, “We do not have certainty that any of our Greek texts or translations thereof, exactly represent what the original authors of the New Testament wrote. We simply cannot know if any reading is original. There are many, many places in which the text of the New Testament is uncertain.” Most Christians would reject such a doctrine, and they should.

A Case-study In Reconstruction

Many Christians who trust modern evangelical textual scholarship and translations, even when shown that this is the doctrinal beliefs of those who are creating the text and translation of their Bibles, tend to dismiss it as a non-issue. For them, at the end of the day, it is not really that big of a problem. This is where Taylor’s article becomes particularly helpful. He writes,

“Once you accept the premise that the Bible has fallen into such disarray that it must be reconstructed, there is not a single passage of Scripture that cannot be called into question.”
https://youngtextlessreformed.com/2021/03/08/1-john-57-and-unbelief/

“Surely this must be an exaggeration”, respond some, “This is a mere emotional response! You cannot actually be implying that literally any text of Scripture could be called into question or changed, that is just a conspiracy theorist mindset!” I wish I was making it up, but this is the exact response that I myself have had from many Christians. A great litmus test (or could I say, “litmus text”) to demonstrate a Christian’s experiential awareness of the self-authentication of the Scripture, that they do indeed hear the Shepherd’s voice in His Word, in its relation to text criticism, is to take them to John 3:16.

I have sometimes asked Christians, “If there were to be some massive discovery of ancient manuscripts, and 100 complete copies of the gospel of John from 150A.D. were found, but they were all missing John 3:16, and the leading evangelical scholars determined, based upon this evidence, that John 3:16 should be removed from the Bible, would you be okay with it?” The vast majority of people I have asked have responded with a resounding, “NO”.

“This is an interesting point of argument, Pastor Dane”, someone might say, “but the this is only hypothetical, no one is actually removing or changing John 3:16. The differences between the critical text and the received text do not affect doctrine or beloved passages like John 3:16.” For the sake of argument, let’s just ignore the fact that it can be demonstrably proven that the changes in the modern critical texts do affect doctrine. What if I were to tell you that beloved passages, key doctrinal passages, one’s which contain the very gospel itself, like John 3:16, actually are affected by changes in the modern critical texts? What if I were to tell you that Taylor’s assertion (“Once you accept the premise that the Bible has fallen into such disarray that it must be reconstructed, there is not a single passage of Scripture that cannot be called into question”) can be proven by looking at John 3:16 in the NA28, the most trusted and widely used modern critical Greek text, from which the most popular modern Bible translations are made?

The Authorised Version, representing the reading of the Textus Receptus and the overwhelming majority of Greek manuscripts, reads, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”(John 3:16, KJV) In the ESV it reads, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”(John 3:16, ESV) All the major modern translations read the same way, and most of them claim to be based off of the NA28 critical text.

What we want to look at is not the lack of “eth” on the verbs, or the difference in translation between, “only begotten Son”, and, “only Son”, but the pronoun, “his”, in the first clause, “his only begotten Son”. There is something alarming in the NA28 Greek text, which is said to underlie the translation of the ESV 2016. It demonstrates both Taylor’s assertion and how practically problematic the theological underpinnings of men like Dr. Wallace are. In the NA28 the pronoun, “his”, is not in the text. If one were to translate the first clause of John 3:16 as it stands in the main text of the NA28, it might read, “For God so loved the world, that he gave the one and only/unique son.” (For those of you who read Greek, “οὕτως γὰρ ἠγάπησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν κόσμον, ὥστε τὸν υἱὸν τὸν μονογενῆ ἔδωκεν” ; I have rendered τὸν μονογενῆ as, “one and only, or, unique”, to be consistent with the “scholarly consensus” found in the ESV and the NET, even though I agree with the KJV’s rendering, “only begotten”).

Doctrine IS Affected

It should also be noted that this is not new information. The NA27, the UBS 4^th edition corrected, the Tyndale House GNT, the Zondervan Reader’s GNT, and the UBS 5^th also do not contain the pronoun, “his”, in John 3:16. I also checked the NA25 and it too was missing “αὐτοῦ” from the text. Thus, we can conclude, from at least 1962, the modern critical text, from which modern “evangelical” Bible translations are made, has not contained the pronoun, “αὐτοῦ”, in the main printed text of John 3:16. We must therefore ask, If this is the case, that the text from which modern Bible translations are made does not have, “his”, in the text, then why does it appear in all editions of the NIV, ESV, NASB, NLT and even all editions of the RSV and NRSV?

I can think of a few reasons, the most important of which is that if they were to translate the clause as it reads in the text (“For God so loved the world that he gave the one and only son”) they would open the flood gates for a host of theological problems and difficulties, specifically in the realm of Christology. Is Jesus Christ God’s Son, is Jesus Christ “his” Son, or is Jesus Christ “the” Son? Was Jesus given to the world as a divine messenger, a created being (even the most glorious created being), “the” son through Mary, or is He the eternal Son of God, the second Person of the Triune God, incarnate to save His people from their sins? Could not an Arian, a Mormon, a Jehovah’s Witness, and many other heretics use the reading, “God gave the unique son”, to discredit the sonship and the deity of Jesus Christ? Is not the sonship, and thus the deity, of Jesus Christ, if not under direct attack, at least compromised and complicated by such a reading? I think an orthodox, conservative, evangelical, reformed protestant would be hard-pressed to deny it.

Someone might respond, “Ah, but even with the reading, we can still conclude that ‘the son’ is God’s Son. The doctrine of Christ’s divine sonship is taught in many other places in Scripture, so even if someone tried to twist this passage to say that Jesus Christ is not God’s eternal Son, we can still point them to many other places that prove it. Even with this reading, Pastor Dane, no doctrine is affected.” If we look at the entire picture I do not think such a response has any legs to stand upon. We are not dealing with a problem in only this one verse, but problems in the seeming vast majority of key Christological verses.

Assuming that one could still argue that the eternal sonship of Jesus Christ can still be demonstrated with the NA28 reading, what happens when we add in the rest of the problematic readings in key Christological verses? To serve as a small sampling, consider, John 1:18 in the critical text, which reads, “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known”(ESV), compared to the received text, “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.”(KJV) Or what about when we add in 1Timothy 3:16 in the critical text, “Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh”(ESV), compared with the received text, “without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh.”(KJV) Still further, what shall we conclude when 1John 5:7 is also considered, which teaches that the Word (that is, Jesus Christ, God’s eternal Son) is one with God, being contained in the received text and completely absent from the critical text? The KJV in this place reads, “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.” In the ESV it reads … well, nothing … because it is not present in the text. We simply do not have time to look at every problematic reading in the critical text concerning Christology, but there are many more.

When we zoom out and see that a great many of the key Christological passages that teach the eternal sonship of Christ and the divinity of Christ have problematic readings in the critical text, the reading now before us in John 3:16 cannot simply be brushed aside as unimportant or said to have no effect on doctrine. I believe this is the main reason that all the major modern Bible translations completely deviate from the text they are translating and retain the reading, “his only son”, found in the received text and the vast majority of Greek manuscripts. To translate the text in front of them would cause serious theological problems and sully the most beloved verse in the Bible.

Conclusion

Whether it is due to ignorance, self-preservation, or a willingness to burry one’s head in the sand and hide from the dire reality of the situation, most Christians and pastors who use the critical text and translations of them do not acknowledge the truth of Taylor’s statement, “Once you accept the premise that the Bible has fallen into such disarray that it must be reconstructed, there is not a single passage of Scripture that cannot be called into question.” If you want a tangible test of the veracity of this claim, I propose the following steps:

If you can read Greek, open up your NA28, UBS5, or Tyndale GNT to John 3:16 and simply read it as it stands in the text, you will immediately notice that the Bible no longer says, “God gave his only begotten son”, as you have so long quoted. If you do not know Greek, grab a black sharpie, open up your ESV, NASB, NET or NIV and fix the translators’ error by returning the text back to the form accepted by the scholars who printed the Greek text your translation is from, cross out the word, “his”, in John 3:16.
As you look down at the page, echo aloud the words of Dr. Dan Wallace, “I do not have now exactly what the authors of the New Testament wrote. Even if I did, I would not know it. There are many, many places in which the text of the New Testament is uncertain.”
If you follow these steps, I assure you that you will not be able to so quickly dismiss Taylor’s assertion, “Once you accept the premise that the Bible has fallen into such disarray that it must be reconstructed, there is not a single passage of Scripture that cannot be called into question.”

20 Articles That Refute Modern Textual Criticism

October 6, 2020 The Young, Textless, and Reformed5 Comments

Introduction

Every time I write an article, my blog becomes increasingly difficult to navigate. I probably need to revamp how the site is organized, but until then I thought I’d put together an article that serves as a glossary to some helpful articles that respond to common claims made by Critical Text apologists.

I have heard it said that in the refutation of the Critical Text, TR advocates are being unnecessarily negative and critical without offering any solutions. This is not true, because the TR position has a rich doctrinal structure, furnished with historical and Scriptural support. If you want to read a summary of the argument in support of the TR, see this article. If you want to read a number of articles I have written on the topic, see this category here.

Common Claims Made by Critical Text Apologists Answered

The Skepticism of the TR Position

October 5, 2020March 13, 2021 The Young, Textless, and Reformed10 Comments

Introduction

Recently James White made the claim that he was astonished at the skepticism of the TR position, comparing it to that of Bart Ehrman. What men like James White do not seem to understand is that this skepticism is not a skepticism of the Scriptures, it is in the modern critical text, which isn’t even finished. What is actually astonishing is the lack of skepticism from people who know this system inside and out. It demonstrates a complete lack of discernment and a troubling adherence to the axioms of modern textual criticism. Now, I can see White now, reading the first four sentences of this article and talking about how wrong I am (with props and all!), but for the discerning reader, I want to present my case as to why it’s not astonishing at all to be extremely skeptical of the Modern Critical Text.

Three Reasons Christians Should Practice Discernment When Approaching the Critical Text

1 – Modern Critical Text Advocates and Bart Ehrman Agree in Almost Everything

While White loves to level the claim that TR advocates are the real skeptics by comparing them to Bart Ehrman, he fails to highlight the fact that him and Bart Ehrman essentially agree on everything. Here is a video of Bart Ehrman saying as much. The only thing that these two men disagree upon is the conclusion that God has anything to do with the Bible. So when White comments that TR advocates are skeptical like Bart Ehrman, he’s really just saying that TR advocates are better students than he is.

We listen to what the scholars have to say about the critical text, and believe them, because they created it. It should not be surprising that Reformed Christians who take church history seriously might reject something new to the church from the 20th century and on. What is really going on when White and others make this argument is that they are distracting from the reality that it is actually their system that agrees with Bart Ehrman.

Not only does the textbook that the critical text advocates use have Ehrman’s name on the front, the main academic book series that is putting out the latest scholarly writing on the topic also has his name on it! In fact, pretty much any book you want to read that represents the critical text position has Bart Ehrman’s name on it or in it. As White loves to point out, this is a clear, and intentional, confusion of categories. TR advocates are skeptical of the critical text, not the Scriptures which they have received. Even if none of this was reality, in order to make this argument consistently, critical text apologists should first retract any claims that those in the TR camp are adhering to blind faith fundamentalism. The fact is that the TR methodology is fundamentally not skeptical, which is a common critique of the position.

2 – What Is Said About the Critical Text is Often Not True of the Critical Text

This is probably the biggest grievance I have with those that advocate for the critical text – they either are ignorant of what the critical text is, or are simply misrepresenting what it is they are advocating for. The critical text is not a Bible in the way that most people think it is. It is a lot of bibles packaged together or perhaps a compendium of manuscript readings. Scholars that produce these texts do not advertise them as “the very Word of God.” These printed volumes simply represent a reconstructed snapshot of the transmitted text at a certain point in time in the transmission history of the New Testament. The readings in each of these texts are simply the editors’ opinions on which reading is the earliest. In the case of the Modern Critical Text, all versions of it represent closely one or two manuscripts from a single geographical location dated around the fourth century. There is not a single scholar or apologist for the Critical Text that would say that any Bible translation is translated from the full record of the original, inspired text. James White touched on this in his recent debate with Pastor Jeff Riddle when being questioned about the authenticity of the ending of Mark, which just confirms he lines up with Dan Wallace and the rest of the intelligentsia on the topic.

“We do not have now – in our critical Greek texts or 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.”
Gurry & Hixson, Myths & Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism, xii. Quote Dan Wallace.

I recognize that people have different perspectives on a wide array of theological topics, but it would be nice for the men who advocate for the Modern Critical Text to at least be straight forward about what their text actually is. TR advocates are skeptical of this text because the scholars that created it are skeptical of it. There is no wide spread conspiracy theory, because the scholars themselves believe what the TR advocates are saying.

3 – Modern Critical Text Advocates Pretend That A Healthy Dose of Skepticism is Outlandish

No matter how loudly somebody denies this reality, there is a good reason people are skeptical of the Modern Critical Text(s). In the first place, it’s not finished. In the second place, the goal of Modern Textual Criticism isn’t to find the autographic readings, it’s to find the earliest possible readings. In the third place, the scholars themselves admit that their text is not verifiable. If you aren’t skeptical of this, you probably should be.

If somebody was trying to sell you a car, and they told you that they weren’t sure if it had all the parts, that they had no way of knowing if it had all the parts, and that another model was coming out soon that also didn’t have all the parts, would you buy that car? Would you let your kids drive it? Probably not, I hope. You would hopefully go and buy a car that at least advertises itself as being a full car. It is time that Modern Critical Text advocates stop pretending that it is absurd for TR advocates to be skeptical of a product that quite literally describes itself as something to be skeptical about.

Conclusion

At this point in the discussion of New Testament Textual Criticism, there is more than enough information available to at least make a determination on whether or not the array of critical texts should be trusted. Shifting the argument and projecting doesn’t change the reality of what textual scholars are actually saying. As it pertains to this argument, you don’t need to know anything about the TR to know that the Critical Text(s) is not what apologists claim that it is. If the claim is that TR advocates are too skeptical, the person making the claim is either misinformed or intentionally conflating categories.

It is revealing that in one breath, a Critical Text apologist can claim that TR advocates have “The same view as Mormons” on Scripture while also asserting that they are “Skeptical like Bart Erhman.” Instead of conflating categories so irresponsibly, it’s important to recognize that when TR advocates are called skeptical, the thing they are skeptical about is the Modern Critical Text. If you aren’t skeptical of the Modern Critical Text, read what the scholars are saying about it before blindly listening to the shock and awe arguments of James White and co. Believe it or not, there are really great reasons to believe that the scholars who created the various Critical Texts are accurate in describing what they created. What the TR advocates are actually setting forth is that Christians have every reason to believe that God has preserved His Word, and that we have that very text today. We simply disagree upon which text that is.

They Think You’re Stupid

September 5, 2020September 11, 2020 The Young, Textless, and Reformed1 Comment

This is the third article in the series, “Faith Seeking Understanding” .

Do you remember during the reformation when they said, “Ad Fontes, back to the Latin Vulgate?” Yeah, me neither. Yet this is the kind of rhetoric that props up the critical texts. Every convert from the critical text position to the TR position has a moment where they realize that many of the attacks against the TR are simply attacks against the history and theology that they believe in. It’s a very similar experience that many people have when they realize that the mainstream media has been lying to them about almost everything. See this quote from James White just two days ago.

“The reformers and puritans would have used what we have today [the modern critical Greek text, they just did not have it], there is no question about that, and I would simply challenge the whole idea of a singular text of the Reformation. There was a general … uhhh …. 11th to 14th century primarily Byzantine manuscript tradition text that was used in general, but if you really want the text of the reformation, (let’s be honest) it was the Latin Vulgate. I mean, I mean, they, most of the reformers were significantly better in Latin (they spoke and preached and everything else in Latin) than they were in Greek .”

Ironically, this quote could serve as a “red pill” for many people in conservative Christianity. White would have you believe that the text of the Reformation was actually the Latin Vulgate. That the visible church, which, as White often says was captive to the Vulgate for 1,000 years, decided to continue defending the very text that had held them captive. Yes, the very text that the Papists defended, was in fact the text of the Reformation. It’s as if the Reformers had Stockholm syndrome and defended their abuser.

The only conclusion that I can draw from this is that these people genuinely believe that their audience is stupid. They think that you are stupid. If this quote is indeed true, we have to rewrite the entire history of the Reformation, where the Reformers defended the Latin Vulgate and weren’t able to translate ancient works from Greek into Latin without BDAG. This kind of defense of the critical texts is actually a beautiful boon to the church, because anybody with a basic understanding of Reformation history knows that the text of the reformation was not the Latin Vulgate. In fact, the Latin Vulgate was officially the text of the counter reformation, codified at the Council of Trent.

Now, from a very practical perspective, this is the kind of argument that might cause even the most average student of church history to pause. It is actually an argument that breaks out of the text-critical realm and into one that many more people have access to: church history. See, the vast majority of the church is generally unaware of textual scholarship. However, and thanks in large part to James White, a huge chunk of conservative Christians are quite familiar with Reformation history.

It should be apparent to everybody reading this article why mere fundamentalism doesn’t adequately explain the appeal to the TR when defending the critical text involves saying that the text of the Reformation was, unironically, the Latin Vulgate. Most importantly, our theology should be pulled from Scripture. As I noted in the last article in this series, the theology of the critical text is something along the lines of “quasi-preservation”. Instead of dealing with this, many choose to attack the historical account of the Reformation itself. The example in this article is probably the most obtuse that I have seen yet.

This is another reason why many flock to the majority text or TR position – the arguments for the critical text read more like conspiracy theories than an actual theological position. Now, an argument against something is not an argument in favor of another, I recognize that wholeheartedly. This article is not a defense of the TR. Rather, it is yet another reason, other than rabid fundamental emotionalism, why people begin to search outside of the critical text for answers about the bible they read.