Tag: KJVO

Mark Ward Proves That Defending Inerrancy Means Nothing

The Young, Textless, and Reformed1 Comment

Many Christians believe that it is fundamental to defend the modern doctrine of Inerrancy. This would be true, if the doctrine of Inerrancy actually set forth anything meaningful. According to Mark Ward, Inerrancy means that “The Bible speaks truly in everything it affirms” (Ward. Bibliology for Beginners. 29.) Inerrancy is the doctrine that affirms the inspiration and authority of the Bible, but only in the original texts, which are no longer extant. This effectively makes it an utterly useless doctrine. Despite this fact, Ward gives four Scripture proofs to support this doctrine (I will use Ward’s translation from the book):

  1. “Your Word is truth” (John 17:17)
  2. “God is not a man, that He should lie” (Num. 23:19)
  3. “God, who cannot lie” (Titus 1:2)
  4. “The Scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35)

Ward continues his thought by saying something quite interesting.

“It is sin to doubt God’s words, and like all sin it is a slippery slope…But how do we know what we have in our hands is really the Bible?”

(Ward. Bibliology for Beginners: What Does the Bible Say About the Bible? 33. Ellipses represent a break.)

So here Ward has to answer the most important question possible. If he does not answer this question adequately, the entirety of his book is useless. The answer to this question informs what is actually substantiated by the doctrine of Inerrancy. It is one thing to say that the Bible is inerrant, and another to be able to point to a Bible and say, “This is inerrant.” So how does Ward answer this question? Well, we know, according to Ward, based on “a work called ‘textual criticism'” (49). This is where I need my reader to pay attention. See how he finishes this thought.

“Here’s where I need to say very directly, don’t be alarmed. Yes, there are differences among Greek New Testament manuscripts. Yes, I sometimes wish they weren’t there, that we knew with precise certainty what every last syllable of the Greek New Testament was. It may even seem like that’s what Jesus promised us.”

(Ward. Bibliology for Beginners: What Does the Bible Say About the Bible? 50.

Ward has used a clever use of words to obfuscate what he is actually saying, so I will translate for you. Surrounding this statement are explanations of the various kinds of scribal errors which do not amount to any serious variants. In this statement, he leads his reader to believe that these are the kinds of variants that we do not know “With precise certainty,” or that we are actually after “every last syllable.” What Ward is actually saying here is that we do not know with precise certainty what the original text said. At that point, whether we are talking about syllables or words does not matter, because there is no amount of granularity that can be determined with his standard. The entire purpose of this chapter is to lower the guard of the Christian’s that read this book. He concludes with this statement:

“The fact is that every available edition of the Greek New Testament gives the same law – and the same grace. They all teach the same Christian faith.”

(Ward. Bibliology for Beginners: What Does the Bible Say About the Bible? 50.

The first thing my reader should notice is that if this is what Ward actually believes, he has no right to attack the TR. In fact, he has no reason to write this book at all because all bibles are basically the same. The TR falls into the category of “every available edition of the Greek New Testament.” So either Ward doesn’t actually believe what he wrote here, or a good portion of his ministry is folly, according to his own standard. Not only is it folly, it is actually sin, again, according to his standard.

Secondly, my reader should notice that Ward introduces his own standard for how you should view the Bible. This is common among the Critical Text crowd. They almost always avoid exegeting the entirely of 2 Timothy 3:15-16. The Scriptures are “able to make thee wise unto salvation” in addition to being profitable for “doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” The Bible is not just a bare bones document that is only to be used for bringing people to Christ. It also informs the Christian’s entire life as it pertains to faith and practice. According to Ward, the “textual critics have weeded them (variants) out with a high degree of confidence” (Ibid. 58). That is to say that Ward has a low degree of uncertainty.

So let’s put this all together. According to Ward, “it is sin to doubt God’s words.” According to Ward, “every available edition of the Greek New Testament gives the same law – and the same Grace. They all teach the same Christian faith.” According to Ward, we can have “a high degree of confidence” in our Bible. So not only is Ward in sin for doubting the TR, he is also in sin for not having full confidence in his own Bible. He is further in sin for teaching people to sin by doubting God’s words. Keep in mind that this is all according to Ward’s own standard that he set in his book.

Lastly, I want my reader to note that nowhere has Ward actually answered the question, “how do we know that what we have in our hands is really the Bible?” He never identifies a particular text or translation and he never says anything other than that “we have a high degree of confidence” that what we have is a Bible. Which is to say, “we have a low degree of doubt.” Which again, according to Ward, is sin. The most important thing to recognize about this “high degree of confidence,” is that it is entirely arbitrary. There is no metric or component of the critical text methodology that actually allows for such a determination, which is apparent in the fact that Ward doesn’t actually substantiate anything he says in this book regarding his levels of confidence. This is the fatal flaw of the Critical Text, and everybody knows it. Mark Ward wrote an entire book about the Bible, and couldn’t even tell his reader what the Bible was, or that they could be fully confident in said Bible. According to Ward, that makes him “in sin.”

My reader needs to recognize that while this theology is actually foolish, but it is also a blessing. It is a blessing because men like Mark Ward very confidently state that they don’t actually believe in a Bible. They believe in a reconstructed text that bears witness to the Bible with a high degree of confidence. That is not the Protestant view, which allows people like you and me to mark and avoid teachers like Ward, Wallace, and White. It is the dividing line. It is the fight of this generation. People have stopped believing in the Bible and the authority of the Bible, and the aforementioned men are leading the charge to convince conservative Christians to do the same.

Mark Ward the Conspiracy Theorist

The Young, Textless, and Reformed8 Comments

Introduction

Mark Ward recently published a pamphlet in November 2020 called, Bibliology for Beginners: What Does the Bible Say About the Bible?. I’m going to do a full analysis on my YouTube channel in the coming weeks, but I ran across something too good not to comment on here. If you’re familiar with Ward’s work, you know that above all else he values that people be “nice” when disagreeing with him and people he likes. He re-emphasizes this on pages 65 and 66 when commenting on Crossway’s “Permanent Edition.”


“This means that when Crossway put out a Permanent Text Edition of their popular and excellent translation, the English Standard Version, promising no more revisions, Christian people should have complained on social media (nicely) and written into Crossway to object (nicely).”

Mark Ward. Bibliology for Beginners: What Does the Bible Say About the Bible?. 65-66.

Now it is comical that Mark Ward simultaneously lauds the ESV as an “excellent translation” while also stating that it is not excellent enough in its current state to be settled. I have said this often, but it’s entertaining to note that modern scholars praise their modern versions while at the same time commenting on the fact that they aren’t good enough to stay the same for more than a decade or good enough to be read in isolation. If it was such an “excellent” translation, why does it go through revisions so often or need to be supplemented with other “imperfect” translations? I imagine Crossway wouldn’t sell a lot of Bibles if they released a marketing campaign around Ward’s idea of “An imperfect Bible for an imperfect church!” Getting back to my point, we see here that Ward values the first commandment of evangelical scholarship so much he included it twice.

It is ironic that Ward very loudly and repeatedly states how much he needs people to be nice while simultaneously offering the harshest and most uncharitable critiques of people who disagree with him. He slaps people with the same hand he offers fellowship, but it’s fine as long as he does it with a soft voice and plenty silly, quirky, quips and analogies. If you don’t believe me, he literally compares the transmission of the Bible to the germs left on a cookie that one of his kids licked from top to bottom and put back in the cookie jar. In this article, I am going to demonstrate that Ward seems to have an extremely conspiratorial view of what he calls “KJV Onlyists.”

Wide Eyed Conspiracy Theories

On page 67, Ward offers the most honest definition of “KJV Onlyism” employed by Critical Text advocates.

“KJV-Onlyists insist that the KJV is the only truly trustworthy translation of Scripture. It is, they say, the best translation of the best texts.”

Mark Ward. Bibliology for Beginners: What Does the Bible Say About the Bible?. 67.

I have been saying for a long time that men like Ward and James White define “KJV Onlyists” as anybody who reads a KJV, but here he says it clearly. What my reader needs to recognize is that when people use the term “KJV Onlyist,” they are not talking about the views of people who graduated from Ward’s Alma Mater. They are talking about anybody who reads a KJV.

After defining “KJV Onlyism,” Ward continues to produce one of the most unhinged takes I have ever seen on page 68.

“It must be pointed out that most KJV-Only Christians believe that the vast majority of Christians who can read Greek and Hebrew are stupid, crazy, or evil (rather than simply wrong) – dupes, dummies, or devils involved in a plot to undermine the Bible’s teaching about Christ’s deity. KJV-Onlyism is, in other words, a conspiracy theory.”

Mark Ward. Bibliology for Beginners: What Does the Bible Say About the Bible?. 68.

In a remarkably matter-of-fact statement made by Ward, he actually alleges that “most KJV-Only Christians” believe in a vast conspiracy propagated by “stupid, crazy, or evil” Christians. He shockingly insinuates that people who read the KJV believe that “vast majority of Christians who can read Greek and Hebrew” are “dupes, dummies, or devils involved in a plot to undermine the Bible’s teaching about Christ’s deity.” This is by far the most absurd thing I have read in a very long time. There is a difference between somebody saying, “This textual variant teaches something different about the divinity of Christ” and “There is a vast conspiracy to take Christ’s divinity out of Scripture.” Ironically, there are many people in Ward’s camp who allege that a conspiracy took place in the early church to add Christ’s divinity into the text, and that is pretty mainstream!

I will do my best to pick through Ward’s wild ideas. In the first place, the number of Christians who can read Greek and Hebrew is astonishingly small. Secondly, this statement demonstrates that the foremost recognized “KJV Scholar” hasn’t the slightest clue who actually reads the KJV. I suspect this could be due to the fact that he believes nobody can actually read the KJV. It seems that in order to make sense of why people read the KJV, Ward has concocted a world in which there is a massive group of conspiracy theorists in the church. This must be the only reason somebody would read a KJV! Instead of charitably stating that people who read the KJV simply disagree with the conclusions of modern textual scholarship, he sends his reader off the deep end into a ridiculous conspiracy theory that KJV readers are unhinged conspiracy theorists. Even though Ward states that “They say” that it is because the KJV is the best translation of the best texts, Ward posits that the true reason is a rampant conspiracy theory plaguing the church.

Conclusion

It’s funny how Critical Text advocates cannot write a book about their theology without talking poorly about the KJV and those who read it. In Ward’s case, it seems he got done watching CNN and realized that the “QAnon” strategy could also work in the realm of the Bible translation debate. Here’s the strategy:

  1. Find a conspiracy theory
  2. Misrepresent the conspiracy theory
  3. Paint all people from the group you don’t like as the same as those conspiracy theorists

There are certainly people that believe as Ward has described above, just like there were/are people who believe things on anonymous message boards. The same way that CNN paints “most conservatives” as “QAnon,” Ward paints “most KJV Onlyists” as conspiracy theorists. This is honestly embarrassing and I’m not sure who signed off on actually publishing these statements. It is such a bad take, in fact, that it is a conspiracy theory in itself. If Ward truly values being nice and charitable so much, it makes zero sense to call most of the 55% of people who read a Bible conspiracy theorists.

Overall, I found Ward’s take highly entertaining. He would rather believe that most KJV readers are conspiracy theorists than actually look at the arguments and interact with them. If anything, this should be encouraging to my readers who are TR advocates because the Critical Text guys have resorted to CNN arguments in their attempts to justify their text. When it comes down to it, Critical Text advocates have openly admitted that they have no ultimate standard by which they judge texts (James White), and that they don’t have a text today (Dan Wallace). I’ll leave my reader with four quotes, which are mostly for Mark Ward, because I know that he reads my blog.

“It is found again in the words of Jesus, who said, ‘The Scripture cannot be broken’ (John 10:35).”

Mark Ward. Bibliology for Beginners: What Does the Bible Say About the Bible?. 30.

“Even if the text of the Gospels could be fixed – and, when viewed at the level of object and material artifact, this goal has never been achieved”

Knust & Wasserman. To Cast the First Stone. 15.

“Think about this: if we need the testimony of a professional historian to testify that the testimony of Luke the Apostle is reliable, then who’s going to testify that the professional historian is reliable?”

Mark Ward. Bibliology for Beginners: What Does the Bible Say About the Bible?. 42.

“At some point, we’re just going to have to trust someone – why not let it be God?”

Mark Ward. Bibliology for Beginners: What Does the Bible Say About the Bible?. 42.

Providential Preservation

The Young, Textless, and Reformed1 Comment

This article is a part of the series called Foundations of Protestant Bibliology. In this series, I will examine the core theological foundations of the Protestant view of Scripture.

Introduction

The foundation of the Protestant Reformation was Sola Scriptura – Scripture alone. It was the doctrine that usurped the Papist view that the Magisterium gave the Scriptures authority in both word and interpretation. Many modern Calvinists and Reformed boldly proclaim this doctrine, yet it in this generation it has lost much of its substance. The men who give the Seminaries their doctrine on Scripture have increasingly departed from the Reformation definition of Sola Scriptura. See the following thoughts of leading evangelical scholars on the topic of Scripture:

“I am not convinced that the Bible speaks of its own preservation. That doctrine was first introduced in the Westminster Confession, but it is not something that can be found in scripture.”

Dan Wallace. Interview with Dan Wallace. 2006.

“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.

“It’s true that human beings need ‘every word that comes from the mouth of God’ (Matt. 4:4), but we don’t necessarily need every word all at once.”

Richard Brash. A Christian’s Pocket Guide to How God Preserved the Bible. 62.

“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.

“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.

What sets apart the above thoughts from the Reformation theology of Sola Scriptura is the doctrine of Providential Preservation. It is the missing link that connects the original to what is available today. Without this doctrine, there is never a final text because there is no way to validate the texts we have today, seeing as there is no original to use as a guide. The scholars recognize this as a “methodological gap.”

“The reason is that there is a methodological gap between the start of the textual tradition as we have it and the text of the autograph itself. Any developments between these two points are outside the remit of textual criticism proper. Where there is “no trace [of the original text] in the manuscript tradition” the text critic must, on Mink’s terms, remain silent.” 

Peter Gurry. A Critical Examination of the Coherence based Genealogical Method. 93.

This methodological gap is the fatal flaw in any view of Scripture that requires reconstructing the text from extant manuscripts. Even if the scholars can say with a high degree of certainty that a text is original or at the very least early, there is nothing axiomatically that connects the reconstructed text with the original. As noted above by Dr. Mink, the methods of textual criticism cannot speak regarding the original. This means that the textual scholar who wishes to make the connection between the reconstructed text and the original must do so, not on text-critical grounds, but on theological grounds.

The Theology of the Modern Critical Text

Many scholars and apologists for the Modern Critical Text are adamant that text-criticism is a scientific process.

“In practice New Testament textual critics today tend to be Christians themselves, but not always. It does not matter, for the quality of their work does not depend on their faith but on their adherence to academic standards.”

Jan Krans. http://evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com/2020/10/why-textus-receptus-cannot-be-accepted.html. October 22, 2020.

This is stated as a net-positive, as this supposedly protects the process of creating Bibles from the bias of the scholars themselves. While it is rather foolish to believe that scientists and scholars are unbiased, in adopting such a methodology, the Protestant theology of Scripture is excluded from the modern efforts of text-criticism. This is generally viewed as a positive trait of the methodology, but it introduces a serious theological error: The goal of text-criticism, which is to reconstruct the original, is outside of the stated capabilities of the current methodology. The Church is faced with a serious conundrum as a result of this reality. The modern doctrine of Scripture is one that works from evidence to doctrine, rather than doctrine to evidence.

In doctrine, modern Christians proclaim the following:

2. Holy Scripture, being God’s own Word, written by men prepared and superintended by His Spirit, is of infallible divine authority in all matters upon which it touches: it is to be believed, as God’s instruction, in all that it affirms, obeyed, as God’s command, in all that it requires; embraced, as God’s pledge, in all that it promises

4. Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God’s acts in creation, about the events of world history, and about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God’s saving grace in individual lives.

Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. A Short Statement, 2,4.

“We affirm that inspiration, strictly speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture, which in the providence of God can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great accuracy. We further affirm that copies and translations of Scripture are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original.


We deny that any essential element of the Christian faith is affected by the absence of the autographs. We further deny that this absence renders the assertion of Biblical inerrancy invalid or irrelevant.”

Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. Article X.

There are two major doctrines that support the Modern Critical Text. The first is that the Scriptures are preserved in all that they teach, and the second is that doctrines cannot be affected by the efforts of textual criticism. This sounds orthodox at first, but it exposes itself as a heterodox doctrine when examined carefully. If it is the case that “Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching” and that there isn’t “any essential element of the Christian faith [that] is affected,” then the modern theology of Scripture is severely departed from the historical Protestant doctrine of Sola Scriptura. I will examine this claim in the next section.

More importantly, this doctrine allows textual scholars to do whatever to the text of Scripture without any suspicion from the modern church because the effort is founded upon the principle that doctrines cannot be affected, even if the words change. This is the necessary formulation that must be adopted if Providential Preservation is rejected. Since the effort of the Critical Text is justified by the belief that the previous generation’s text is an erroneous development, the text that was used cannot be considered providential or preserved. In adopting the Critical Text methodology, one must necessarily reject Providential Preservation. This is demonstrated as reality by the quotes above.

Since necessary conclusion of the Critical Text requires the rejection of Providential Preservation, the modern doctrine of Scripture is forced to confront the fatal methodological flaw in its system: the lack of an authentication principle. Since the Modern Critical Text methodology has no concept of Providential Preservation and no authentication principle, the text itself is not verifiable nor can it be established as a preserved text. This is evidenced in the way that evangelical text-critics describe the text itself as one which is not the original, but grants “good access” to the original. That is to say that the Bible is not the exact Word of God, but rather is an access point to the Word of God.

This leaves the modern doctrine of Scripture in a precarious place. The former generation had the wrong Bible, but even so, that Bible is infallible in all that it teaches. The modern effort of textual criticism seeks to find the original, yet methodologically it cannot. Despite the modern text being different than the former text, it too is considered infallible in all that it teaches, or inerrant. This is the Modern Critical Conundrum. In the first place, the Bible of the Protestant Reformation has errors, but not in what it teaches. Further, the Modern Critical Text has many places of uncertainty, but not in what it teaches. Differences between the two text forms cannot affect doctrine, yet the modern text form is better to some unquantifiable degree.

The conclusion of such a doctrine is that the actual words of Scripture are not what give the authority to Scripture. The modern doctrine of Scripture does not contain any mechanism to validate the reconstructed text against the original, and the changes between editions and manuscripts cannot affect doctrine. This presents a second fatal flaw which I will pose as a question: If the words in the Bible are not the vehicle of doctrines and teachings in Scripture, what is? This is yet another methodological gap in the modern doctrine of Scripture. Since the words can change while the meaning stays the same, there is some other delivery mechanism for the doctrines. The only conclusion is that interpretation of Scripture is the authority giving mechanism. This is the substance of the Papist argument for the magisterium, and reflects the same battle between the Protestants and Rome.

“The question betwixt us and the Papists, now cometh to be considered, which of these editions is authentical, that is, which of it self hath credit and authority, being sufficient of it self to prove and commend itself, without the help of any other edition, because it is the first exemplar or Copy of the divine truth delivered from God by the Prophets and Apostles.”

Edward Leigh. A Systeme or Body of Divinity. 78. Emphasis mine.

What the modern doctrine of Scripture should demonstrate to my reader is that it requires external validation. Since the modern doctrine of Scripture insists that “doctrine cannot be affected,” the only mechanism that allows for this to be possible is that of interpretation. In other words, the “doctrines cannot be affected” doctrine is really just, “Our interpretation cannot be affected.”

The Theology of Protestant Orthodoxy

There are a number of distinctives that are contained within the Sola Scriptura doctrine of the Protestant Reformation. The modern doctrine sounds a lot like the Protestant doctrine, but does not share the substance. The major distinctions are in authentication and preservation, which give authority to the doctrine. In the first place, the Protestant doctrine teaches that the Scriptures are self-authenticating. This is the case that the Reformed made against the Popish doctrine of the magisterium. Man cannot authenticate the Scriptures, God authenticates the Scriptures.

“It is a most dangerous adventure to examine, or regulate Divine Truths by human wisdome”

Thomas Thorowgood. Moderation Justified. 8.

Second, the Scriptures are Providentially Preserved, or kept pure in all ages. This is the practical function of self-authentication as it relates to the manuscripts. Before defining this further, I will examine the modern response to this doctrine.

The Modern Critical Text view proposes that the Bible was not preserved providentially in the continuous transmission of the Scriptures, rather it was preserved in the totality of the manuscript tradition. So manuscripts that fell out of use and were not propagated forward are included in this body of extant evidence. In the case of the Modern Critical Text, these texts which were not propagated forward are considered the most valuable.

This means that all extant copies of New Testament manuscripts are considered to be preserved texts, which include texts that do not preserve the original. Despite some of these texts not preserving the original wording, the Critical Text theology states that the doctrines are still preserved in the two most different manuscripts. See this popular level explanation by James White:

“The reality is that the amount of variation between the two most extremely different New Testament manuscripts would not fundamentally alter the message of the Scriptures…The simple fact of the matter is that no textual variants in either the Old or New Testament in any way, shape, or form materially disrupt or destroy any essential doctrine of the Christian faith.”

James White. The King James Only Controversy. 67.

This can be said because the determining factor for this is not the text itself, it is the interpretation of the text, as demonstrated in the previous section.

This modern doctrine stands in opposition to the historical Protestant doctrine of self-authentication and Providential Preservation. If my reader wishes to examine the Biblical merits of Providential Preservation, see this paper. Historically speaking, the Protestants affirmed the doctrine of Providential Preservation.

“Nay, not only the main Doctrine of the Scripture hath been continued, but no part of it is falsified, corrupted, or destroyed…But the Scriptures are wonderfully preserved, as the three Children in the Furnace, not an Hair was singed; not a jot or tittle of the Truth is perish or corrupted…Christ hath promised not a tittle shall fall to the ground. The Word hath been in danger of being lost, but the Miracle of Preservation is therefore greater.”

Thomas Manton. A Second Volume of Sermons. 254.

“The marvelous preservation of the Scriptures. Though none in time be so ancient, no none so much oppugned: yet God hath still by his providence preserved them and every part of them”

James Ussher. A Body of Divinity. 11.

“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.

It should be clear now that there are two definitions of original at play here. The original doctrines or the original text. There are two definitions of preservation being discussed. Preservation in the totality of extant manuscripts or preservation in the continuing propagation of manuscripts. There are even two different definitions of the Bible. The very Word of God or the means by which we access the Word of God. The Protestant doctrine of Scripture affirms that the original text was propagated forth in transmission, that God providentially kept the original text pure in the apographs, and that this original text is self-authenticating and therefore we have the exact Word of God today. This means that the text that arrived via transmission to the 14th century was as pure as that which arrived to the 16th century. Thus the Reformed held the view that the efforts of “text-criticism” during the 16th century were conducted using such authentic texts as a method of ongoing propagation, not reconstruction.

There is a reason that the Protestants held this view. They recognized that Rome must be correct about needing a magisterium if the Scriptures were not providentially preserved. In order to examine this topic more thoroughly, I will conduct a thought experiment before concluding this paper. I will begin by asking, “What must I believe if I reject Providential Preservation?”

First, I must believe that the exact original wording of Scripture is lost and cannot be recovered by any available methodology. Second, I must believe that the corrupted Protestant text contains no doctrinal differences than the reconstructed text set forth by modern scholars. Third, I must believe that despite there being no doctrinal differences between the two most different manuscripts, that the modern effort which changes my Bible is necessary. Finally, I must believe that the authority of Scripture is determined by my interpretation of it.

When examined in such a way, the proposition set forth in the modern doctrine is abjectly absurd.

Conclusion

The discussion of textual criticism becomes simple when examined at a doctrinal level. Without Providential Preservation, the modern doctrine of Scripture leaves the church without any discernable Bible, just a product that gives the people of God “good access” to the Bible. This is reconciled by proposing that “doctrines cannot be affected” regardless of textual variation. As a result, the method of authentication for Scripture shifts from Scripture itself to man’s interpretation of Scripture. This is clearly not the historic Protestant view, and when examined in substance, bears remarkable resemblance to that of the Papists.

There is a reason this doctrine is defined in the first chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith and London Baptist Confession of Faith. It is the fundamental component of Sola Scriptura that all doctrines are established upon. If the Scriptures are not Providentially Preserved, than the church is left to her interpretation of the Scriptures alone, which inevitably produces infinite variations of what Christianity even is. If one were to survey the state of the modern church, they will indeed find that this is exactly the case. The doctrine of inerrancy, in rejecting Providential Preservation of the words of Scripture, has created the semblance of an orthodox doctrine without any of the substance. It outsources the Bible’s authority to man over and above the Scriptures themselves. There is one simple conclusion that must be drawn from the theology of Scripture and also plain observation – without Providential Preservation and self-authentication, there is no discernable Bible and thus no discernable Christ and thus no discernable Christianity. Any claims to the authority of Scripture completely fall flat without these doctrines.

Review: The King James Version Discussion – Chapter 7

The Young, Textless, and Reformed3 Comments

Introduction

Chapter 7, entitled “Fourteen Theses,” makes up over 25% of the page count in this work, so I will try my best to handle each thesis in as little words as possible. As I commented in a previous article, this chapter would have likely been sufficient as the sum of the whole book to accomplish Carson’s objective. He begins the chapter by stating that he is not going to argue that defenders of the TR are “knaves or fools,” yet all throughout chapter 7 he uses language that is essentially synonymous. He harshly critiques defenders of the Byzantine tradition such as Zane Hodges and Edward F. Hills, and John Burgon, despite all three being a far more careful, studied, and respected scholars than himself, especially on this topic. Keep in mind that Carson is not a text-critic so his hostile analysis of these scholars is rather peculiar, considering he accuses people of blindly following and repeating their claims – which is the exact thing he seems to be doing throughout this work, only with Metzger. In order to keep this article at a manageable length, I will respond with very simple counter-arguments.

Thesis 1: There is no unambiguous evidence that the Byzantine text-type was known before the middle of the fourth century

I’ll just quote Carson in response:

I do not deny that readings found in the Byzantine text-type are found in the ante-Nicene period;

Carson, D. A.. The King James Version Debate (p. 44). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

He of course follows this statement with a “but,” but that is irrelevant if the claim is that “The Byzantine text-type didn’t exist.” You can’t say, “The Byzantine text didn’t exist, except where it did exist, I just don’t count that.” He further buries himself when he says,

It has not been proved conclusively that the Byzantine text-type did not exist before the fourth century.

Carson, D. A.. The King James Version Debate (p. 44). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

In his first thesis, Carson has seemingly undone the whole foundation of his argument.

Thesis 2: The argument that defends the Byzantine tradition by appealing to the fact that most extant manuscripts of the Greek New Testament attest to this Byzantine text-type, is logically fallacious and historically naïve

Here Carson demonstrates that he does not understand what the term “logically fallacious” means. The fallaciousness of a statement is determined by the coherence of an argument from premise to conclusion, not by whether or not you have a counter premise. Something can be logically coherent and still false. He could have just offered his counter argument rather than insulting Zane Hodges’ ability to think, but I suspect that Carson knows his argument is not that strong without poisoning the well first. Carson’s actual argument is as follows,

“It is quite possible to conceive that the best manuscripts of the New Testament were removed to some relatively quiet corner of the Mediterranean world while inferior manuscripts dominated in publishing centers.”

Carson, D. A.. The King James Version Debate (p. 48). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

So Carson’s response to what he calls “logically fallacious” and “historically naïve” is that God stashed the Bible away for over a thousand years in the Mediterranean rather than preserving it in the transmitted copies of the New Testament. In the rest of the chapter, Carson goes on to argue that “it is not asking to much” to reject that historical tradition of the church based on “the type of text found in B and Aleph” (50), engaging in what appears to be special pleading on behalf of two manuscripts over the majority tradition.

Thesis 3: The Byzantine text-type is demonstrably a secondary text

Carson bases the premise of his next thesis upon conjecture of what scribes may have done. Here is one example:

“One might argue that particularly heterodox scribes might well make a text more complicated.”

Carson, D. A.. The King James Version Debate (p. 52). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

He then makes the argument that the Byzantine text is “given to harmonization” (52). I’ve always found this argument rather strange, as it requires the belief that the original New Testament was lacking harmony and “abrupt.” Ultimately, the Scriptures being “given to harmonization” is not an argument against originality unless you are supposing the original text was not harmonious.

Thesis 4: The Alexandrian text-type has better credentials than any other text-type now available

Carson here uses a double standard to support his fourth thesis. In thesis 1, he argues that ante-nicene father quotations and versional evidence are not enough to defend the existence of the text type, yet here he uses it as a primary example of a credential for the Alexandrian text.

“Not only is the Alexandrian text-type found in some biblical quotations by ante-Nicene fathers, but the text-type is also attested by some of the early version witnesses.”

Carson, D. A.. The King James Version Debate (p. 53). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

“I do not deny that readings found in the Byzantine text-type are found in the ante-Nicene period; but almost all of these readings are also found in other text-types (mostly Western).”

Carson, D. A.. The King James Version Debate (p. 44). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

One would think that Carson’s own analysis would support an earlier Byzantine text, seeing as it is shared among multiple traditions, as if other traditions adapted the Byzantine text, but he arrives at the opposite conclusion. According to Carson, since there isn’t a complete record of the Byzantine text, the individual witnesses must be discarded. The important point to note here is not my own theory, it is the fact that Carson uses the same standard to reject the Byzantine text as he does to support the “better credentials” of the Alexandrian text. As a side note, I would expect the use of the word “credentials” to mean that we know who created Aleph and B and who used them, which we do not know.

Thesis 5: The argument to the effect that what the majority of believers in the history of the church have believed is true, is ambiguous at best and theologically dangerous at worst; and as applied to textual criticism, the argument proves nothing very helpful anyway

Here Carson argues that because Christians are fallible, the texts they produced also can be fallible, and therefore the argument is moot. I would argue that Carson has misunderstood the argument, either intentionally or unintentionally. However, if we apply the same argument to his position, could the Byzantine defender not argue that the text of Aleph and B were also subject to the same error as those who produced the Byzantine text? Carson has not yet made any case for the quality of the two flagship manuscripts, other than they meet his arbitrary criteria of being as early as 350AD.

Thesis 6: The argument that defends the Byzantine text by appealing to the providence of God is logically and theologically fallacious

Carson argues that if God has providentially preserved the Byzantine text, he has also preserved the others.

“God, it is argued, has providentially preserved the Byzantine tradition. That is true; but He has also providentially preserved the Western, Caesarean, and Alexandrian traditions.”

Carson, D. A.. The King James Version Debate (p. 56). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Interestingly enough, the Byzantine text is the only former text-type that is considered to be a text group still. He ends this argument by misunderstanding the difference between corruptions and variations, and closes with this statement:

The interpretation of individual passages may well be called in question; but never is a doctrine affected.

Carson, D. A.. The King James Version Debate (p. 56). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Here Carson unintentionally refutes the whole point of his book. If the manuscript tradition is all providentially preserved, that includes the Byzantine. And if doctrine is never effected, there is no doctrinal difference between the providentially preserved traditions. Therefore, Carson has no purpose for writing this book, and has refuted himself.

Thesis 7: The argument that appeals to fourth century writing practices to deny the possibility that the Byzantine text is a conflation, is fallacious

Carson’s argument in this thesis is so incredibly misleading that I would go as far to say that he has slandered Edward F. Hills, broken the 9th commandment, and shown himself to be a juvenile scholar not worthy to mention Hills’ name.

“Hills, in his book The King James Version Defended! argues that the Byzantine text could not be a fourth-century compilation from other texts because editors of that period did not have desks to write on.”

Carson, D. A.. The King James Version Debate (p. 57). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

The only word I have to describe this interpretation of Hills is “stupid.” DA Carson is stupid for what he has just told his reader. In the first place, this is Hills’ secondary argument, in which he is making the point that no scholar or scribe could have possibly had the resources such as a textual apparatus in a standard printed volume, and yes, a desk and chairs. Hills does this, appealing to Metzger, ironically enough. Hills’ point is that there is no evidence that such a blending of textual traditions could have been possible with the available resources and scribal practices, and thus the traditional text had to have occurred organically.


“Hence, the kind of mixture would be sporadic and unsystematic and not at all of the kind that would be required to produce the Traditional (Byzantine) New Testament text. Thus the theory that the Traditional Text was created by editors breaks down when carefully considered.”

Hills, Edward F. The King James Version Defended. 177.

Thesis 8: Textual arguments that depend on adopting the TR and comparing other text-types with it are guilty, methodologically speaking, of begging the issue; and in any case they present less than the whole truth

DA Carson unashamedly says that TR defenders “present less than the whole truth” after claiming Hills rejects the “recension” theory on the basis of lack of desks. He ends this point by saying that “slanted arguments in these issues ought to be rejected by lovers of truth” (61). At this point, Carson’s argumentation has devolved into misrepresenting other scholars and appealing to the emotions of his reader. In this section, his problem is with using the TR or KJV as a base text for comparison of other texts. This would be a valid point, if he didn’t do the same exact thing with Aleph and B. Rather than starting with the TR, he starts with the Critical Text. His disagreement is not in methodology, it is in the form of the text that is to be used as the standard for comparison.

Thesis 9: The charge that non-Byzantine text-types are theologically aberrant is fallacious

His argument in this thesis is that doctrine cannot be effected by the differences in the manuscript tradition.

However, I would argue that none of the text-types distinguished by contemporary textual criticism is theologically heretical in the way that defenders of the KJV sometimes suggest.

Carson, D. A.. The King James Version Debate (p. 62). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

This doctrine says that even if a passage is not supposed to be in the text, the doctrine can be found elsewhere. This is standard fare for the “doctrine cannot be effected crowd.” One interesting thing to note is that Carson constantly uses the term “fallacious,” confusing it with the words, “I disagree.”

Therefore the charge that the non-Byzantine text-types are theologically aberrant is fallacious.

Carson, D. A.. The King James Version Debate (p. 66). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Again, something being fallacious entirely depends on the structure of an argument. Carson’s structure is that a difference in words in the Bible does not change the meaning of the Bible. According to his premise, the claim he is interacting with is fallacious – but that’s not the premise of the argument he is opposing. The argument that he is opposing goes like this:

The meaning of the Bible is communicated through words. If the words change, then the meaning changes. The words are changed between the traditional and critical text. Therefore, the meaning is different between the traditional and critical text.

Carson has not interacted with that argument other than to disagree with the premise and then call it fallacious, by which he means “I disagree.”

Thesis 10: The KJV was not accepted without a struggle, and some outstanding believers soon wanted to replace it

This argument is rather straight forward, the KJV wasn’t immediately accepted. Defenders of the KJV may have argued that in Carson’s day, but I have not seen that argument before, so I’ll leave it as is. In any case, I don’t think the reception argument hinges on the KJV being immediately adopted by every single Christian in the 17th century.

Thesis 11: The Byzantine text-type must not be thought to be the precise equivalent of the TR

This point is one of clarity that I think everybody is aware of, that the TR isn’t a pure majority text. There are minority readings in it.

Thesis 12: The argument that ties the adoption of the TR to verbal inspiration is logically and theologically fallacious

Carson correctly identifies what Scripture teaches about itself in this thesis.

The argument, briefly, is this: Since God inspired the Scriptures verbally, therefore He must have preserved them even to the details of their words; and these passages presuppose that God has done just that.

Carson, D. A.. The King James Version Debate (p. 69). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

His argument is essentially that it is impossible to say that the TR or Byzantine tradition is the verbally inspired text. The Bible doesn’t promise “an infallible text-type” (72). He continues by saying,

“Third, to concede that total inerrancy or verbal inspiration is restricted to the autographs does not mean we have no sure word from God.”

Carson, D. A.. The King James Version Debate (p. 73). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

The way he deals with this doctrinal issue is the same way scholars and apologists deal with the problem today.

“In like fashion the vast majority of the New Testament is textually certain. (3) Even where the text is less than certain, high probability of this reading or that exists. (4) No doctrine and no ethical command is affected by the “probability” passages, but only the precise meaning of specific passages. (5) In my judgment the degree of uncertainty raised by textual questions is a great deal less than the degree of uncertainty raised by hermeneutical questions.”

Carson, D. A.. The King James Version Debate (p. 73). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

He ends by stating what I wish more Critical Text advocates knew:

“Fourth, the purpose and goal of textual criticism is to get as close to the original text as possible. To fail to recognize this is to misapprehend what textual criticism is all about.”

Carson, D. A.. The King James Version Debate (p. 74). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

In short, textual criticism is not about getting to the exact original, it is about getting “as close to the original text as possible.” Carson, while being necessarily constrained by his understanding of text-types, is quite accurate when discussing the purpose and goal of text-criticism.

Thesis 13: Arguments that attempt to draw textual conclusions from a prejudicial selection of not immediately relevant data, or from a slanted use of terms, or by a slurring appeal to guilt by association, or by repeated appeal to false evidence, are not only misleading, but ought to be categorically rejected by Christians, who, above all others, profess to love truth and to love their brothers in Christ

It seems that if Carson was slightly more self aware he might see the glaring problem with this thesis.

Thesis 14: Adoption of the TR should not be made a criterion of orthodoxy

I agree. I would also argue that believing that God gave His people the verbally inspired text, in its words, should be. The issue the TR advocate has with the Critical Text is first one of doctrine, and second that of the actual text. If we can agree that God actually preserved His whole word, we can have a conversation. The fundamental difference is that, as Carson has stated many times, the Critical Text advocate does not believe we have the exact inspired text today, and that the words of our Bibles can change and not effect doctrine. The TR is the logical end of having the correct Bibliology.

Conclusion

This chapter is the substance of this entire work so far. I think it would have been adequate just to publish this chapter. In Carson’s fierce attempt to defend the Critical Text, he refuted many of his own claims in the process. Overall, this chapter is again a rehashing of Metzger with a lot harsher language than the previous chapters. The main take away I will leave my reader with is this:

If the Bible is preserved in the whole manuscript tradition, and doctrine isn’t changed between manuscripts, why this book? Why attempt to discredit a textual tradition that Carson claims is correct doctrinally? This is a question I have not seen answered yet. According to the “no doctrine is affected” doctrine, I would expect Critical Text advocates to actually defend the Byzantine text, which they claim is doctrinally complete.

Review: The King James Version Debate – Chapter 4

The Young, Textless, and ReformedLeave a comment

Introduction

In the fourth chapter entitled, “Some Criteria for Making Textual Choices,” Carson provides a brief summary of some of the axioms of Modern Textual Criticism as presented by Metzger. I will highlight again Carson’s use of “most likely” in the opening paragraph.

“Before turning to the nub of the debate, I propose now to sketch in some of the criteria scholars use to determine what reading is most likely closest to the original.”

Carson, D. A.. The King James Version Debate (p. 29). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

In other words, this criteria is by no means a definitive standard for determining an original text.

The Criteria for Making Textual Decisions

Carson sorts the criteria into two categories: External and internal. He lists manuscript date, geographical location, and text type as the three external criteria. As far as the value that external evidence can offer, Carson clarifies that these categories are not decisive.

“None of these considerations is considered decisive; all have to be weighed.”

Carson, D. A.. The King James Version Debate (p. 29,30). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

One major point that Carson makes demonstrates the age of this book. He states that “the date of the text-type is more important than the date of a particular witness.” In today’s model, the date of a witness is considered more important and the concept of text-type has been mostly retired.

Under internal evidence Carson lists the preference for the shorter reading (or perhaps the longer reading), the preference for the most difficult reading, the preference for readings with similar vocabulary choices, and the preference for the reading that best explains the other variants.

One thing that I will note here is that the assumptions of this model are not conducive with an inerrant original text, as Carson believes. If the original texts are as Carson describes, they are short and grammatically difficult. This seems to be in conflict with the doctrine of inerrancy and either the original was not perfect, or in these rules the scholars admit that the closest to the original we can get is a choppy, short, grammatically difficult version of it.

Carson ends the chapter by stating that most of the lines in the New Testament are certain.

“Nevertheless, the vast majority of the lines of the Greek New Testament may be regarded as textually certain. A number of others are certain to a high degree of probability. A relative handful constitute famous problems that are debated constantly in books and in journal literature.”

Carson, D. A.. The King James Version Debate (p. 33). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

This is still the argument from Modern Critical Text apologists, though I have not seen this claim substantiated anywhere. The trend, according to scholars such as Dr. Peter Gurry, is towards more uncertainty as the effort of Modern Textual Criticism progresses, not less. According to Dr. Daniel Wallace, “There are many, many places in which the text of the New Testament is uncertain.”

Conclusion

In Chapter 4, we again see a summarization of Metzger with some interesting commentary from Carson. He acknowledges that the criteria set forth by textual scholars are not a definitive method for finding the original, so in that sense he is still quite relevant. This chapter is probably the most dated of the book so far, as Carson leans heavily on the text-type framework for his understanding of textual criticism. This is not unusual, however, seeing as the book was first published in 1978. The real substance of this book is in the upcoming chapters, but I will review every chapter for the sake of being thorough.

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

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.

Ruckman & the Critical Text: Theological Cousins

The Young, Textless, and Reformed15 Comments

Introduction

When people hear the term “King James Onlyism,” there are a number of definitions that might come to mind. Some think of the version of King James Onlyism which believes that the Bible didn’t exist until 1611 and that the English King James was immediately inspired. This is often called “Ruckmanite” KJVO, or something similar. Others might think of somebody who only reads the KJV due to the lack of quality of modern translations or somebody who simply prefers the KJV. On my blog I rarely address Ruckmanite King James Onlyism because I personally have never talked to somebody who believes after Ruckman or Gipp. If people weren’t constantly bringing him up, I probably would not have even heard of it from anybody in real life.

Recently I was talking to a brother who lives in Tennessee, who told me that it is a pretty serious problem where he lives, which made me realize I’ve never really addressed it. In this article, I’d like to examine the theology of this position and critique it by comparing it theologically to the Critical Text position. One of the major issues with this discussion is that the Modern Critical Text apologists cannot seem to bring themselves to make the proper category distinction between the Traditional Text position and Ruckmanite KJVO, so I will demonstrate in this article that it is actually the Critical Text position and Ruckmanite KJVO that are similar, not the TR position. Perhaps this will even demonstrate to the Ruckmanite that their theology is quite liberal in reality. In this article, I am using the term “Ruckmanite” to describe those who believe that the Bible was re-inspired in the English King James Version (double inspiration) and who reject the authority of the Hebrew and Greek texts over the KJV as a result of that doctrine.

The Similarities between the Modern Critical Text and Ruckmanite KJVO

Interestingly enough, the only thing that Ruckmanite KJVO and Traditional Text advocates share is their use of the King James Bible, and even then, some Traditional Text guys read the NKJV, MEV, or Geneva Bible. The Ruckmanite and the Modern Critical Text (CT) advocate actually have a lot more in common than a Ruckmanite and Traditional Text advocate. I am not saying that the theology of the CT and Ruckman are exactly the same, just that they share a serious overlap in the doctrinal core of their respective positions.

First, both the CT proponent and the Ruckmanite reject that the Bible was providentially preserved in the Hebrew and Greek. The CT proponent says that the Bible has fallen away, or perhaps was stashed in the desert in Egypt and needs to be reconstructed. There is no way to adhere to the WCF or LBCF 1.8 as a Critical Text advocate unless we redefine 1.8 in a Warfieldian way. Alternatively, the Ruckmanite will say that the Bible didn’t officially exist until 1611. While each camp arrives at extremely different conclusions, both accept the premise that the Bible was not handed down perfectly in the original manuscripts. See this quote from Dr. Andrew Naselli in his widely read How to Understand and Apply the New Testament.

“The Bible’s inerrancy does not mean that copies of the original writings or translations of those copies are inerrant. Copies and translations are inerrant only to the extent that they accurately represent the original.”

Andrew Naselli. How to Understand and Apply the New Testament. 43.

The Ruckmanite would agree that the the copies and translations of the copies of the original are not inerrant. They disagree with Naselli in the fact that they believe the KJV is the only inerrant Bible, whereas Naselli believes the Bible is only inerrant where it can be proven to be original (which is the standard view of inerrancy set forth by the Chicago Statement, article X). So both camps say that the copies that were handed down are not providentially preserved, whereas the Traditional Text advocate believes as Turretin did, that the original writings are represented by the apographs, or copies.

“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.

Second, both the CT proponent and the Ruckmanite are okay with treating translations as authoritative. The CT scholars use the Septuagint as authoritative above the original Hebrew, whereas the Ruckmanite views the KJV to be authoritative over the Hebrew and Greek. Even though the extant versions of the Septuagint cannot be proven to represent the original, these versions are used to correct the Hebrew of the Old Testament. Both, due to the first belief that God did not providentially preserve His Word in the original Greek and Hebrew, are perfectly fine treating a translation as authoritative over the original text.

While the doctrine of inerrancy as set forth by the CT advocate may sound different than the view of Ruckman, it really is quite similar. Since there is no mechanism of textual criticism that can demonstrate an extant copy or translation of a copy to “accurately represent the original,” the only thing that remains is the belief that the translation is more authoritative than the Hebrew original. The CT does this in many places in the Old Testament. If you were to inspect the footnotes of the Old Testament in a 2016 ESV for example, there are readings on nearly every page that are taken from translations such as the Latin, Syriac, and Greek over and above the Hebrew. This again is quite different from the Traditional Text view, which aligns with the Westminster Confession of Faith and the London Baptist Confession of Faith 1689.

“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 the 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, and interest in the Scriptures, and are commanded, in the fear of God, to read and search them, therefore they are to be translated in to 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.”

The Westminster Confession of Faith. 1.8.

The Traditional Text view is that the authentic Scriptures are the Hebrew and Greek, which have been providentially kept pure in all ages, so the concept of taking a translation over the original does not exist in the TR view. Both the CT proponent and Ruckmanite appeal to translations as authoritative over the original. While the CT advocate may offer lip service to the Reformed doctrine above, they contradict themselves when they take the LXX or any other translation as more authoritative than the Hebrew or even Greek (2 Peter 3:10). The Ruckmanite is simply more transparent about the practice. At face value, the CT advocate and the TR advocate may sound like they are saying the same thing about translations being authoritative insofar as they represent the original, but there isn’t a concept of an available original in the CT position. In order for Article X of the Chicago Statement to actually mean something, there needs to be a defined original that can be used as a final authority. Further, the CT scholars reject this in practice when they place readings in the text over the original languages from other translations such as the Latin, Syriac, and LXX. In this sense, they share far more in common with the Ruckmanite when it comes to Bibliology than the TR proponent.

Conclusion

In both the case of the CT proponent and the Ruckmanite, the core belief is that the Bible was not providentially preserved in the original Greek and Hebrew. The CT advocate applies this doctrine by enthusiastically supporting the ongoing effort to reconstruct the Bible, whereas the Ruckmanite applies the very same doctrine by saying that the Bible was finally inspired in the KJV in 1611. It is the same doctrine with two different conclusions. It is the same problem answered in two very different ways. The tactic that the CT camp employs is to focus on the the fact that both the Ruckmanite and the TR believer read the KJV and not the theological core and practical application of that doctrine. The CT believer looks at the Traditional Text advocate and the Ruckmanite, sees that they both use the KJV, and concludes they are the same. This is a massive blunder.

The important distinction occurs in the doctrinal substance of both positions, and when considered, the CT advocate and the Ruckmanite have much more in common than the Traditional Text proponent. Both the CT supporter and Ruckmanite believe that the inerrant text was not transmitted in the copies. Both the CT supporter and the Ruckmanite believe that translations can be more authoritative than the original language texts as a result of the first belief. The Traditional Text advocate affirms against both. The only similarity between the Ruckmanite and the TR advocate is that they use the KJV, and this isn’t even true in every case as many TR believers read the NKJV, MEV, or perhaps the Geneva Bible.

There is a reason some have appropriately labeled the CT position as “Reformed Ruckmanism,” because there is serious overlap in the theology of both positions. The overlap is so significant, that it is perplexing that the CT apologist even takes issue with Ruckmanite KJVO at all. They slam the Ruckmanite for viewing a translation as more authoritative than the original language texts, but they do the very same thing with the Latin, Syriac, and LXX. There is no theological reason for a CT advocate to object to Ruckman. The only place they really disagree is in the severely incorrect answer Ruckman has to their shared problem.

Ultimately, the CT proponent has a playground tier argument against the Ruckmanite. They called “dibs” on correcting the original with a translation, and don’t like that the Ruckmanites aren’t respecting the authority of “dibs.” Ironically, the Traditional Text camp is the only position that consistently critiques both positions, despite being labeled as “KJVO” by CT apologists. As I have noted before on this blog, the Modern Critical Text position has yet to explain how their practices can be consistent theologically with Scripture. That is what happens when you focus on textual data and variants all day and fail to stop for a second to think about doctrine.

The Absurdity of Anti-KJV Rhetoric

The Young, Textless, and Reformed2 Comments

Introduction

There are a number of reasons people choose a Bible translation. For those in the Modern Critical Text crowd, it’s often the same logic that caused many people to vote for Joe Biden – because he wasn’t the other guy. In the same way, the modern axiom seems to be, “So as long as it’s not the KJV it’s fine.” In fact, this is exactly the logic found in mainstream, “Reformed” New Testament exegesis textbooks such as How to Understand and Apply the New Testament authored by Andrew Naselli. All translations are permissible, even the Message, so as long as it’s not the KJV. The Living Bible even has more to offer than the King James, according to Naselli!

This, in my opinion, is astronomically stupid. There are plenty of reasons to believe that the King James is the best available translation without believing that the English of the King James was re-inspired. This is true, even if the modern scholars and armchair warriors disagree. In this article, I will examine two common arguments made by anti-KJV Christians to see if what they say actually makes any sense.

Reading One Bible Version is Bad

This is a rather common complaint from the Modern Critical Text crowd. They suppose that being an “onlyist” is a bad thing. Yet when we look at this claim simply, it doesn’t make all that much sense. There are plenty of people who read the NIV and only the NIV. Same goes with the ESV and the NASB. They do this because they prefer one translation over another. Despite this being quite common, I’ve never seen a Gospel Coalition article condemning people for preferring the ESV or people writing books about people who only read the ESV. What this reveals is that the issue, at least when considered broadly, is not with people only reading one translation, the problem is with the KJV itself. So when somebody says, “I just have an issue with people who only read the KJV because they believe all of the other translations are bad,” they are really saying that they just don’t like that people read the KJV. It’s okay if somebody only reads the ESV, just not the KJV.

The problem is not with the “Onlyist” part of KJVO, it’s the “KJV” part of KJVO. Ironically, when I was in the critical text crowd, I constantly saw people bickering, especially on behalf of the NASB, about how their choice translation is the BEST translation. This may be news for some people, but it’s okay to have an opinion about which translation is best. It demonstrates that somebody cares about the words on the page of their Bible. It’s actually more concerning, in my opinion, when people give so little concern about the words in their Bible that they actually think all Bibles are made equal. This is drawn to its absurd end when respectable scholars such as Andrew Naselli defend the MSG in a textbook marketed to Reformed Christians. If somebody says it is more profitable to read the MSG than the KJV, what would you say the real issue is? If Naselli and the critical text advocate’s only issue is “Onlyism,” I’d like to see a chapter dedicated in the next “Reformed” textbook about why “ESV Onlyism” is heresy. Of course they won’t because the issue isn’t with “Onlyism,” it’s with the KJV.

KJV Onlyism is Bad Because it Rejects Modern Translations

The premise of this argument assumes that modern translations are not bad, or that somebody is not allowed to believe that modern translations are bad. This again, is absurd. The scholars who claim to specialize in this topic, such as Mark Ward and Dan Wallace, admit as much when they say there are no perfectly accurate modern translations. They write this off as the inevitability of sinners having produced them, but secular scholars accurately translate things all the time. Modern Scholars talk about modern translations like a mother talks lovingly about her child who got held back two years in grade school. “He’s gets the answers wrong a lot, but he has a huge heart and has a lot to offer in other areas.”

If the modern Bible translations, by admission of the scholars, get it wrong a lot, why is it so absurd when people choose something else? If the top scholars tell Christians that reading all modern translations is profitable because none of them get it 100% right, is it possible that the “KJVO” crowd might be onto something? Who am I kidding though, it might pain a modern critical text advocate to be overly charitable to people who read the KJV or admit that a gap-toothed KJVO might be correct about something. This again highlights that the real issue that the modern critical text advocate has is with the KJV and nothing else.

Further, people that don’t read the KJV reject modern translations all the time. There is a reason John MacArthur made his own translation rather than subjecting himself to the NASB 2020. Is John MacArthur now a Legacy Bible onlyist? Should somebody write treatises against him too? I’d like to see Mark Ward issue a “sincere” offer to John MacArthur like he did to Trinitarian Bible Society to convince him to change his ways. Since rejecting translations is common in the modern critical text crowd, it seems reasonable to say that rejecting Bible translations isn’t the unforgiveable sin of somebody who reads the KJV. As one would expect, reading the KJV is the unforgiveable sin of the person who reads the KJV.

Conclusion

Whenever I interact with people who think they doing the world a service by eradicating “KJV Onlyists” from the face of the earth, it always comes to light that they aren’t actually talking about “KJV Onlyism.” I run a somewhat-popular blog in the “KJV Only” world and I have only ever had one person in support of Peter Ruckman comment on my blog or YouTube. Ultimately, the term “KJVO” is just another tool for people to bludgeon people on the internet. If you actually make somebody define what they mean by “KJVO,” they are simply talking about people who read the King James. The great sin of only reading one translation, despite being something that many people do, is only wrong when that one translation is the KJV.

I have pointed this out before on this blog, but the “KJV Onlyists” seem to be the only people that are actually paying attention to what the scholars are saying. Scholars are praised for saying the same exact thing that “King James Onlyists” are saying. The “KJV Onlyist” will say that all modern translations have error, and that is why they read the KJV. Dan Wallace will say the same thing and he gets invited to speak in your churches and seminaries. So what makes the “KJV Onlyist” different than Dan Wallace? Dan Wallace doesn’t read the KJV. The problem that modern critical text advocates have is not with “KJV Onlyism,” it is with the KJV.



“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.

The real problem is when somebody believes that the theology behind the above Dan Wallace quote is less dangerous than believing than God has preserved His Word and the KJV is an accurate translation of it. Perhaps we will see some scholars writing treatises about that in the future, but I won’t hold my breath.

3 Terrible Reasons You Should Trust Modern Evangelical English Bible Translations

The Young, Textless, and Reformed2 Comments

Introduction

I recently watched this video by Mark Ward entitled, “3 Reasons Why You Should Trust Modern Evangelical English Bible Translations” and thought it would be helpful to write an article demonstrating just how ridiculous these points are. Without any further introduction, I will evaluate each of his reasons which are as follows:

  1. You have to
  2. Trustworthy people made them
  3. Trustworthy people use them

You Have to Trust Modern Evangelical Bible Translations

The simple and obvious answer to Ward’s first point is that no, you actually don’t have to trust or use any modern Bible versions. Now, Ward may have meant that “you have to trust a Bible translator” as he talks about that briefly, but the video says “3 Reasons Why You Should Trust Modern Evangelical Bible Translations.” So if point one is, “because you have to,” it’s clearly wrong. I have read the NIV, ESV, HCSB (CSB), and NASB and I can happily say I will never be returning to them other than for research. Most of my scripture memorization is in the ESV, and in my opinion, it’s not worth the paper it’s printed on compared to the KJV.

The basic point Ward makes here is that everybody, for the most part, has to trust a translator of some sort, so why not trust a modern translator? If you don’t know Greek and Hebrew, then you can’t actually make a determination one way or the other as to the quality of a translation. On that point, he is only correct in that most people don’t know Hebrew and Greek. He is wrong when he acts as a Gatekeeper to the conversation, telling Christians that if they do not know the original languages, then they cannot know if a translation is trustworthy. Using a slightly different and better argument, Christians can know if a translation is trustworthy by looking at the scholarship (not the scholar) of other Christians. Christians do not have to understand Hebrew and Greek if they are able to read an accurate analysis of the Hebrew and Greek in their original tongue.

Further, Ward tries to normalize the idea that Bible translations cannot be “perfect”, or rather, do not contain translational errors. This is a common strategy used by men of the Critical Text. They make the equivocation between “perfect” and “accurate”. A Bible can be 100% accurately translated, and why would Christians want to be comfortable with a Bible that isn’t? If it is discovered that a translation has made an error, it should be fixed in the next edition, right? Shouldn’t we hold these trustworthy men to that standard? They have a text before them in one language, and their task is to translate it into a target language. The expectation isn’t that a translation come out of the translators committee perfect on the first go, but shouldn’t it get there eventually? Greek and Hebrew are languages that can be known and translated, and if Mark Ward thinks something has been translated incorrectly in the Bible he reads, why doesn’t he tell all of his translator friends that they made an error so they can fix it? Apparently having a poorly translated Bible is something Christians should just accept. Why would a Bible version that isn’t accurately translated, by Mark Ward’s own admission, be considered trustworthy? This seems to actually be an argument against his point.

Trustworthy People Made Modern Evangelical Translations

In this segment of the video, Ward appeals to the character of the people on various translation teams to demonstrate why we should trust modern versions. According to Ward, somebody being able to hike the Grand Canyon and having a good sense of humor are among some of the reasons to trust a Bible translation. Plainly stated, it is remarkably absurd to say that we should trust a Bible because the person who translated it virtuous Christian. There are plenty of trustworthy people in the church that have error in one area or another. It is astounding that an argument like this could even make a list of 3 items. According to Ward, if a Bible translation is made by somebody trustworthy, the translation therefore must be trustworthy.

If this is the case, let’s take Dan Wallace, who Mark Ward lists as a trustworthy source for whether a Bible translation is trustworthy or not, at his own words.

“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.”

Dan Wallace

According to Mark Ward, the trustworthiness of our Bibles should be at least in part based on the trustworthiness of the scholars who created them and use them. If this is the case, it seems that there actually aren’t any Bibles that can be trusted. In opposition to Ward’s conclusion, if we are to trust these men, it doesn’t appear the Modern Evangelical Bible translations are trustworthy at all if we as Christians are concerned with exactly what Paul wrote.

Trustworthy People Use Modern English Bible Translations

This is the same form of argument as the second point on Mark Ward’s list, only it is applied to those that use these Bibles as opposed to those who created those Bibles. Ward appeals to the Holy Spirit for this argument to say that God would not let so many Christians read a bad text. I don’t have to engage further because Ward actually refutes his own argument in the video itself when discussing a pamphlet called “Trusted Voices on Translation”.

“It doesn’t prove that any given Modern English Bible translation is trustworthy, it shows only that countless Evangelical luminaries of the past, thought it was possible to trust the KJV and newer translations of their day”

The same thing can be said about Ward’s argument in this video. According to Ward, if a trustworthy Christian uses a Bible translation, then that translation must be trustworthy. All Ward has demonstrated is that people he trusts made and read modern translations.

His argument can be further refuted by using his own logic when he says that a translation cannot be perfect because the people translating are sinners. By this logic we can easily say that a Christian can’t be the determining factor in whether a Bible is trustworthy because they are a sinner! If a sinner can be wrong in translation, they can be wrong in discernment too, and Ward’s argument again falls to the ground. It’s not God’s fault that a sinner is imperfect, and we don’t hastily blame God for the sins of men. I’m not saying that reading an ESV makes somebody a sinner, just that if we are to assume Ward’s premise of sinful men making errors in translation, we can apply it readily to sinful men making errors in which Bible translation they read.

Conclusion

In short, a response to Ward’s three points can be answered in much less words than I’ve written here. I’ll end by answering Ward’s argument simply.

Do Christians have to trust modern bible translations, because, well they have to?

No.

Do Christians have to trust modern bible translations because the scholars who produced them are trustworthy?

No.

Do Christians have to trust modern bible translations because people that use them are trustworthy?

No.

As far as I can tell, this video said nothing of significance other than, “Trust the scholars and the people who trust the scholars.” I for one am not convinced by this presentation, and I would argue that nobody should be. The scholars and people that use Modern Evangelical Bible translations may very well be trustworthy, but that has nothing to do with whether or not a translation is trustworthy. And if we do adopt Ward’s arguments as true, we have to also adopt Ward’s arguments as false simultaneously! Ultimately it comes down to what threshold we set for a translation being considered trustworthy, and Ward has set the bar extraordinarily low.

I’ll end by leaving my reader with an analogy. I am a software analyst. If I were to commit code to our production servers at work, the company I work for expects that code to work. They would expect that I have tested every line of my code. They would expect that I wouldn’t release code with errors in it. They expect it to be trustworthy. If I submitted code and it breaks the application, I’d have to answer for it. If my response to my boss was, “There are many, many places in which my code is uncertain,” I’d be fired or at the very least reprimanded for knowingly releasing bad code. It doesn’t matter how virtuous, nice, or agreeable I am. It doesn’t matter how trustworthy I am.

When it comes to our Bibles, we have to be willing to hold our translators to at least the same standard that a secular company holds its employees to, even if they do happen to be the nicest and funniest and well-meaning people in the whole of the world. Christians should have higher standards than the world, not lower, and if I can’t get away with this kind of work in my day job, why should we give translators a pass for something far more important such as the translated Word of God that Christians use daily? Is this really our standard? Because somebody is trustworthy we ignore their work product? It is undiscerning and unwise to admit that the translational work product isn’t perfect and then give a pass simply because the men who made the translations are well intentioned, trustworthy people. If you want people to trust modern bible translations, it would make sense to stop advertising them as “imperfect” and then appealing to the Christian character of the people that made them.

The Practical Theology of the Two Textual Positions

The Young, Textless, and Reformed5 Comments

Introduction

I have been a Calvinist for about as long as I have been a Christian. At that time, I did not know about Reformed Theology, nor did I call myself Reformed. When I entered the “Reformed” space on the internet via the Reformed Pub, I was introduced to a number of Theological debates. The first two years of my time as a “Reformed” Christian was spent debating various topics that internet Reformedom deems most important. This debate culture led me to believe that being Reformed was mostly an exercise of having a fully developed Theological menu. In essence, you picked out your stance on a list of ten issues, and then debated them online.

This of course is an unfortunate meme of Reformed Theology. When I began reading the English and Dutch Puritans, I realized that the way the divines of old discussed Theology was entirely different than the way modern Reformed Christians discussed Theology. In the first place, many of the pet issues of Internet Reformedom were not even a concern for the post-Reformation and Puritan divines, such as Theonomy. As I got off the internet and onto the writings of the Reformed, I realized one important emphasis that I had completely neglected – practical Theology. In this article, I will be discussing the practical Theology of the Critical Text and Traditional Text. It is important to clarify that I am not talking about the text itself, but the Theology of each text.

The Purpose of Scripture and Theology

Theology is the study of living unto God. In 2 Timothy 3:15-16, God tells His people exactly what Scripture is to be purposed for, “to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Jesus Christ” and to be “profitable for doctrine, reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” He finishes this thought by saying that this is so “that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.” In other words, the study of doctrine is to have direct application in every way to practical Christianity. Every line of Theology in the brain of a Christian should also have a place in the heart.

This is the greatest difference between Internet Reformedom and actual Reformed Christianity. Internet Reformedom almost never discusses practical, experiential Christianity. It never emphasizes the practical impact and use of believing various doctrines. According to Internet Reformedom, doctrine is something to be debated and that’s it. This is the case in the discussion of textual criticism as well. Christians spend hours upon hours debating variants without considering what it means to reject a variant. The reality is that the practical application of the Critical Text dogma to the common Christian is absolutely detrimental to Christian practice.

The practice of the Critical Text doctrine diminishes Christian experiential religion in every way imaginable. In private devotion, it teaches that Christians ought to question the text underneath what is written in their translation. It encourages its users to “go back to the Greek” to determine what the Bible “really says.” The English translation must be flawed, and it is up to the reader to find out what the translators “really should have said.” It teaches that somebody who does not know anything about the original languages of the Bible can actually correct those who do know the languages by simply using an online tool. In Theological study, it teaches Christians that textual criticism is the first step to understanding God’s Word. In order to exegete the text you have to decide what the text says first. Christians have to stand over God’s Word first in order to sit under it. This leads to every Christian having a different text, and those that are really learned to have no text at all. In Evangelism, it teaches that Christians must learn textual criticism to have an apologetic to the unbeliever rather than just preaching the Gospel, which is the power of God unto salvation (Romans 1:16). In Ecclesiology, it teaches that every Christian should rejoice in using a different Bible than the person next to them in the pew. Churches are to dance in the chaos that is produced by the “embarrassment of riches” that is our modern Bible situation. Practically, it misdirects and distracts Christians from every aspect of practical, experiential, religion.

The Theology of the Traditional Text is much different than that of the Critical Text. It teaches believers that they can trust what is on the page of their Bible, which is what you would expect from a book that is said to be the “very Word of God.” Learning Greek and Hebrew is not a requirement for the layperson because the languages can and have been translated accurately. It encourages its readers to sit under the Word as a student rather than over it as a critic. It is not up to the person who doesn’t know Greek and Hebrew to determine what the words “really mean” because they couldn’t do it even if they tried. It assumes that a Christian does not need to learn, or pretend to know the original languages in order to access the Scriptures. It allows for churches to share a common Theological vocabulary because they all have the same text. In matters of controversy within the church, the discussion of “which Bible is correct” isn’t relevant because the church is unified on that matter. In Evangelism, there is no call to convince the mind of man that the Bible is the Word of God, because that is not the requirement of Scripture, and is impossible for the unregenerate man in the first place. In preaching the Gospel, the Gospel is preached without any other requirement, as the Scriptures say. The Word of God is accessible, easy to use, and straight forward. The point of reading it is to be taught and refined. The point of studying is not to judge the text, but to be judged by the text. In short, it teaches Christians to trust their Bible, not question it. In every single place, the Traditional Text brings harmony to a church, whereas the Critical Text brings chaos, confusion, and division.

Conclusion

The difference between the practical Theology of the Critical Text and Traditional Text could not be more dramatic. The Critical Text methodology trains skeptics and puffs up the individual while the Traditional Text encourages humility and a teachable spirit. The average Christian does not know Greek and Hebrew, and finding an online lexicon does not change that or give a Christian the ability to provide a “correct” translation. In every case I have a seen a layperson “go back to the Greek,” they are horribly mistaken as to what the Greek actually says and further, incredibly ignorant as to how language works in general. They confuse the text of the Bible rather than providing clarity.

Despite the fact that Critical Text apologists are desperately trying to reframe the modern Bible embarrassment as an “embarrassment of riches,” it constantly causes division. If you’ve ever been in a small group with somebody who reads the NASB you know exactly what I’m talking about. Christians who have actually gone out and preached the Gospel on the street know that the massive number of Bible translations is a common reason people do not trust the Bible. If you’ve ever carried a KJV into a New Calvinist church you know that you will not leave that church without being told to watch the Dividing Line and to buy an ESV. Carrying a KJV into a modern “Reformed” church is as taboo as wearing a Trump hat onto a college campus. Scholars and apologists have made textual criticism a requirement for the average Christian without actually equipping them to answer the difficult questions. They leave them with the apologetic of Dan Wallace, which is to agree with Bart Ehrman and then say, “But that’s not a good reason to be skeptical!”

When a scholar or a pastor imposes the Critical Text methodology on the layperson, they are really just peddling skepticism and chaos. When a scholar or pastor argues against the Traditional text, they are arguing against unity and putting the believer on the same ground as the unbeliever. Every flaw that Critical Text apologists offer as a critique to the Traditional Text is actually a deficiency of the Critical Text. There is no practical application to Christian life and practice within the Critical Text methodology. The scholars admit that they approach the text agnostically, without the input of their Christianity. This is how they teach Christians to approach the Bible as well. Yet, we are supposed to be unabashedly Christian in how we read our Bible. I have spent many words discussing the Theological problems with the Critical Text on this blog, but it is also important to highlight the practical problems as well. Any methodology that teaches Christians to be “scientific” about how they read their Bible has unequivocally missed the mark. As with any area of Theological study, there must be practical application. The practical application of the Critical Text and Traditional Text could not be more different. One methodology teaches Christians to be critics of the Bible, and the other teaches Christians to be students.