I had heard of Charles Spurgeon (I think in one of Ian Murray’s little books on him) that when in personal contact with people he was kind and respectful – in short, a gentleman – but in the pulpit, when addressing certain topics, he took off his gloves, as it were, and pulled no punches.
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All I can say, Scott, anyone who is identified with “a bunch of hippie Calvinists” I gotta like, seeing as from thence I came, having spent 19 years in Woodstock, my daughter and I both coming of age in that milieu, and even before then counted myself a member of that counterculture.
Ben, sorry if I’ve given you a headache!
Folks, I really don’t mean to offend anyone, but this is a truth-claim issue, and I’m taking a stand. Perhaps you will appreciate that I did not draw “first blood,” in this conflict (as Rambo was wont to say), Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield did when he wrote to the general Christian public in
Sunday School Times 24 in 1882, that Mark’s long ending was “no part of God’s word,” and therefore “we are not to ascribe to the verses the authority due to God’s Word.” [Cited from Theodore P. Letis’
The Ecclesiastical Text: Text Criticism, Biblical Authority and the Popular Mind, p. 53]. In naming him thus be it understood I mean not at all to demean “the mighty Warfield,” as other than in the area of text criticism I honor and love him. But when a man is wrong we sin if we do not decry that error which causes harm to the flock of God.
To his credit, Warfield’s intentions were good; he hoped to disarm the threat posed by text criticism in the hands of liberal and unbelieving scholars by redefining the Westminster Confession’s statement on Scripture to refer to the inerrant autographs (anciently lost and beyond reach) instead of the apographs (the copies; texts in the hands of the Westminster divines). I quote from Letis’ essay “B. B. Warfield, Common-Sense Philosophy and Biblical Criticism” (in
The Ecclesiastical Text”, pp. 26-27):
Only eight years after Warfield’s death [in Feb 1921], the higher criticism entered Princeton and the seminary was reorganized to accommodate this. The facile certainty that Westcott and Hort’s system seem to offer Warfield evaporated. Later text critics abandoned the hope of reconstructing a “neutral” text and today despair of ever discovering an urtext, the final resting ground of Warfield’s doctrine of inspiration and inerrancy. Warfield had given earnest expression to his hope that,
The autographic text of the New Testament is distinctly within the reach of criticism….we cannot despair of restoring to ourselves and the church of God, His book, word for word, as He gave it by inspiration to men. [“The Rights of Criticism and of the Church”, The Presbyterian (April 13, 1892):15]
Fifty years later, the Harvard text critic, Kirsopp Lake, offered a more modest assessment:
In spite of the claims of Westcott and Hort….we do not know the original form of the Gospels, and it is quite likely that we never shall. [Family 13 (The Ferrar Group (Phila., The Univ. of Penn. Press, 1941), p. vii]
Warfield’s Common Sense adoption of German methods would be more fully developed by others at Princeton who would no longer find his appendage of the inerrant autographs theory either convincing, or any longer relevant for N.T. studies.
Make no mistake about it, Warfield’s textual theories, taken in good faith from Westcott and Hort – which he was open to after his studies in German criticism at the University of Leipzig in 1876 – single-handedly turned the Reformed Communities from their former view of the WCF and its prizing the texts-in-hand to the (what turned out to be) never-to-be-found-or-restored autographic texts. This was the watershed. And today men of good intentions seek to make the best of it, developing theories and stances so as to defend what they say is a trustworthy Bible.
David,
When you use a phrase like “deflated the ‘ecclesiastical text’ rhetoric,” as though the well-informed and heartfelt conviction of a man amounted to no more than propagandistic tripe, this is a form of marginalizing a view (and a man) through the use of condescending labels and stereotypes.
Okay, my poem is bare-knuckled, as some of Spurgeon’s sermons were when he dealt polemically with serious issues of his day, but I say with David of old, “Is there not a cause?” (1 Sam 17:29) Poetry is (or rather, may be) a form of visionary combat in the Global Arena of Consciousness, and there are no holds barred save that which is laid upon us by the Word and Spirit of Christ. It is a different arena than the one in which strictly civil discourse is conducted, as we do now.
I have not yet finished my research and studies in the matters surrounding the Biblical texts, but I find that much relevant material is not widely known in the community of believers. And so I do a small part in bringing such to light.
It is also a pastoral matter to me, this stand I take on the Received Text, for I have seen people in my care, as well as classes of mine (to whom NIVs had been distributed before I took over the teaching) distressed at the marginal notes saying very plainly that the Biblical text is uncertain, and what was once thought the Word of God is alleged by some to be, of all things, debunked! And the newer ESVs are no better, due to the underlying Greek text.
So I endeavor to be conversant with the various views in this matter, and have for some time become convinced of the view I presently hold, although I like to keep abreast of the work of those who oppose me. To this end I am getting material by James White, in the event I will some day talk with him, and I am most interested in a book he more recently wrote than the
KJO Controversy, and that is his,
Scripture Alone: Exploring the Bible’s Accuracy, Authority and Authenticity. I want to know how he states his view positively, that is, not merely his arguments against the KJV/TR (1894), but what confidence he holds out for those that use versions based on the Critical Text. I am sincerely interested to see his view on this.
I also take note of the specific KJV texts White (and others) bring forth as being in serious question in their eyes. I always appreciate when people can give a cogent reply to such questions, and so have made a list which I research to the best of my limited means (being stuck on an island in the Mediterranean, and out-of-the-loop as far as being able to obtain scholarly materials, and on a fixed retirement income).
I take pains to explain these things so as not to give the impression I am but a rabble-rousing demagogue handing out slick slogans, but rather a sincere laborer in the vineyard of the Lord, with a genuine concern that a palpable evil in the camp be exposed routed. I am open to other points of view – I try to remain teachable in this area – but there are certain doctrines of the Faith that are non-negotiable. For instance, the Deity of Jesus Christ, the tri-unity of the Godhead, the doctrines of grace, the virgin birth, and such bedrock foundations. I reckon the God-breathed infallibility of the entire Scripture, and its providential preservation throughout the ages among these. This was the doctrine of the Reformation churches, and it is here, in the 17th century, that the Reformation church developed the doctrine of Scripture – as exemplified in the Westminster Confession and the Helvetic Consensus Formula – as a response to the counterattack of the Roman Catholic “Church,” which attack specifically consisted of displaying its array of variant readings as found in the MS we now know as B, or Vaticanus, and a multitude of others found in their library, so as to undermine the Protestants’ basic doctrine of Sola Scriptura. This was the Rome who bathed the ground of Europe in the blood of believers. And the textual issue was the ferocious battle between the scholars of each camp in those days. The Reformation stood on this doctrine of providential preservation so despised today,
and on the Old and New Testament texts—in the Hebrew and Greek—which were translated into the King James Bible, likewise despised, even in most of the Reformed communions today.
The very weapon Rome used to try to subvert the Reformation—the array of variant readings from its bag of MSS—is what the Critical Text is doing today in the hands of our fellow Reformed believers; this is the text of Rome! Is there not something amiss?
As I study the “variants” proposed by Dr. White and others which purportedly show the TR/KJV to be lacking in correctness, I would offer a couple for you CT folks. I refer to the last 12 verses of Mark’s Gospel (the notorious shot across the bow of the Reformed ship which caused it to surrender, finally, to the cannon of Rome), and to 1 Timothy 3:16, where “
God was manifest in the flesh” is replaced by “he” or “he who”. Do you think you can defend these? If so, come visit the “authentic New Testament text” thread.
At any rate, I hope to come across as fairly rational in presenting my views.
Robert, “screamers” do not last long in the Global Arena of Consciousness (is not this the situation in terms of consciousness and worldwide instantaneous communications?), for to be short of temper and apt to “scream” and rant indicate that such a warrior can be brought down rather easily. It takes a steady nerve and calm heart to stand in the global warfare, especially in the days when the devil is active with “great wrath” and subtlety of deception. Those who walk with the Lord Jesus He gives a calm heart.
Please, do not mistake the weapon of poetry for the common rant; the one is a dry stick, the other a honed edge forged off-world. There are some mighty foes out there.
Bruce,
Thank you for a calm and reasonable word.
Steve <><