Quote:
Originally Posted by beej6  While disagreeing with the KJV presupposition of the TBS in their article, I would heartily agree with its assessment of the Church today.
Would confessionalism help in this dilemma? I speak primarily of the first article of the WCF which establishes a doctrine of Scripture before embarking on a doctrine of God (the correct approach, imho). |
Protestant scholastics affirmed Scripture as the prolegomena to Scripture, prior to the doctrine of God, even in the absence of a prolegomena.
Providential Preservation defended this presupposition, which means that canonicity is received with the text of Scripture as a unified whole - which is why you have a declaration of canonicity of Scripture before you have a declaration of preservation in the Westminster Confession of Faith. You also have a denial of the canonicity of the Apocrapha before you have a declaration of preservation. So, in terms of Authority you have a positive thesis (what is Scripture), negative thesis (what is not Scripture), defense of thesis (providential preservation.)
The answer to your question is yes, confessionalism solves this dilemma, but if you disagree with the KVJ presupposition, then no, because you don't hold to the confession. The critical presupposition segregates canonicity from the text of Scripture, in that it searches for the Word of God independent of the text of Scripture. This is because you no longer receive the text of Scripture in it's final form but are searching for its initial form - hence canonicity is fluid. Which is precisely what Semler held and is a logical outworking of that presupposition.
It no longer holds to the Protestant scholastic approach where Scripture is the prolegomena to Scriptura, an unknown "inerrant original autograph" is the prolegomena - but since you don't know what that is precisely, men stand in it's place.