The short answer is: both text and meaning are inspired.

The problem is not that the very words were not inspired. They were.
The problem is not that the very words have ALL been preserved. They have.

The problem IS, where (which mss tradition? one? another? all taken together?) and on what basis (majority of mss? oldest? clearest reading? most grammatical? light from ancient translations? etc.) are we to determine how to get as close as we can to those very words. The problem is in people and the various mistakes they made here and there as copyists, and in our fallible attempts, through a wide collation and careful 'listening", to remove what static we can from our system. The basic trouble is internal to us, not external.

The truth is that there is, despite all the heavy breathing, an extraordinarily reliable text of this ancient book, no matter how many introductions of "errata" one can cobble. Nothing, absolutely nothing else in the world is comparable. So where we as humans end up disagreeing about whether the word has a missing letter, objectively we typically have little trouble agreeing on the inspired meaning of that sentence.

There is more disagreement between an Arminian and a Calvinist--who may both agree perfectly on inspiration--over the theological import of a sentence, than scholars arguing over the placement of certain letters.


In my humble opinion, for whatever weight an unbeliever or an apostate gives to "mss differences" for turning his heart away from trust in the God of inspiration, his problem is not ultimately intellectual, but a one of "hearing." The failure is in his "equipment," in his "receiver."

In the end, this duty we have as Christians to "hear" the Shepherd's Voice (Jn 10:27) is very much akin to the early church's need to settle the canon. Where is God doing his talking? If you don't like the NIV, and prefer the KJV, I hope it is because the former is in your estimation a "crummy receiver," too filled with "static" that it hardly gives you what clarity of reception you want, and NOT because you cannot tell that it is GOD talking to you in those pages!

For if that is your problem, then what will you do if you lose your KJV, and cannot find another? Unlikely, perhaps, but the thought experiment is still valid. If you can't tell God's is the Voice behind the NIV, then you obviously can't tell the difference between the NIV and the NWT (the jw deliberate work of distortion) or the Book of Mormon. In your determination not to be led astray, you will just sit at home, preferring no Bible, and your rusty memory to feed yourself. What a pity!

So, make your choice. Say something like this: "This is the Best Bible I can find; I hear Christ in it most clearly and wonderfully. I don't think I'll ever give up this vacuum tube technology, or my earbuds, or these old speakers, or that brand ruins the tone, or I don't think the reception is quite as good in that one, or this one uses the word 'Jehovah', or...."

I hope you get the picture. Listen to the advice of someone you trust to give you a good "brand" recommendation. And then don't worry about it.

__________________
Rev. Bruce G. Buchanan
ChainOLakes Presbyterian Church, CentralLake, MI


When posting friends, kindly bear those words of earthly wisdom in mind:
Oh, that God the gift would give us
To see ourselves as others see us.
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