# Westminster COF Chapt 1 para 8



## larryjf (Jan 2, 2005)

I would like to get your input on chapter 1, paragraph 8 of the Westminster Confession of Faith. Specifically about this part -

"by his(God's) singular care and providence, kept pure in all ages" (speaking about the scriptures)

I have heard different explanations from those who claim to be confessional.
Some say that "pure" doesn't mean "pure", but it means almost pure - that seems like a cop out to me.
Others say that the scribes caused error - even though the confession says it is by God's "singular" care.

Here's my take on the issue...

It has been kept pure by God. The fact that it is God who is keeping it pure means that it is done perfectly. Not to mention the fact that pure means "Free from adulterants or impurities", "Containing nothing inappropriate or extraneous", "Having no faults".

However, just because it is perfectly preserved does not mean that it is perfectly compiled, translated, or composed by us.

So while i do believe God has perfectly preserved the scriptures, i do not believe we can perfectly extract it at this time.

[Edited on 1-2-2005 by larryjf]


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## JohnV (Jan 2, 2005)

What I take it to mean quite often is that truth itself remains undefilable, and that the Word can always be measured by its truthfulness. Though there have been transcription errors, and so translation diffuculties, yet the unity of the whole remains intact. 

For example, one of the most troublesome words of late has been the meaning of the Hebrew word 'day', whether or not it refers to a 24 hr. period or a more general era of time. From this some have extrapolated eons of time to be in the same reference; and some have extrapolated a time for God's time. These latter are clearly unwarranted, and the plain reading of the text remains quite unchanged by these diversions. In the end we may know no more about it, but the meaning remains still intact. Once all is said and done, plain reason brings you right back to the six-day, 24 hr. scenario. What I mean is that one has to imagine the truthfulness of these human-invented theories in order to uphold any other understanding, and that is not plain reason, because its speculation. 

In the same way, there are entire texts and bunches of texts that have come into question. But in order to do this one has to answer the human questions first, and that remains largely ignored as yet. I note the recent conversations we have had on the John 8 passage. There is also Mark 16, and numerous part and whole texts throughout the Bible. The addition or subtraction of these does no harm to the message of the Bible, for the rest remains consistent. But it does do something else, which is very serious. And that is the seemingly willy-nilly romoving (and logically, "or adding") of pieces of Scripture. That is the larger question, and not the actual purported "adding" by later transcribers. Its an accusation that remains unprovable. So again one has to imagine human theories to work with these notions as "truths". That is not plain reason, but usually it is placed erroneously against a similar accusation of imagining the truthfulness of the traditional renderings. So, in other words, we have to imagine that God does not really uphold His Word, but lets parts of it be added and subtracted at the will of transcribers: we have to imagine the falling of one doctrine to uphold another. 

It simply is not sufficient to warrant the removal of any text by the evidence of variations in the manuscripts. It is scholarly to note these, but is not warrant to remove any text. It remains a judgment call by the translators, and one has to wonder if they have been endowed with some special message from God to do the things they are doing. For this is Scripture, God's Word, and not some Greek epic. So the human questions loom much larger than the manuscript problems. 

Its the same mistake that the Positivists made some decades ago. They put their trust in contemporary scholarship instead of the Word of God. The former was deemed infallibly true, and therefore the latter had to be mistaken at certain points. What they failed to say was that if the Word of God was seen as mistaken, it was because what we thought it meant may be mistaken, or the criterion used to make such an evaluation was mistaken, or our scholarship may be mistaken. Instead they jumped at the chance to accuse the Word. They have since been robbed of their boastful arrogance, once faced with the hoaxes perpretrated by their very heroes. 

Through all this we still have the same Word. And once we've finished bouncing each other off the walls over various things, we will still be faced with the very same doctrine and life difficulties in this life, the ones the Word addresses.


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