Dennis and Matthew, thank you for bringing these text-critical issues up. I think Theodore Letis addresses them well in
these quotes from his book,
The Majority Text: Essays And Reviews In The Continuing Debate, from the essay, "In Reply to D.A. Carson's '
The King James Version Debate' " :
As Letis begins his interaction with Carson, he proceeds thus:
If D.A. Carson’s book illustrates nothing else it shows there are two schools of thought. Both schools interpret the data of NT textual criticism and modern translations differently, and both groups fill in the gaps in the data with assumptions which favor their given position. I hope some are beginning to see that this is not an argument between scholarship (the established school represented by Carson) and non-scholarship (the challenging school which has traditionally been treated as non-scholarly and completely uncritical). To the contrary, the best representatives of both schools display genuine scholarship. Why is it, then, that these two schools co-exist on this all-important issue of the very wording of the NT text? And is this a recent or a long-standing debate? It is these questions that we hope to broach—and answer—in this essay. . .
Further on in the essay Letis continues,
That Carson’s school claims total theological neutrality with regard to the method of textual criticism applied, and the overall approach to the NT documents, is a quality that is boasted of by its proponents.
In Carson’s school of textual criticism those who do not necessarily hold to any view of inspiration and those who are supposed to hold to an evangelical view of inspiration, share agreement. This is conceded by Gordon D. Fee:
What is most probable in textual choices transcends confessional boundaries, hence, confessional evangelicals are generally at one with other scholars on the principles, if not on the actual choices, of textual criticism.(9)
Here is where the plumb-line is drawn. Hills protests, saying,
If, now, the Christian Church has been correct down through the ages in her fundamental attitude toward the Old and New Testaments, if the doctrines of the
Divine inspiration and providential preservation of these Scriptures are true doctrines, then the textual criticism of the New Testament is different from that of the uninspired writings of antiquity. The textual criticism of any book must take into account the conditions under which the original manuscripts were written and also those under which the copies of these manuscripts were made and preserved. But if the doctrines of the divine inspiration and providential preservation of the Scriptures are true, then the original New Testament manuscripts were written under special conditions, under the inspiration of God, and the copies were made and preserved under special conditions, under the singular care and providence of God.(10)
What Hills offers is an unambiguous “confessional statement” that leads to a particular interpretation of New Testament textual criticism data. Such a confessional statement, the omission of which in one’s method of textual criticism will lead to a totally different interpretation of the same data, is precisely what Fee admits is conspicuously absent from the school represented by himself and Carson. Is it any wonder that the two schools do not see eye to eye? Is it not clear by now why Nolan never convinced Griesbach’s disciples (1815),(11) Scrivener never convinced Westcott and Hort who dominated over the revision committee for the Revised Version (1870-1881),(12) Burgon never convinced Bishop Ellicott (1883),(13) Miller never convinced Sanday (1897),(14) Hoskier never convinced Souter (1914),(15) Hodges never convinced Fee (1978), (16) and finally, why Hills, Pickering, and van Bruggen have not convinced Carson?
Hills himself a well-trained textual critic, who earned his doctorate in NT textual criticism from Harvard, has classed Carson’s school because of its omission of the before-mentioned “confessional statement,” the “naturalistic method”(17) of textual criticism; Hodges at one time similarly called it “rationalistic.”(18)
The mystery of the ages must be put forth in the question: At what point were confessing evangelicals persuaded to “compartmentalize” their beliefs concerning inspiration and preservation, in order to be allowed to play at textual criticism? (e.g., as Carson has mentioned: Warfield, Machen, Robertson, et al.). While agreeing that much unfair abuse has been heaped on Westcott and Hort in pro-TR literature, I am nevertheless compelled “by the facts of history” to acknowledge them carefully as the major force in producing this situation…(pages 191-196 of Letis’ Majority Text)
Some will fault me for not answering every objection of Carson’s, but it was only our intention to raise the old issue of presuppositions and to underscore the fact that this debate is not one between experts with data and non-experts with dogma, but rather one between experts with the same data, but different dogma—the dogma of neutrality versus the dogma of providence…(pp. 201-204)
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Footnotes
(9) Gordon D. Fee, “The Text of the New Testament and Modern Translations,” Christianity Today (June 22, 1973), pp. 6-11)
(10) Hills, The King James Version Defended, p. 2.
(11) See Frederick Nolan’s critique of Griesbach’s premises and methodology in his An Inquiry into the Integrity of the Greek Vulgate or Received Text of the New Testament, (London: F.C. and J. Rivington, 1815).
(12) See his critique of Westcott and Hort’s theory in F.H.A. Scrivener, A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, 4th ed., 2 vols. Revised by Miller (London: George Bell and Sons, 1894), Vol. 2, pp. 285-301.
(13) See Burgon’s “Letter to the Right Rev. C.S. Ellicott, D.D., bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, in reply to his pamphlet in defense of the revisers, and their new Greek text of the New Testament,” as it appears in his Revision Revised, pp. 369-520.
(14) See Edward Miller’s The Oxford Debate on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament which is an edited version of the public debate held at New College on May 6, 1897, principally between Edward Miller the advocate of the traditional (majority) text, and William Sanday, the advocate for Westcott’s and Hort’s text. Interesting to note is the fact that many of the same arguments raised in this debate were being raised again in the JETS debate between Hodges and Fee, eighty-one years later.
(15) Notes Souter’s harsh comments in review of H. Hoskier’s Concerning the Genesis of the Versions of the New Testament, 2 vols. (London: Bernard Quaritch, 1910, 1911), as they appeared in the Journal of Theological Studies, Vol. 13 (1912): “We cannot afford to do without his valuable cooperation in New Testament textual criticism, but would suggest that he confine his energies to the collection and accurate presentation of material, and leave theorizing to others, at least meantime” (p. 122). Hoskier’s response was the massive two-volume Codex B and Its Allies: A Study and an Indictment, 2 vols. (London: Bernard Quaritch, Ltd., 1914), wherein he replied directly to Souter: “I refuse to be bound by such advice” (p. i).
(16) See the debate between Hodges and Fee in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Vol. 21, Nos. 1 and 2 (March 1978, June 1978).
(17) Hills, The King James, pp. 62-114.
(18) Zane C. Hodges, “Rationalism and Contemporary New Testament Textual Criticism,” Bibliotheca Sacra 128 (January, 1971), 27-35. Hodges has, however, been similarly criticized for his rationalistic use of the argument of statistical probability.
[End Letis]
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This may be a bit too much scholarship for some, but how else can we discern what is going on unless we seek to understand the presuppositions of those putting forth their arguments! This really is the crux of the matter!
