TR/KJV Viewpoint and NAPARC Churches?

[jwright82]

I don't know how you can say "you think I haven't addressed your issues with the CT position", when I posed two questions, relevant to the discussion, and you didn't answer either of them. In all sincerity, can you answer these questions simply?

1. Is 1 Peter 1:3–9, without reservation, the Word of God? How do you know?

I'll answer because it's in my ESV Bible and every other Bible I have ever personally owned (NIV and NKJV). There's no textual comments about it, that I may feel inclined to look up or not.
Is this a disputed text? The only debate I'm aware of is that of the author. But that normally looks at the whole book first.
But I would say that the emphasis on being "tested by trials" certainly aligns with someone who didn't pass his own personal trial and denied being associated with our Lord.
Plus I trust the canonization process that affirmed it, through the work of Michael Krueger. I see no reason to doubt it.

1. If tomorrow, a new edition of the ESV came out and for the sake of the example this passage was now, by well-meaning and faithful Christians who are by no means lying, no longer seen as part of the Word of God, what would you do?

Forget about my analogy, I'm not trying to say anyone is lying. Just please, I beg you, answer my questions.

Probably nothing. But I call into question the rather hypothetical nature of the question. What are the chances of that happening? I mean real numbers not "it's possible". I also call into question the implicit idea that some kind of evidence will be discovered today that will cause such a ruckus in the world of textual criticism that the editor's of the ESV will change the format to account for that.
I mean that's not how textual criticism works. The chances of that happening are so unlikely that I don't think it's even worth considering. I personally, and I'm not saying that you're doing this, don't take highly unlikely scenarios seriously in my day to day dealings.
But you wanted a simple answer, nothing. I would do nothing because of the reasons above.

 

[De Jager]

I'll answer because it's in my ESV Bible and every other Bible I have ever personally owned (NIV and NKJV). There's no textual comments about it, that I may feel inclined to look up or not.
Is this a disputed text? The only debate I'm aware of is that of the author. But that normally looks at the whole book first.
But I would say that the emphasis on being "tested by trials" certainly aligns with someone who didn't pass his own personal trial and denied being associated with our Lord.
Plus I trust the canonization process that affirmed it, through the work of Michael Krueger. I see no reason to doubt it.

Probably nothing. But I call into question the rather hypothetical nature of the question. What are the chances of that happening? I mean real numbers not "it's possible". I also call into question the implicit idea that some kind of evidence will be discovered today that will cause such a ruckus in the world of textual criticism that the editor's of the ESV will change the format to account for that.
I mean that's not how textual criticism works. The chances of that happening are so unlikely that I don't think it's even worth considering. I personally, and I'm not saying that you're doing this, don't take highly unlikely scenarios seriously in my day to day dealings.
But you wanted a simple answer, nothing. I would do nothing because of the reasons above.

Thank you for your response.

It's not a disputed text by any means, as far as I know. I only used it by way of example. My main concern is that I want to be able to open up my bible, read a verse, and know that it is, without a doubt, the word of God. I feel like this isn't too much to ask? I don't appreciate it when arguments are made (not by you to be clear!) to the effect "if these things hurt your faith that's your own fault". I'm sorry but what kind of pastoral response is that? It bothers me to read through the scriptures in certain versions, and read things like "such and such is not in the best manuscripts" or to see a whole section or verse italicized or a footnote casting doubt on whether it's truly God's word. I am not alone in this. Earlier I posted about the Reformation Heritage Study Bible. As far as I know, and I could be wrong, by design, they don't do that. So this isn't just me, an uneducated and inexperienced peasant, who is uncomfortable with this kind of casting into doubt certain sections of God's Word; considerable Biblical scholars feel the same way.

I don't think the fact that I asked a hypothetical question or the fact that it likely won't happen makes it invalid. I'm not arguing about likelihood, I'm arguing about the principle behind the method. My point is simply this: it appears, at least to me, that the very nature of the CT methodology opens up any and all texts in the scriptures to possible future revision. My mentioning the ESV is also not to cast any shade on the ESV; I have used this version myself - I simply use it as an example of of a version based on the CT.

 

[Ploutos]

@De Jager I didn't answer your questions for the same reason that I deferred to answer the question about Mark earlier in this very same thread, which is because I reject the line of reasoning that leads to the question and I don't feel like being baited into the tiresome line of questioning that invariably follows such questions whenever this topic comes up.

Jamie's criticism of your questioning about 1 Peter is absolutely spot-on and I maintain that the question is invalid. Has any scholarly consensus in 2,000 years ever questioned 1 Peter 1:3-9? Why not? The very question itself (and this is one reason I refuse to answer it) betrays a lamentable misunderstanding of how even non-Christians conduct text criticism. Note that I'm not talking the Dan Browns of the world. Sure, someone could "discover" a manuscript that omits these verses and write the sequel to the Da Vinci Code about how Christianity is a post-manufactured hoax. But I'm talking about serious text criticism, not fringe loonies. Even unbelieving scholars have enough sense to uncritically accept something that comes out of nowhere like this. I mean seriously - a manuscript like that is more likely to end up as the subject of Tucker Carlson's next podcast rather than any serious scholarly journal.

There's another misconception involved in the line of reasoning that leads up to your question, and it's hinted at by the answer that Jamie gave to your question. Can it seriously be asserted that Christians who hold to the CT position are so compromised that even in such an unlikely scenario they are going to just go along with the flow? There are any number of text critical issues which sensible Christians flat-out reject, the most obvious being the questioning of the authorship of Ephesians, the Pastoral Epistles, and 2 Peter. You do your fellow believers an injustice by assuming that because they (sensibly, in their opinion) accept some premises of the CT position that they are therefore compromised and vulnerable to every problematic implication that every liberal God-hater has ever drawn from that position. That's not a reasonable way to deal with people. You can hold to the TR position if you want, and are free to disagree with the CT position (as I myself have already indicated I am inclined to do on at least some points) - that doesn't mean you have to denigrate the position wholesale as leaving its adherents with no basis for having any sure belief in the Word of God. That's just not a truthful take or an accurate representation at least of any of the CT adherents on here, so even if you're right 99% of the time, this 1% of the time, you're lyi-, I mean, wrong.

 

[Ploutos]

A great number of original manuscripts and editions of musical works were destroyed or lost in World War 2, with the result that a printed edition may be based on now-lost manuscripts of a higher quality than the best currently available manuscripts. I think (though I can't cite a source and can no longer locate the resources to determine this with certainty) that there is some significant evidence of this with the music of J.S. Bach, where the "best" modern editions are based on a diminished and possibly inferior manuscript base because of the damage wrought by that war. Even without scholar-level research into the matter, though, it just strikes me as common sense. You could have, hypothetically, a printed edition of Bach's works that dates from the mid-1900s, which is based on really excellent manuscripts that are now lost. Consequently, you could have a modern edition based on a few available manuscripts from close to Bach's time, yet that modern edition could be inferior. This to me just seems intuitive, and it is something that can be demonstrated in just the last 2-3 centuries rather than requiring millennia. For that reason, I tend to lean toward the Byzantine tradition, and I tend to lean more toward the TR rather than the CT text, but not absolutely. I think the numbers count there.

I just want to qualify this statement that I made earlier just to highlight why I don't have a firmer stance on this issue. While the above example drawn from musicology does provide a common-sense reason why I might lean TR, I would also point out that it's not a given that either a) the older print edition has a better manuscript tradition to draw from or that b) the older print edition has faithfully and without further alteration continued the manuscript tradition without alteration or editing. So while it's possible (and I think has been actively hypothesized) that there are some Bach editions from the early 1900s that are based on reliable since-lost manuscripts, I think it's also established that the first compilation of the complete works of Bach, the Bach-Gesellschaft, is generally regarded as being based on an inferior manuscript base than the post-war Neue Bach Ausgabe. So none of this is absolute.

There's another thing: musicology is not perfectly analogous to Biblical text criticism. Particularly in the 19th century, music from earlier times was freely handled both in transmission and in performance. Mozart rescored Handel's Messiah for a more typical Classical-era orchestra. Liszt transcribed Bach's organ works for piano, while Reger wrote transcriptions of the Brandenburg Concertos for piano duo. Earlier works were published in new editions in which they were freely and liberally updated according to the tastes of the time; notes were added, octaves or instruments were added, all manner of dynamic markings and performance indications were scattered all over. That's not at all analogous to the process by which early Christians (and later, monks) would have handled the word of God. A second difference emerges: in musicology there can be no talk of providential preservation, much as some people (perhaps even including myself) might like to facetiously hyperbolize the glory of the sacred works of Bach and Handel.

If in this post I've provided a bewildering array of qualifications pointing every which-a-way that would qualify me out of firm adherence to either end of this camp, that's precisely my point, and since Charles asked for my views earlier, I felt it necessary to provide those qualifications to avoid being typecast. My personal preference for the Byzantine / TR tradition is just a leaning, and my personal preference for the KJV is pedagogical and literary rather than theological. The "practical" component of my view given above is really the heart of my position on the matter.

 

[jwright82]

Thank you for your response.

It's not a disputed text by any means, as far as I know. I only used it by way of example. My main concern is that I want to be able to open up my bible, read a verse, and know that it is, without a doubt, the word of God. I feel like this isn't too much to ask?

I appreciate your response and I have the same feeling as you. When I started my deep dive into textual criticism my momma was very concerned that it might lead me away from the certainty of God's Word in my hands. That's how she raised me, with certainty in the Word Of God.
So I do relate to your concern but the good news is that I haven't found anything that shook my faith. It may be the whole "stubborn, hard-headed, Irish thing" finally working in my favor.

I don't appreciate it when arguments are made (not by you to be clear!) to the effect "if these things hurt your faith that's your own fault". I'm sorry but what kind of pastoral response is that?

I agree with your sentiment here. I'm not a pastor, so take this with a grain of salt, but my response to an enquiry like this would be to gently ask questions about "why this is an immediate concern for the person I'm counseling?"
If a brother or sister in Christ came to me with this sort of question (I do get inquiries from family and friends all the time) I would walk them through the evidence at the level they are on. I have no desire to be acknowledged as "smart" or any other accolade but I also understand the human response to this.
So I wouldn't walk my mom through the presuppositional arguments over methodological philosophies because I'd lose her. She's a simple little Bible believing Christian who seeks out my opinion on these matters.

It bothers me to read through the scriptures in certain versions, and read things like "such and such is not in the best manuscripts" or to see a whole section or verse italicized or a footnote casting doubt on whether it's truly God's word. I am not alone in this. Earlier I posted about the Reformation Heritage Study Bible. As far as I know, and I could be wrong, by design, they don't do that.

I can certainly understand that and to be honest next to my insatiable desire to learn about this issue is an equal desire to answer that question so that God's sheep can be comforted in their faith.
Because there are answers to those questions and the Churches should be able to provide some kind of answer to those questions, or refer people to places to get the answer.
As far as individual translations and whether or not they do that is above my pay grade. That's up to individuals to decide for themselves or their house holds.
It sounds like that translation you mentioned is a good one to recommend to people in this particular position. It would remove the question but individuals are individuals so what can we do?

So this isn't just me, an uneducated and inexperienced peasant, who is uncomfortable with this kind of casting into doubt certain sections of God's Word; considerable Biblical scholars feel the same way.

Well first off, I've been interacting with you and reading your post's for years and I would give yourself more credit then this.
That may be true about certain "considerable Biblical scholars" but I don't think it necessarily means that. It appears to me that it's simply a decision by an editorial board to be honest about the textual situation. But I'm not them, so I can't be certain or answer for whatever they decide.
But does it really "cast it into doubt?" I mean I've worked very hard in this thread not to address the philosophical issues I see being thrown around (that's a quick way to dull a party, let a philosopher speak, Jacob probably knows what I'm talking about).
Did our Lord and Savior give us a reliable Word (however He did that) to place our God given faith into? Yes, we all agree on that. Did he provide us (NAPARC or Churches that would agree with NAPARC) with Churches in denomination's that are faithful to His Word and our Biblical COF? Yes, we agree on that.
So I would frame the question, philosophically, as do we have warrant epistemologically to believe that the translation we hold is the Word Of God? Yes, that is true regardless of the textual criticism issues.
Warrant works on the basis that at this point in time I have no real reason to doubt my beliefs on this subject but if/when an argument or piece of evidence comes up that "gives me reason to doubt that" then I can seek out answers to that question.
All other questions are more inline with how individual pastors handle this subject in their pulpits.

I don't think the fact that I asked a hypothetical question or the fact that it likely won't happen makes it invalid. I'm not arguing about likelihood, I'm arguing about the principle behind the method. My point is simply this: it appears, at least to me, that the very nature of the CT methodology opens up any and all texts in the scriptures to possible future revision. My mentioning the ESV is also not to cast any shade on the ESV; I have used this version myself - I simply use it as an example of of a version based on the CT.

I love my ESV personally and I know you're not trying to change that. But I appreciate the way you phrased your concern, as a methodological implication or consequences of the method. That's much easier to understand, so thank you.
But is this a problem only for a CT translation and is some kind of "received text" the answer to this proposed problem? And is some kind of "received text" immune to these problems? I'd say no to both those questions.
I know that you haven't been arguing for any kind of TR or RT view but placing the CT view on one side implies another side (whatever you want to call that). I personally don't think there's only two sides of this debate but three, the vast majority of people who don't see a problem like me is the third side. This is the unofficial position of Churches in denomination's that are part of NAPARC.
In my studies I haven't personally seen any good reasons to doubt my ESV. So I wonder if the hypothetical, but good, question you ask maybe invents a problem that doesn't exist?
But the principle behind the method is not designed to cast doubt on the Scriptures, that may be an unintended consequence of it but the fact of textual variants makes this a problem for everyone. Not just CT translations.

 

[Ploutos]

I don't appreciate it when arguments are made (not by you to be clear!) to the effect "if these things hurt your faith that's your own fault". I'm sorry but what kind of pastoral response is that?

Since I was the one that said something broadly similar to the quoted remark (though to be clear, I did not and would not say that in the exact way you worded it), I'll address this. This is not a forum for pastoral counseling and I'm not a pastor. My saying that does not mean that I would say that in a pastoral setting nor does it mean that I would endorse any other pastor doing that. I said that with the presumption that you have a certain degree of certainty in your faith and in God's word, and so I consider myself free to be more direct than would be advisable in other contexts. If you yourself are actually having a serious crisis of faith over this: first, you probably should be talking to your pastor about it; second, you probably shouldn't be jumping into a debate about it on an online forum; third, if you're going to discuss it online, you should probably be upfront about that so that people can respond appopriately (such as in the "Prayer Concerns" sub-forum). And if this thread were about a real life situation of someone having a serious crisis of faith over this, again, it would be a different thread and I would approach it differently.

 

[De Jager]

@De Jager I didn't answer your questions for the same reason that I deferred to answer the question about Mark earlier in this very same thread, which is because I reject the line of reasoning that leads to the question and I don't feel like being baited into the tiresome line of questioning that invariably follows such questions whenever this topic comes up.

Jamie's criticism of your questioning about 1 Peter is absolutely spot-on and I maintain that the question is invalid. Has any scholarly consensus in 2,000 years ever questioned 1 Peter 1:3-9? Why not? The very question itself (and this is one reason I refuse to answer it) betrays a lamentable misunderstanding of how even non-Christians conduct text criticism. Note that I'm not talking the Dan Browns of the world. Sure, someone could "discover" a manuscript that omits these verses and write the sequel to the Da Vinci Code about how Christianity is a post-manufactured hoax. But I'm talking about serious text criticism, not fringe loonies. Even unbelieving scholars have enough sense to uncritically accept something that comes out of nowhere like this. I mean seriously - a manuscript like that is more likely to end up as the subject of Tucker Carlson's next podcast rather than any serious scholarly journal.

There's another misconception involved in the line of reasoning that leads up to your question, and it's hinted at by the answer that Jamie gave to your question. Can it seriously be asserted that Christians who hold to the CT position are so compromised that even in such an unlikely scenario they are going to just go along with the flow? There are any number of text critical issues which sensible Christians flat-out reject, the most obvious being the questioning of the authorship of Ephesians, the Pastoral Epistles, and 2 Peter. You do your fellow believers an injustice by assuming that because they (sensibly, in their opinion) accept some premises of the CT position that they are therefore compromised and vulnerable to every problematic implication that every liberal God-hater has ever drawn from that position. That's not a reasonable way to deal with people. You can hold to the TR position if you want, and are free to disagree with the CT position (as I myself have already indicated I am inclined to do on at least some points) - that doesn't mean you have to denigrate the position wholesale as leaving its adherents with no basis for having any sure belief in the Word of God. That's just not a truthful take or an accurate representation at least of any of the CT adherents on here, so even if you're right 99% of the time, this 1% of the time, you're lyi-, I mean, wrong.

I am at a loss for words at this point. Again, multiple paragraphs, and still not either understanding or appreciating my concerns. Just a "I'm not answering, the question is invalid" non-answer.

I will try again. Whether the passage is 1 Peter 1:3-9 is NOT THE POINT. It's an example. It could be any passage.

Premise 1) The methodology of the CT approach involves a scholarly review of manuscripts, the results of which scholarly review sometimes leads a bible publisher to say "this or that text is not in the best manuscripts". Correct? Forgive me if I don't phrase it exactly right, but is this not correct?

Premise 2) This methodology inherently, by its very nature, means the text is open to revisions. Correct?

Conclusion: If scholarly consensus changed on a particular passage, it is theoretically possible that there are verses in the scriptures that are currently considered undisputed, will become disputed, which will lead to the conclusion that they probably aren't the word of God.

This is not some pie-in-the-sky possibility. This has happened in real life. The most famous disputed passages are an example of this very thing occuring. What is to say it won't happen to more verses in the future. Do you not see that this is problematic for the Christian who wants to trust his Bible?

I'm not hinting at or asserting anything about Christians who hold the CT position. I've literally never done that once.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

I think you're also missing the point of what I am saying; I'll take the blame for that, as my post might have been better suited as a standalone rather than responding to yours.

I acknowledge that there are translation differences - I'm really not concerned about that. Of course I expect faithful men to have differing opinions on that, and I expect them to wrestle with the original langauges!

Also: I am not accusing anyone of lying. I am using the analogy of a person who occasionally lies to prove a point. My main concern lies not with translation differences; it lies in the fact that there are bibles that omit or italicize entire verses and sections of the scriptures. According to the produces of those bibles, those sections are "probably not" the word of God. They say things like "x or y passage is not in the 'best' manuscripts" or something like that. In my mind, then, the word of God is not really a settled thing. So, by their own admission, they have produced a compilation of the Scriptures that is, say 99.5% the Word of God, and 0.5% probably not the word of God. You surely can't deny that this is the logical implication of what they are saying. Are you OK with this? By the way, I'm not sure if the NKJV publishers do the same thing, and if that's the case, then I'm against that too.

What is exactly the Word of God? Is any verse in the scriptures truly safe? What is to say that tomorrow someone doesn't find a stash of manuscripts in a pot in Egypt which fundamentally changes the settled archaeological and historical consensus, and some precious piece of the Word of God is deemed "probably not" the Word of God. Can you admit to this possibility? Do we just have to live with this? How can I hang my hat on any particular verse?

In my mind, the entire philosophy of preservation between the CT and TR camps is entirely different. In the CT camp, they argue that archaeological discoveries and the parsing through of old manuscripts to determine the "best" is a means by which God uses to preserve the Word of God. They subject the Word of God to archeological discoveries. In the TR camp, they subject archaeological discoveries to what has been 'received' as the Word of God. I cannot for the life of me get behind the former approach.

I asked ChatGPT a salient question and it highlights this difference in practice and touches on the point I'm making:

----------------------------------------------------------

Does the Reformation Heritage Study Bible contain footnotes like the ESV which says things like "this section not in the best manuscripts", etc. etc.


The Reformation Heritage KJV Study Bible edited by Joel Beeke, Michael Barrett, and Gerald Bilkes does not generally do what the ESV does with notes such as “the earliest manuscripts do not include this passage” or by bracketing Mark 16:9–20 and John 7:53–8:11.

In fact, its textual philosophy is substantially different. The introductory essay, “The King James Version: Its Tradition, Text, and Translation,” explicitly defends the Textus Receptus/Received Text underlying the KJV. It argues that the traditional text represents the providentially preserved text of the church and cautions against automatically preferring manuscripts simply because they are older.

So, for example:

• Mark 16:9–20 is printed normally as Scripture, rather than being separated with an ESV-style warning that some early manuscripts omit it.
• John 7:53–8:11 is likewise retained normally.
• 1 John 5:7–8, including the Trinitarian wording of the KJV, is retained.
• You therefore don't encounter the repeated impression you can get in the ESV/NIV of “this verse isn't in the earliest/best manuscripts.”

That doesn't mean the RHSB pretends textual variants don't exist. Its introductory material actually discusses manuscripts and textual criticism. But its position is essentially that “oldest surviving manuscript” is not synonymous with “best manuscript,” and that continuity of usage and preservation in the church is important evidence. Its discussion explicitly says that some earlier manuscripts have readings differing from the Byzantine/received tradition, but argues that “discovery is not preservation.”

So if one of the things that bothers you about the ESV is the frequency of footnotes that seem to cast doubt on traditional passages, the Reformation Heritage KJV Study Bible is almost the opposite kind of study Bible in that respect.

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My analogy about someone "lying" is not to be taken as me claiming that ministers or bible publishers are lying. It is to say, that if a person produces a work that is mostly to be seen as true, but some of it is probably not true, then that simply calls into question the remainder of the content.

I think there are two basic errors here that keep recurring, and they are making the disagreement appear much larger and more alarming than it actually is.

According to the producers of those bibles, those sections are "probably not" the word of God. They say things like "x or y passage is not in the 'best' manuscripts" or something like that.

First, that is not quite what a note such as “some of the earliest manuscripts do not include...” is saying.

If a translation tells you that certain early manuscripts omit a passage, it is first giving you historical information about the manuscripts. That information is true whether you ultimately conclude that the passage is authentic or not.

Now, we should distinguish that from the committee's textual judgment. If a translation actually omits a verse from the main text, the translators have indeed made a fallible judgment that the reading is probably not original. The ESV itself says this about the very small number of verses it omits. But the footnote reporting that particular manuscripts omit or contain a reading is not itself a declaration that those words are “not the Word of God.” The ESV describes its textual notes as informing readers about textual variations and how its committee resolved them.

Frankly, because of WCF 1.8, I find that transparency preferable to pretending the manuscript evidence does not exist.

If the Hebrew and Greek are the final appeal, why would I want information about the actual Hebrew and Greek witnesses concealed from me?

If I were producing a KJV study Bible, for example, I would have no theological objection to a note at Revelation 22:19 explaining that Erasmus lacked Greek text for the end of Revelation and supplied it from Latin, and that the TR's “book of life” there derives from that retroversion whereas the extant Greek manuscript tradition reads “tree of life.” That is not an attack upon preservation. It is useful information about the history of the Greek text we are supposedly concerned to preserve. The historical relationship between Erasmus's Latin supplementation and the TR reading at Revelation 22:19 is well documented.

The Reformed tradition was not afraid of this sort of information. The existence of variants did not cause the Westminster divines to lose confidence in Scripture. As has already been shown in this thread, they knew about variants and even considered readings from Alexandrinus.

Which brings me to the second and more persistent error.

In the CT camp, they argue that archaeological discoveries and the parsing through of old manuscripts to determine the "best" is a means by which God uses to preserve the Word of God.

The Critical Text is not the same thing as the manuscript evidence from which critical editions are constructed.

I do not know how many different ways this can be stated.

A Nestle-Aland volume contains two importantly different things on the same page:

1. The main Greek text, which represents the editors' judgment about the earliest attainable reading.
2. The critical apparatus, which records significant alternative readings and the witnesses supporting them.

The German Bible Society itself describes the apparatus as a means by which readers can form their own informed judgments about the text.

And this is the point I wish people would write out 200 times:

THERE IS NOTHING THAT REQUIRES A TRANSLATOR, TRANSLATION COMMITTEE, PASTOR, OR EXEGETE TO AGREE WITH THE READING PRINTED IN THE MAIN TEXT OF NESTLE-ALAND OR UBS.

In fact, the German Bible Society explicitly says that translators are not bound to the decisions of the textual committee.

And this is not theoretical. The ESV's own preface says that in some New Testament passages its translators deliberately followed a Greek reading different from the reading preferred by UBS/Nestle-Aland.

So the categories need to be kept straight.

A pastor can open NA28, examine the apparatus, see that NA28 prints reading A, examine the witnesses for A, B, and C, and conclude that B is original.

He has not “followed the Critical Text.”

He has used a critical edition as a tool because its apparatus conveniently tells him what manuscript evidence exists.

He could even conclude that the TR reading is correct against the NA28 main text.

That is the whole point of having the apparatus.

The apparatus is useful precisely because the printed TR does not tell you all of that. A Scrivener TR gives you its Greek text. It does not place underneath that text the significant alternative readings preserved in Alexandrinus, Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, papyri, other Byzantine manuscripts, versions, fathers, and so forth.

That does not make Scrivener bad. It means it is performing a different function.

This is why the statement:

They subject the Word of God to archaeological discoveries.

is also misleading.

Manuscripts are not archaeological authorities standing over Scripture. They are witnesses to the Greek text of Scripture.

If tomorrow someone really did discover “a stash of manuscripts in a pot in Egypt,” nobody would be required to change a single word of his Greek New Testament merely because they were old.

Those manuscripts would have to be studied.

What do they contain? Are they independent witnesses or copies of the same exemplar? How do their readings relate genealogically to known witnesses? Are their peculiarities characteristic scribal errors? What is their geographical distribution? What do the versions and fathers show? What does the grammar indicate? What does the context indicate?

The mere fact that a manuscript is newly discovered does not constitute a vote that overrules the Church.

And one can perform all of that analysis while beginning with an absolute conviction that God has preserved his Word.

This is where the repeated identification of “using manuscripts unknown to the KJV translators” with “the CT position” has badly confused the conversation.

Those are not the same thing.

A Christian may reject significant portions of modern eclectic methodology and still believe that a manuscript unavailable to Erasmus or Beza ought to be examined.

Indeed, that seems almost unavoidable if our concern is actually with the original Greek rather than with the historical finality of particular sixteenth-century editorial decisions.

And this brings me back to the irony about the footnotes.

You are worried that the ESV reader sees a note saying, in effect, “Some manuscripts do not contain these words.”

I am more concerned about creating the impression that no such manuscript evidence exists or that faithful Christians have no legitimate reason even to consider it.

If the TR contains a reading whose history involves Erasmus supplying Greek from Latin, I want to know that.

If Alexandrinus contains a different reading and Westminster divines knew about it, I want to know that.

If Byzantine manuscripts divide at a particular point, I want to know that.

If the TR differs from the majority of Byzantine witnesses, I want to know that too.

That information does not make Scripture less certain.

It allows the Church to do exactly what its trained ministers have always done: examine the available witnesses, use grammatical and theological judgment, compare Scripture with Scripture, and make a responsible ministerial judgment concerning the Hebrew and Greek text God has preserved.

So no, the alternatives are not:

TR = settled Word of God

versus

CT = a permanently provisional Bible that archaeology may destroy tomorrow.

That formulation conflates manuscripts, critical editions, apparatuses, translation committees, and textual methodologies into one thing.

They simply are not one thing.

And until those distinctions are kept clear, I think we are going to continue talking past one another.

 

[De Jager]

I appreciate your response and I have the same feeling as you. When I started my deep dive into textual criticism my momma was very concerned that it might lead me away from the certainty of God's Word in my hands. That's how she raised me, with certainty in the Word Of God.
So I do relate to your concern but the good news is that I haven't found anything that shook my faith. It may be the whole "stubborn, hard-headed, Irish thing" finally working in my favor.

I agree with your sentiment here. I'm not a pastor, so take this with a grain of salt, but my response to an enquiry like this would be to gently ask questions about "why this is an immediate concern for the person I'm counseling?"
If a brother or sister in Christ came to me with this sort of question (I do get inquiries from family and friends all the time) I would walk them through the evidence at the level they are on. I have no desire to be acknowledged as "smart" or any other accolade but I also understand the human response to this.
So I wouldn't walk my mom through the presuppositional arguments over methodological philosophies because I'd lose her. She's a simple little Bible believing Christian who seeks out my opinion on these matters.

I can certainly understand that and to be honest next to my insatiable desire to learn about this issue is an equal desire to answer that question so that God's sheep can be comforted in their faith.
Because there are answers to those questions and the Churches should be able to provide some kind of answer to those questions, or refer people to places to get the answer.
As far as individual translations and whether or not they do that is above my pay grade. That's up to individuals to decide for themselves or their house holds.
It sounds like that translation you mentioned is a good one to recommend to people in this particular position. It would remove the question but individuals are individuals so what can we do?

Well first off, I've been interacting with you and reading your post's for years and I would give yourself more credit then this.
That may be true about certain "considerable Biblical scholars" but I don't think it necessarily means that. It appears to me that it's simply a decision by an editorial board to be honest about the textual situation. But I'm not them, so I can't be certain or answer for whatever they decide.
But does it really "cast it into doubt?" I mean I've worked very hard in this thread not to address the philosophical issues I see being thrown around (that's a quick way to dull a party, let a philosopher speak, Jacob probably knows what I'm talking about).
Did our Lord and Savior give us a reliable Word (however He did that) to place our God given faith into? Yes, we all agree on that. Did he provide us (NAPARC or Churches that would agree with NAPARC) with Churches in denomination's that are faithful to His Word and our Biblical COF? Yes, we agree on that.
So I would frame the question, philosophically, as do we have warrant epistemologically to believe that the translation we hold is the Word Of God? Yes, that is true regardless of the textual criticism issues.
Warrant works on the basis that at this point in time I have no real reason to doubt my beliefs on this subject but if/when an argument or piece of evidence comes up that "gives me reason to doubt that" then I can seek out answers to that question.
All other questions are more inline with how individual pastors handle this subject in their pulpits.

I love my ESV personally and I know you're not trying to change that. But I appreciate the way you phrased your concern, as a methodological implication or consequences of the method. That's much easier to understand, so thank you.
But is this a problem only for a CT translation and is some kind of "received text" the answer to this proposed problem? And is some kind of "received text" immune to these problems? I'd say no to both those questions.
I know that you haven't been arguing for any kind of TR or RT view but placing the CT view on one side implies another side (whatever you want to call that). I personally don't think there's only two sides of this debate but three, the vast majority of people who don't see a problem like me is the third side. This is the unofficial position of Churches in denomination's that are part of NAPARC.
In my studies I haven't personally seen any good reasons to doubt my ESV. So I wonder if the hypothetical, but good, question you ask maybe invents a problem that doesn't exist?
But the principle behind the method is not designed to cast doubt on the Scriptures, that may be an unintended consequence of it but the fact of textual variants makes this a problem for everyone. Not just CT translations.

Thank you very much for your post. I really appreciate it!

Maybe I am truly searching for an "illegitimate level of religious certainty". My main concern is whether I and my children can trust the Bibles we have. I have never really been concerned about different translations or renderings of certain passages. I have and use NKJV, ESV, KJV, and NIV and appreciate all of them for different reasons. It's not differing renderings of the original that I'm concerned with. It's this notion of whether entire passages or verses truly are the Word of God or not. Like I said, when I see a verse and a footnote that says "not in the best/earliest manuscripts", I'm sorry but how am I supposed to take that? This is the publishers making a de facto judgment on what is or isn't the word of God. I don't think my gut-level discomfort with this is misplaced.

I'm not a "TR only" person by any means, and I'm not even trying to argue such that "my team wins". I also recognize that sinful people can take any method and use it for bad purposes. Liberal scholars can take the CT approach and use it to cast God's word in doubt. On the other hand, the RCC can take their Bible (including their Apocrphya) and say we've received this text and its valid because the church endorses it.

If I lean a certain way, though, it's to a TR-style approach.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

I have a couple simple questions. I will keep them short, and please keep your answers short. I don't need an essay.

1. For the sake of discussion only, and not because there is any particular significance to this passage as it relates to this discussion, can you confirm that 1 Peter 1:3-9 is absolutely, without reservation, the Word of God. How do you know?

2. If, tomorrow, scholarly consensus determined that 1 Peter 1:3-9 is "probably not" in the original, what would you do?

Your point about your pastor being right 99% of the time misses the mark. We are not claiming that your pastor is inspired and inerrant. We are claiming that the Bible is inspired and inerrant. If that's the case, then should I not be able to take out my Bible, read a verse, and then, without qualification, say "this particular verse is the Word of God". You are not dealing with my concern that it seems like the CT position inherently, by the nature of the process itself, leaves the scriptures open to further revisions, such that there is absolutely no reason why, in the future it could be decided that any particular verse in the scriptures is "probably not" the Word of God. How could you possibly not acknowledge this? This seems to be inherent in the very CT process.

Thanks

I came into this discussion after it had already been underway for some time, so perhaps I missed an earlier qualification. But I have to say that this formulation makes the problem especially clear.

If, tomorrow, a new edition of the ESV came out and ... this passage was now ... no longer seen as part of the Word of God, what would you do?

The form of this argument sounds remarkably like something a Counter-Reformation controversialist could have said to frighten ordinary Christians away from the Protestant appeal to the Hebrew and Greek:

“See what happens when you abandon the received ecclesiastical text and place Scripture in the hands of Protestant scholars. Today they tell you this is the Word of God. Tomorrow their committees may remove 1 Peter. How can you possibly know what your Bible is without an authoritative ecclesiastical settlement?”

That is not an exact equation of your position with Rome. But the argument from uncertainty is strikingly similar.

William Whitaker had to answer precisely this sort of Roman polemic. He records the argument that Protestant editions were “various and discordant,” and therefore could not provide certainty. His answer was not to establish an infallible Protestant edition. It was to insist that the authentical standard remained the Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament and that translations and editions were to be judged by those originals.

That is why your hypothetical does not trouble me.

If tomorrow an ESV committee announced that 1 Peter 1:3-9 should be removed, my response would not be, “Well, the committee has spoken, so apparently God's Word changed overnight.”

I would ask them to show their work.

Where is the manuscript evidence?

What witnesses omit those verses?

What is their genealogy and geographical distribution?

What do the ancient versions show?

What do the Fathers show?

What happened in the transmission history that explains this evidence?

And given the actual manuscript evidence for 1 Peter, the answer would almost certainly be that the committee had lost its mind.

The ESV committee possesses no magisterial authority over the Greek text.

Neither does UBS.

Neither does Nestle-Aland.

This is the point that keeps getting obscured by phrases like “the CT position.” A critical edition contains editorial judgments. A critical apparatus exposes manuscript evidence so that competent readers can evaluate those judgments. A pastor or translator can consult the apparatus and reject the reading printed in the main text.

That is not some obscure loophole. That is how the thing works.

So when you ask what happens if “scholarly consensus” changes tomorrow, the question assumes a Protestant textual magisterium that simply does not exist.

Nobody calls the ESV committee together, takes a vote, and thereby changes the Word of God.

And the historical irony is substantial. The Roman controversialists argued that Protestants produced uncertainty because they allowed appeal from the received Latin text to Hebrew and Greek sources. Whitaker describes Roman writers who objected to correcting an ecclesiastically received text by appeal to the Hebrew and Greek and who pointed to Protestant disagreements as evidence of the instability this produced.

The Protestant response was not:

“You are right. We need our own permanently fixed edition so nobody can ever question a reading again.”

It was:

“No. The Hebrew and Greek originals remain the standard, and fallible editions and translations are judged by them.”

That is much closer to the position I have been articulating throughout this thread.

There is also something wildly unrealistic about choosing seven consecutive verses of 1 Peter as the hypothetical. The manuscript tradition simply is not sitting there in such a state that tomorrow someone might find a papyrus and scholars suddenly announce, “We have discovered that 1 Peter 1:3-9 was never Scripture.”

There are variants within those verses. That is very different from evidence that the entire passage is some later fabrication. Your hypothetical takes ordinary localized textual variation and extrapolates it into the theoretical disappearance of an entire substantial passage.

That makes the textual tradition sound far more unstable than it actually is.

And this is why I think the rhetoric can become positively misleading to people who do not understand the process. It conjures a picture of ordinary Christians helplessly waiting each year to see which verses a mysterious committee of scholars has voted in or out of their Bible.

That is simply not how textual criticism, critical editions, translation committees, or pastoral exegesis work.

The apparatus actually makes the evidence more visible.

If a manuscript lacks a reading, I want to know that.

If another manuscript contains it, I want to know that.

If the TR reading is overwhelmingly Byzantine, I want to know that.

If the TR differs from the Byzantine majority, I want to know that too.

If Erasmus supplied Greek from Latin because his Greek copy was defective, I want that fact available as well.

That is not skepticism about Scripture. It is refusing to pretend that historical information becomes dangerous merely because it complicates a preferred account of how Providence operated.

And if the answer is that ordinary Christians must somehow be insulated from these facts so that they can have certainty, then we really are edging toward the old Roman argument: certainty requires an ecclesiastically settled text that cannot be questioned by appeal to the underlying sources.

The Westminster answer is not that.

WCF 1.8 sends the Church finally to the Hebrew and Greek.

So yes, I can say without hesitation that 1 Peter 1:3-9 is the Word of God.

And if tomorrow an ESV committee says otherwise, I will not tremble before the Committee.

I will ask to see the Greek.

 

[Ploutos]

This is not some pie-in-the-sky possibility. This has happened in real life. The most famous disputed passages are an example of this very thing occuring. What is to say it won't happen to more verses in the future. Do you not see that this is problematic for the Christian who wants to trust his Bible?

No, I don't see that it's problematic for the Christian who wants to trust his Bible. Not in the least.

Why has it happened for some verses? Why not for other verses? This is precisely why your question about 1 Peter is so misleading. As far as I'm aware, there is no manuscript tradition that omits those verses. In 2,000 years, not one manuscript that I'm aware of has raised that question. So instead of your question, I would propose that the better question would be: why do significant parts of the manuscript tradition omit Mark 16:8-20 while precisely zero parts of the manuscript tradition omit 1 Peter 1:3-9?

Were such a manuscript to be discovered tomorrow... well, Rich has already explained better than I could how that would work.

 

[De Jager]

I think there are two basic errors here that keep recurring, and they are making the disagreement appear much larger and more alarming than it actually is.



First, that is not quite what a note such as “some of the earliest manuscripts do not include...” is saying.

If a translation tells you that certain early manuscripts omit a passage, it is first giving you historical information about the manuscripts. That information is true whether you ultimately conclude that the passage is authentic or not.

Now, we should distinguish that from the committee's textual judgment. If a translation actually omits a verse from the main text, the translators have indeed made a fallible judgment that the reading is probably not original. The ESV itself says this about the very small number of verses it omits. But the footnote reporting that particular manuscripts omit or contain a reading is not itself a declaration that those words are “not the Word of God.” The ESV describes its textual notes as informing readers about textual variations and how its committee resolved them.

Firstly, thank you for this information - it is informative. I appreciate the distinction between a verse being omitted altogether and a footnote in the margins on a particular verse. My concern would still be: why is that footnote required at all, and is it conveying something, even unintended? What is the purpose of that historical information? How is that helping an uneducated lay-person? How is that helping me grow in my faith? I would argue that it does almost nothing productive. Could you not include some kind of interesting historical manuscript-related comment on almost any verse? By saying something like "some of the earliest manuscripts do not include" it appears that they are de facto making a judgment about the text, whether intended or not. This does not appear to be an unbiased fact. How else am I supposed to take this information? I didn't buy my Bible to read interesting facts about manuscripts? I bought it to read God's word. The average lay-person in the pew does not need to, nor I would argue are they called to, get into the rabbit hole of textual criticism such that they need such information.

If I were producing a KJV study Bible, for example, I would have no theological objection to a note at Revelation 22:19 explaining that Erasmus lacked Greek text for the end of Revelation and supplied it from Latin, and that the TR's “book of life” there derives from that retroversion whereas the extant Greek manuscript tradition reads “tree of life.” That is not an attack upon preservation. It is useful information about the history of the Greek text we are supposedly concerned to preserve. The historical relationship between Erasmus's Latin supplementation and the TR reading at Revelation 22:19 is well documented.

Again, I do not see how this information is helpful for Christians. Interesting, maybe, but practically speaking, I would love to hear a coherent argument on how this information helps the average believer grow in his faith.

The Reformed tradition was not afraid of this sort of information. The existence of variants did not cause the Westminster divines to lose confidence in Scripture. As has already been shown in this thread, they knew about variants and even considered readings from Alexandrinus.

Which brings me to the second and more persistent error.

The Critical Text is not the same thing as the manuscript evidence from which critical editions are constructed.

I do not know how many different ways this can be stated.

A Nestle-Aland volume contains two importantly different things on the same page:

1. The main Greek text, which represents the editors' judgment about the earliest attainable reading.
2. The critical apparatus, which records significant alternative readings and the witnesses supporting them.

The German Bible Society itself describes the apparatus as a means by which readers can form their own informed judgments about the text.

And this is the point I wish people would write out 200 times:

THERE IS NOTHING THAT REQUIRES A TRANSLATOR, TRANSLATION COMMITTEE, PASTOR, OR EXEGETE TO AGREE WITH THE READING PRINTED IN THE MAIN TEXT OF NESTLE-ALAND OR UBS.

In fact, the German Bible Society explicitly says that translators are not bound to the decisions of the textual committee.

And this is not theoretical. The ESV's own preface says that in some New Testament passages its translators deliberately followed a Greek reading different from the reading preferred by UBS/Nestle-Aland.

So the categories need to be kept straight.

A pastor can open NA28, examine the apparatus, see that NA28 prints reading A, examine the witnesses for A, B, and C, and conclude that B is original.

He has not “followed the Critical Text.”

He has used a critical edition as a tool because its apparatus conveniently tells him what manuscript evidence exists.

He could even conclude that the TR reading is correct against the NA28 main text.

That is the whole point of having the apparatus.

The apparatus is useful precisely because the printed TR does not tell you all of that. A Scrivener TR gives you its Greek text. It does not place underneath that text the significant alternative readings preserved in Alexandrinus, Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, papyri, other Byzantine manuscripts, versions, fathers, and so forth.

That does not make Scrivener bad. It means it is performing a different function.

Maybe I'm just not comprehending how messy history is, or the particular methods of preservation. How nice it would be if God just dropped a Bible to us from the sky. I get it that this isn't what happened.

I can appreciate that there are thousands of manuscripts, and if taken together, they provide an overwhelming body of evidence for the trustworthiness of the Bible. What I struggle with is the "open endedness" of the CT methodology. I question the necessity of it. I am not saying it is inherently invalid for someone to look through manuscripts and make a judgment. Even some of the reformers did that, right? But at this point, it's been 2,000 years. We're not in the grips of Rome's darkness, so is this whole business required anymore? Surely by now we have the Bible? Or do I have to be concerned that this or that verse might someday have a footnote that says "not in the earliest manuscripts" - again, a note that I find irrelevant at best, and at worst making a de-facto judgment.

Manuscripts are not archaeological authorities standing over Scripture. They are witnesses to the Greek text of Scripture.

If tomorrow someone really did discover “a stash of manuscripts in a pot in Egypt,” nobody would be required to change a single word of his Greek New Testament merely because they were old.

Those manuscripts would have to be studied.

What do they contain? Are they independent witnesses or copies of the same exemplar? How do their readings relate genealogically to known witnesses? Are their peculiarities characteristic scribal errors? What is their geographical distribution? What do the versions and fathers show? What does the grammar indicate? What does the context indicate?

Of course I know that just because a manuscript is discovered the Bible won't necessarily be changed. My concern is that the methodology behind the CT allows for this possibility, does it not? Shouldn't we acknowledge this possibility? We've seen it play out for real in the case of several verses/passages. What is to say it won't happen again in the future for more passages? Is that not problematic? Maybe I truly do need to just "deal with it", but it's slightly unsettling.

The mere fact that a manuscript is newly discovered does not constitute a vote that overrules the Church.

And one can perform all of that analysis while beginning with an absolute conviction that God has preserved his Word.

This is where the repeated identification of “using manuscripts unknown to the KJV translators” with “the CT position” has badly confused the conversation.

Those are not the same thing.

A Christian may reject significant portions of modern eclectic methodology and still believe that a manuscript unavailable to Erasmus or Beza ought to be examined.

Indeed, that seems almost unavoidable if our concern is actually with the original Greek rather than with the historical finality of particular sixteenth-century editorial decisions.

I can understand and receive all of this. My practical question remains - when does it end? Or will it never end? When can we finally say "enough, we don't need to revisit it, every verse in this copy of the scriptures is the Word of God, without any qualification or reservation?" It seems like the CT method implies that you can't say that.

And this brings me back to the irony about the footnotes.

You are worried that the ESV reader sees a note saying, in effect, “Some manuscripts do not contain these words.”

I am more concerned about creating the impression that no such manuscript evidence exists or that faithful Christians have no legitimate reason even to consider it.

If the TR contains a reading whose history involves Erasmus supplying Greek from Latin, I want to know that.

If Alexandrinus contains a different reading and Westminster divines knew about it, I want to know that.

If Byzantine manuscripts divide at a particular point, I want to know that.

If the TR differs from the majority of Byzantine witnesses, I want to know that too.

That information does not make Scripture less certain.

It allows the Church to do exactly what its trained ministers have always done: examine the available witnesses, use grammatical and theological judgment, compare Scripture with Scripture, and make a responsible ministerial judgment concerning the Hebrew and Greek text God has preserved.

I guess that's the difference between you and me. Where you say "I want to know that", I can honestly say "this is in no way helpful to me". I would hazard to guess that the vast majority of Christians feel the exact same way. I bet you if you polled the members of my church, almost no one, probably not a single soul would say that any of that information has helped them in any way whatsoever. I don't think I'm exaggerating at all in this assertion, even though I certainly haven't done an actual poll.

To me, and I think to others, all of these comments DO make Scripture less certain.

So no, the alternatives are not:

TR = settled Word of God

versus

CT = a permanently provisional Bible that archaeology may destroy tomorrow.

That formulation conflates manuscripts, critical editions, apparatuses, translation committees, and textual methodologies into one thing.

They simply are not one thing.

And until those distinctions are kept clear, I think we are going to continue talking past one another.

I can accept this.

 

[Ploutos]

Izaak, you raise some good points - but I think we could also ask where your approach ends. Do we need study Bibles at all? If so, what categories of information should and shouldn't be put in? Why or why not?

Your question about "where does it end" is certainly an understandable one. But we could ask that about any number of things. There are many things about the Christian faith that should be settled after 2,000 years but aren't. Surely we can all agree on the Trinity now, right? Except Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Oneness Pentecostals, Universalists, and now William Craig Lane don't.

Surely we can all agree on justification by faith, right? Except that the vast majority of supposed Christendom doesn't - Rome, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Arminians.

I get your concern that maybe text criticism isn't super relevant to every believer. Maybe it's not; but I'm not so sure. It is not just important to know God's Word but to know about God's Word. As Rich has said, this kind of knowledge strengthens belief rather than weaken it. It would be akin to not telling your children about evolution and other origin theories, in a way. Not everything has to be relevant to everybody, but I think the general approach should be to put at least some basic knowledge out there for edification and building up.

 

[jwright82]

Thank you very much for your post. I really appreciate it!

Maybe I am truly searching for an "illegitimate level of religious certainty". My main concern is whether I and my children can trust the Bibles we have. I have never really been concerned about different translations or renderings of certain passages. I have and use NKJV, ESV, KJV, and NIV and appreciate all of them for different reasons. It's not differing renderings of the original that I'm concerned with. It's this notion of whether entire passages or verses truly are the Word of God or not. Like I said, when I see a verse and a footnote that says "not in the best/earliest manuscripts", I'm sorry but how am I supposed to take that? This is the publishers making a de facto judgment on what is or isn't the word of God. I don't think my gut-level discomfort with this is misplaced.

Well I'm glad it was helpful. As far as your questions are concerned, you can "take that" however you want to. I'm not being glib here but I don't really see the problem, at least I've never come across it in my life. I've heard ordinary people ask questions about those things but they never presented it as damaging their faith. They always just seem curious to me. As far as publisher's "de facto" ruling what is or isn't scripture, I don't think that's how it actually works. If you simplify the problem down to that statement then well of course you have a problem. But you've thrown out essential elements in the process just to simplify it.
Plus the editor's of the TR did the same thing so they're this boat as well. In fact every translator does this, it's the nature of translation. And the bad news is that you can't get around the problems inherent in being finite.
That may be what your problem is, you said in a post after this one how nice it would be "if God sent down His Word to us from heaven" (or something like that). But, as you know, that's not what He chose to do.
In fact that whole publisher's "de facto ruling" is just a straw man argument that you probably picked up somewhere but as Rich has pointed out multiple times the editor's of the TR did the same thing, so same problem. You can't escape it.

I'm not a "TR only" person by any means, and I'm not even trying to argue such that "my team wins". I also recognize that sinful people can take any method and use it for bad purposes. Liberal scholars can take the CT approach and use it to cast God's word in doubt. On the other hand, the RCC can take their Bible (including their Apocrphya) and say we've received this text and its valid because the church endorses it.

If I lean a certain way, though, it's to a TR-style approach.

And maybe that's your answer, some kind of TR approach gives you the certainty you're looking for. Go with that. And so I can see how this thread might have "rocked the boat" a bit but the truth can set you free.
If I'm being honest then I would say that you picked up some "talking points" somewhere about the CT method and that's what you think it is, only to find out that the safety you thought you had in some kind of TR approach isn't any better.
And also, thanks to Rich, you may be incorrect about the CT method. Well, bad explanations given to you about the situation are going to do that. I mean, I know that you don't want to believe in bad information just to be in a place of false security.
Honestly if where you were before this thread was better for you than go back but the "genie is out of the bottle" as they say.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Firstly, thank you for this information - it is informative. I appreciate the distinction between a verse being omitted altogether and a footnote in the margins on a particular verse. My concern would still be: why is that footnote required at all, and is it conveying something, even unintended? What is the purpose of that historical information? How is that helping an uneducated lay-person? How is that helping me grow in my faith? I would argue that it does almost nothing productive. Could you not include some kind of interesting historical manuscript-related comment on almost any verse? By saying something like "some of the earliest manuscripts do not include" it appears that they are de facto making a judgment about the text, whether intended or not. This does not appear to be an unbiased fact. How else am I supposed to take this information? I didn't buy my Bible to read interesting facts about manuscripts? I bought it to read God's word. The average lay-person in the pew does not need to, nor I would argue are they called to, get into the rabbit hole of textual criticism such that they need such information.



Again, I do not see how this information is helpful for Christians. Interesting, maybe, but practically speaking, I would love to hear a coherent argument on how this information helps the average believer grow in his faith.



Maybe I'm just not comprehending how messy history is, or the particular methods of preservation. How nice it would be if God just dropped a Bible to us from the sky. I get it that this isn't what happened.

I can appreciate that there are thousands of manuscripts, and if taken together, they provide an overwhelming body of evidence for the trustworthiness of the Bible. What I struggle with is the "open endedness" of the CT methodology. I question the necessity of it. I am not saying it is inherently invalid for someone to look through manuscripts and make a judgment. Even some of the reformers did that, right? But at this point, it's been 2,000 years. We're not in the grips of Rome's darkness, so is this whole business required anymore? Surely by now we have the Bible? Or do I have to be concerned that this or that verse might someday have a footnote that says "not in the earliest manuscripts" - again, a note that I find irrelevant at best, and at worst making a de-facto judgment.




Of course I know that just because a manuscript is discovered the Bible won't necessarily be changed. My concern is that the methodology behind the CT allows for this possibility, does it not? Shouldn't we acknowledge this possibility? We've seen it play out for real in the case of several verses/passages. What is to say it won't happen again in the future for more passages? Is that not problematic? Maybe I truly do need to just "deal with it", but it's slightly unsettling.



I can understand and receive all of this. My practical question remains - when does it end? Or will it never end? When can we finally say "enough, we don't need to revisit it, every verse in this copy of the scriptures is the Word of God, without any qualification or reservation?" It seems like the CT method implies that you can't say that.



I guess that's the difference between you and me. Where you say "I want to know that", I can honestly say "this is in no way helpful to me". I would hazard to guess that the vast majority of Christians feel the exact same way. I bet you if you polled the members of my church, almost no one, probably not a single soul would say that any of that information has helped them in any way whatsoever. I don't think I'm exaggerating at all in this assertion, even though I certainly haven't done an actual poll.

To me, and I think to others, all of these comments DO make Scripture less certain.



I can accept this.

I think we have reached the point where I genuinely do not know how many more ways to explain the distinction you keep collapsing.

You write:

What I struggle with is the "open endedness" of the CT methodology.

But I have repeatedly explained that I am not defending “the CT methodology” as the controlling principle by which the Church must determine every reading. I have distinguished the manuscripts themselves, the critical apparatus that reports their readings, the editorial text produced by a committee, and the independent judgment of pastors and translators who consult that evidence.

You actually quoted that explanation immediately before repeating the same characterization.

At some point this begins to feel less like disagreement and more like my position being replaced with one that is easier to attack. I do not want to accuse you of deliberate deception, but if someone understands these distinctions and continues to describe the position as though “the CT” leaves the Bible perpetually open to wholesale rewriting, the description becomes seriously misleading.

What is “open ended” here?

At the end of the day, we possess thousands of manuscript witnesses copied by Christians through the centuries. Their readings are overwhelmingly established. Where they differ, the differences are local. There are comparatively few places where the alternatives are both meaningful and genuinely difficult to adjudicate.

Nobody wakes up each morning wondering whether Romans, 1 Peter, or John will still exist.

Nobody is rewriting the New Testament every few years.

And your own hypothetical about 1 Peter demonstrated why this matters. There is no manuscript history suggesting that 1 Peter 1:3-9 might disappear. Your hypothetical turned the mere existence of textual criticism into the theoretical possibility that anything might someday vanish, irrespective of the actual evidence.

That is not how historical reasoning works.

You also say:

I guess that's the difference between you and me. Where you say "I want to know that", I can honestly say "this is in no way helpful to me".

I confess that this surprised me more than anything else you have written.

I grew up Roman Catholic, so I am quite familiar with a religious culture in which the ordinary layman was historically encouraged to possess what Reformed theologians criticized as a kind of implicit faith. The Church and its trained men know these things. The ordinary Christian need not concern himself with them.

One of the great achievements of the Reformation was moving in exactly the opposite direction.

Ordinary Christians were given Bibles. Ministers were trained in Hebrew and Greek. They compared manuscripts. They discussed variants. They corrected translations by appeal to the originals. They believed Christians could be taught these things without thereby destroying confidence in Scripture.

So when an adult Reformed Christian says, essentially, “I don't want to know that Erasmus supplied Greek from Latin there; I don't want to know that the manuscripts differ; just give me the Bible and don't trouble me with it,” I find that instinct much closer to the old ideal of implicit faith than to the intellectual instincts of the Reformation.

I am not saying every Christian needs to learn textual criticism. Of course not. Most Christians will never need to read an apparatus.

But saying, “That information is of no use to me, therefore I question whether Bible publishers should tell anyone about it,” is very different.

Why would truthful information about the history of the text God preserved be spiritually dangerous?

If Erasmus reconstructed a Greek reading from Latin because his Greek manuscript was defective, I want to know that.

If the Westminster divines knew of Alexandrinus and considered readings from it, I want to know that.

If the Majority Text differs from the TR, I want to know that.

I do not need those facts in order to believe the Bible. But neither do I need to be protected from them in order to believe the Bible.

In fact, I would much rather have a translation honestly say, “Some early manuscripts do not contain these words,” than silently allow readers to assume that no such manuscript evidence exists.

That is not casting doubt upon God's Word. It is telling the truth about the copies through which God preserved it.

Then there is this:

But at this point, it's been 2,000 years. We're not in the grips of Rome's darkness, so is this whole business required anymore? Surely by now we have the Bible?

Ironically, this starts sounding remarkably similar in form to the Counter-Reformation objection.

William Whitaker had to answer Roman controversialists, including Bellarmine and his fellow Jesuits, who appealed to ecclesiastical reception and complained about Protestant appeals behind the received Latin text to Hebrew and Greek sources. Whitaker's answer was not that textual inquiry had reached an expiration date. His answer was that the Hebrew and Greek remained authentic and that versions were always subject to correction by those sources.

“It's been 2,000 years. Surely we have the Bible by now” only becomes an argument if someone is claiming we do not have the Bible.

I am claiming precisely the opposite.

We have the Bible.

We have had it.

The manuscripts demonstrate that with extraordinary abundance.

The fact that a few local readings still require judgment does not mean the text “keeps getting rewritten.” That formulation throws rhetorical dust into the air by transforming a remarkably stable textual tradition into something perpetually fluid.

And the passage of 2,000 years actually makes the hypothetical anxiety less plausible, not more.

After two millennia of copying, geographical dispersion, thousands of surviving Greek manuscripts, ancient translations, patristic quotations, and centuries of detailed comparison, the idea that tomorrow someone might find a pot in Egypt that causes Christianity to discover that seven undisputed verses of 1 Peter were never Scripture is not a serious description of the evidentiary situation.

The history has narrowed uncertainty rather than expanded it.

There is another practical point that I think gets lost when textual variants are made to sound so threatening. The theology of a translation committee can affect an English translation far more frequently than textual variants do.

The Greek text may be perfectly clear, while translators still have to decide how a word's semantic range should be rendered, how syntax should be represented, how gender should be expressed, whether an idiom should be formal or dynamic, and how theological terminology should be translated.

That happens constantly.

We nevertheless trust faithful translations while recognizing that ministers trained in Hebrew and Greek may occasionally explain that a phrase could be rendered differently.

Why?

Because our certainty rests ultimately in the inspired Hebrew and Greek, not in the infallibility of a translation committee.

The same principle applies here.

I do not need an infallible committee.

I do not need an infallible Erasmus.

I do not need an infallible Scrivener.

I do not need an infallible Nestle-Aland committee.

I need the Word God promised to preserve, and I believe we possess it.

What I continue to reject is the idea that confidence in possessing it requires us to declare that at some particular point in history the Church must stop looking at the manuscript evidence God has actually preserved for us.

That is an additional theory about the mechanism of Providence.

It is not WCF 1.8.

 

[Northern Crofter]

The mere fact that a manuscript is newly discovered does not constitute a vote that overrules the Church.

But I have repeatedly explained that I am not defending “the CT methodology” as the controlling principle by which the Church must determine every reading.

But isn't this returning us to one of the major issues associated with the OP: the Church does not determine the readings - some denominations do put forward particular texts/translations as approved for use in public worship, but the WCF states that the authority of Scripture does not depend not upon the testimony of any man or church but rather "our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth, and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts." (1.5). This is the Reformed view contra the Roman position that the Church decides the text of Scripture.

It seems some in this conversation want the "certainty" of the Roman view - perhaps why it feels to others like QIRC - and I am sympathetic to that. This should not be brushed aside as it seems some want to do as it is a very real issue for some people in their walk in the faith, and it is a particular point raised when speaking with Roman and Greek adherents - I have found when engaging with those from these traditions who are knowledgeable that they are quick to criticize the position at the end of WCF 1.5 as an example of Protestant individualism and relativism (especially my friend in the Greek sect who is always happy to point out that their services are in Greek and they are reading and studying the original). We can't ignore the fact that this desire for certainty/authority when it comes to the text of Scripture is one of the main reasons some cross the Tiber and/or the Ionian Sea.

I have distinguished the manuscripts themselves, the critical apparatus that reports their readings, the editorial text produced by a committee, and the independent judgment of pastors and translators who consult that evidence.

Again, none of this is from the Church, and some of the contributors and the scholarly sources they draw from are from outside the visible Church, so how does one respond* to those in the Roman and Greek traditions when they point out that the Scriptures we (Protestantism in general) are using (either the Hebrew and Greek texts or the translations) have not been ruled on or determined by the Church?

I recognize that I'm shifting the thread into apologetics - if that is too much of a shift and should be a new thread, I'm happy to take that on. But I see it as germane to the OP which mentioned the role of Church courts in relation to these textual issues, and our witness within and without the Reformed world is not a mere hypothetical.

*I can share how I respond/have responded, but I'd like to hear from others first.

 

[Jerusalem Blade]

When a thread gets to 286 posts, there is a failure to communicate – and is counter-productive. I would suggest shutting it down, and if anyone wants to start a new thread or threads, go ahead.

 

[jwright82]

But isn't this returning us to one of the major issues associated with the OP: the Church does not determine the readings - some denominations do put forward particular texts/translations as approved for use in public worship, but the WCF states that the authority of Scripture does not depend not upon the testimony of any man or church but rather "our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth, and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts." (1.5). This is the Reformed view contra the Roman position that the Church decides the text of Scripture.

It seems some in this conversation want the "certainty" of the Roman view - perhaps why it feels to others like QIRC - and I am sympathetic to that. This should not be brushed aside as it seems some want to do as it is a very real issue for some people in their walk in the faith, and it is a particular point raised when speaking with Roman and Greek adherents - I have found when engaging with those from these traditions who are knowledgeable that they are quick to criticize the position at the end of WCF 1.5 as an example of Protestant individualism and relativism (especially my friend in the Greek sect who is always happy to point out that their services are in Greek and they are reading and studying the original). We can't ignore the fact that this desire for certainty/authority when it comes to the text of Scripture is one of the main reasons some cross the Tiber and/or the Ionian Sea.


Again, none of this is from the Church, and some of the contributors and the scholarly sources they draw from are from outside the visible Church, so how does one respond* to those in the Roman and Greek traditions when they point out that the Scriptures we (Protestantism in general) are using (either the Hebrew and Greek texts or the translations) have not been ruled on or determined by the Church?

I recognize that I'm shifting the thread into apologetics - if that is too much of a shift and should be a new thread, I'm happy to take that on. But I see it as germane to the OP which mentioned the role of Church courts in relation to these textual issues, and our witness within and without the Reformed world is not a mere hypothetical.

*I can share how I respond/have responded, but I'd like to hear from others first.

The OP (I should know because I started it) is about either side of the argument not going to the Churches to specify or rule on the matter. It's not about that the Church should or shouldn't determine these matters. But if someone wants to argue one way or the other they can.
It's also about throwing around the accusations of someone being "unconfessional". If it's a view that is "unconfessional" then let the Church decide that. The Church's decide for their denomination what is and isn't confessional.
So the Church, it seems, already has ruled on it by not ruling on it. My Church preaches from the ESV and that is also the pew Bible but they don't care what individuals personally read.
So my question was is anyone who feels one way or the other actually doing anything to change that? And the answer is no. So I would say that my Church is keeping WCF Chp 1 by it's practice and formal vow to uphold the WCF and Catechism's.

 

[jwright82]

All the other things you mentioned are good points. I just wanted to clarify why I started this thread.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

But isn't this returning us to one of the major issues associated with the OP: the Church does not determine the readings - some denominations do put forward particular texts/translations as approved for use in public worship, but the WCF states that the authority of Scripture does not depend not upon the testimony of any man or church but rather "our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth, and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts." (1.5). This is the Reformed view contra the Roman position that the Church decides the text of Scripture.

It seems some in this conversation want the "certainty" of the Roman view - perhaps why it feels to others like QIRC - and I am sympathetic to that. This should not be brushed aside as it seems some want to do as it is a very real issue for some people in their walk in the faith, and it is a particular point raised when speaking with Roman and Greek adherents - I have found when engaging with those from these traditions who are knowledgeable that they are quick to criticize the position at the end of WCF 1.5 as an example of Protestant individualism and relativism (especially my friend in the Greek sect who is always happy to point out that their services are in Greek and they are reading and studying the original). We can't ignore the fact that this desire for certainty/authority when it comes to the text of Scripture is one of the main reasons some cross the Tiber and/or the Ionian Sea.


Again, none of this is from the Church, and some of the contributors and the scholarly sources they draw from are from outside the visible Church, so how does one respond* to those in the Roman and Greek traditions when they point out that the Scriptures we (Protestantism in general) are using (either the Hebrew and Greek texts or the translations) have not been ruled on or determined by the Church?

I recognize that I'm shifting the thread into apologetics - if that is too much of a shift and should be a new thread, I'm happy to take that on. But I see it as germane to the OP which mentioned the role of Church courts in relation to these textual issues, and our witness within and without the Reformed world is not a mere hypothetical.

*I can share how I respond/have responded, but I'd like to hear from others first.

I think this is an important question, but I would answer the Roman or Eastern objection by rejecting a premise that I think has crept into the discussion:

Again, none of this is from the Church, and some of the contributors and the scholarly sources they draw from are from outside the visible Church, so how does one respond to those in the Roman and Greek traditions when they point out that the Scriptures we are using have not been ruled on or determined by the Church?

I would not concede that the Church has somehow been removed from the process.

The Reformed position was never that individual scholars operate autonomously, gather manuscripts, and manufacture a Bible for themselves. The Church receives the Scriptures, preserves and teaches them, trains ministers in the biblical languages, translates them, compares Scripture with Scripture, evaluates textual questions, and may adjudicate controversies when necessary.

What the Church does not do is stand over Scripture as the authority that makes a reading authentic by ecclesiastical decree.

That is precisely the distinction the Reformed made against Rome. Whitaker could say that faith is produced by the Holy Spirit speaking through Scripture and that the Church acts ministerially rather than becoming the supreme judge over the Word. WCF 1.5 likewise gives genuine weight to the Church's testimony while locating our full persuasion in the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word. WCF 1.10 then makes the Holy Spirit speaking in Scripture, rather than a church tribunal, the supreme judge of controversies.

So I would put it this way: the Church is involved, but the Church remains reformable.

That is enormously important.

The Roman problem was not that Rome had no Church, no tradition, no scholars, or no ecclesiastical judgments about Scripture. It was that an ecclesiastically received tradition could become functionally insulated from correction by the very Hebrew and Greek Scriptures to which the Reformers appealed.

Justification is a useful illustration, although it is not simply a textual-variant issue. The Latin iustificare and the theological tradition that developed around it were commonly understood in the West in terms of making a person righteous. Returning carefully to the usage of the Greek dikaioō helped the Reformers insist upon its forensic force, to declare or reckon righteous. The Reformation did not say, “The Western Church has received this understanding for centuries, therefore the matter is closed.” It allowed the original-language Scripture to reform the Church's inherited theology.

That is exactly why I would be very reluctant to answer Rome or the East by constructing a Protestant equivalent of their argument and saying, “Our Church has now received this textual form, therefore the matter is settled.”

The Reformed answer is better than that.

At the same time, this does not mean theology disappears from textual or translational judgment. Quite the contrary. A faithful minister does not approach the Greek or Hebrew as a religiously neutral technician. He reads it as a Christian, within the Church, instructed by the whole counsel of God and by the saints who have gone before him.

Even where there is no textual variant at all, translation requires theological and exegetical judgment. Consider the familiar pistis Christou constructions. Is a genitive to be rendered “faith in Christ” or “faithfulness of Christ”? The manuscripts may be perfectly agreed on the Greek words. The question arises in interpreting their syntax and their relation to Paul's broader theology.

That is not the Church corrupting Scripture. It is the Church doing exegesis.

The same is true with textual variants. A minister or translator considers manuscript evidence, but he also considers grammar, syntax, immediate context, canonical usage, analogy of faith, and the theology of Scripture. He does this prayerfully and as a servant of the Church, trusting the Spirit who inspired and preserved the Word.

But he does it fallibly.

That is the critical Reformed qualification.

We do not answer Roman Catholicism by creating an infallible Protestant textual tradition.

Nor do we answer it by pretending the Church is absent and scholars are autonomous.

We say that Christ has given his Word to his Church, the Spirit guides the Church through that Word, and the Church ministerially receives, teaches, translates, and defends it while always remaining subject to correction by Scripture itself.

And I think we need to keep the actual textual problem in proportion.

The churches are not sitting around waiting for another manuscript to be discovered so that they can finally determine whether they possess the Scriptures. We already possess Matthew, Romans, 1 Peter, Isaiah, Genesis, and the rest. The testimony, theology, narrative, doctrine, and structure of Scripture have been delivered to the Church.

What we are discussing are overwhelmingly localized questions inside already established books and passages.

Is this clause original?

Which word stands here?

Is this longer or shorter reading preferable?

Does this sentence belong at this precise location?

That is a very different situation from imagining that the Church is waiting for archaeologists to tell it what Christianity is.

And this is another place where the older Reformed answer to Rome is useful. Rome could ask, in effect, “If the Church does not infallibly determine these things for you, how can you have certainty?”

The Reformed answer was not that every philological or exegetical judgment is infallible.

It was that our confidence in Scripture does not require an infallible Church standing between us and Scripture.

I think the same answer serves us here.

The Church has a real role. The Spirit has not abandoned the Church to unbelieving textual critics. Ministers and scholars work within the Church, under the Word, using the evidence Providence has preserved. But their judgments remain ministerial and reformable.

That is not Protestant individualism.

That is classical Reformed ecclesiology and bibliology.

And it is importantly different both from the idea that secular textual scholarship rules the Church and from the Roman or Eastern idea that ecclesiastical reception itself settles what may subsequently be corrected by appeal to the sources.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

When a thread gets to 286 posts, there is a failure to communicate – and is counter-productive. I would suggest shutting it down, and if anyone wants to start a new thread or threads, go ahead.

I don't think the number of posts, by itself, means a thread has become counterproductive.

Puritan Board has had many long threads that became useful precisely because people kept pressing distinctions, bringing in sources, and refining arguments beyond the point where a shorter discussion would have stopped.

This thread has certainly repeated some points, but it has also developed into several related questions about WCF 1.8, preservation, ecclesiastical reception, textual criticism, translation, and church authority.

Nor does it strike me as especially fractious. People disagree strongly, but they are still engaging the substance.

I suspect it will run its course soon enough. If it devolves into personal attacks or pure repetition, that is another matter. But a high post count alone is not a good reason to shut down a theologically useful discussion.

 

[De Jager]

I had a good chat with the visiting minister on this subject today. He was not obviously "TR" or "CT" and helped me understand some of the nuances. I apologize to anyone for any tone or content of my posts that were in any way insulting or inappropriate. I appreciate the answers I've been given amd the knowledge of the posters here. I will try to be more accurate in my terminology.

 

[Jeri Tanner]

One thing Izaak brought up that I think is very important is that critical theory work over the past years has resulted in average Christians using Bibles that have footnotes that say “the oldest and best manuscripts don’t contain this passage” etc.; to which average Christians, not knowing the issues, just think oh, ok. In my excitement at discovering Calvinism and coming to a more Reformed theology (and so having acquired an ESV, of course), I once informed a dear family member, who simply loved God and His Word, that “the story of the woman taken in adultery is probably not really in the original.” I was so proud to be in the know, so to speak, and to share this startling news with my dear loved one. I never even thought to ask our pastor about it- after all, it was the authoritative word of God I had a copy of, and it was the ESV, the cutting-edge Bible of the young, restless, and reformed (I say this sarcastically with a sigh at my ignorance, of course). Maybe, hopefully, many wise pastors speak to their people about these footnotes in their Bibles and the issues they raise.

Holding to the TR position now is a great comfort. I see that there’s no reason not
to hold to it (I’m reminded of evolution theory, and the steady stream of discoveries that in the end don’t disprove a young earth).

 

[NaphtaliPress]

Jeri, I hope the friend was not upset. But you touch on something that I've been thinking about. What do pastors on any end of the textual debate do pastorally with cases such as a 90 yo grandmother who memorized, meditated, found comfort in, prayed, verses the pastor believes is not scripture? It raises third and second commandment issues so it surely is not a non moral issue. Sure; sin of infirmity; but you don't leave someone in sin of any kind. If the end of Mark 16 or the Pericope Adulterae is not scripture it is a moral question when it comes to use in worship. This is not a gotcha for one side; you can create cases from other perspectives I'm sure. Do you instruct the grandma, risking distress or leave her be in her sin of infirmity? The textual debate is not just ivory tower; it can cause real distress and dissent and has a moral component as said.

One thing Izaak brought up that I think is very important is that critical theory work over the past years has resulted in average Christians using Bibles that have footnotes that say “the oldest and best manuscripts don’t contain this passage” etc.; to which average Christians, not knowing the issues, just think oh, ok. In my excitement at discovering Calvinism and coming to a more Reformed theology (and so having acquired an ESV, of course), I once informed a dear family member, who simply loved God and His Word, that “the story of the woman taken in adultery is probably not really in the original.” I was so proud to be in the know, so to speak, and to share this startling news with my dear loved one. I never even thought to ask our pastor about it- after all, it was the authoritative word of God I had a copy of, and it was the ESV, the cutting-edge Bible of the young, restless, and reformed (I say this sarcastically with a sigh at my ignorance, of course). Maybe, hopefully, many wise pastors speak to their people about these footnotes in their Bibles and the issues they raise.

Holding to the TR position now is a great comfort. I see that there’s no reason not
to hold to it (I’m reminded of evolution theory, and the steady stream of discoveries that in the end don’t disprove a young earth).

 

[NaphtaliPress]

I queried AI about how Owen and Walton would view critical apparatus and it came up with the following. AI can make mistakes; and yes, I'm still using dumber AI tonight.
By removing the boundaries that both 17th-century men took for granted, modern publishing has created an environment that would deeply trouble both the Puritan pastor and the Anglican bishop.

Modern critical text criticism fails them both in distinct, profound ways:

1. How It Fails John Owen: The Destruction of Absolute Authority

For John Owen, the absolute authority of God's Word required a settled, objective text. Modern implementation fails him entirely because:

• It Replaces Certainty with Probability: Modern critical text panels work on percentages and fluid consensus. A verse can be in the Bible in one decade and bracketed or moved to a footnote the next based on new papyri discoveries.
• It Subjectifies the Text: To Owen, a Bible that is 0.5% "probably not the Word of God" strips the preacher of the right to say a definitive, unqualified "Thus saith the Lord." It hands ultimate authority over to a fluctuating committee of modern academics rather than leaving it in the hands of the Holy Spirit-guided Church.

2. How It Fails Brian Walton: The Abandonment of the Pastoral Filter

While modern critics claim Walton as their intellectual ancestor because he pioneered the textual apparatus, their implementation violates his entire pastoral and ecclesiastical framework:

• Radical Transparency without Education: Walton believed the raw data of textual variations belonged exclusively in the academic library, wrapped in the protective custody of trained theologians. Dumping raw, unfiltered text-critical doubts (like "the earliest manuscripts omit this") directly into a standard pew Bible leaves the untrained reader completely unequipped to process it.
• Weaponizing Trivialities: Walton’s entire defense was that 99% of variants do not matter and do not alter doctrine. He would be appalled to see that modern margins make mountain-sized crises out of molehill-sized scribal slips, actively breeding the exact skepticism he promised Owen his Polyglot would never cause.

The Modern Trap: Failure of Faith vs. Failure of History

Ultimately, the modern church is stuck in the exact crossfire they tried to avoid:

• If it follows the modern critical consensus, it falls into the trap Owen warned about: a creeping, subtle doubt that the text in front of you is never truly settled.
• If it blindly ignores the reality of variants, it falls into the trap Walton warned about: a fragile faith that shatters the moment someone encounters a historical fact they weren't prepared for.

This is precisely why the philosophy of the Reformation Heritage Study Bible—and the broader return to Confessional Text/TR positions—is gaining so much traction. It recognizes that the modern implementation has failed, and it seeks to restore the historic, pastoral balance that keeps the sanctuary a place of absolute faith while keeping historical honesty in the study.

To what extent is “instruct you people” a solution to an ongoing issue and to what extent is it too late; if it is. It sounds reasonable.

The defense of the modern critical-text approach—"better instruct your people in the pews to handle the variants"—sounds highly reasonable on the surface. It appeals to the Protestant love of education, discipleship, and literacy. [1]

However, when evaluated against the structural reality of church life and human psychology, this solution is a mix of an ongoing pedagogical ideal and a response that is arguably far too late.

---

​

1. To What Extent It Is a Legitimate, Ongoing Solution

For modern evangelical textual critics (such as Daniel Wallace or Peter Gurry), education is the only honest way forward. They argue that instructing the pews works as a viable solution under specific conditions:

• Inoculation Against Apologetic Crises: Proponents argue that if you teach teenagers and adults the basics of textual variants in Sunday School before they go to secular universities, they won't have a crisis of faith when an agnostic professor points out that Mark 16 isn't in Codex Sinaiticus. It preempts the "bomb" Walton warned Owen about.
• Reframing the Footnotes: Proper instruction shifts the layman’s perspective from “something is being stolen from my Bible” to “look at how transparent and scientifically tracked the transmission of my Bible is.” [2]

2. To What Extent It Is "Too Late" (The Structural Failure)

Despite its intellectual appeal, critics from the confessional and pastoral camps argue that relying on "better instruction" is a flawed, elitist, and hopelessly late bandage for a wound that modern publishing inflicts weekly. It fails for three structural reasons:

A. The Liturgical Environment is Wrong

A Sunday morning worship service is not a seminary classroom. Worship is designed for reverence, absolute rest, and spiritual feeding. When a pastor says, "Turn to Mark 16," and a believer opens their pew Bible to find a giant bracket and a note saying "The earliest manuscripts omit this," the text has instantly signaled an immediate doubt.
The pastor cannot pause a 30-minute sermon to give a 45-minute lecture on 19th-century Westcott-Hort manuscript theory just to get the congregation back to a baseline of trust. The footnote does its damaging work in two seconds; the "instruction" requires hours. [3, 4, 5]

B. The "Seminary Bill" is Passed to the Layman

The "better instruct them" argument essentially demands that ordinary factory workers, mechanics, stay-at-home moms, and children must reach a baseline level of textual-critical literacy just to read their Bibles in peace. It shifts the burden of textual evaluation from the qualified academic and the historical church council down onto the individual sitting in the pew.

C. It Ignores Human Psychology

No matter how many times a scholar says, "Don't worry, 99.5% of the text is safe and no major doctrine is affected," human psychology does not work that way. If you buy a house and the inspector tells you, "The foundation is 99.5% perfect, but there's a 0.5% chance the living room floor might collapse," you do not relax. You focus entirely on the 0.5%. The brackets act as permanent visual alerts that subconsciously tell the reader: This page is unstable.

---

​

The Ultimate Verdict

The suggestion to "better instruct the pews" is too late because the product has already corrupted the environment. It prints the doubts of the library into the liturgy of the sanctuary, and then asks the pastor to work overtime to fix the resulting anxiety.

This is why the Reformation Heritage Study Bible's approach remains so compelling. Its editors recognize that the proper place for instruction in textual variants is in an introductory essay or an academic classroom, while the proper text for the pew is an un-bracketed, authoritative word that a believer can read, memorize, and rest upon without distraction.

 

[Ploutos]

One thing Izaak brought up that I think is very important is that critical theory work over the past years has resulted in average Christians using Bibles that have footnotes that say “the oldest and best manuscripts don’t contain this passage” etc.; to which average Christians, not knowing the issues, just think oh, ok. In my excitement at discovering Calvinism and coming to a more Reformed theology (and so having acquired an ESV, of course), I once informed a dear family member, who simply loved God and His Word, that “the story of the woman taken in adultery is probably not really in the original.” I was so proud to be in the know, so to speak, and to share this startling news with my dear loved one. I never even thought to ask our pastor about it- after all, it was the authoritative word of God I had a copy of, and it was the ESV, the cutting-edge Bible of the young, restless, and reformed (I say this sarcastically with a sigh at my ignorance, of course). Maybe, hopefully, many wise pastors speak to their people about these footnotes in their Bibles and the issues they raise.

Holding to the TR position now is a great comfort. I see that there’s no reason not
to hold to it (I’m reminded of evolution theory, and the steady stream of discoveries that in the end don’t disprove a young earth).

One thing I would say in response to this is to ask how it's any different from cage-stage Calvinists who are overly rash in their approach, to the detriment of opportunities for witness to those around them. No Reformed person in such cases accepts that the problem is Calvinism.

I sympathize with the situation you described; but I don't think that the story you told materially changes the issue at hand, nor does it counteract any of the excellent points made in this thread. My take-away from your story is that this is an issue that needs to be handled with discernment and care - and as I mentioned in my comments to Izaak above, where people are struggling over this, it requires wisdom, prudence, and sensitivity to be sure.

But we don't change doctrines based on people's needs. We change our approach and adjust our method to the specific situation here at hand. I think of the admonition of our Reformed forebears to handle the doctrines of predestination with special care; but there is no thought of changing those doctrines because they have been rashly handled to the detriment of some. The same holds true here. A balanced position on textual criticism is worth defending, and if there is somebody who is struggling over that issue, adopting an anti-historical approach analogous to the stance of the late medieval church is not the answer.

 

[Jeri Tanner]

One thing I would say in response to this is to ask how it's any different from cage-stage Calvinists who are overly rash in their approach, to the detriment of opportunities for witness to those around them. No Reformed person in such cases accepts that the problem is Calvinism.

I sympathize with the situation you described; but I don't think that the story you told materially changes the issue at hand, nor does it counteract any of the excellent points made in this thread. My take-away from your story is that this is an issue that needs to be handled with discernment and care - and as I mentioned in my comments to Izaak above, where people are struggling over this, it requires wisdom, prudence, and sensitivity to be sure.

But we don't change doctrines based on people's needs. We change our approach and adjust our method to the specific situation here at hand. I think of the admonition of our Reformed forebears to handle the doctrines of predestination with special care; but there is no thought of changing those doctrines because they have been rashly handled to the detriment of some. The same holds true here. A balanced position on textual criticism is worth defending, and if there is somebody who is struggling over that issue, adopting an anti-historical approach analogous to the stance of the late medieval church is not the answer.

I wasn’t implying that the problem was Calvinism, that was just the vehicle in my case that brought me to purchase an ESV and be enamored with the “fact” that I was now in the know, and in possession of the latest scholarship.

The story I told doesn’t materially change the issues at hand, it is the issue at hand. The issue that you say needs to be handled with discernment and care is actually an issue that needs to go away, as soon as possible. Many people, like former me, weren't and aren’t struggling at all over having doubt placed on a passage of Scripture via a (breathtaking) footnote in their Bible that casts doubt on God’s word. That was and is a problem.

You say we don’t change doctrines based on people’s needs, but in reality we shouldn’t be trying to change doctrines at all. There will never, never be proof that any passage in the received text is wrong or shouldn’t be there, and certainly that no doctrine should be changed. The variants we have available to us in the TR were used wisely like commentators like Gill and Matthew Henry to implement nuance and color in places (kind of like an amplified effect). If that’s what you mean by textual criticism then that’s fine, although that description needs to be dropped, there’s no need for it, we’ve had that work from pastor commentators since the Reformation.

Your last sentence is incomprehensible to me, but it did make me smile. I don’t mean any of this personally, I hope you take it in the spirit of Christianly argument.

 

[Jeri Tanner]

I queried AI about how Owen and Walton would view critical apparatus and it came up with the following. AI can make mistakes; and yes, I'm still using dumber AI tonight.
By removing the boundaries that both 17th-century men took for granted, modern publishing has created an environment that would deeply trouble both the Puritan pastor and the Anglican bishop.

Modern critical text criticism fails them both in distinct, profound ways:

1. How It Fails John Owen: The Destruction of Absolute Authority

For John Owen, the absolute authority of God's Word required a settled, objective text. Modern implementation fails him entirely because:

• It Replaces Certainty with Probability: Modern critical text panels work on percentages and fluid consensus. A verse can be in the Bible in one decade and bracketed or moved to a footnote the next based on new papyri discoveries.
• It Subjectifies the Text: To Owen, a Bible that is 0.5% "probably not the Word of God" strips the preacher of the right to say a definitive, unqualified "Thus saith the Lord." It hands ultimate authority over to a fluctuating committee of modern academics rather than leaving it in the hands of the Holy Spirit-guided Church.

2. How It Fails Brian Walton: The Abandonment of the Pastoral Filter

While modern critics claim Walton as their intellectual ancestor because he pioneered the textual apparatus, their implementation violates his entire pastoral and ecclesiastical framework:

• Radical Transparency without Education: Walton believed the raw data of textual variations belonged exclusively in the academic library, wrapped in the protective custody of trained theologians. Dumping raw, unfiltered text-critical doubts (like "the earliest manuscripts omit this") directly into a standard pew Bible leaves the untrained reader completely unequipped to process it.
• Weaponizing Trivialities: Walton’s entire defense was that 99% of variants do not matter and do not alter doctrine. He would be appalled to see that modern margins make mountain-sized crises out of molehill-sized scribal slips, actively breeding the exact skepticism he promised Owen his Polyglot would never cause.

The Modern Trap: Failure of Faith vs. Failure of History

Ultimately, the modern church is stuck in the exact crossfire they tried to avoid:

• If it follows the modern critical consensus, it falls into the trap Owen warned about: a creeping, subtle doubt that the text in front of you is never truly settled.
• If it blindly ignores the reality of variants, it falls into the trap Walton warned about: a fragile faith that shatters the moment someone encounters a historical fact they weren't prepared for.

This is precisely why the philosophy of the Reformation Heritage Study Bible—and the broader return to Confessional Text/TR positions—is gaining so much traction. It recognizes that the modern implementation has failed, and it seeks to restore the historic, pastoral balance that keeps the sanctuary a place of absolute faith while keeping historical honesty in the study.

To what extent is “instruct you people” a solution to an ongoing issue and to what extent is it too late; if it is. It sounds reasonable.

The defense of the modern critical-text approach—"better instruct your people in the pews to handle the variants"—sounds highly reasonable on the surface. It appeals to the Protestant love of education, discipleship, and literacy. [1]

However, when evaluated against the structural reality of church life and human psychology, this solution is a mix of an ongoing pedagogical ideal and a response that is arguably far too late.

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1. To What Extent It Is a Legitimate, Ongoing Solution

For modern evangelical textual critics (such as Daniel Wallace or Peter Gurry), education is the only honest way forward. They argue that instructing the pews works as a viable solution under specific conditions:

• Inoculation Against Apologetic Crises: Proponents argue that if you teach teenagers and adults the basics of textual variants in Sunday School before they go to secular universities, they won't have a crisis of faith when an agnostic professor points out that Mark 16 isn't in Codex Sinaiticus. It preempts the "bomb" Walton warned Owen about.
• Reframing the Footnotes: Proper instruction shifts the layman’s perspective from “something is being stolen from my Bible” to “look at how transparent and scientifically tracked the transmission of my Bible is.” [2]

2. To What Extent It Is "Too Late" (The Structural Failure)

Despite its intellectual appeal, critics from the confessional and pastoral camps argue that relying on "better instruction" is a flawed, elitist, and hopelessly late bandage for a wound that modern publishing inflicts weekly. It fails for three structural reasons:

A. The Liturgical Environment is Wrong

A Sunday morning worship service is not a seminary classroom. Worship is designed for reverence, absolute rest, and spiritual feeding. When a pastor says, "Turn to Mark 16," and a believer opens their pew Bible to find a giant bracket and a note saying "The earliest manuscripts omit this," the text has instantly signaled an immediate doubt.
The pastor cannot pause a 30-minute sermon to give a 45-minute lecture on 19th-century Westcott-Hort manuscript theory just to get the congregation back to a baseline of trust. The footnote does its damaging work in two seconds; the "instruction" requires hours. [3, 4, 5]

B. The "Seminary Bill" is Passed to the Layman

The "better instruct them" argument essentially demands that ordinary factory workers, mechanics, stay-at-home moms, and children must reach a baseline level of textual-critical literacy just to read their Bibles in peace. It shifts the burden of textual evaluation from the qualified academic and the historical church council down onto the individual sitting in the pew.

C. It Ignores Human Psychology

No matter how many times a scholar says, "Don't worry, 99.5% of the text is safe and no major doctrine is affected," human psychology does not work that way. If you buy a house and the inspector tells you, "The foundation is 99.5% perfect, but there's a 0.5% chance the living room floor might collapse," you do not relax. You focus entirely on the 0.5%. The brackets act as permanent visual alerts that subconsciously tell the reader: This page is unstable.

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The Ultimate Verdict

The suggestion to "better instruct the pews" is too late because the product has already corrupted the environment. It prints the doubts of the library into the liturgy of the sanctuary, and then asks the pastor to work overtime to fix the resulting anxiety.

This is why the Reformation Heritage Study Bible's approach remains so compelling. Its editors recognize that the proper place for instruction in textual variants is in an introductory essay or an academic classroom, while the proper text for the pew is an un-bracketed, authoritative word that a believer can read, memorize, and rest upon without distraction.

Thanks Chris, this is helpful.

 

[Jerusalem Blade]

I just felt bad for you, Rich, going over the same ground again and again. But I stand corrected.

 

[jwright82]

I had a good chat with the visiting minister on this subject today. He was not obviously "TR" or "CT" and helped me understand some of the nuances. I apologize to anyone for any tone or content of my posts that were in any way insulting or inappropriate. I appreciate the answers I've been given amd the knowledge of the posters here. I will try to be more accurate in my terminology.

Don't worry about it brother. You're just concerned that's all and seeking understanding. I'm glad you found it.