One thing I know -- both you and DTK have as little hope of proving that the Bible is the Word of God from crumbly old mss. as I do. That is why I insist that it should not even be attempted. I know both whence I came and whither I am going. The Bible tells me so!
I don’t think any man can prove that the Bible is the Word of God. I think that the Bible is, as the Reformers and the Post-Reformation Reformed insisted, true in and of itself (
autaletheia) trustworthy in and of itself (
autopistis), because it is the word of the true and living God. And because it is the word of God, it is
axiopistos (worthy of faith). This was not novel because it simply echoed the patristic consensus, who likewise recognized and submitted to the witness of God in Holy Scripture. If Scripture is trustworthy in and of itself, it stands in no need of any external authority, be it church or tradition, as witness to approve, endorse, validate, substantiate, or sanction its divine origin.
Here’s the difference, I suspect, between you and I. You look at all the manuscripts (we have some 5,000 or more today) and the subsequent variants, and you regard these as a threat to what you perceive to be the pure texts behind the AV. Your presupposition is based on a desire for no variation in any texts, without which you think we can have no certainty regarding the Bible. On the other hand, I do not believe that textual variations equal textual corruption. It is well known by students of the Bible that textual variations between the Hebrew text, the Septuagint (LXX), and copies of both existed in the days of our Lord. Yet, Jesus and the New Testament writers quote repeatedly from contemporary copies of both the extant Hebrew texts and translations of the Septuagint, never once calling into question the certainty, integrity, and adequacy of these copies to communicate infallibly the word of the true and living God. To suggest otherwise is to call into question the integrity of the New Testament witnesses themselves. Moreover, the preservation of the New Testament text (from the first century to our own day) has been shown many times over to possess the highest degree of accuracy in comparison to other ancient texts. Commenting on the phrase ‘as it is written,’ Roger Beckwith has pointed out:
The quotations are treated as having finality, and it is the contemporary text of the quotations which is treated in this way. Philo quotes from the Septuagint translation, as the New Testament often does and the Fathers regularly do, but when the Hebrew is quoted or reflected (as in the Dead Sea Scrolls and sometimes in the New Testament), there is nothing to suggest that anything other than contemporary manuscripts of the Hebrew is being used. Paraphrase, where paraphrase is employed, is evidently designed to draw out the most relevant implications of the passage quoted, and not to restore a more primitive form of the text. In all this, the practice of Jesus and his apostles in the New Testament is like that of their Jewish contemporaries.
What this implies is that God’s ‘singular care and providence’ was understood to extend not just to the traditional form (or forms) of the original text, but even to standard and accepted translations of the text, such as the Septuagint. See Beckwith’s ‘Toward a Theology of the Biblical Text’ in Donald Lewis and Alister McGrath, eds., Doing Theology for the People of God: Studies in Honor of J.I. Packer (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1996), p 48.
Likewise, Roger Nicole has observed, “When the New Testament authors appealed to Scripture as the Word of God, it is not claimed that they viewed anything but the original communication as vested in full with divine inerrancy. Yet their willingness to make use of the LXX, in spite of its occasional defects, teaches the important lesson that the basic message which God purposed to deliver can be conveyed even through a translation, and that appeal can be made to a version insofar as it agrees with the original" (p. 143). See his ‘New Testament Use of the Old Testament,’ in Carl F.H. Henry, ed., Revelation and the Bible: Contemporary Evangelical Thought (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1958), p. 143. Bruce Metzger (who was the leading authority in the field of textual criticism) has pointed out that:
…the overwhelming majority of such variant readings involve inconsequential details, such as alternative spellings, order of words, and interchange of synonyms. In these cases, as well as in the relatively few instances involving the substance of the record, scholars apply the techniques of textual criticism in order to determine with more or less probability what the original wording was. In any event, no doctrine of the Christian faith depends solely upon a passage that is textually uncertain. Bruce M. Metzger, The New Testament: Its Background, Growth, and Content, 2nd ed., enlarged (Nashville: Abingdon, 1990), p. 281.
Your point is basically there can be no certainty apart from everyone using the AV as the standard text, and anything otherwise is laying one’s head down in a mess. Well, then, pray tell what is the standard German text, or the standard French text, or the standard Korean text? The language of the world isn’t restricted to English. Your point, as I’ve tried to argue, is not only ahistorical in contrast to the witness of the NT writers themselves, but ignores the richness of the great certainty to which the overall manuscript tradition testifies! As F. F. Bruce observed:
By the ‘singular care and providence’ of God, the text of Scripture has come down to us in such substantial purity that even the most uncritical edition of the Hebrew and Greek, or the most incompetent (or even the most tendentious) translation of such an edition, cannot effectively obscure its essential message or neutralize its saving power. F.F. Bruce’s remarks in the forward to Dewey M. Beegle, Scripture, Tradition and Infallibility (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1973). See also the comments of Gerhard Maier, Biblical Hermeneutics, trans. Robert W. Yarbrough, (Wheaton: Crossway, 1994), p. 185.
Your response to Rich is that, “I refuse to lay my head down in a mess,” which I paraphrase as “I refuse to deal with it.” It’s not helpful, and it certainly isn’t going to give someone like a Korean believer anywhere to pillow his faith against the critics of Holy Scripture.
Apparently, according to your view, God has only preserved his word pure for the English-speaking peoples of the world. Now, you certainly do not argue this, but it leaves no place, for example, for the Korean believer as noted above.
My preferred text for reading and study and from which I preach is the NKJV. But to use it does not require that I bury my head in the sand and ignore the richness of the vast evidence for the certainty of the NT text of Holy Scripture. In other words, I don't simply say, "I know both whence I came and whither I am going. The Bible tells me so!" as if, obliviously, my non-English speaking brethren can fend for themselves because I'm standing alone on the Word of God. No, one need not agree with you to know whence they came and where they're going.
I would suggest that, in the end, your argument is similar to that of the Romanist, because he likewise argues for a uniformity of agreement, and that otherwise there can be certainty.
Cheers,
DTK
