Thomas - thank you - do I understand you accurately to be saying that the principle of Sola Scriptura is based solely on the authority and accuracy of the Received Text? Also - does
this wiki entry accurately describe the Textus Receptus position?
Apologies if I am inaccurately understanding.
Hello JD,
Here are two quotes that briefly answer your question. The Helvetic Consensus Formula of 1675 explains clearly the meaning of Reformed Orthodoxy in terms of the texts mentioned in the Westminster Confession:
“The Hebrew original of the Old Testament, which we have received and to this day do retain as handed down by the Jewish Church,…not only in its matter, but in its words, inspired of God, thus forming, together with the original of the New Testament, the sole and complete rule of faith and life: and to its standard, as to a Lydian stone, all extant versions, Oriental and Occidental, ought to be applied, and wherever they differ, be conformed.” HCF, Chapter 2, edited for clarity
The Reformers held the Received Text tradition as the standard and to them this was the definition of "Sola Scriptura," in terms of the New Testament.
Jack Rogers did a good job explaining what this meant to Reformers in comparison to modern principles:
“The text of Scripture is the Word of God, and God’s Word is not to be sought independently of the text of Scripture. Inspiration does not usually imply any particular theory about how the Scripture came to be the Word of God. Nor does inspiration eliminate the human contribution which the human authors made to the written Scripture. And most certainly, for the Westminster divines, inspiration can not be used as an excuse for trying to find God’s Word separate from the written text of Scripture.” Rogers, Scripture in the Westminster Confession, p 301-2
I think it would be easiest to follow suite of Elder Rafalsky and post some prior work I've done on this. The following was some blog comments on this subject I made a few months ago in regard to a similar question, I think it will help explain this in more depth. Of course, if it doesn't, I'll be happy to answer more particular points.
My answer to the question below is similar to your question: "Do I understand you accurately to be saying that the principle of Sola Scriptura is based solely on the authority and accuracy of the Received Text?"
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You said:
“The “providential view” is a name I made up, but I’m sure that someone holds to something like this! Many King James only advocates, for example, would argue that God must have preserved scripture a certain way, and the KJV is how he did it.”
My answer:
What you claim to have “made up” is actually what the Magisterial Reformers held to and is the Confessional position of the Westminster Confession of Faith, 1:8
While they didn’t hold to unlearned anabaptist thought about inspiration of translation, which should be self evident, they did hold that the commonly Received Text of Scripture was the original text Providentially Preserved (1, Aland quote below).
(1) “…it is undisputed that from the 16th century to the 18th century orthodoxy’s doctrine of verbal inspiration assumed… [the] Textus Receptus. It was the only Greek text they knew, and they regarded it as the ‘original’ text.” (Kurt Aland, “The Text of the Church” Trinity journal 8 (1987), p. 131.
Thus, during the English civil wars the printing of Bibles in England had ceased, some copies printed in Holland and imported were examined by the Assembly of Divines in 1643 and found to contain printing errors they considered to be “corrupt and dangerous to religion.” (see Scrivener, Authorized Edition of the English Bible (1611), p 25) They then petitioned Parliament to outlaw any importation that was not approved by said Divines which was enacted, but it didn’t do much good as many were subsequently imported from Holland with false claims as to the origin of press .
In that sense one could say the Westminster Divines were “King James Onlyists” as they were opposing the Tridentine attacks upon Sola Scriptura through the introduction of variant readings and Rome’s assertion therein that Papal Infallibility was the only reliable guide to Truth. This claim, of course, has simply been restated today in terms that enlightenment textual philosophers are now the infallible guide.
While it is not true that it was the only Greek “text” they knew (2), in case someone reads that to mean “manuscript text”, it is true they regarded it as the original and reliable text of Scripture itself.
That is why it is called the “Received Text” as it is held by orthodox Protestantism to be the original autographa Providentially Preserved and “received” by Christendom through the ages. They had a much higher view of Scripture and approached the issue from an entirely different orientation, never entering their mind to attempt to compare apographs with hypothetical “inerrant autographs” which they didn’t nor could possess. Thus, the doctrine of Inspriration, Inerrancy and Infallibility was not approached from the enlightment philosophy that posits an extrabiblical standard upon textual reliability.
Furthermore, it is incorrect to allude, the way you do that the Received Text “finds its roots in Erasmus’s Novum Instrumentum Omne.” The word “roots” indicates, at least in my interpretation, that you are saying that Erasmus created a “received text,” when it is merely the transmission of a manuscript text already commonly received into printed form.
Sincerely,
Thomas
(2) Paul Bombasius, on June 18, 1521, the secretary of the Lorenzo
Pucci at Rome, sent a letter to Erasmus containing a copy of portions of Codex Vaticanus. Jospeh Dixon (1853) says that Erasmus rejected it presuming Vaticanus to be corrupt and altered to match the Latin.
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A couple of people responded with more questions to this post, those responses are below:
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Question asked:
“If I may ask, if they did not approach this from an Enlightenment philosophy with its attendant extrabiblical standards, then whence or how did they approach the doctrine of Inspiration, Inerrancy, and Infallibility?”
My answer:
Francis Turretin, a Geneva Reformer and author of the Helvetic Consensus, explains the matter plainly. For more see that Consensus:
“By the original texts, we do not mean the autographs written by the hand of Moses, of the prophets and the apostles, which certainly do not now exist. We mean their apographs which are so called because they set forth to us the word of God in the very words of those who wrote under the immediate inspiration of the Holy Spirit.” Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 1992 1:106.
For a much more expansive answer I would refer you to Richard Muller’s, “Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics.” Here is a pertinent quote:
“By “original” and “authentic” text, the Protestant orthodox do not mean the autographa which no one can possess but the apographa in the original tongue which are the source of all versions. The Jews throughout history and the church in the time of Christ regarded the Hebrew of the Old Testament as authentic and for nearly six centuries after Christ, the Greek of the New Testament was viewed as authentic without dispute. It is important to note that the Reformed orthodox insistence on the identification of the Hebrew and Greek texts as alone authentic does not demand direct reference to autographa in those languages: the “original and authentic text” of Scripture means, beyond the autograph copies, the legitimate tradition of Hebrew and Greek apographa. The case for Scripture as an infallible rule of faith and practice and the separate arguments for a received text free from major (non-scribal) error rests on an examination of the apographa and does not seek the infinite regress of the lost autographa as a prop for textual infallibility…. [In related footnote 165 Muller observes: “A rather sharp contrast must be drawn, therefore, between the Protestant orthodox arguments concerning the autographa and the views of Archibald Alexander Hodge and Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield.”] p. 433
The principle held today in modern criticism of this “infinite regress” to “inerrant autographa” is the textual heterdoxy of BB Warfield when he departed from the Westminster Confession and then redefined it in terms of his departure standing upon the enlightenment presupposition of Wescott and Hort. His departure from Protestant orthodoxy created a need to establish and maintain a scientific definition of Biblical inerrancy under attack by naturalistic scientific theory, walla, “inerrant autographa.” It is a new and novel idea in terms of historic Reformed Orthodoxy, none of the Magisterial Reformers held to the concept, on the contrary, that was Rome’s claim.
To the Reformers the Bible was infallible because it was the very word of the Living God. They simply identified the legitimate tradition of the preservation of the text and received it.
So, they approached it in the way they approached Nicene and Chalcedonian orthodoxy, thus they did not create a second classification of Scripture based upon hypothetical and hellenic presuppositions (”inerrant autographs”) in which God by His “singular care and providence” becomes required to abide by. Once you take the Bible in your hands and pit the autographa against the apographa, you are attempting to hold it in dialetical tension in the hellenic Form/Matter dialetic; you then become a wordless “Christian Mime.” Which is why the Gospel only speaks today in terms of “relevancy,” instead of an authoritative word from the Most High God.
Thus, they didn’t philosophize about the text, they received the Scriptures that was common to Greek and Protestant Church through the ages. The modern heterdoxy of “inerrant autographs” would have been seen by the Reformers as a concession to Rome, and the modern fundamentalist “KVJ Only” baptist clearly senses this. He simply doesn’t have the ability to deal with the problem of Biblical Authority with the philosophical tools at hand to him, this is because he is standing upon Reformed Orthodoxy in receipt of the Authorized Version but theologically denies the doctrines of that Orthodoxy. Hence, he necessarily creates the “inspiration” of the translation to maintain his theological independence. If you look at Riplinger, for example, whom James White disparages; she receives the Bible of Chalcedonian Orthodoxy (e.g., Calvinism) and sets out on anti-Calvinistic tirade because the Reformed caved to naturalistic scientific criticism ala BB Warfield and published that Romish NIV. James White, then, in his championing of Warfeldian heterdoxy simply confirms, in their eyes, every word she wrote.
The Reformers did not try to stand upon a presupposition of neutral objectivity, they were biased against Rome and championed that bias. It is a matter of presuppositions by and through which one interprets the data, EF Hills explains this very well in his work, King James Version Defended.
The same problem exists, for example, in the way the evolutionist pretends to be capable of standing upon neutral ground to interpret the creation, instead of being analogical and thinking God’s thoughts after Him, in his definition he becomes a maker of facts, and stumbles. Likewise, the principles of eclectic criticism is the academic equivalent of the Scopes Monkey Trial in its quest for the inerrant autographa, which is why the Authorized Version is scorned and disparaged.
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You asked,
“Where did the Magisterial Reformers get the idea “that the commonly Received Text of Scripture was the original text Providentially Preserved”?”
That is the essence of the Reformation and its doctrine of Sola Scriptura in its return to “ancient catholic orthodoxy.” Steinmetz explains what this term means:
“[T]he attempt of the Protestant reformers to recapture ancient doctrine and discipline is labelled innovation by a Church which has lost contact with its own past and which identifies modern belief and practice with the faith and discipline of the early Church….In point of fact, the Protestant reformers are attempting to keep faith with the ancient teaching of the Apostles as understood by the fathers against the later unwarranted innovations and novelties introduced by the medieval Catholic Church.” Steinmetz, Luther in Context, 1986 p 92
continuing question:
“This is certainly not a Biblical idea, so aren’t they also imposing an extrabiblical standard by which to determine the inspired text?”
It most certainly is a Biblical idea because returning to the original language texts as against Popery was a rejection of it’s extrabiblical innovations upon the doctrines of the Faith once delivered to the Saints and the text itself.
continuing question:
“It seems to me that they more or less picked one specific text and decided to go with that one.”
The issue is one of Authority, does it rest in men or does it rest in the Word of God itself? Does the visible Church create Authority or does it simply recognize Authority?
They rejected the former and accepted the latter. Hence, they recognized the Received Text as the Authoritative text of ecclesiastical tradition and received it upon the same terms they received the early ecumenical creeds.
Hence, there is continuity between the teaching of the Creeds and the Scripture and discontinuity in the Romish practice and textual variants that support it. Modern textual criticism says these variants are the “oldest and best manuscripts.” They marked those textual variants out as corrupted. Burgon, who actually spent about six years personally collating manuscripts explains his rejection of Wescott and Hort’s New Greek Text:
“The task of laboriously collating the five “old uncials” throughout the Gospels, occupied me for five-and-a-half years, and taxed me severely. But I was rewarded. I rose from the investigation profoundly convinced that, however, important they may be as instruments of Criticism, codices Aleph A B C D are among the most corrupt documents extant. It was a conviction derived from exact Knowledge and based on solid grounds of Reason. You, my lord Bishop, who have never gone deeply into the subject, repose simply on Prejudice. Never having at any time collated codices Aleph A B C D for yourself, you are unable to gainsay a single statement of mine by a counter-appeal to facts. Your textual learning proves to have been all obtained at second-hand, taken on trust. And so, instead of marshalling against me a corresponding array of ancient authorities, you invariably attempt to put me down by an appeal to Modern Opinion.” Burgon, Revision Revised, p 376
Burgon, even though a High Church Anglican, was standing upon textual Protestant Orthodoxy. Wescott and Hort following Greisbach had rejected this and formulated a new theory, which if held to will destroy Protestantism. That is why everyone that faithfully holds to modern textual criticism eventually rejects the doctrines of Protestant Orthodoxy and is invariably led back to Rome or a High Church position, or some in between (e.g., Federal Vision Theology of Reformed Presbyterians)
Finally question:
“The original manuscript view agrees that there was one inspired text (the original manuscript), but it is now lost, hence the task of textural criticism, that is, to as nearly as possible determine what that original manuscript was.”
I agree that this the modern view and it was the view of Rome, it is not the view of Reformational Orthodoxy, they denied it was lost, but preserved in the apographs, just with the warts of uninspired human agencies upon its transmission.
The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Mainz stated the issue very well, when he first saw a Bible:
“Of a truth I do not know what book this is, but I perceive everything in it is against us.” Bennet’s Memorial of the Reformation, p. 20; Edin., 1748
The modern view of textual criticism is a continuation of medieval
scholasticism. Scholasticism reintroduced Aristotle’s humanism into Western
history, the result was the decline of orthodox Christianity and it’s Trinitarian
answer to the problem of the “One and the Many”, or the problem of Authority.
The implications of scholasticism are by their very nature subordinationist. Revelation was slighted and nature was, after Greek philosophical presuppositions, asserted as the primary and basically self sufficient order. The same principle is held to by secular humanists when they interpret “natural law,” which means something completely different to Christians.
When Scripture is suboridnated the determination of history and Sovereignty as a religious concept passes from eternity into time, from the supernatural to the natural. Subsequently, a subordinationist Christology was developed and this became the imperial Christology of the Roman Catholic Church.
Modern textual criticism invariably leads one back to an Imperial Christology as well and displaces Chalcedonian Orthodoxy in the process.
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Question asked:
Thomas,
I would like to read more along the lines you are spelling out. You mentioned a couple of references ie EF Hills and Mueller, anything else I can check in to.
Oh and thanks for the detailed response. And the distinction between what you are setting forth and KJV-Onlyism.
My answer:
In my understanding the issue of modern textual criticism has to be put into its proper context to understand both its origin, method and effect in terms of Reformational Orthodoxy that delivered unto us the Received Text, and the Authorized Version as the established Bible, as well as our Reformed Confessional standards. That is to say, we must seek to understand the rationale employed by the Reformation era editors in producing the Received Text and the Westminster Confession’s theological tenet of Providential Preservation of which it is the tangible reality.
You simply can’t evaluate Renaissance scholarship by post-Enlightment standards and make the conclusion that they were all wrong, or doofus’s, or not as smart as we are &c. They approached the issue from a completely different orientation.
As Rushdoony states, “The issue of the Received Text is thus no small matter, nor one of academic concern only. The faith is at stake.” The Problems of the Received Text, 1989
First, one needs to understand the Reformed Dogmatics in which this textual tradition arose, so the reference to Muller is a good one as well as “The Inspiration of Scripture: A Study of the Theology of the Seventeenth Century”, by Robert D Preus, Ph.D.
Then, I would suggest, these two works to understand the principles of Griesbach and its affect upon the theology and the discipline:
An Inquiry into the Integrity of the Greek Vulgate or Received Text of the New Testament, Frederick Nolan, 1830
“The Canon of Scripture being received as the unerring rule of faith, and the ultimate test of controversy; the foundation of all Religion must necessarily collapse with the destruction of its
integrity. As this object would be effectually obtained, should the critical system, on which Dr. Griesbach proposed to amend the Received Text, be incautiously admitted; it required no exertion of sagacity, or stretch of foresight to observe, that while his critical labors continued silently to gain
ground; the landmarks fixed by the Established Church, as a barrier to innovation and error, could not preserve their original position.” Ibid.
The Rise of Biblical Criticism in America, 1800-1820: The New England Scholars, Jerry Wayne Browne, 1969
“Joseph S. Buckminster persuaded the officials of Harvard College to publish an American edition of Griesbach’s Greek New Testament, because he viewed text criticism as a most powerful weapon to be used against the supporters of verbal inspiration.” Ibid.
Also, you’ll need a good history of the Reformation, and Bennet’s “Memorial of the Reformation” is an absolutely pleasurable read, then everything by Edward Freer Hills and Theodore Letis, especially:
“The Ecclesiastical Text,” Theodore P. Letis
“The Revival of the Ecclesiastical Text and the Claims of the Anabaptists,” Theodore P. Letis
and finally, John Owen, “Of the Integrity and Purity of the Hebrew and Greek Text of the Scriptures”
Cordially,
Thomas
