TR/CT debate - split from White/Ehrman debate thread

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Does Mr. White want a discussion or a debate? Which one for his radio program?

And will he be acting as brother in Christ, with love and patience admonishing another brother in Christ or as a secular critical scholar?

It is really insulting when you are stigmitised as a secular critical scholar because you do not accept the TR as pure in every respect compared to earlier Alexandrian manuscripts.

I really do not understand all these veiled allegations against a very learned and courageous orthodox Christian.

What?


I do not accept the TR as pure?

You can always send me a private message.
 
Does Mr. White want a discussion or a debate? Which one for his radio program?

And will he be acting as brother in Christ, with love and patience admonishing another brother in Christ or as a secular critical scholar?

It is really insulting when you are stigmitised as a secular critical scholar because you do not accept the TR as pure in every respect compared to earlier Alexandrian manuscripts.

I really do not understand all these veiled allegations against a very learned and courageous orthodox Christian.

What?


I do not accept the TR as pure?

You can always send me a private message.

You have misread my message (or indeed perhaps I have mistyped it or a combination of the two). It is Dr White who I undersatnd does not accept that the TR is pure in every single one of its variants. I certainly do not and I do not have to adopt secular critical assumptions to do so.
 
You have misread my message (or indeed perhaps I have mistyped it or a combination of the two).

You were perfectly clear. It is yet another example of how Gil is not following these threads with comprehension.

Gil, perhaps you should spend a few months using the search function here and reviewing these threads.
 
I certainly am not an expert on this subject nor a scholar. I have been a christian for 24 years and by God's grace have been a student of the Word since then. I have been using the AV for all of that time. The only CT bible I own is a ESV that I use for comparison purposes besides that I have a NKJV and a Geneva. I also have online bible where I have access to other translations and "literal" translations. I have read the NKJV through as well as the Geneva but always go back to the AV because it is "burnt" into my mind from all the years of reading it. With that said I have a few questions that I am hoping some of those who advocate the CT could answer for me,

What new truth has the CT given us that we did not have in the TR?
What has the plethera of new translations done for the church?
Has the CT not caused a lot of confusion in the church regarding the accuracy of some texts maybe giving rise to unbelief in some?
What do we have in the CT that we do not have in the TR?

Blessings on you all
 
What new truth has the CT given us that we did not have in the TR?
What has the plethera of new translations done for the church?
Has the CT not caused a lot of confusion in the church regarding the accuracy of some texts maybe giving rise to unbelief in some?
What do we have in the CT that we do not have in the TR?

Blessings on you all

What new truth has the CT given us that we did not have in the TR?

By the time the text evolved into the TR it contains additions and errors that were not in the original text

What has the plethera of new translations done for the church?

The new transalations are a mixture of good and bad, what the best have done is to show that even though in every tradition there are textual variants the cannon as a whole has remained pure and we have texts in the vernaculer where people can understand the message for themselves.

Has the CT not caused a lot of confusion in the church regarding the accuracy of some texts maybe giving rise to unbelief in some?

No, it is the different historical texts that gives rise to confusion and unbelief. If the Church ignored all such texts or denied there existance it would be accused of ignoring history and relying on assertion rather than history. Islam has done a splendid job of keeping its text pure and denying any historical variants in the text, in doing so they have stemed unbelief but they have done so by distorting history and truth.

What do we have in the CT that we do not have in the TR?

We have a more accurate historical text


Now all these points are arguable but in arguing against any form of CT as a matter of principle rather than as a matter of historic evaluation of individual texts it is opponents of textual evaluation who seem to deny any real historical basis for the biblical texts.

The reformed traditions great strength is its willingness to put mans minds at the service of the Gospel, to fight Liberalism on the basis of historic Christianity being fact, not to retreat into a mire of assertions.
 
Hey Tim P.,

Where I stand too.

Mark%20and%20DrO.jpg


So...why are you wearing a GA Southern shirt? (That's my Alma mater.) :think:

p.s. If the image doesn't show up it's here.
 
What new truth has the CT given us that we did not have in the TR?

The energy placed in this debate (on the PB) is fueled by a desire by orthodox Christians to have the most accurate, most exact, and closest text to the original autographs. TR folks think that they have it in the Erasmian text by the providential preservation of God providing him with the correct half dozen or so mss. that are the gold standard. The fact that he did not even have a mss. with the end of Revelation and had to "back translate" it himself from the Latin Vulgate would be enough to cast doubt in my mind as to the validity of the assumption.

As an orthodox Christian who holds to the inerrancy of the Bible, I want my English Bible to be based upon the closest thing we can get to the original autographs. The CT and TR crowd are both trying to do that. They do disagree on the way to accomplish that end. The TR side believes that we can find the more accurate text in the majority of mss; the CT group thinks that the better method is to look at the oldest mss.

Arguing against the invalidity of WH premises and presuppositions is typically not terribly impressive to CT advocates today because they do not view themselves as subscribers to WH. An analogy if you will would be Darwinian evolution (I write this as a 6 day creationist). In my disputes with modern evolutionists, they seem rather indifferent to my poking holes in Darwin. They suggest that they could poke their own holes in Darwin. Still, they hold to evolution as the best explanation of the evidence and credit Darwin with getting THAT right while much of the rest of it he got wrong. Bart Ehrman is an apostate. He uses the pheneomena of textual criticism to argue against the faith in the same way as others use the differences in the Synoptics to argue against inerrancy. Taking us back to the original premises of the founders of Textual Criticism or its earliest pioneers may be interesting, but will seldom convince a modern day practitioner, in my opinion.

What has the plethora of new translations done for the church?

Here we are mixing apples and oranges. The issue of Bible translation is not the same as textual transmission. The translators of the Geneva Bible, the KJV, and the NKJV all work with essentially the same texts and attempt to render them into the vernacular English as Luther did with his Die Heilige Schrift. The fact that people have proliferated English translations in the second half of the 20th century may be argued to have done as much harm as good. For every instance of easier translation, I would counter that we have lost a standard Bible, a function the KJV held for many generations. But, even the NKJV and the efforts to create a "modern language" English MT translation participate in that trend.

The American fascination with creating new Bible translations is only incidentally related to the text from which they worked. If there were no CT, we might have had a NAS, RSV, NIV, CEV, NEB, LB, etc. style all based on the TR!!! Lay people don't typically read the NLT because it is based on "older and more accurate texts," but because they think that it reads "easier." Proponents of the NAS think that it is more "literal" and less literary than the KJV or RSV. Frankly, I suspect that ego, party spirit, and marketing realities have as much to do with the plethora of translations as anything else. Is there really any reason why the SBC had to have their own Bible (HCSB)? I like the HCSB, but do not see that it was all that "needed." The same can be said for the CEV, NEB, NLT, etc. If you want to have different translation philosophies represented, then how about the [KJV, NKJV, NAS] vs. [RSV, ESV, HCSB] vs. the [NIV, NLT] vs. the [CEV, TEV, LB, Message]?

Has the CT not caused a lot of confusion in the church regarding the accuracy of some texts maybe giving rise to unbelief in some?

Sure. But there really are thousands of mss and they really do differ from each other. The rise of "reasoned eclecticism" is one approach to making sense of that reality. The fact that the Byzantine tradition (the vast majority of mss of which the TR is a part) differs from the TR provides the fodder for the critics regardless of whether the CT existed. in my opinion, critics would have a MUCH easier time throwing brickbats at the TR if we did not have a CT. The sheer weight of the argument that we have older mss that "differ" from the TR would be used to argue that the church corrupted the Bible from the original. Indeed, one might argue that the presence of the CT and apologists such as James White are a positive answer to Bible critics who try to make it out that we have a corrupt text. They argue with some measure of persuasion and cogency that the methods of textual criticism, albeit flawed, have allowed us to reconstruct the original text to such an extent that the arguments of the apostates and agnostics fall flat.

What do we have in the CT that we do not have in the TR?

This is a funny question. IFF you can forget that there really are thousands of mss with differences, and IFF you accept the KJVO arguments about providence leading Erasmus to have the "right" mss to translate from, etc. . . . then . . . nothing.

If you begin by saying that out of the thousands of mss. you want to have only the readings that the original Author and the biblical writers actually wrote, and you are confident in the methodology employed by the textual critics to determine this, then you may gain quite a bit.

In terms of doctrinal outcomes neither textual tradition gives us anything all that unique . . . you can be just as Reformed with either the TR or the CT, just as Arminian with either the TR or the CT, and just as committed to the Word-Faith "name it and claim it" movement with either one.

The vast majority of the most orthodox Reformed teachers today AND a rank apostate like Bart Ehrman all accept the CT. Some of the most Godly and articulate expositors of the Word (e.g., our own Rev. Winzer) AND some of the most heretical argue for their unusual views with a KJV in their hands. So, in my opinion, the issue is not one of what does the CT (or TR) add. You can be orthodox or heretical with either text in your hands.

Please remember: the most staunchly KJVO advocate and the firm CT devotee both argue that they have THE Word of God. And, on the doctrines of Christ, sin, salvation, the Holy Spirit, the Second Coming, Election, Predestination, the Atonement, etc. BOTH the CT and the TR "teach" THE SAME THING!!! Whether your Bible includes 1 John 5:7 or not, the Trinity is clearly articulated or suggested in many texts (e.g., Eph. 1:3-14; Matt 28:18-20, etc.). If you remove the woman taken in adultery from John 8, all of the doctrine and homiletical applications can be taught using other passages. The Marcan ending, however, just plain confuses me. I have nothing to say one way or the other on it. Mark 16:8 would indeed be a "weird" way to end a "Gospel." But so is snake handling???????
 
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I have heard that we have about 98% of the Word of God in our Bibles (either in the KJV, NASB, ESC, etc. or TR and CT). Also, that what we are missing is equivalent to not having one fat toe in one of our feet. However, this is okay since what we are missing we can know and figure out base on what we have already for certain in the Word of God revealed.
 
I'm going to close this thread now and remind everyone that the biggest issues, on both sides, has been a supposition (by a few) that an alternative view is wicked. Positions are painted in the worst possible light.

This debate from a few threads has spilled over in a way to affect personal relationships. A few of us on the Mod team have become emotionally exhausted by the turmoil this has sparked.

This issue is worth debating over and fighting for but, for me, it's not worth splitting Churches over and decreeing the "believers in God's Providence" from the unbelievers.

For my part, I have resolved in the board at large that I'm gong to spend much less engery trying to explain that I'm a brother in Christ who has a differing view for Biblical reasons to some who really are not interested in why I do or even believe that I can have Biblical reasons for some. I've resolved to be more irenic and not throw my weight into discussions that can only inflame because my sense of what a fair discussion has been co-opted. I'm going to encourage those and help those that want to hear my thoughts on a matter and be nonresponsive and patient with those who are disinterested.

I can't see any other way to keep some level of peace here as well as letting it affect personal relationships that I hold dear.
 
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