From: Douglas K Kutilek <dkutilek@juno.com>
Date: Sun, 28 Feb 1999 21:30:55 EST
Excerpted (with permission) from:
"AS I SEE IT"
Volume 2, Number 3, March, 1999
(See additional info re. "AISI" at the end of the article.)
THE PRESERVATION OF SCRIPTURE
The foundational premise of the modern infallible English
Bible movement is a belief that because God gave the
original Scriptures in a perfect, infallible and inerrant form,
He is thereby obligated to preserve the inspired Scripture in
an absolutely perfect and uncorrupted form throughout all
subsequent time. And, furthermore, since God evidently has
not done that with the original language Scriptures (no two
manuscripts of the Greek New Testament, for example,
being exactly alike in every detail), therefore--they conclude
by leap of "faith" (really presumption)--God must have
preserved it in some other form. This leads to a "quantum
leap" in presumption as they fix on the King James Version
of the Bible in English as the proffered infallibly-preserved
modern day Scripture. Conveniently ignored are legitimate
questions: why this version and no other? and, why in this
language and no other? and what of the very numerous
differences between the various editions of the KJV
published since 1611? (no two being identical in all details--
except for photographic reprints--which being true, how can
THIS meet the standard of an infallibly-preserved
Scripture?).
The fact of the matter is, the basic premise that there is a
Divine promise to infallibly preserve Scripture from any
alterations of whatever sort in the copying and translating
process is defective. No such promise is given in Scripture
(and alleged "proof-texts" for this doctrine, such as Psalm
12:6-7; Matthew 5:17, 18; and Matthew 24:35; are without
exception misinterpreted and misapplied).
That there is no Biblical promise of perfect preservation of
Scripture in the process of copying and translating has been
asserted repeatedly by devout, well-informed scholars. In a
previous issue of AISI (1:6, June, 1998), we reproduced just
such a statement by British New Testament scholar and
advocate of the Byzantine text-type John William Burgon
(1813-1888): ". . . That by a perpetual miracle, Sacred
Manuscripts would be protected all down the ages against
depraving influences of whatever sort,--was not to have
been expected; certainly, was never promised." (REVISION
REVISED, p. 335). And he certainly means promised by
God.
Recently, we ran across another, similar comment by
Burgon's contemporary and fellow-Byzantine text defender
F. H. A. Scrivener. In his INTRODUCTION TO THE
CRITICISM OF THE NEW TESTAMENT (Cambridge:
Deighton, Bell, and Co., 1883. Third edition), Scrivener
gives his expert testimony--and that he was expert in such
matters no one familiar with the facts will dispute. In the
19th century, no one had a fuller acquaintance than he with
the minutiae and details of the surviving Greek manuscripts
of the New Testament as well as the various editions of the
KJV, and no one was a more meticulous recorder and
publisher of such details.
Scrivener opens his volume:
"1. When God was pleased to make known to man His
purpose of redeeming us through the death of His Son, He
employed for this end the general laws, and worked
according to the ordinary course of His Providential
government, so far as they were available for the
furtherance of His merciful design. A revelation from
heaven, in its very notion, implies supernatural interposition;
yet neither in the first promulgation nor in the subsequent
propagation of Christ's religion, can we mark any WASTE of
miracles. So far as they were needed for the assurance of
honest seekers after truth, they were freely resorted to:
whensoever the principles which move mankind in the
affairs of common life were adequate to the exigencies of
the case, more unusual and (as we might have thought)
more powerful means of producing conviction were withheld,
as at once superfluous and ineffectual. Those who heard
not Moses and the prophets would scarcely be persuaded,
though one rose from the dead.
2. As it was with respect to the EVIDENCES of our faith, so
also with regard to the volume of Scripture. God willed that
His Church should enjoy the benefit of His written word, at
once as a rule of doctrine and as a guide unto holy living.
For this cause He so enlightened the minds of the Apostles
and Evangelists by His Spirit, that they recorded what He
had imprinted on their hearts or brought to their
remembrance, without the risk of error in anything essential
to the verity of the Gospel. But this main point once
secured, the rest was left, in a great measure, to
themselves. The style, the tone, the language, perhaps the
special occasion of writing, seem to have depended much
on the taste and judgment of the several penmen. Thus in
St. Paul's Epistles we note the profound thinker, the great
scholar, the consummate orator: St John puts forth the
simple utterings of his gentle, untutored, affectionate soul: in
St Peter's speeches and letters may be traced the
impetuous earnestness of his noble yet not faultless
character. Their individual tempers and faculties and
intellectual habits are clearly discernible, even while they
are speaking to us in the power and by the inspiration of the
Holy Ghost.
3. Now this self-same parsimony in the employment of
miracles which we observe with reference to Christian
evidences and to the inspiration of Scripture, we might look
beforehand, from the analogy of divine things, when we
proceed to consider the methods by which Scripture has
been preserved and handed down to us. God MIGHT, if He
would, have stamped His revealed will visibly on the
heavens, that all should read it there: He MIGHT have so
completely filled the minds of His servants the Prophets and
the Evangelists, that they should have become mere
passive instruments in the promulgation of His counsel, and
the writings they have delivered to us have borne no traces
whatever of their individual characters: but for certain
causes which we can perceive, and doubtless for others
beyond the reach of our capacities, He has chosen to do
neither the one nor the other. And so again with the subject
we propose to discuss in the present work, namely, the
relation our existing text of the New Testament bears to that
which originally came from the hands of the sacred penmen.
Their autographs MIGHT have been preserved in the
Church as the perfect standards by which all accidental
variations of the numberless copies scattered throughout the
world should be corrected to the end of time: but we know
that these autographs perished utterly in the very infancy of
Christian history. Or if it be too much to expect that the
autographs of the inspired writers should escape the fate
which has overtaken that of every other known relique of
ancient literature, God MIGHT have so guided the hand or
fixed the devout attention both of copyists during the long
space of fourteen hundred years before the invention of
printing, and of compositors and printers of the Bible for the
last four centuries, that no jot or tittle should have been
changed of all that was written therein. Such a course of
Providential arrangement we must confess to be quite
possible, but it could have been brought about and
maintained by nothing short of a continuous, unceasing
miracle;--by making fallible men (nay, many such in every
generation) for one purpose absolutely infallible. If this
complete identity of all copies of Holy Scripture prove to be
a fact, we must of course receive it as such, and refer it to
its sole Author: yet we may confidently pronounce
beforehand, that such a fact could not have been
reasonably anticipated, and is not at all agreeable to the
general tenour of God's dealings with us.
4. No one who has taken the trouble to examine any two
editions of the Greek New Testament needs to be told that
this supposed complete resemblance of various copies of
the holy books is not founded in fact. Even several
impressions derived from the same standard edition, and
professing to exhibit a text positively the same, differ from
their archetype and from each other, in errors of the press
which no amount of care or diligence has yet been able to
get rid of. If we extend our researches to the manuscript
copies of Scripture or of its versions which abound in every
great library in Christendom, we see in the very best of them
variations which we must at once impute to the fault of the
scribe, together with many others of a graver and more
perplexing nature, regarding which we can form no probable
judgment, without calling to our aid the resources of critical
learning" [pp.1-3, all capitals substituted for italics in the
originals].
Or, to summarize Scrivener, God did perform a miracle
when Scripture was originally written, and while He COULD
have continued to perform a miracle in the copying (and, we
would add, translation) process to prevent the least scribal
variation from the original, He did not do so, the facts of the
manuscripts and printed editions eloquently testifying
against such an occurrence.
To the above opinions, we may add that of highly-respected
19th-century American Baptist theologian J. L. Dagg (1794-
1884). In his MANUAL OF THEOLOGY (Harrisonburg, Va.:
Gano Books, 1982 reprint of 1857 edition), he addressed
the serious question--are variations in existing Bible
manuscripts a barrier to confidence in the Scriptures? His
reply is exactly on target:
"The Bible though a revelation from God, does not come
immediately from him to us who read it, but is received
through the medium of human agency. It is an important
question, whether its truth and authority are impaired by
passing through this medium. Human agency was
employed in the first writing of the Scriptures, and
afterwards in transmitting them, by means of copies and
translations, to distant places, and succeeding generations"
(p. 22).
"The men who originally wrote the Holy Scriptures,
performed the work under the influence of the Holy Spirit.
Such was the extent of this influence, that the writing, when
it came forth from their hands, was said to be given by
inspiration of God. . . .The men who spoke and wrote as
they were moved by the Holy Ghost, were the instruments
that God used to speak and write his word" (pp. 22, 23).
On the other hand,
"Although the Scriptures were originally penned under the
unerring guidance of the Holy Spirit, it does not follow, that a
continued miracle has been wrought to preserve them from
all error in transcribing. On the contrary, we know that
manuscripts differ from each other; and where readings are
various, but one of them can be correct. A miracle was
needed in the original production of the Scriptures; and,
accordingly, a miracle was wrought; but the preservation of
the inspired word, in as much perfection as was necessary
to answer the purpose for which it was given, did not require
a miracle, and accordingly it was committed to the
providence of God. Yet the providence which has preserved
the divine oracles, has been special and remarkable. . . .
The consequence is, that, although the various readings
found in the existing manuscripts, are numerous, we are
able, in every case, to determine the correct reading, so far
as is necessary for the establishment of our faith, or the
direction of our practice in every important particular. So
little, after all, do the copies differ from each other, that
these minute differences, when viewed in contrast with their
general agreement, render the fact of that agreement the
more impressive, and may be said to serve practically,
rather to increase, than impair, our confidence in their
general correctness. Their utmost deviations do not change
the direction of the line of truth; and if they seem in some
points to widen that line a very little, the path that lies
between their widest boundaries, is too narrow to permit us
to stray" (pp. 24, 25).
Or, to summarize Dagg: the miracle of inspiration was
operative only in the original writing of Scripture and only
the originals are infallible. Rather than involving the direct
work of the Holy Spirit, the copying process was committed
to the general providence of God, which, though permitting
scribal mistakes and variations to occur, nevertheless
restricted those variations so that the doctrinal integrity of
the Bible was preserved intact.
But what about translations?
"As copies of the Holy Scriptures, though made by fallible
hands, are sufficient for the guidance in the study of divine
truth; so translations, though made with uninspired human
skill, are sufficient for those who have not access to the
inspired original . . . . [God] has bestowed the knowledge
necessary for the translation of his word on a sufficient
number of faithful men, to answer the purpose of his
benevolence; and the least accurate of the translations with
which the common people are favored, is full of divine truth,
and able to make wise to salvation" (p. 25).
How desperately our present generation of preachers, Bible
college students and church members needs to lend an
attentive ear to the sane and sensible analysis of these
men, rather than embracing a fraudulent (though seemingly
attractive) substitute for the truth!
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"AS I SEE IT"
Volume 2, Number 3, March, 1999
["As I See It" is a monthly electronic magazine compiled and edited by
Doug Kutilek. Its purpose is to address important issues of the day and
to draw attention to worthwhile Christian and other literature in order to
aid believers in Jesus Christ, especially pastors, missionaries and Bible
college and seminary students to more effectively study and teach the
Word of God. The editor's perspective is that of an independent Baptist
of fundamentalist theological persuasion.
AISI is sent free to all who request it by writing to the editor at:
DKUTILEK@juno.com. You can be removed from the mailing list at the
same address. Back issues sent on request.
All articles are by the editor (unless otherwise noted) and may be
reproduced for distribution, provided the following conditions are met:
1. articles must be reproduced in unedited, unabridged form; 2. the writer
must be properly credited; and, 3. such reproduction must be for free
distribution only. Permission to distribute in any other form must be
secured in writing beforehand. Permission for reproduction in Christian
print periodicals will generally be given.]
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