In all the discussion of the TR-Only position, I think there have been a lot of straw men erected (on both sides of the discussion) and a lot of complimentary schismogenesis. I am going to ask all of you to forget all the anxilliary arguments for a moment. I think the core discussion is being lost in the fog of all the stuff being thrown around.

At the core of the Textus Receptus argument is this simple statement:

God entrusted the Bible to the Church; and the part of the Church that spoke Greek preserved the Greek New Testament.

As a corollary to this primary thesis:

Textual readings that are newly discovered and vary from the living, received text are not to be preferred over the readings that remained in daily, regular use.

This is why the Elzevir brothers termed this manuscript tradition textus receptus and why it was later dubbed majority text.

Now, without getting into any anxillary points, can we look at this thesis and its corollary and find any reason it should not stand.

I am legitimately asking the commenters and contributors to suspend any discussion of the ‘weight’ of variants and those things. I am asking you to focus only on the thesis and its corollary.

This discussion is open to anyone (including even you, Steve), but I warn you that any discussion off-topic will be removed. I want to see if it is even possible for everyone to deal with this premise and this premise alone. If you can’t stay on topic, however, it is probably best not to comment.

OFF THE SUBJECT:
There might also be a secondary corollary to this:

The archaic, koine, form of Greek is older than the Attic and Byzantine forms of Greek where the two might diverge in living, received manuscripts.

But that is a topic for another time.

One Bible Only? Examining Exclusive Claims for the King James Bible may just be the best book on the King James Only debate, period. The posts in this series are tracing the arguments of Kevin Bauder, in his conclusion to the book: “An Appeal to Scripture”. He explains several theological arguments that KJV Onlyists resort to, in an effort to continue propagating their belief against a mass of contrary evidence. Bauder shows that these arguments are really illusions that don’t stand up to scrutiny.

Part 1 set the stage, and part 2 dealt with “the appeal to faith”. Now in part 3, we come to “the appeal to reason”.

Bauder has in mind a specific argument that KJV Onlyists use in relation to preservation. They claim that “verbal inspiration… is useless unless it is followed by exactness in verbal preservation”. I have seen KJV Only materials which claim that verbal preservation (also known as perfect preservation), is a direct corollary of verbal inspiration. Bauder is quick to affirm verbal inspiration, but does not affirm perfect preservation. “While this argument from reason sounds plausible at first hearing,” he says, “it actually runs counter to God’s dealings in Scripture.” (pg. 158)

Bauder makes the case that this demand that perfect inspiration requires perfect preservation does not stand up to Scripture itself. First, he shows that not all of God’s spoken words were recorded in Scripture. Pre-flood instructions on sacrifices, the seven thunders of Revelation (Rev. 10:1-4), and Jesus’ words that aren’t recorded in Scripture (John 21:25) all are evidence that perfect words of God can be given and yet not preserved.

Bauder’s second line of argumentation here deals with the written words of Scripture comparing the actual record we have in Scripture with the KJV Onlyists requirement of perfect preservation. Bauder finds that the testimony of Scripture doesn’t support perfect preservation. His thoughts are worth repeating at length.

Even with regard to written words, it is demonstrably true that when someone’s spoken words were later recorded in Scripture, the “exact” words spoken were not necessarily the very words that were used in Scripture. For example, when the Gospel writers recorded words that Jesus had spoken during His lifetime, these authors, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, recorded the essence of Jesus’ words, not His exact words. This observation must be true because the recounting of Jesus’ words by the Gospel writers do not exactly agree (compare, for example, Matt. 13:1-13 with Mark 4:1-13 word for word). We affirm wholeheartedly that the Gospel writers were accurately employing the exact words that God wanted them to use to record Jesus’ speech under the perfect, supervisory ministry of the Holy Spirit. However, we also know that the Holy Spirit intended for these writers to record the essence of Jesus’ speech, not His exact words, for that is what they did. Also, remember that Jesus and His disciples frequently quoted the Old Testament (OT) in other than exact words. They sometimes quoted the Septuagint, the Masoretic text, a free rendition, or a combination thereof. In God’s method of propagating truth, it is apparent from the text of Scripture itself that He allowed some degree of latitude for the accurate and authoritative communication of that truth apart from the perfect preservation of all of the exact words in one particular place; and this latitude is observable even under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. (pt. 159, bold emphasis mine)

He then gave one final example from Scripture. “In one case,” he said, “the entire written revelation of God survived in a single manuscript that was hidden from public view (2 Kings 22:8; 2 Chron. 34:15).”

From this, Bauder makes the following conclusion about “the appeal to reason”:

…In all of the cases enumerated herein, God gave specific, verbal revelation, but He did not necessarily see fit to preserve all of the words and exactly the words in a publicly accessible form. The doctrines of inspiration and inerrancy (which are absolute truths) and the King James-Only proponents’ postulate of perfect preservation (which is dubious speculation) are certainly not inextricable corollaries.

All parties to this debate acknowledge that God has superintended the choice of the precise words that would be used to communicate His truth. To accept this fact, however, is not to concede that God is obligated to preserve every word through which His truth has been revealed. He might preserve some words and He might permit some to be lost, depending upon His own purpose. The appeal to reason is not a sufficient ground for the King James-Only argument.

What Bauder has done here is extremely important, in my view. He goes to Scripture itself to see how important the preservation of the specific wording of a text is. When one can see parallel accounts in the OT and NT which do not line up perfectly in word order and precise wording, and when one sees quotations of other texts which are not word perfect, why shouldn’t one conclude that a certain latitude is permissible here, that minor variations among translations of Scripture do not affect their authority?

One Bible Only? Examining Exclusive Claims for the King James Bible may just be the best book on the King James Only debate, period.  The posts in this series are tracing the arguments of one of the editors, Kevin Bauder, in his conclusion to the book: “An Appeal to Scripture”.  Bauder explains several theological arguments that KJV Onlyists resort to, in an effort to continue propagating their belief against a mass of contrary evidence.  Bauder illustrates how these arguments really are illusions that don’t stand up to scrutiny.

Part 1 set the stage, and now we get to the first of the theological arguments for KJV Onlyism.

The first illusion is the appeal to faith. According to its leading defenders, the King James-Only movement is fundamentally a “faith position.” Genuine, biblical faith, however, must rest in the promise of God. To be believed, the promise of God must be clearly revealed in the pages of Scripture itself. The question is not whether the Bible contains a promise that God will preserve His Word. King James-Only advocates go much further. They insist that God has preserved His words and preserved them exactly in a singular, identifiable, and accessible form. So the question is whether the Bible contains a promise that God will preserve, word for word, the text of the original documents of Scripture in a particular manuscript, textual tradition, printed text, or version. As this book has shown, the Bible contains no promise whatsoever that includes the preservation of all the words of the autographa (without addition or deletion) in a single, publicly accessible source. Without such a promise, the appeal to faith does not rest in the promise of God, but in the untestable and unverifiable speculation of the King James-Only advocates themselves. Until they can produce a Scripture that (properly and contextually understood) does promise all that they assert, they have no legitimate right to appeal to faith.

(Bolded emphasis mine. Excerpted from pg. 158, One Bible Only? Examining Exclusive Claims for the King James Bible, edited by Roy Beacham and Kevin Bauder; Kregel Publications: Grand Rapids, 2001.)

?This is the rub in my opinion.  The various texts that apply to a doctrine of preservation, do not make the explicit claim that all the words of Scripture will be preserved in an accessible form.  For at least 1500 years, most KJV Onlyists allow that the words of Scripture weren’t together in a printed text or version that is accessible too.  Especially when one considers what E.F. Hills points out that several of the TR passages are preserved in the Latin language texts rather than the Greek language texts, and the New Testament was purified when the two streams were brought together.

We’ve been posting links to an excellent series on the Bible’s teaching on preservation, by Aaron Blumer over at SharperIron.org. The last couple installments in this series, have looked closely at Thou Shalt Keep Them: A Biblical Theology of the Perfect Preservation of Scripture, edited by Kent Brandenburg.

Here is an excerpt from today’s article by Blumer. I encourage you to go over and read the whole thing.

This series has not aimed to examine the case for perfect text preservation (PTP) comprehensively. Rather, my aim has been to scrutinize the biblical facts and identify what believers may properly term “doctrine of preservation.” Do we have biblical statements that say, or clearly imply, that believers will always have access to every word of Scripture in the form of a text they know is flawless?

Please note what the question is not. It is not, “Do verses indicate God’s Word will last forever?” It is not, “Do passages teach that God has tasked His people with maintaining written copies?” It is not, “Do verses emphasize that the words of Scripture are vital for Christian doctrine and Christian living?” Nor is the question, “Do people try to distort and sabotage the words of God?” Finally, the question is not, “Is God able to overcome human nature so that those He chooses perfectly preserve the text?”

The answers to all of these questions is yes. But if we look closely at what Scripture claims regarding the how-and-what details of preservation—and read the relevant passages with a scriptural view of human nature in view—what we see over and over again is that PTP is neither stated nor clearly implied.

Daniel Wallace on  has an interesting post on Bible.org entitled Inspiration, Preservation, and New Testament Textual Criticism.  In this post the author states:

not only do they put preservation on exactly the same level as inspiration, but they also can be more certain about the text, since they advocate a printed edition. But their argumentation is so palpably weak on other fronts that we will only make two observations here: (a) since the TR itself went through several different editions by Erasmus and others, TR advocates need to clarify which edition is the inspired one; (b) one simply cannot argue for the theological necessity of public accessibility throughout church history and for the TR in the same breath—for the TR did not exist during the first 1500 years of the Christian era. (Rather inconsistent, for example, is the logic of Theo Letis when he, on the one hand, argues that God must have preserved the pure text in an open, public, and accessible manner for Christians in every generation and, on the other hand, he argues that “the Latin and non-majority readings [of the TR] were indeed restorations of ancient readings that fell out of the medieval Greek tradition”!

He goes further and says:

As we have argued concerning the faulty assumption that preservation must be through “majority rule,” the scriptures nowhere tell us how God would preserve the NT text. What is ironic is that as much ink as MT/TR advocates spill on pressing the point that theirs is the only biblical view, when it comes to the preserved text being found in the majority of witnesses, they never quote one verse. Although they accuse other textual critics of rationalism, their argument for preservation via the majority has only a rational basis, not a biblical one. “God must have done this”—not because the Bible says so, but because logic dictates that this must be the case.

A statement that I found extremely interesting was the following:

the doctrine of preservation was not a doctrine of the ancient church. In fact, it was not stated in any creed until the seventeenth century (in the Westminster Confession of 1646). The recent arrival of such a doctrine, of course, does not necessarily argue against it—but neither does its youthfulness argue for it. Perhaps what needs to be explored more fully is precisely what the framers of the Westminster Confession and the Helvetic Consensus Formula (in 1675) really meant by providential preservation.

I must add this comment here:  At this point I have no idea as to the veracity of this claim.  It is interesting, however, because we have seen the argument over and over by one particular person who visits this blog that the TR/KJVO view is based upon a historical view of preservation.  I would certainly like to see more detail on this from both sides of the issue.

The following struck a chord with me, though I’m not exactly sure at this time how much I agree:

if the doctrine of the preservation of scripture has neither ancient historical roots, nor any direct biblical basis, what can we legitimately say about the text of the New Testament? My own preference is to speak of God’s providential care of the text as can be seen throughout church history, without elevating such to the level of doctrine. If this makes us theologically uncomfortable, it should at the same time make us at ease historically, for the NT is the most remarkably preserved text of the ancient world—both in terms of the quantity of manuscripts and in their temporal proximity to the originals. Not only this, but the fact that no major doctrine is affected by any viable textual variant surely speaks of God’s providential care of the text. Just because there is no verse to prove this does not make it any less true.

A very interesting argument in the inspiration=preservation discussion is given:

there is a tacit assumption on the part of Pickering that everything a biblical author writes is inspired. But this is almost certainly not true, as can be seen by the lost epistles of Paul and the agrapha of Jesus. The argument is this: there seem to be a few, fairly well-attested (in patristic literature), authentic sayings of Jesus which are not found in the Gospels or the rest of the New Testament. Of course, evangelicals would claim that they are inerrant. But they would not be inspired because inspiration refers strictly to what is inscripturated within the canon. Further, Paul seems to have written three or four letters to the Corinthians, perhaps a now-lost letter to the Laodiceans, and apparently more than a few letters before 2 Thessalonians. If some NT epistles could be lost, and even some authentic sayings of Jesus could show up outside the NT, then either they were not inspired or else they were inspired but not preserved. Assuming the former to be true, then the question facing us in Mark’s Gospel is whether an inspired writer can author non-inspired material within the same document—material which is now lost. Such a possibility admittedly opens up a Pandora’s box for evangelicals, and certainly deserves critical thought and dialogue. Nevertheless, the analogies with the lost epistles of Paul and the authentic, non-canonical agrapha of Jesus seem to damage Pickering’s contention that if the last portion of Mark’s Gospel is lost, then inspiration is defeated.

The author concludes by saying:

In sum, there is no valid doctrinal argument for either the Textus Receptus or the majority text. A theological a priori has no place in textual criticism. That is not to say that the majority text is to be rejected outright. There may, in fact, be good arguments for the majority text which are not theologically motivated. But until TR/MT advocates make converts of those who do not share with them their peculiar views of preservation and inspiration, their theory must remain highly suspect.

It will probably take reading and re-reading for me to digest all that is said here.  I must say, however, that there is much to commend this article, though I may not embrace all that is said.  I believe it provides a relatively balanced approach to the debate in that it takes the arguments of the MT/TR/KJVO seriously and seeks to answer them Biblically, doctrinally, textually, and historically.

Another King James Only Double Standard?

Over a month ago, Erik posed the question: Does King James Onlyism come out of imperialism? over at the Fundamentally Changed blog. The discussion spilled out onto this site as well. My answer to that specific question was, “no.” I do not believe King James Onlyism is a result of imperialism. I have never found imperialistic tendencies within the arguments I’ve read supporting the KJVO position. However, I do believe that imperialism was a factor contributing to the rise of the King James Version (check out the links for the discussion).

Apparently, so did others. Even those who support the KJVO view chimed in at the comments section to give a nod to the idea that English imperialism aided the King James Version’s rise to prominence. Of course, none tried to justify the abuses of the imperialistic system nor everything that ensued during the height of the British Empire. However, the use of imperialism to spread the gospel, the Bible (particularly the KJV), and the modern missions movement was seen as a justifiable mean on the basis of the fact that God providentially used this situation for the furtherance of His cause.

Here’s what some of our King James Only commentators said about this:

Erik’s puerile argument could be easily turned on him as the Critical Text view was propogated at the zenith of the British Empire by the Anglican Establishment, I would not be so crass as to couple this incidental fact with the rise of imperialism. If anything, the RSV is tainted more with imperialism as it is the translation propagated by the imperialists. – PS Furgeson

If we believe that God is in charge and that history unfolds according to His sovereign will, then we are happy to see several points.
1. The Bible had an important place in English History: Alfred, Wycliffe, Tyndale, KJV.
2. God blessed England: the sinking of the Spanish Armada in 1588, the spread of British culture all over the world in the 18th and 19th centuries, which included the spread of the Bible.
3. The Bible spread to all the British colonies.
4. The Bible was preached to the world by British and American missionaries: China, India, and Africa.
5. The Sovereign God providentially used Great Britain to spread His Word all over the world—Praise the Lord!
6. We recognize God’s sovereignty, we see His providence, and we see that the King James Version was the Bible of this people. – Kent Brandenburg

In 1611 the English language was spoken by a mere 3% of the world’s population, but today English has become the closest thing to a universal language in history. He used the King James Bible to carry His words to the far ends of the earth, where it was translated into hundreds of languages by English and American missionaries for over 300 years. The sun never set on the British empire. It was even taken to space by American astronauts and read from there. God knew He would use England, its language and the King James Bible to accomplish all these things long before they happened. It is the only Bible God has providentially used in this way. It is the only Bible believed by thousands upon thousands of believers to be the inspired, infallible and 100% true words of God. – Will Kinney

I for one certainly recognise the perfection of the KJB and the greatness of the British Empire, and see a link between the two; I certainly argue for English to be used in missionary work and for people everywhere to eventually use the KJB; I certainly argue for a national view which is based on the KJB. However, I probably would not accept descriptions of my view as put forward by those who are not for it. – Bibleprotector

I interpret this as saying the English speaking people are not more specially important in the history and development of Christianity in the civilised world than any other language group. But, hasn’t the great modern push for cross-cultural evangelism since William Carey been largely born by the English-speaking peoples, as they took the Gospel (and the KJV as an integral part of that) to every corner of the globe, in the wake of English imperial ‘conquests’ ? – Edwin Clive

Now, I agree. History certainly is His Story. God is in sovereign control, and He uses all sorts of means to accomplish His ends. Of this there is no doubt. But the double standard that I see is this: how can we allow ourselves to think that God providentially uses some historical circumstances for good, when those circumstances involve evil, but not allow the same in other situations? I’m referring to the rise of Bible versions. The King James Onlyist is basically saying, “Yes, imperialism, and all its ills, were used of God for the rise of the King James Version.” But then he turns around and says, “(The means by which) the modern versions rose to popularity are evil, and therefore the modern versions are evil.”

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This is a repost of Dr. Paul Henebury’s recent post on his blog. Dr. Henebury is the President of Veritas School of Theology.

Introduction

The greatest British theologian of the 17th Century was, in the opinion of many, John Owen.  Owen made distinctive contributions in a number of theological loci.  His book on the mutual relationship within the Trinity and our communion with each of the Divine Persons is still the best work on the subject.[1] Likewise, his manifesto for congregational-independency[2] offers some of the best arguments for Pastor-led congregational form of church government, and his The Death of Death in the Death of Christ[3] is considered the book on the Reformed view of particular redemption.  Owen’s teaching on the subject of the inspiration of the Bible is also most instructive, especially in view of what has been and is being taught in some evangelical seminaries and books.

The Importance of Divine Inspiration

Owen’s views on the crucial matter of the relationship of the Bible as we have it and the autographs are worth pondering.  He, like all solid evangelicals, rests the authority of the Bibles we have, not upon some inner impression of its validity, but upon its original theopneustic character.  In his, The Divine Original of the Scripture he asserted, “That the whole authority of the scripture in itself depends solely on its divine original, is confessed by all who acknowledge its authority.”^[4] Thus the autographs were from God and delivered to men.  We possess “the words of truth from God Himself.”[5]

Inspiration he defined as “an indwelling and organizing power in the chosen penmen.” ^[6] Thus, “they invented not words themselves…but only expressed the words they received.”[7] Indeed, “the word that came unto them was a book which they took in and gave out without any alteration of one tittle or syllable (Ezek. ii 8-10, iii 3; Rev. x 9-11).”^[8] As Owen writes in his great work on the Holy Spirit:

He did not speak in them or by them, and leave it unto their natural faculties, their minds, or memories, to understand and remember the things spoken by him, and so declare them to others; but he himself acted their faculties, making use of them to express his words, not their own conceptions.^[9]

It is because of its divine provenance that the Scripture gains “the power and to require obedience, in the name of God.”[10] The Scriptures “being what they are, they declare whose they are.”[11] Even so, being as the Bible is the Word of God, every man is bound to believe it.[12]

All this notwithstanding, Owen refuses to ground his doctrine of Scripture solely on the internal testimony of the Spirit.  As he says in his The Reason of Faith, “If anyone…shall now ask us wherefore we believe the Scripture to be the word of God; we do not answer, ‘It is because the Holy Spirit hath enlightened our minds, wrought faith in us, and enabled us to believe it.’”[13] Such a declaration may at first seem to be a deviation from the tradition inherited from the Reformation.  But Owen demonstrates that there has to be an external reason for the credibility of our faith in Scripture as the Word of God.[14] Divine revelation must have the character of truth through and through, and it is this character which the Spirit causes us recognize through faith.[15]

The Role of Apographa

Where John Owen, together with many of his contemporaries, differed from modern expressions of inspiration was in the close connection he saw between the Scriptures as originally given and the Scriptures as we now have them.  For example, he wrote:

Sacred Scripture claims this name for itself.  It has its origin from God…[s]o that what God once said to the Church through the medium of Prophets, Apostles, and other inspired writers was still spoken directly by God, and that not only in the primary sense to those whom He delegated this task of reducing His revealed will to written form, but also, no less so in a secondary sense, He speaks to us now in His written word…, as in days past He spoke through the mouths of His holy prophets.^[16]

In contrast to the way inspiration and (if at all) preservation is taught nowadays, men like Owen saw a real continuity between the autographs and what were often termed the “apographs,” or copies of the originals.  “It is true”, Owen said, “we have not the Autographa …but the apographa or “copies” which we have contain every iota that was in them.^[17]

As we have already inferred, in saying this Owen was not alone.  Francis Turretin of the Genevan Academy also held this view:

By original texts, we do not mean the autographs…, 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.”[18]

Did this show a pre-Enlightenment naiveté?  Not at all.  Owen was well aware that the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts available in his day contained variant readings, transpositions, corrections, and other glosses.  But he saw the supervening hand of God in transmission of the texts.  For example, he wrote, “For the first transcribers of the original copies, and those who… have done the like work from them…[i]t is known, it is granted, that failings have been amongst them, and that various lections are from thence risen.”^[19]

It is of interest to note that Owen’s recent translator contrasts the view of the Puritan with that of BB Warfield, especially in the areas of the extent of the understanding of inerrancy and the identity of the Text.  Stephen Westcott says that,

Owen saw inerrant as not meaning just that all “between the boards of the Bible” was inspired and without error…, but rather that inerrant necessarily meant plenary inspiration, and plenary inspiration that the Bible lacks nothing, and is thus a full and perfect rule and guide for all of life –not just for “religion”, and he saw inspiration as involving three essential factors: content inspiration, verbal inspiration, and divine preservation.^[20]

Summarizing Owen’s View

From the above quotations the following three points can be drawn:

1. The Divine authority of the Bible rests in itself.  It is self-attesting:

“That God, who is prima Veritas, ‘the first and sovereign Truth,’…should write a book, or at least immediately indite it, commanding us to receive it as his under the penalty of his eternal displeasure, and yet that book not make a sufficient discovery of itself to be his, to be from him, is past all belief.”^[21]

1. This authority rested in the first instance in Scripture’s inherent status as God-given, and not in the inner testimony of the Spirit to His Word.

1. Although He allowed the human authors to remain individual personalities, the Holy Spirit nevertheless “acted their faculties” in order to produce His words in written form.  Owen taught that the nature of the Spirit presupposed this kind of inspiration,^[22] even if, strictly speaking, “It is the graphe that is theopneustos.”^[23]

1. Although we no longer possess the original manuscripts of the Bible, the apographa or copies do communicate to us what the Holy Spirit said in the autographs.^[24] Owen, unlike some Evangelicals today, held to a strong doctrine of Preservation.^[25]

This assertion gives the lie to the thesis of people like Sandeen and Rogers and McKim^[26] who have claimed that the belief that Scripture’s authority extends to all aspects of life is due to the influence of the Enlightenment. ^[27] But it also reminds us that God has not just set His Word in the world and then left it up to frail men to preserve it unsupervised.  In a very real sense the Bible through which God actively communicates today is foremost His Word, not our attempt to reproduce it.

^[2] Owen, The True Nature of a Gospel Church, Works XVI, (London: Banner of Truth, 1968).

^[3] The Death of Death in the Death of Christ, Works X, (London: Banner of Truth, 1968).

^[4] The Divine Original of the Scripture, Works XVI, (London: Banner of Truth, 1968), 297.

^[5] Ibid., 305

^[6] A Defense of Sacred Scripture.  Appended to his Biblical Theology, (Pittsburgh, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1994), 789.

^[7] Divine Original, 305

^[8] Divine Original, 299.

^[9] A Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit.  Works III, (London: Banner of Truth, 1967), 132-133.

^[10] Divine Original, 308

^[11] Ibid., 311

^[12] Ibid., 335

^[13] The Reason of Faith, Works IV, (London: Banner of Truth, 1967), 60

^[14] Ibid., 61-69

^[15] Ibid., 68

^[16] Defense, 788. (cf. also Works XVI, 357).

^[17] Divine Original, 300-301.

^[18] Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1992), 1.106.

^[19] John Owen, Of the Integrity and Purity of the Hebrew and Greek Text of the Scripture. Works XVI, 355.

^[20] Stephen Westcott, “Editors Introduction,” – John Owen, Defense, 772-773.

^[21] Cf. also, Works XVI, 317-318, and, 335.  Calvin said, “We ask not for proofs or probabilities on which to rest our judgment, but we subject our intellect and judgment to it as too transcendent for us to estimate.” – John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.7.5. (1.72).

^[22] Owen, A Discourse Concerning The Holy Spirit, Works III, 131.

^[23] Divine Original, 300.

^[24] Likewise, see the opinion of William Whitaker recorded by John Woodbridge in his rebuttal of Rogers and McKim in Douglas Moo (ed.), Biblical Authority and Conservative Perspectives, (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1997), 46.

^[25] See Owen, Divine Original of the Scripture, 354-355.

^[26] See also the attacks on men like Carl F.H. Henry by the likes of Donald Bloesch.

^[27] We are aware of the fact that men like Owen, Voetius, Turretin, and Thomas Boston believed that the Masoretic punctuation marks were divinely inspired.  They were mistaken.  But this does not mean that they were wrong in the matter before us. Furthermore, it may not be out of place to add that in the debate about the Majority Text versus the minority Critical Text.  For what it is worth, Stephen Westcott believes that Owen, were he alive, would side with the MT.  “For Owen, the Reformation, and the Puritans [to even put it in those terms] …would be to settle the dispute!” – “Editor’s Introduction,” to John Owen, A Defense of Sacred Scripture, 773.

It has been fashionable among textual scholars for nearly three hundred years to refer to “text-family” as a distinguishing characteristic of manuscripts. There are two primary text-families that get the most print:

• Alexandrian: best known by the three codices Westcott and Hort used in preparing their 1881 New Testament – Codices Vaticanus (The Vatican, Bibl. Vat., Vat. gr. 1209 or B), Alexandrinus* (London, British Library, MS Royal 1. D. V-VIII or A), and Sinaiticus (London, Brit. Libr., Additional Manuscripts 43725, or ?)
• Byzantine: easily the most attested manuscript text-family. Of the 500+ manuscripts that contain a complete General Epistles, more than 350 of them are Byzantine in character.

*Technically, A is both Alexandrian and Byzantine because most of the codex is Alexandrian but the Gospels are distinctly Byzantine.

In addition to these two text-families, Westcott and Hort pioneered the usage of two other text-family names:

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The Evangelical Textual Criticism blog pointed my attention to a lengthy article by Adam at the Old Testament Studies blog which refutes  the “Ecclesiastical Text theory”.  The article covers quite a bit of ground as it attempts to refute a recent article by Kent Brandenburg on the LXX argument.  Adam interacts with the Scriptural evidence for preservation, and shows how a proper exegesis does of them does not demand the preservation of a word-perfect, accessible text.  Adam then discusses targumming, the LXX, and gets into some OT textual criticism.

I recommend the article as a good reference for discussion.  The question remains, did he really refute the Ecclesiastical Text theory?  For additional discussion here, perhaps we should switch from calling a reasoned, Greek studying, KJV-onlyism, TR-onlyism and instead call it the “Ecclesiastical Text theroy”.  I think that might be preferred by people of that persuasion, what do you think?

Thanks go out too, to the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog for linking to our little blogging establishment again in their post about Adam’s article.

A quick note letting everyone know that part 3 of Aaron Blumer’s series on Preservation: How and What? is up over at Sharper Iron.  He continues his look at what the Bible teaches about preservation, and he pays special attention to arguments from the book Thou Shalt Keep Them edited by Kent Brandenburg (Pillar and Ground Publishing).