INSPIRATION AND PRESERVATION (Continued)
This week we are going to look at a few verses in I Peter that have to do with the doctrine of the preservation of Scripture. The first of these is verse 23. �Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the world of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.�
At first glance this verse seems to be speaking about salvation. That is so. It does speak of salvation. But, the verse is making the point that our salvation is based upon a response to a record that is certain.
In the early years of television there was a program about a man who gave away one million dollars, tax free. It was, of course, a fictional show. Basically, if someone comes by your house and tells you that they are going to give you, tax free, one million dollars, there is only one thing you can take to the bank - it ain�t gonna happen!
You�ve probably gotten the e-mails from a man who claims to be a former government official of an African country. He has thousands of dollars of money that he must find a way to disperse. If you will only send him, say, $1,000.00, he will send you back $500,000.00. I don�t have to tell you that this is a scam. It is not true.
Some people�s word about things is fictional. Other people are dealing in dishonesty and their word cannot be trusted, either. But, the Word of God is certain. That is why we can trust His offer of Salvation. It is backed by His eternal Word.
He promises that we are reborn into an incorruptible salvation because of His incorruptible seed. That seed is backed by the Word of God.
In the 1969 professional football Super Bowl, the quarterback of the New York Jets promised that his team would win the game. He even guaranteed that win. His team did win. But, it was not because of his guarantee. The Jets won the game because they played better. Perhaps they were given a boost in confidence by their leader.
We are given a guarantee of salvation. It is not based on our �playing the game� better. It is not based even on our confidence in the God Who made the promise. Our guarantee is based on the Word of God. We can have confidence in His Word, to be sure. But it is not our confidence which is the determining factor. The determining factor is His fidelity to His Word. We will live forever because His Word will live, and abide, forever.
The Hebrew-Greek Key Study Bible defines �for ever� as: �...perpetuity (also past); by impli. the world; spec. (Jewish) a Messianic period (present or future); -age, course, eternal, (for) ever (-more); (n-) ever, (beginning of the, while the) world (began, without end.)�
Notice that �for ever� reaches back and continues forward. Our salvation is not simply a thing of time. It is of eternal duration. It is of eternity.
That same sort of thing must also be said of the Word of God since that is the guarantee of our Salvation.
That �Word of God� is more than simply the Gospel message of salvation, although this is included as part of the message. Many of the commentaries I consulted gave short shift to the entire message of God in this passage. They said that Peter was only speaking of the Gospel message of salvation which was being preached. Reference was made to verse twenty-five.
Notice, however what verse twenty-five does say: �And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.� The message of the Gospel of salvation is derived from the entire message of God to humanity. It is an important part of that message. But there is even more than the simple Gospel of salvation which God wants us to know and study. Reference I Corinthians, chapter three, and Paul�s use of the terms �milk� and �meat� of the Word, in relation to this concept.
As to the term �abideth� (and �endureth� of verse 25), the Hebrew-Greek Key Study Bible gives this definition: �...to stay (in a given place, state, relation or expectancy); -abide, continue, dwell, endure, be present, remain, stand, tarry (for) X thine own.�
Peter is not giving a picture of a Scripture which would be lost in time and need to be reconstructed by those who doubt the power of God to preserve His Word. Peter was preaching the Bible doctrine of Bible preservation.
Peter continues the thought in the next two verses: �For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.� (I Peter 1:24-25)
About this passage, the Life Application Bible says, �...Peter reminds the believers that everything in this life - possessions, accomplishments, people - will eventually fade away and disappear. Only God�s will, word and work are permanent. We must stop grasping the temporary and focus our time, money and energy on the permanent - the Word of God...�
That is a strong statement as to the doctrine of the preservation of Scripture. The amazing thing, to me at least, is that I culled this statement from a copy of this study Bible which used a modern translation of the Scripture. This modern translation was based on one of these reconstructed textual bases.
While arguing that the Words of God were secure and permanent, this edition used as a base text, a foundational text which by its very existence argued something else. The foundation of the newer versions of the English translations is an eclectic text. It is argued that this text is necessary because new discoveries of ancient texts have shown the Traditional Text to be flawed.
This is an argument that God lost control of His Word. It is an argument that God did not, or could not, preserve His Word.
This is also a false argument. There have been no new �readings� unearthed since the time that the King James Bible was translated.
Our Bible is either preserved or it is not. But, remember our very Salvation is tied to the promises of God. God promised to preserve His Word. If He did not keep His Word on that point can we begin to trust Him in His Word about our Salvation?
Criswell, in the Criswell Study Bible, also makes mention of the permanence of the Scriptural record. �Quoting Isaiah 40:6-8, Peter stresses the enduring nature of the Word of the Lord. Flesh and all other materialistic features are destined for destruction. In none of these can one afford to place his trust. But what God says is permanent, enduring and trustworthy.�
There are two things I�d like you to notice about what Criswell said. First, Peter was quoting from the Prophet Isaiah when he wrote, under inspiration, the passage in I Peter. This, itself, is a picture of the preservation of Scripture. Would God have led Peter to quote from a Word which was lost and uncertain? Of course not. By inspiring this message through the pen of Peter, God was verifying the power of the preserved written Word.
Second, the only thing which we are given to be trusted is the Word of God. We can trust This because It has been preserved by God. Even the witness of the Spirit within us is given so that we may have complete trust in the preserved Word of God. If it were otherwise we would become, dependant upon our feelings, the arbitrator of the message of God.
The Spirit indwells us to confirm the preserved Word, and to illumine that Word within our hearts as we read It in our hands!
We need a secure Word in a changing world. That is not a new observation. Always has the world been changing through the years. Never has the Word of God changed except in the minds of sinful mankind. God has kept His Word. If we are to trust Him, and obey Him, we must recognize this fact.
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11 November 2005
INSPIRATION AND PRESERVATION (Continued)
Paul begins the third chapter of the Book of Romans with a question which he answers in the very next verse: �What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision? Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God.� (Romans 3:1-2)
The �oracles� spoken of in the above verses are the Scriptures of the Old Testament. Griffin (The Bible: Preserved For You) makes note of the care exercised by those ancient Jewish people in the transmission of the sacred text.
�The ancient Hebrew scribes handled the Word of God with extreme reverence. Their work was done with the utmost care and meticulous fidelity. No mistakes in copying were permitted. Copies of the Old Testament were made on sheets of finely prepared animal skins which were sewn together to form long scrolls. If a scribe made a mistake, the entire sheet had to be destroyed and a new copy written. To further guard against error, the scribes counted the words and letters of a copy to make sure nothing had been added or left out. They even went so far as to identify the middle letter on each sheet. If the middle letter was missing or out of position, they knew a mistake had been made.�
About the above paragraph, copied from Griffin�s work, I looked up after having copied and saw a red line under the word �letter� in the next to last line. This was a function of my word processor alerting me to the fact that I had made a mistake. I had left the first �e� out of the word.
The ancient scribes did not have word processors to alert them to errors they might have made. Neither, of course, did they have a cataract on one eye, awaiting removal, that tended to obscure their vision! But, without this modern invention, they still managed to find a way to make copies without error.
First of all, of course, there was their religious dedication to the task. They took extreme care to copy the Word of God as the Words of God. They knew that they were handling things holy. Their culture was such that the great awe and reverence of Deity laid heavy upon their hearts, minds, hands and eyes as they went about their sacred task.
This was no 9 - 5 job in which they were engaged. They were very cognizant of the fact of the sacredness of their service. Their minds were not wandering to the nights entertainment. They were solely dedicated to their consecrated task. Though they were beset with the cares of the day as are all men, their reverence to the God of the Word held their minds to the task at hand.
Second, of course, the many safeguards which were set upon their tasks would also guard against the possibility of error. Those very safeguards argue as to their fidelity to their task. They would not allow an error to contaminate the religious purity of their task.
Finally, we need to consider just who were these men that carried forth the task of the scribe. These were not men culled from the nearest �temporary hire agency.� Neither were they young people who had been placing applications at every available job site who would take the first job offered them. These were professional scribes and copyists.
This was not a time of universal education. Not everyone learned the skill of writing. Only the best educated would be allowed consideration for the task. Only the best, and most piously dedicated, would be allowed to put pen to vellum to attempt the mission of making copies of God�s inspired Word.
It was from this same tradition that the copyists of the New Testament writings would emerge. Of those copyists, may we remember, this was not considered a job or an occupation. The work of the transmission of the Scripture was not one entered into lightly. It was considered a holy calling, for a holy purpose, to be done by a holy, dedicated, and competent, person. To convey the Words of God to a new generation was a high calling and a reverential task.
In all of this we have not even considered the truth of God�s presence in the preservation of the Scripture. The very fact that God did originally inspire the Words of His message to man gives us the information that He considered these words important. This also means that He would wish to have them correctly copied from one generation of man to the next.
Would God have the power to do this? Throughout the inspired record we are shown a picture of a God Who is interested in the affairs of His created beings. We are shown a picture of a God Who was willing to insert Himself, from His eternal realms, into the day-to-day history of His created universe. God has, obviously, the power to protect His Word should He so choose. His care in the giving of that message would argue that He would so choose. His Own recorded Word, as we have seen in the past several weeks, has carried His promise that He would do just that.
Next week we will look further at the mechanics of the transmission of the New Testament Scriptures.
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18 November
INSPIRATION AND PRESERVATION (Continued)
In Brown�s fictional book, The Da Vinci Code, we are treated to pseudo history of a church council deciding which of the many manuscripts would be, and which would not be, allowed to enter in the official canon of Scripture. This is not true history.
Although there were councils which recognized as canonical certain Books of the Bible, there was no council which decided to set that role upon any group of Books. Basically, what happened was that the councils ratified that which the churches had already recognized. Thiessen (Introduction to the New Testament) noted, �It is a remarkable fact that no Church council selected the books that should constitute the New Testament Canon. The books that we now have crushed all rivals, not by adventitious authority, but by their own weight and worth.�
The Bible, as we have noted previously, is not just another book. It is altogether another Book. The Bible is the only inspired (God breathed) Book in the history of this world. As the God breathed Book, it is alive in a real way. The Holy Spirit moved upon the various New Testament churches to seek and find the will of God. In doings so the Spirit lead those churches to find, and accept, just those writings which He had authorized for their use and edification.
This is one of the reasons why the churches, historically, have had the Word of God. That, the body of believers in those New Testament churches, was the natural repository of the true Word of God. Therefore, to argue that the Word of God was lost for a thousand years only to be rediscovered in the burning barrels of a monastery or the back of a library, is to admit to a lack of faith in the God of that Word.
New discoveries of biblical texts which do not agree with those which are of the Traditional Texts, can never be considered as part of the Word of God because they are not in the proper repository - the churches of Jesus Christ.
Fuller (Counterfeit or Genuine) has noted that, �...during the fourteen centuries in which the New Testament circulated in manuscript form God worked providentially through the usage of the Greek- speaking Church to preserve the New Testament in the majority of the Greek New Testament manuscripts. In this way the True New Testament Text became the prevailing Traditional Text.�
Fuller continues. �When a copy having mistakes was compared with others, the mistakes were easily revealed and easily corrected.�
When we have removed our trust from a reliance upon God providentially protecting His Own Word in the fellowship of His Own Churches, we have entered into a shaking and perilous land of winding streets and dark alleys. We can easily become lost in our own logic.
By removing our accepted standard from that which was passed down through the Bible trusting churches of history, we are left with no base line of certitude. If we are to only access as reliable the oldest manuscripts available, one must ask why these are available when most of the rest of their ilk have been lost to history.
Brown�s answer is that a church council decided that some manuscripts were acceptable and others were not. At this point, however - following this logic, we are not certain just what it is that we are handling.
Suppose a teen-age girl is writing in her diary about her boy friend. She may use very flattering words to describe the paragon of virtue. Now, suppose the two have a fight and break up. What will she now write? Which of her two manuscripts will accurately describe the young man in question? Probably neither.
Now, suppose that there is a group that exits that wishes to portray the Christian faith in an aberrant manner. They may be doing this to satirize the Christians, or they may have some aberrant theological stances which they wish the Scripture to advance. They may just �shade� the message slightly so as to make it seem to agree with their stance. If, because they were not true followers of Jesus and thus lacked the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit, they die out in time, what of their tracts and nuanced renditions of Scripture?
These will tend to die out with them. If these manuscripts are found, suppose in a hot and dry area such as Egypt, and these are considered the oldest available manuscripts, does this make them correct? No; of course not. This only makes them available. It is from such as these that we have gotten our false base texts of the newer Bible versions. It is from these that those newer Bible versions have been flawed.
It is through this continuos copying of manuscripts by the Spirit energized churches of history, which has produced the great majority of the manuscript evidence which has continued to this day, that we ought to look for our manuscript evidence. This evidence is heavily in favor, as would be expected if God has been in control of His churches, His people, and His Word, that we find the tradition of the Traditional Text.
This is the text which underlies our King James Bible.
With the advent of the moveable type printing presses came a renewed interest in the copying of the Words of God. Hills (The King James Version Defended) has argued that �The printed text of the Traditional Text was a step in God�s preservation of the True Text of His Scripture.�
Of course, as with any move of God upon this earth, Satan will attempt to present a falsified message to man. Such has ever been the case. In the Garden Satan asked, �Yea, hath God said...� In this day he now asks, �How many ways did God say?�, until we have seen the Words of God flooded under a sea of contradictory and false versions.
May we ignore the muddy waters of the flood of false texts and rely upon the pure water which God has bottled for us in His Own Traditional Text.
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25 November 2005
INSPIRATION AND PRESERVATION (Continued)
Words mean things. What we mean is even more important than that which we say.
Many preachers will say that they believe in an inspired and preserved Word of God. But, they mean an inspired Word in the originals and a preserved word only in the essence of the thoughts of the various readings.
This sort of inspiration is useless because it is not tied to anything which can be accessed in this day. It�s sort of like saying, �I loved my wife the day I married her.� That doesn�t really say anything about one�s current feelings, does it?
Likewise, to say that the Word was once inspired, but lost, gives little real meaning to any sort of �preservation� that only applies to the general idea of the �readings.� That�s like saying that reading a �classics illustrated� comic book, or watching a movie version, of one of the books of Hawthorne is the same as reading the story. True, most of the general information would be in the abridgment, but what would be lost by neglecting to actually read the words of the author? Just as importantly, what might be added by the copyist - simply to make the pseudo version �easier to understand?�
Gipp (An Understandable History of the Bible) has noted an obvious fact: �Scholars today believe that God inspired words but preserved thoughts.� The sad thing about his observation is that this describes all too many of those in the fundamentalist camp who thunder forth in their sermons, �This is the unalterable, unchangeable, undefeatable Word of God!�, while they tune their corrector�s pen of rhetoric by saying, in the next breath, �This passage doesn�t have the correct wording because an redactor made changes that have only recently been discovered and corrected.�
That�s not unalterable! That�s not unchangeable! That�s not undefeatable! That is a Word that has been defeated by Satan when he changed to wording and altered the textual base!
This is a theology which robs the confidence of the readers of the Word of God in the very power and majesty of God. This is a theology which robs the Bible of its preeminence as the Message of God. The Message is then become only what the �religious professional� finds it to be by his study, rather than what God has clearly said. This is a theology which pictures man as the measure rather than man measuring up to God�s Standard.
If it is true that God could not preserve, or at the least did not preserve, His Word because of the mistakes that men made while copying the inspired text, how can we possibly have any trust in the same race of man to reconstruct what God could not preserve? We are asked to have faith in the scholars of the day to reconstitute the Word which God was not powerful enough to preserve even as we mistrust the scholars of an earlier day to keep that which was committed unto them.
Worse! We are asked to trust these scholars who are united in a belief that God either lacked the power to preserve His Own Word, or was so uncaring about His Message to man as to refuse to oversee the preservation of that Word. We can, we are told, trust the scholar who doubts the power or goodness of God. But, we cannot trust God!
What a basis on which to build the �faith� once delivered! (see Jude 3)
This is also a meaningless theological stance. It is impossible to relate thoughts, in any sort of precise manner, without the use of words. Take away the words and the thoughts will become unintelligible. The expression of thought is made possible via the use of the words.
My grandson has a very limited vocabulary. Now, this is quite normal for a one-year-old. He will mostly just babble incoherently and point when he wants something. His wants are minimal at this stage of his life - food, drink, attention, maybe a new diaper - so it is not impossible to figure out what he wants. Still, sometimes I figure wrong and he gets mad that I�ve not gotten what he wants.
The thoughts of God might be just a little more expansive than those of my grandson. The thoughts of God relate to every aspect of our lives on this earth - and on our spiritual needs for the world to come. Is it really reasonable to consider that God would only try to communicate to us with grunts and gibberish?
No! Of course not! We would expect that God would be at least as precise as the people who give us our prescription medication for our physical health. Those pill bottles do not say, �Take a couple every few hours.� They say, �Take two tablets every six hours.� Why would we expect God to be any less precise than this? Yet, this is what we suggest when we presume to say that He only preserved general precepts and not precise Words.
This theology of a lost and corrupted Scripture will lead to several very bad outcomes.
First, this will lead to a lack of trust in those Scriptures. How could we possibly trust a Scripture which we believe God did not preserve, in the word order in which He inspired that Scripture?
The problem with a �general contextual guess of the original Words Scripture� is that it argues against that which we find in Scripture about God�s willingness to preserve His Word. It argues against the care of God towards the creature if God didn�t care to keep available His Message to mankind down through the ages. It argues against the purposes of God in suggesting that He, basically, wasted His time in preserving that which He knew would be lost. In essence, this theological stance will lead to a lack of trust in God.
That is a very bad thing when one considers that our basic response toward God in this dispensation is via the medium of faith!
To argue to remove the security of the transmission of the Biblical Message will mean that we are left with no discernable standard of right, wrong, or even the leadership of God in our lives. If we have no real confidence in what we are reading, how can we possibly know if the map is correct or has all the routes misnumbered?
The truth of the matter is, if the Word be not preserved - accurately - then we cannot!
Next week we will begin to look at from where this type of faulty and faithless theology stems.
Keep in mind, we have a Word we can trust because we have a God we can trust. The two go hand in glove. To mistrust one is to mistrust the other. We need not have this mistrust because God is powerful enough to create the universe. It�s not really a long leap of faith to understand that He is powerful enough to protect His Word.