THE WORDS ARE IMPORTANT (Continued)
As we look at the basis of the newer English language translations we are struck by the number of them. Each of them has promised to make the Bible more readable and easier to understand. The problem with these pronouncements is that there are so many which make the claim. Are they each �more readable?� Are the each �easier to understand?�
Which one of the many on the market is the most readable? Which one of the many on the market is the easiest to understand. I, honestly, have no idea how many new versions and translations are on the market in this day. I have over forty of them on the shelves of my study; yet every time I look there is another one which I do not have.
I have ceased to buy these new versions and translations. I am too struck by their false advertising. �More readable and easier to understand?� If that is true, why is there less Bible reading going on in this day? If that is true, how come almost the entire population is functionally Biblically illiterate?
We have seen a marked decline in public piety and influence of the Christian religion in the past fifty, or so, years since the advent of multiple volumes of multiple translation and versions. I honestly believe that part of this decline in the understanding of things Biblical has to do, to a great extent in the very fact that there are all of these newer versions, each claiming to be the �Word of God in simple English.� People are not completely stupid! They understand that fifty competing versions can not each be �The Word of God.� Some must be closer to God�s Words and some must be further from God�s Words.
I�ve just sent another new book of my own to the publisher. The publisher has informed me that I must take out a copyright on my own work in order to �insure the integrity of my message.� If I do not do this, I am told, someone could copy my words, exchanging their own view of what I should have said for what I did say. The copy so made would claim to be my words but might say something completely different. People understand this in the natural realm. Is not this also very easy to understand in the spiritual realm?
God�s Words altered cease to be God�s Words. They become the words of whomever does the alteration. The sheer number of translations and versions argue that this is an accomplished fact. The only question left is, which one is God�s Word.
All of the new versions and translations are agreed as to which is, in their estimation, the worst. To them it is the King James Bible founded on the Traditional Text. On this they are all agreed. Fuller (Which Bible) notes that the reason all of the new English translations and versions are united against the King James Bible is because these all agree together on only one salient point: they all argue that the Words of God were lost somewhere in time and needed to be rescued by human control and intellect.
�They believe that all during the medieval period and throughout the Reformation and post-Reformation era that the true New Testament text was lost and that it was not regained until the middle of the nineteenth century, when Tischendorf discovered it in the Sinaitic manuscript Aleph and Westcott and Hort found it in the Vatican manuscript B. Such inconsistency, however, is bound to lead to a skepticism which deprives the New Testament text of all authority.�
The interesting conclusion seems to be, since all of the many and varied new English language versions and translations are agreed primarily on this one point, is that this very fact elevates the Traditional Text of the King James Bible to the place of being the standard by which all others are judged. Satan, in attempting of obscure the preserved Message of God, has given tacit agreement as to just what is the true Message of God.
The reader of the newer English language versions must be left with a curiosity as to what, if anything, is really the Words of God. If the only real agreement is that the Traditional Text of history is wrong, then the concept of a Sovereign God must, by default, be wrong or He would have had the power and love to control that Message. After all, He must have, if He be True, believed that this Message was important. How could He have allowed it to be lost.
The only answer really available to the reasonable person is that God did not really care if that Message be read by humanity. If He is powerful and so intended, it would not have happened that the Message was lost. If the message (small case intended at this point) has been lost, it must follow that God is not all-powerful; or else He is not loving enough to have kept the Message for humanity. But, if He is not all-powerful, he (small case intended) is not God. If He is not loving we must question if He really intended to give a Message in the first place.
This being so, modern man must consider that the Bible is simply another book from antiquity. It is no better, maybe no worse, than any other work. At that point it matters not if we have an accurate copy or not. �After all,� the reasoning must go, �The Bible is simply a primitive story of early man�s search for meaning in the Cosmos.� God is no longer the First Cause. He has become simply the first superstition, if the Scriptures be lost and unsure.
Fuller, again (True or False), argues that it is the responsibility of the modern critic and translator to explain how this Scripture, if it is important, was lost.
�It is for them to show, and by testimony which carries through conviction, that God left His people for fifteen centuries or more to the bad effect of a corrupt text, until, in fact, the chance discovery by Constantine Tischendorf, in the meddle of the 19th century, of some leaves of parchment so lightly valued by their custodians that they had been thrown into the waste paper basket, and until (for some mysterious and as yet unexplained reason) the Codex Vaticannus was exhumed from its suspicious sleeping place at the papal headquarters.�
If the conviction of the revisionists be true, how did it happen that The Lord of Glory lost control of His Words on this earth? How did the Eternal succumb to the temporal? How is it that fallen man, with no concept of the Truth of the Spiritual realms except as given in God�s Words to humanity, manage to undo the decay of the Scriptural Message which even God could not stop?
How?
Is there possibly a Spiritual reason which would compel God to allow His Message to be lost for centuries? What could that reason be if God had, in fact, given that Message in the first place?
Either the Message was so important that God gave it to us, or the message is not really important.
What could the answer be? I can conceive of no answer except to doubt the goodness, power, and logic of God.
What a basis for a �Bible� to be more readable and more easily understood. What of importance is to be read? What of value is to be understood? The Message is either preserved, and kept by God through the ages, or the message is only of small value. The message would then be nor more than an entertaining story.
Hills (Believing Bible Study) argues that, �...this carefree attitude [that all manuscripts are flawed and it is therefore unimportant which is used] leads to complete agnosticism and anarchy as far as Christian doctrine is concerned.�
In football, if the quarterback drops the ball it is a fumble. If, however, the throwing arm of the quarterback is going forward with the ball when it is dropped, it is an incomplete pass. If you think that this isn�t important to the players and coaches, just watch a game on television and watch the reactions of the crowd, players and coaches when such an incident happens.
If following the rules, which are often changed from season to season, is important in football, if the rule book of the game is important in football, if the proper determination of the plays of the game is important in football, how much more important is it that the Words of God, which are given so that we can understand that which we could not understand left to our own devices, be pure from generation to generation.
We need the true Words of God to be able to even begin to understand the true Message of God.
12 October 2007
THE WORDS ARE IMPORTANT (Continued)
The very words of Scripture are inspired. There are those today who would not accept this as fact yet they would still argue that they accept an inspired �Word.� This is a somewhat disingenuous method of claiming inspiration and preservation without really meaning inspiration and preservation.
These people�s arguments, and many of them are fundamentalists who are vigorous in their �defense� of the Gospel, are that God never intended to inspire the very Words of Scripture; He only inspired the general thought, or story. This argument is akin to President Clinton wondering what the meaning of �is� is. If the Words are devalued, how can the �message,� or even the �general thoughts� be inspired. It is the Words which deliver that message and general thought.
Not only did God inspire, and give to humanity, the very Words He wished to be used, those very Words are Holy because they are from God. You might notice that I mention various source material by name, and by the book or magazine article, from which I quoted. That is because these words are not my own. They may be incorporated into an article I have authored; but they are not my words.
About the Words of Scripture, David Cloud (Dynamic Equivalency - A Frightful Influence on Fundamental Translations) has well noted that, �...God has given His Word in the Holy Spirit-taught words (I Corinthians 2:12-14; Matthew 4:4, etc.) and no one can accurately translate the Scriptures when aiming only to transfer basic thoughts or general ideas.�
If you have read �The Living Bible,� or �The New International Version,� you have read a paraphrase of the translated material. A paraphrase can give a very good sense of the original, or it can give a very biased view of the original. It all depends upon the translators art and fidelity to the original text.
But, one thing that is certain about any paraphrase (the meaning of Dynamic Equivalency) is that the paraphrase will be the concept of the translator as to what HE believes the words meant to say. If, for instance, a Protestant would paraphrase Matthew 16:18, he would probably interpret the verse to say that the confession of Peter is that upon which the churches were established by Christ. A Catholic theologian would argue that the translation would say that Peter was enthroned as the head of The Church.
This is the problem when one attempts to argue that only the �thoughts or general ideas� have been inspired and preserved. They will always tend to argue that those �thoughts and general ideas� support their own theological bias. It would not be from a base desire that they would do so; it would be done because this is what their belief system would tell them that the �thoughts and general ideas� must have been.
Why let a few little Words get between theological training and God�s desire to properly inform His people.
Bynum (King James Fans) makes note that �The liberals, at least many of them, believe that the Bible contains the words of God, along with some of the words of men and errors that they placed in the Bible.�
Can anyone explain how this differs from the fundamentalist viewpoint that says God only preserved His general thoughts? Any such explanation will not suffice. The truth is that if God did not preserve His very Words for this day, then His very message is simply whatever sinful mankind may believe it to be. Our prejudices, some good and some bad, will influence our understanding of simple myth.
�Myth� is a red flag word to the fundamentalist. But, consider that if all we have are general ideas, the original Words having been lost to the ages, then all we really have is myth; as my dictionary describes it, �A traditional tale that explains beliefs, practices, or natural phenomena.� A traditional tale but not an assuredly accurate rendition from God. An accurate rendition demands an accurate account. An accurate account demands a trustworthy testimony to the facts. A trustworthy testimony to the facts demands that the testimony not be altered.
If the words are not preserved, the testimony has been altered.
The little tract, Correcting the King James Bible, makes a very big point. �Neo-orthodox teachers like Barth and Brunner teach that the Word of God means the message of God rather than the Words of God.�
Folks, when I use a citation exactly as it was found I must put quotation marks around it. When I fail to put these quotation marks around a citation I may very easily twist the meaning of my source. I am, in that situation, simply saying that my understanding of what they said is so and so. The quotation marks remove the ambiguity. That is the reason that we find so many italicized words in the King James Bible. These are words that the translators have added for the sake of clarity. These translators wanted the reader to understand where they had added those words and where God�s Words were simply translated.
Any translation which is founded on the principle that God did not preserve His Words has no such compulsion. Those translators are free to add any thoughts they might believe that God had meant to say.
What a blank check to fit our prejudices into God�s Words. This was the general method of Origen when he produced his notoriously corrupted manuscripts.
Even W. A. Criswell (Why I Preach that the Bible is Literally True) argues against the concept of a �concept Bible.�
�As for thoughts being inspired apart from the words which give them expression, you might as well talk of a tune without notes or a sum without figures. No such theory of inspiration is intelligible. It is as illogical as it is worthless.�
No argument with Dr. Criswell on that point! Without the Words to give form and formation to the thoughts and general ideas, there is no possibility of knowing what those thoughts and general ideas really were.
�I went out into a field and threw a ball up into the sky.� �I went outdoors and tossed a ball up.� �I was outdoors when I sent a ball up.� �While outside, I let a sphere rise.� Shall I keep doing this until I have a helium filled balloon soaring to the moon? Do you understand what the problem is if the Words were not preserved? Small changes, each succeeding one seeming to carry the general idea of the former, will eventually convey a message that was never intended.
God preserved His Words. That is an important concept!
In our next session we will consider some of the ways that discarding the concept of full preservation will lead to serious error!
19 October 2007
THE WORDS ARE IMPORTANT (Continued)
There is a new theory out concerning the inspiration of Scripture. It is called the �Concept Theory of Inspiration.� The general gist of this is that God only inspired the general concept, or story of Scripture rather than the words. This is rather a confusing situation since the Bible is considered to be the very Word of God.
In the early part of the twentieth century the �Modernists� would argue that the Bible simply contained the Words of God. The �Fundamentalist� would argue that the Bible was the Words of God. Now, with this �concept� theory, many Fundamentalists are arguing the same thing the Modernist argued a century ago. Stripped of a faithful Bible the Fundamentalist will go the same way as the Modernist in time. Many already have!
The argument is that the Bible is the �Word� of God. It just isn�t the �Words� of God. The question arises as to just how one can have a �Word� without using �Words.� Mark Twain used words when he wrote his stories. Twain�s humor lay in his use of words, even though some of the words were pure dialect rather than the standardized English of the time. Robert Frost used words when he wrote his poetry. The poetry may have carried certain symbolic meaning, but Frost used words to convey that meaning. Stephen King uses words when he writes his tales. King�s tales may be of the supernatural; but they are a tale told by the use of words.
Why are we asked to believe that God didn�t use words, but only used a general idea? A general idea is open to wildly speculative interpretation.
Consider the purpose of God originally inspiring the Scripture. God�s purpose was to tell His Story to humanity. The Story of God has to do with the Spiritual and the Eternal. In neither of this has man had, or could man have, any experience. Because of this God may have used illustration. I believe that the Old Testament is defiantly inspired of God. Still, I believe that the Old Testament is a physical outplaying of those things that the churches, and the Christians of those churches, need to know. Both Testaments are teaching truths of the spiritual and the eternal.
In such a situation, knowing that man�s imagination could not grasp the Truths being presented, were those truths not explicitly told - even those portions told in obvious illustration, God would be expected to be very careful to explain exactly what He meant to say. This is an obvious fact when one considers the purpose of Scripture and the sin nature of man which would not be able to grasp an abstract truth were it not explained in some sort of detail.
God would not have inspired His human instruments to write in general idea or concept. This would have been a fruitless, and very sloppy, means of transmitting that which He wanted to transmit. God wanted to transmit what amounts to the Words of Life to the people inhabiting the world of death. General concept is too sloppy a means for The All Wise God of creation.
Neither would it been reasonable to expect that God�s preservation of His Words would be of a simply concept, or story, means. The reasons listed above argue as strongly against this type of preservation as they do against this type of inspiration.
Other books from antiquity may have their flaws. God�s Book is not just another Book from antiquity. To put the Bible on the same plane as Homer is to elevate Homer�s works to the level of Deity and lower God�s Works to the same plane as man. This is a very dangerous situation to consider. Fuller (Which Bible?) has argued that �...if the New Testament is just an ordinary book, then the trustworthiness of the text is, at best, only a possibility, never a certainty.�
Such an argument calls into question the very reasoning powers of God. Such an argument calls into question the Love of God in that He would not protect that message which He, Himself, deemed as eternally important. Such an argument calls into question the ethics of God in that the argument postulates that God allowed to be withdrawn that important message after merely one or two generations had benefitted from His Words.
Since we have no other means of understanding the spiritual and the eternal, other than the Book of God, we are lost without a guide. If we are not certain that a compass points North, we need to find another way to navigate the wilderness. If we are not certain that we have the preserved Words of God we have no other means to navigate the spiritual, or to even understand what that �spiritual� may be.
This is the problem Burton (Let�s Weigh the Evidence) saw when he said, �If God has not preserved His Word perfect, but has allowed some errors, then, since we don�t have the �original autographs,� we must assume that we have been preaching out of a book that is not completely reliable.�
If the Bible is deemed as �not reliable,� folks, we got nothing! We might as well spend our time fishing on Sunday rather than worshiping that which we can not know. As for �fishing for men,� what is the bait and where is the boat?
Criswell (Why I Preach that the Bible is Literally True) has given four �if� illustrations as to a Bible which is untrustworthy.
�If we put an �if� into the Decalogue you lay a charge of dynamite under the morality of men and nations.� The wisdom of those words is shown nearly every day in the streets of our nation. We have rejected, as a nation, God and His Words. I would say, �God, save us from the consequence of our rejections,� but we�ve nationally rejected the only One Who could save us. The result is a complete rejection of the culture of an earlier time when we considered that we were the creation of The Creator, and an acceptance of the bestial nature of a jungle of predators in our streets, homes and schools.
�If you put an �if� before the story of the manger in Bethlehem, you destroy the Incarnation in human flesh by a preexistent Christ.� So many places today do not even want to acknowledge the fact of Bethlehem. �Happy holidays,� is a greeting that wants the trappings of Christianity without the facts of Christianity. This is just an example of our national rejection of the God Who so miraculously birthed, and has often moved to save, this nation.
Can we expect God to be more patient with our nation that He was with His Own people in Israel and Judah?
�If you put an �if� by the side of the cross of Calvary you cast doubt upon the hope of the forgiveness of our sins.� To doubt the full inspiration and preservation of the Scripture is to doubt the Scripture. We can not just pick that which makes us feel good if we have rejected that which convicts us of sin. We can not �choose� a salvation that God may have, or may not have, offered to us.
�If you put an �if� by the side of the story of the empty tomb in Joseph�s garden, our visions of life and immortality vanish into thin air.� We either have a God Whose Words we can trust in all areas of their speaking, or we do not! �...choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.� (Joshua 24:15)
We either serve a nebulous tradition of men (Since we really don�t know from where those traditions might have come if the Bible be flawed.) or we serve the Lord of Glory. It is He Who has given His Words to us and preserved those Words for us.
In our next session we will continue to examine the fact of inspired Words in our preserved Scripture which God has given to us.
26 October 2007
THE WORDS ARE IMPORTANT (Continued)
During the past few weeks we�ve been looking at the concept that the words of Scripture are important. We have looked at the fact that ideas are conveyed by means of words. If the words are not certain, we have deduced that the general message cannot be certain as it is those very words which deliver the concept, or message, from the person doing the speaking, or writing, and the hearer or listener.
We have discussed that this concept is even more important when it concerns the matter of the revelation of God to man. Man is a creature of the physical and of time. He can have no experiential basis to understand the things of the spirit and of eternity. The only way that man could have gained any understanding of these realms would have been for Deity to speak to humanity of those truths and values.
In doing the speaking, the Creator would be very precise with His message to humanity. He would do this because He would understand that He is speaking of the unknown to a people unable to grasp that unknown. Thus, the concept of a written message, with precise words to explain that message, would be the most logical medium of teaching.
Those of our day who favor the idea of merely concept, or general story, inspiration are suggesting that man is capable of understanding an abstract subject with not basis of experience on which to base his abstract understanding. It is as though one would attempt to explain the concept of a less dense layer of air on a high mountain to a fish. The fish, even a fish with some measure of intelligence, could never understand such a concept as breathing without water. Even if the fish could understand the abstractness of the concept it would be beyond his ability to understand that their might be less air (oxygen) at a higher level.
Therefore, the idea of a �concept,� or general story, translation can not fully explain the unexplainable which God seeks to convey to humanity. A word for Word translation, as much as is possible is relating the message from an original language to another language, is the only method of translation which would be workable.
Further, this concept also mitigates for a preservation of the original Words down through time since God has the power, especially when one considers His residence in the eternal realms, to keep pure that message which He originally inspired. Logic, again, would argue that God�s inspiration gives ample reason to expect God�s preservation of His message.
Beyond our human logical understanding, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, which argues for preservation, there are Biblical evidences which suggest that this was, indeed, the very purpose of God for His message to humanity.
W. A. Criswell (Why I Preach that the Bible is Literally True) makes note of the teaching of Jesus as this pertained to the Old Testament Scriptures. Criswell noted that, �...Scriptures are inspired as to their words (Matt. 5:17, 18). Christ affirmed here the indestructibility of the law, not its substance only but its very form, not the thought, but the word itself.�
What Jesus said was true about the shadow, would not be less true about the substance. Therefore, if Jesus was correct in stating that the Old Testament Scriptures were preserved, it could not be less true that the New Testament Scriptures which speak of Him and His great salvation.
Criswell makes illustration to this point when he speaks of the great confession of Peter that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God.
�The self-disclosure and the revelation was made in words. It was not in the general realm of ideas. We are told specifically that the disciples did not grasp it, but the revelation is there because the precise words are recorded. The same comment can be made about Simon Peter�s confession in Caesarea Philippi (Matt. 16:6). Peter said what he said was by divine revelation but afterwards was rebuked because he did not comprehend the meaning of what he said (v. 23).�
Many, probably almost all, of the newer English versions and translations make the argument that they are needed so that a Bible is provided which is more easily understood and, thus, attractive to both the Christian and the non Christian. This argument is only true if two other things are true. First, as to the non Christian, it must first be established that he will even have an interest in the things of God. The fact of the sin nature mitigates against the understanding.
Further, Romans 3:10 very plainly tells us that the sinner has no real interest in the spiritual things of God. �There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. A Bible for the unsaved is not an option until the Spirit has worked upon their spirit, and the witness of a Christian has reached out to tell them of the Savior.
As for making a Bible which is easier to understand, this is only an option if this was the intention of God. Peter mentions that this is not always the case.
�As also in all his [Paul�s] epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.� (II Peter 3:16)
The purpose of God is not always to make things easy for the Christian. The simple Gospel message is simple enough that anyone can understand. Some of the deeper things of the Scripture are accessible only through diligent work. This work is an indication of our being committed to the Lord. It is not a function of our own intellect; it is a function of our spirit striving to be the best vessel we can be for our Lord. (see II Timothy 2:15 for the command to study the things, and words, of God.)
God will often drop some precious nugget of His truth into our possession as we pan the streams of Scripture. More often He will yield these nuggets to those who take pick and axe and mine the mountains of Scripture. Criswell gives one such example of the deeper meanings of Scripture lying within the Words of Scripture.
�We can see the extent of the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures by looking at the use the Bible will make of a single word. In Galatians 3:16 Paul will make an argument for a great doctrine on the basis not only of a single word in the Scripture but also of a single letter. The entire doctrinal discussion turns on one letter of one word, the difference in the Scriptures� use of �seeds� and �seed.� In doing this Paul was but following the example of his Master and our Lord Jesus Christ who based the doctrine of the resurrection from the dead on the use of a certain tense of a verb in the Old Testament (cr. Matt. 22:31-35).�
In this we are able to understand that not only is an appeal to a �concept� Bible illogical. We are also able to see that such an endeavor is also unbiblical. The same must also be said of the preservation of the Scripture. God must have inspired His Word. Given that inspiration is must also be allowed, from all we know of the Scripture, that God has preserved this Word for all the eons of time.
In our next session we will look at the importance of revelation, especially as it pertains to the doctrine of preservation.