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CHAPTER FOUR363
A CHRISTIAN VIEW OF THE BIBLICAL TEXT
In order, therefore, to discover the true
principles of New Testament textual criticism we must turn neither
to the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church nor to the equally arbitrary
dicta of the naturalistic critics but to the teaching of the New Testament
itself. The following is a brief outline of this teaching which will
be developed more fully in the chapters that follow.
(a) The Universal Priesthood of all Believers
As we have seen, the study of the Old Testament
indicates that the Old Testament Scriptures were preserved through
the divinely appointed Old Testament priesthood. The Holy Spirit guided
the priests to gather the separate parts of the Old Testament into
one Old Testament canon and to maintain the purity of the Old Testament
text. Have the New Testament Scriptures been preserved in this official
manner? In the New Testament Church has there ever been a special,
divinely appointed organization of priests with authority to make
decisions concerning the New Testament text or the books that should
belong to the New Testament canon? No! Not at all! When Christ died
upon the cross, the veil of the Temple was rent in sunder, and the
Old Testament priesthood was done away forever. There has never been
a special order of priests in the New Testament Church. Every believer
is a priest under Christ, the great High Priest. (1 Peter 2: 9, Rev.
1: 5-6).
Just as the divine glories of the New Testament
are brighter far than the glories of the Old Testament, so the manner
in which God has preserved the New Testament text is far more wonderful
than the manner in which He preserved the Old Testament text. God
preserved the Old Testament text by means of something physical and
external, namely, the Aaronic priesthood. God has preserved the New
Testament text by means of something inward and spiritual, namely,
the universal priesthood of believers, through the leading, that is
to say, of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of individual Christians
of every walk of life.
(b) The Writing of the New Testament Books
The writing of the New Testament as well as
the preservation of it was a fulfillment of the promises of Christ
that His Word should be forever preserved. Heaven and earth shall
pass away, but My words shall not pass away (Matt. 24:35; Mark
13:31; Luke 21-33). As the Saviour was about to return to His heavenly
Father, He left His Apostles this blessed assurance: These things
have I spoken unto you being yet present with you. But the Comforter,
which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, He
shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance,
whatsoever I have said unto you (John 14:25-26). Here we see
that both the agreements of the Four Gospels with one another and
their differences are due to the inspiration which the Apostles received
from the Holy Spirit and the control which He exercised over their
minds and memories.
In the Gospels, therefore, Jesus reveals
Himself through the story of His earthly ministry. The rest of the
New Testament books are His divine commentary on the meaning of that
ministry, and in these books also Jesus reveals Himself. These remaining
books were written in accordance with His promise to His Apostles:
I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them
now. Howbeit, when He, the Spirit of truth is come, He will guide
you into all truth; for He shall not speak of Himself: but whatsoever
He shall hear that shall He speak: and He will shew you things to
come (John 16:12-13). It was in fulfillment of this promise that
the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles at Pentecost, filled their
minds and hearts with the message of the risen, exalted Lord, and
sent them out to preach this message, first to the Jews at Jerusalem
and then to all the world. Then followed the conversion of the Apostle
Paul and the Epistles which he wrote under the inspiration of the
Holy Spirit. Then James, Peter, John, and Jude were inspired to write
their Epistles, and Luke to tell the story of the Acts of the Apostles.
Finally, the Revelation proceeded from the inspired pen of John on
Patmos, announcing those things that were yet to come. Volumes, of
course, could be filled with a discussion of these sacred developments,
but here a bare statement of the essential facts must suffice.
(c) The Formation of the New Testament Canon
After the New Testament books had been written,
the next step in the divine program for the New Testament Scriptures
was the gathering of these individual books into one New Testament
canon in order that thus they might take their place beside the books
of the Old Testament canon as the concluding portion of God's holy
Word. Let us now consider how this was accomplished under the guidance
of the Holy Spirit.364
The first New Testament books to be assembled
together were the Epistles of Paul. The Apostle Peter, shortly before
he died, referred to Paul's Epistles as Scripture and in such a way
as to indicate that at least the beginning of such a collection had
already been made (2 Peter 3:15-16). Even radical scholars, such as
E. J. Goodspeed (1926),365
agree that a collection of Paul's Epistles
was in circulation in the beginning of the 2nd century and that Ignatius
(117) referred to it. When the Four Gospels were collected together
is unknown, but it is generally agreed that this must have taken place
before 170 A.D. because at that time Tatian made his Harmony of
the Gospels (Diatessaron), which included all four of the canonical
Gospels and only these four. Before 200 A.D. Paul, the Gospels, Acts,
1 Peter and 1 John were recognized as Scripture by Christians
everywhere (as the writings of Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and
Tertullian prove) and accorded an authority equal to that of the Old
Testament Scriptures. It was Tertullian, moreover, who first applied
the name New Testament to this collection of apostolic
writings.366
The seven remaining books, 2 and 3 John, 2
Peter, Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation, were not yet unanimously
accepted as Scripture. By the time the 4th century had arrived, however,
few Christians seem to have questioned the right of these disputed
books to a place in the New Testament canon. Eminent Church Fathers
of that era, such as Athanasius, Augustine, and Jerome, include them
in their lists of New Testament books. Thus through the Holy Spirit's
guidance of individual believers, silently and gradually--but nevertheless
surely, the Church as a whole was led to a recognition of the fact
that the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, and only these books,
form the canon which God gave to be placed beside the Old Testament
Scriptures as the authoritative and final revelation of His will.
This guidance of the Holy Spirit was negative
as well as positive. It involved not only the selection of canonical
New Testament books but also the rejection of many non-canonical books
which were mistakenly regarded as canonical by some of the early
Christians. Thus the Shepherd of Hermas was used as holy
Scripture by Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria, and the same status
was wrongly given to the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles
by Clement and Origen. Clement likewise commented on the Apocalypse
of Peter and the Epistle of Barnabas, to which Origen
also accorded the title "catholic." And in addition, there were many
false Gospels in circulation, as well as numerous false
Acts ascribed to various Apostles. But although some of these
non-canonical writings gained temporary acceptance in certain quarters,
this state of affairs lasted for but a short time. Soon all Christians
everywhere were led by the Holy Spirit to repudiate these spurious
works and to receive only the canonical books as their New Testament
Scriptures.
The Preservation of the New Testament Text
Thus the Holy Spirit guided the early Christians
to gather the individual New Testament books into one New Testament
canon and to reject all non-canonical books. In the same manner also
the Holy Spirit guided the early Christians to preserve the New Testament
text by receiving the true readings and rejecting the false. Certainly
it would be strange if it were otherwise. It would have been passing
strange if God had guided His people in regard to the New Testament
canon but had withheld from them His divine assistance in the matter
of the New Testament text. This would mean that Bible believing Christians
today could have no certainty concerning the New Testament text but
would be obliged to rely on the hypotheses of modern, naturalistic
critics.
But God in His mercy did not leave His people
to grope after the True New Testament Text. Through the leading of
the Holy Spirit He guided them to preserve it during the manuscript
period. God brought this to pass through the working of His preserving
and governing providence. First, many trustworthy copies
of the original New Testament manuscripts were produced by faithful
scribes. Second, these trustworthy copies were read and
recopied by true believers down through the centuries. Third,
untrustworthy copies were not so generally read or so frequently recopied.
Although they enjoyed some popularity for a time, yet in the long
run they were laid aside and consigned to oblivion. Thus as a result
of this special providential guidance the True Text won out in the
end, and today we may be sure that the text found in the vast majority
of the Greek New Testament manuscripts is a trustworthy reproduction
of the divinely inspired Original Text. This is the text which was
preserved by the God-guided usage of the Greek Church. Critics have
called it the Byzantine text, thereby acknowledging that it was the
text in use in the Greek Church during the greater part of the Byzantine
period (452-1453). It is much better, however, to call this text the
Traditional Text. When we call the text found in the majority of the
Greek New Testament manuscripts the Traditional Text, we signify that
this is the text which has been handed down by the God-guided tradition
of the Church from the time of the Apostles unto the present day.
A further step in the providential preservation
of the New Testament was the printing of it in 1516 and the dissemination
of it through the whole of Western Europe during the Protestant
Reformation. In the first printing of the Greek New Testament we see
God's preserving providence working hiddenly and, to the outward eye,
accidentally. The editor, Erasmus, performed his task in great haste
in order to meet the deadline set by the printer, Froben of Basle.
Hence this first edition contained a number of errors of a minor sort,
some of which persisted in later editions. But in all essentials the
New Testament text first printed by Erasmus and later by Stephanus
(1550) and Elzevir (1633) is in full agreement with the Traditional
Text providentially preserved in the vast majority of the Greek New
Testament manuscripts. This printed text is commonly called the Textus
Receptus (Received Text). It is the text which was used by the Protestant
Reformers during the Reformation and by all Protestants everywhere
for three hundred years thereafter. Hence the printing of it was,
after all, no accident but the work of God's special providence.
The special providence of God is particularly
evident in the fact that the text of the Greek New Testament was first
printed and published not in the East but in Western Europe where
the influence of the Latin usage and of the Latin Vulgate was very
strong. Through the influence of the Latin-speaking Church Erasmus
and his successors were providentially guided to follow the Latin
Vulgate here and there in those few places in which the Latin Church
usage rather than the Greek Church usage had preserved the genuine
reading. Hence the Textus Receptus was a further step in the providential
preservation of the New Testament. In it the few errors of any consequence
occurring in the Traditional Greek Text were corrected by the providence
of God operating through the usage of the Latin speaking Church of
Western Europe.
Thus God by His special providence has preserved
the New Testament text in a three-fold way through the universal
priesthood of believers. In the first place, 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 text in the majority of the Greek
New Testament manuscripts. In this way the True New Testament Text
became the prevailing Traditional Text. In the second place,
during the 16th century when the New Testament text was being printed
for the first time, God worked providentially through the usage of
the Latin-speaking Church to influence Erasmus and the other editors
and printers of that period to follow the Latin Vulgate in those few
places in which the Latin Church usage rather than the Greek Church
usage had preserved the genuine reading. Then in the third
place, during the 450 years which have elapsed since the first printing
of the New Testament, God has been working providentially through
the usage of Bible-believing Protestants to place and keep the stamp
of His approval upon this God-guided printed text. It is upon this
Textus Receptus that the King James Version and the other classic
Protestant translations are based.
(e) Alternative Views of the Providential Preservation of the
New Testament
We see now how Christ has fulfilled His promise
always to preserve in His Church the True New Testament Text, namely,
through the universal priesthood of believers. In the special providence
of God believers down through the ages have been guided to reject
false readings and preserve the true, so that today the True New Testament
Text is found in the majority of the Greek New Testament manuscripts,
in the Textus Receptus, and in the King James Version and the other
classic Protestant translations. But because of the opposition of
unbelievers conservative Christian scholars have become increasingly
reluctant to adopt this view and have offered various alternatives
in place of it. Let us therefore consider briefly these alternative
views of God's providential preservation of the New Testament text.
The alleged agreement of all the New Testament
manuscripts in matters of doctrine.
In dealing with the problems of the New Testament text most conservatives
place great stress on the amount of agreement alleged to exist among
the extant New Testament manuscripts. These manuscripts, it is said,
agree so closely with one another in matters of doctrine that it does
not make much difference which manuscript you follow. The same essential
teaching is preserved in them all. This reputed agreement of all the
extant New Testament manuscripts in doctrinal matters is ascribed
to divine providence and regarded as the fulfillment of the promise
of Christ always to preserve in His Church a trustworthy New Testament
text.
This is the thought that was emphasized by
Richard Bentley (1713) in his celebrated reply to the free-thinker,
Anthony Collins, who asserted that New Testament textual criticism
had made the sacred text uncertain. This charge, Bentley rejoined,
was baseless. "The real text of the sacred writers does not now (since
the originals have been so long lost) lie in any single manuscript
or edition, but is dispersed in them all. 'Tis competently exact indeed
even in the worst manuscript now extant; choose as awkwardly as you
can, choose the worst by design, out of the whole lump of readings....
Make your 30,000 (variant readings) as many more, if numbers of copies
can ever reach that sum: all the better to a knowing and serious reader,
who is thereby more richly furnished to select what he sees genuine.
But even put them into the hands of a knave or a fool, and yet with
the most sinistrous and absurd choice, he shall not extinguish the
light of any one chapter, nor so disguise Christianity but that every
feature of it will still be the same."367
Since the days of Bentley countless conservative
scholars have adopted this same apologetic approach to the study of
the New Testament text. New Testament textual criticism, they have
affirmed, can do no harm to the Christian faith, because the special
providence of God has brought it to pass that the differences which
exist among the extant New Testament manuscripts do not affect any
essential point of doctrine. This theory, however, presupposes an
extremely mechanical and unhistorical conception of the providential
preservation of Scripture. According to this theory, God in some
mechanical way must have prevented heretical scribes from inserting
into the New Testament manuscripts which they were copying readings
that favored their false views. Or, if God did now and then allow
an heretical reading to creep into a manuscript, He must have quickly
brought about the destruction of that manuscript before the false
reading could be transferred to another manuscript and thus propagated.
But the testimony of history indicates that God's providential
preservation of Scripture did not function in any such mechanical
fashion but organically through the Church. Heretical readings were
invented and did circulate for a time, but they were rejected by the
universal priesthood of believers under the guidance of God.
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(2) The true reading preserved in at least
one of the extant manuscripts.
Many conservative scholars seem to feel that God's providential care
over the New Testament text is adequately defined by the saying that
the true reading has been preserved in at least one of the extant
New Testament manuscripts. Theodor Zahn (1909) gave expression to
this point of view in the following words: "Though the New Testament
text can be shown to have met with varying treatment, it has never
as yet been established from ancient citations, nor made really probable
on internal grounds, that a single sentence of the original text has
disappeared altogether from the text transmitted in the Church, that
is, of all the manuscripts of the original and of the ancient
translations."368
In other words, the true reading is always to be found in some one or
other of the extant manuscripts. The only question is, which one.
Zahn's doctrine seems to be comforting at
first glance, but on closer analysis this comfort soon disappears.
Has the special providence of God over the New Testament text done
no more than to preserve the true readings somewhere, that is to say,
in some one or other of the great variety of New Testament manuscripts
now existing in the world? If Christ has done no more than this, how
can it be said that He has fulfilled His promise always to preserve
in His Church the True New Testament Text? How can His people ever
be certain that they have the True New Testament Text? For not all
the extant New Testament manuscripts have yet been discovered. No
doubt many of them still remain in the obscurity into which they were
plunged centuries ago, concealed in holes, ruins, and other unknown
places. How can we be sure that many true readings are not hiding
in these undiscovered manuscripts? And even if this is not the case,
how can we be certain which of the known manuscripts contain the true
reading in places in which these manuscripts differ? For Christians
troubled with doubts like these Zahn's theory is no help at all.
(3) Are naturalistic New Testament textual
critics providentially guided?
Many conservatives have adopted the theory that it is through textual
criticism, and especially through the textual criticism of Westcott
and Hort, that Christ has fulfilled His promise always to preserve
in His Church the True New Testament Text. In regard to this matter
J. H. Skilton (1946) writes as follows: "Textual Criticism, in God's
providence, is the means provided for ascertaining the true text of
the Bible."369
And half a century earlier Dr. B. B. Warfield (1893)
expressed himself in a very similar manner. "In the sense of the
Westminster Confession, therefore, the multiplication of copies of
the Scriptures, the several early efforts towards the revision of
the text, the raising up of scholars in our own day to collect and
collate manuscripts, and to reform them on scientific
principles--of our Tischendorfs and Tregelleses, and Westcotts and
Horts--are all parts of God's singular care and providence in
preserving His inspired Word pure."370
Dr. B. B. Warfield was an outstanding defender
of the orthodox Christian faith, so much so that one hesitates to
criticize him in any way. Certainly no Bible-believing Christian would
wish to say anything disrespectful concerning so venerable a Christian
scholar. But nevertheless it is a fact that Dr. Warfield's thinking
was not entirely unified. Through his mind ran two separate trains
of thought which not even he could join together. The one train of
thought was dogmatic, going back to the Protestant Reformation. When
following this train of thought Dr. Warfield regarded Christianity
as true. The other train of thought was apologetic, going back to
the rationalistic viewpoint of the 18th century. When following this
train of thought Dr. Warfield regarded Christianity as merely probable.
And this same divided outlook was shared by Dr. Warfield's colleagues
at Princeton Seminary and by conservative theologians and scholars
generally throughout the 19th and early 20th century. Even today this
split-level thinking is still a factor to be reckoned with in conservative
circles, although in far too many instances it has passed over into
modernism.
Dr. Warfield's treatment of the New Testament
text illustrates this cleavage in his thinking. In the realm of dogmatics
he agreed with the Westminster Confession that the New Testament text
had been "kept pure in all ages" by God's "singular care and providence,"
but in the realm of New Testament textual criticism he agreed with
Westcott and Hort in ignoring God's providence and even went so far
as to assert that the same methods were to be applied to the text
of the New Testament that would be applied to the text of a morning
newspaper. It was to bridge the gap between his dogmatics and his
New Testament textual criticism that he suggested that God had worked
providentially through Tischendorf, Tregelles, and Westcott and Hort
to preserve the New Testament text. But this suggestion leads to
conclusions which are extremely bizarre and inconsistent. It would
have us believe that during the manuscript period orthodox Christians
corrupted the New Testament text, that the text used by the
Protestant Reformers was the worst of all, and that the True Text
was not restored until the 19th century, when Tregelles brought it
forth out of the Pope's library, when Tischendorf rescued it from
a waste basket on Mt. Sinai, and when Westcott and Hort were
providentially guided to construct a theory of it which ignores God's
special providence and treats the text of the New Testament like the
text of any other ancient book. But if the True New Testament Text
was lost for 1500 years, how can we be sure that it has ever been
found again?
(f) The Principles of Consistently Christian New Testament Textual
Criticism
Bentley, Zahn, Warfield, and countless others
have tried to devise a theory of the special providential preservation
of the Scriptures which leaves room for naturalistic New Testament
textual criticism. But this is impossible, for the two concepts are
mutually exclusive. Naturalistic New Testament textual criticism requires
us to treat the text of the New Testament like the text of any other
ancient book, in other words, to ignore or deny the special providential
preservation of the Scriptures. Hence if we really believe in the
special providential preservation of the Scriptures, then we cannot
follow the naturalistic method of New Testament textual criticism.
For a believer, then, the only alternative
is to follow a consistently Christian method of New Testament textual
criticism in which all the principles are derived from the Bible itself
and none is borrowed from the textual criticism of other ancient books.
In the preceding pages we have striven to present such a consistently
Christian New Testament textual criticism, and now we will recapitulate
and summarize its principles briefly:
Principle One: The Old Testament
text was preserved by the Old Testament priesthood and the scribes
and scholars that grouped themselves around that priesthood.
Principle Two: When Christ died upon
the cross, the Old Testament priesthood was abolished. In the New
Testament dispensation every believer is a priest under Christ the
great High Priest. Hence the New Testament text has been preserved
by the universal priesthood of believers, by faithful Christians in
every walk of life.
Principle Three: The Traditional
Text, found in the vast majority of the Greek New Testament manuscripts,
is the True Text because it represents the God-guided usage of this
universal priesthood of believers.
Principle Four: The first printed
text of the Greek New Testament represents a forward step in the
providential preservation of the New Testament. In it the few errors
of any consequence occurring in the Traditional Greek Text were corrected
by the providence of God operating through the usage of the Latin-speaking
Church of Western Europe. In other words, the editors and printers
who produced this first printed Greek New Testament text were
providentially guided by the usage of the Latin-speaking Church to
follow the Latin Vulgate in those few places in which the Latin Church
usage rather than the Greek Church usage had preserved the genuine
reading.
Principle Five: Through the usage
of Bible-believing Protestants God placed the stamp of His approval
on this first printed text, and it became the Textus Receptus (Received
Text). It is the printed form of the Traditional Text found in the
vast majority of the Greek New Testament manuscripts.
Principle Six: The King James
(Authorized) Version is an accurate translation of the Textus Receptus.
On it God has placed the stamp of His approval through the long continued
usage of English-speaking believers. Hence it should be used and defended
today by Bible-believing Christians.
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