|
BIBLICAL PRESERVATION
(B. B. Warfield and the Reformation
Doctrine of the Providential Preservation of the Biblical Text: A Paper by
the American Presbyterian
Church)
The orthodox, the Reformation,
the Westminster doctrine of the Scriptures has at least two key points. The
first is that the Scriptures are the inspired, inerrant, word of God. The
second, less well known, but equally important is God’s preservation of
these inspired Scriptures throughout history for the benefit of his church.
As the Westminster divines stated it,
The Old Testament in Hebrew
(which was the native language of the people of God of old) and the New
Testament in Greek (which at the time of the writing of it was most
generally known to the nations), being immediately inspired by God and by
his singular care and providence kept pure in all ages, are therefore
authentical, so as in all controversies of religion the Church is finally to
appeal unto them. (WCOF,
Ch. 1, Sect. 8).
The Westminster divines did not
invent this doctrine or dream it up as a necessary support for any doctrine
of the Scriptures. Rather they supported this doctrine of the divine
preservation of the Scriptures with an abundance of Scripture proofs. Some
of the proof-texts for this doctrine are…
For verily I say unto you,
Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from
the law, till all be fulfilled.
Matthew 5:18
The words of the LORD are
pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.
Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation
for ever. Psalm
12:6-7
As for me, this is my
covenant with them, saith the LORD; My spirit that is upon thee, and my
words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor
out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed’s seed, saith
the LORD, from henceforth and for ever.
Isaiah 59:21
The grass withereth, the
flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.
Isaiah 40:8
Being born again, not of
corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and
abideth for ever. 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.
1 Peter 1:23-25
Both of these doctrines are
crucial for the Church of Jesus Christ. And they stand or fall together.
After all, there is no purpose in maintaining that God preserved some
uninspired scriptures that are neither infallible nor inerrant. Similarly,
it is meaningless to contend that the Church once possessed an inspired and
infallible Bible, but it was not providentially preserved and has been lost
and the best we now have is a corrupted facsimile. Yet, the latter is
exactly the position that Warfield took. So ultimately, although Warfield
contended for an inspired and inerrant Bible, it was a meaningless struggle.
He could only attribute inerrancy to the original autographs which have long
been lost. He could not say that we today have an inerrant and infallible
Bible.
Warfield held to the current
theories of rationalistic textual criticism. These theories held that the
true text of the New Testament has been lost and may or may not be
recoverable. How did Warfield attempt to reconcile his views with respect to
the preservation of the Scriptures? How can one reconcile the view that God
has providentially preserved his word in all ages with the theories of
textual criticism? Westcott and Hort, the leading textual critics of his
day, believed that the Bible was corrupted in the 4th century.
They believed that it remained in this corrupted state for over 1500 years.
They taught that only in the late 19th century, through the
science of rationalistic textual criticism, was the process of
reconstructing the true text of the New Testament even begun. They taught
that until the discovery of some of the oldest manuscripts of the New
Testament text such as Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, the real text
had been hopelessly lost. Warfield’s response to this dilemma that placed
him at odds with the orthodox doctrine, the Reformation doctrine, and the
statements of the Confession, was to attempt to synthesize the two. He took
the view that it was through the science of rationalistic textual criticism
that God was providentially preserving his text. That this involved him in
hopeless contradictions was pointed out by Edward F. Hills, that great
defender of the Textus Receptus. Hills writes,
“(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.” 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.”
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?” (Edward F.
Hills, The King James Version Defended, The Christian Research Press,
1973, pp. 109-110.)
The results in the 20th
Century of Dr. Warfield’s thinking has been disastrous. It has left him and
his followers with an emasculated theory of inspiration that applies only to
the lost autographs. It has left the church without the conviction that it
truly possesses the inerrant, inspired word of God today.
It has sunk evangelicalism into
the morass and quicksand of textual criticism. It has left the church at the
mercy of a high priesthood of secular textual critics who will instruct her
on what parts of the Bible are God’s words and what parts should be emended
or deleted per the latest textual theories. It is the prime reason why at
many evangelical colleges and seminaries any meaningful belief in the
inerrancy and inspiration of the Scriptures is dead.
(Source:
http://www.americanpresbyterianchurch.org/preservation.htm; used
with permission.)
- Published in
The True Life
BPC's Weekly, Volume 5 Number
50
Top
/ Back
|
