The Ecclesiastical Text: Text Criticism, Biblical Authority and the
Popular Mind
by
Theodore P. Letis
Chapter Synopses of the Book
The Ecclesiastical Text: Text Criticism, Biblical Authority and the Popular
Mind
(2nd print. 2000)
by the author of the book
Theodore P. Letis
Introduction
The
Introduction, written by the author, sets the tone for what follows. It
establishes that a genuine crisis exists regarding the English Bible in
America. With the loss of reading ability comes a disinterest in the original
Biblical language qualities as found in the Authorized Version. Instead, the
"Bible landlords" of the profit-making Bible publishing industry have
convinced the middle-class, evangelical communities (with too much disposable
income on their hands), that they must purchase an ever increasing number of
loosely translated "modern language" Bible options. This has resulted
in perpetuating and enlarging the distance between the authentic Biblical
content of the original language documents and the modern, reading-challenged,
Evangelical/Fundamentalist. The Introduction also recounts the publishing
history of each of the previously published essays and reviews that are to
follow.
Chapter One:
Chapter one is
the foundation to everything that follows. If the thesis of this essay is not
grasped in its fullest detail and implications, the rest of the book will be
nearly useless. The premise is a simple one: there was a crisis concerning
verbal inspiration that arose in America at the turn of the century. Text
criticism was the cause. A theory arose placing all Biblical authority strictly
speaking in the autographic form of the text only, rather than in the extant
copies. Professor B.B. Warfield at Princeton Seminary formulated this theory in
great detail. This became one answer to this problem that was accepted amongst
nearly all conservatives at the time. The only problem with Warfield's solution
is that: a) it was a direct betrayal of the Westminster Confession of Faith--to
which Warfield was bound by a sworn allegiance as a minister and teacher within
the Presbyterian Church of his day. The Confession had taught that the extant
editions of Scripture were authoritative, not lost autographs; b) by his
betrayal he actually opened the door, at what was the bastion of conservative
theology in America, to the threat of rationalistic Biblical criticism, which
would eventually bring Princeton to adopt Barthianism and other
"neo-orthodoxies." Hence, what Warfield did is a paradigm of warning
to us not to go down the path he took Princeton and the mainline Presbyterian
Church of his day.
Chapter Two
Following
naturally from the previous chapter, if Warfield betrayed the Westminster
Confession on the subject of Biblical authority, this chapter is a recounting
of just what that Confession taught on this subject from which Warfield
departed. What emerges is an entirely different paradigm from that which
Warfield imposed on the American Presbyterian Church in the late 19th century. Here we discover that clearly, after Rome
attacked the Reformers and attempted to stop the progress of Protestantism by
means of the counter-Reformation Council of Trent, the 17th century orthodox Protestant dogmaticians replied
with their doctrine of the Providential preservation of the Hebrew OT
text and of the Greek NT text. Rome claimed that only the Latin Vulgate was
authoritative and that the only true church, the Roman Catholic Church, had
preserved it. The Protestants countered with the claim that the Vulgate was
only a translation with many errors. Moreover, they argued, only the Greek text
which had been inspired and was preserved in the Greek speaking Orthodox
Church; and the Hebrew Bible that had been inspired and preserved by the Jews
in their Synagogue worship were the authentic and preserved, infallible texts
of Scripture. Hence, the Protestants never appealed to the autographic
form of the text--as Warfield would do in the late 19th century--but only and always to the extant,
preserved editions of the original language texts. Therefore, between these
first two chapters it is well documented that the Evangelical Theological
Society, the National Association of Evangelicals or anyone who claims that
"autographs" were ever defended as the final source of authority by
the orthodox are profoundly poor historians.
Chapter Three
This chapter
deals specifically with the alteration of the language about Biblical
authority as this corresponds with the alteration of the paradigm of
Biblical authority. When Warfield altered the locus of authority from apographs
(preserved copies) to autographs (the original writings as they came from the
authors which are lost forever) he also switched terminology. When the orthodox
defended Scripture they always defended inspired and infallible
apographs. Warfield changed the language from "infallible" to
"inerrant." This is very important because infallible always and
only had as its referent extant copies; inerrancy always and only has
as its referent the no-longer-existing-autographic-form of the text. Because of
their different referents these words are neither synonymous nor
interchangeable. This is an extraordinary important issue ignored by all
neo-Evangelicals and most fundamentalists.
Chapter Four
This chapter
treats the rise of an approach to Biblical studies that has emerged on the campus
of Yale Divinity School, which is part of the so-called "New Yale
Theology." This movement is what is known as a post-critical approach,
also sometimes known as post-liberal, attempting to give a traditional
articulation to the historical Faith after the liberals have had their go with
their modernism. Brevard Childs, Professor of OT at Yale, has written two
massive introductions to both the OT as well as the NT according to a method he
calls The Canonical Approach to doing Biblical theology. Here I highlight
that because neo-Evangelicalism has gutted the faith of its notion of an extant
sacred text (only the "lost original" is authoritative for them), one
response has been a move back to Rome. Many prominent Protestants looking for a
well-defined theology, so lacking within neo-Evangelicalism and within
liberalism have turned back to Rome for answers. The reason they are leaving is
because Rome offers the substance that neo-Evangelicalism lacks. Hence, I
suggest that what Childs is saying allows us to recover the original dynamic of
classic Protestant orthodoxy because he advocates that we should use the received
text tradition for our exegetical, homiletical, and commentary writing.
This is because these are the only officially sanctioned forms of the text the
Church (i.e. believers) has ever used. The Bible is, after all, the text of the
Church, (i.e. of Christian believers). James Barr, a classic liberal, opposes
Childs and his project and here I rehearse the debate.
Chapter Five
This chapter
is the only firsthand text critical study in the book. It is, however, a very
important study. Because Warfieldians have stripped the Bible of several proof
texts for the deity of Christ (e.g. ITim. 3:16) in their quest for the
"historical text," here they claim that they now have a proof for the
deity of Christ from their own favorite Alexandrian recension. What I have
demonstrated, however, expanding on the work of Burgon, Hoskier and Hills, is
that the neo-Evangelicals have actually adopted a profoundly poisonous variant
that most probably came from the quill of a 2nd century Gnostic leader called Valentinus. Hence,
their naiveté in nearly always accepting the so-called "oldest
witnesses" has seriously betrayed them, especially since the oldest
witness in this case is an undisputed 2nd century heretic. Moreover, I demonstrate how
Childs's Canonical Approach also affirms the received text reading.
Chapter Six
Here we treat
the issue of vernacular translations from within the Protestant communities in
the 16th/17th
centuries. The thesis is that because the standard of verbal inspiration was
the dominant consideration amongst the Protestant orthodox, priority was always
given to a word-for-word translation technique that did justice to the
confessional/theological understanding of the Biblical translation task.
Moreover, it is demonstrated that inspiration in its fullest sense is found in
the languages in which Scripture was given by inspiration.
Chapter Seven
This chapter
addresses two of the most substantial responses to the "revival of the
Ecclesiastical text" begun by Edward F. Hills in 1956, and then taken up
again in a fresh phase in the late Seventies by certain faculty and alumni from
Dallas Theological Seminary (and elsewhere). The first is Daniel Wallace, who
is currently on the faculty there and who proves to be something of a disaster
on the subject. The second is the late Kurt Aland, former Professor of Church
History and former Director of the Institute for New Testament Textual Research
in Münster/Westphalia, Germany and one of the editors of the United Bible
Societies Greek NT 27th ed..
The contrast between these two could not be more dramatic--Wallace little more
than a dilettante and Kurt Aland perhaps the leading authority in the field in
all of Europe in his day. The corresponding quality of each of their critiques
is not surprising. Wallace's is superficial and sloppy; Aland's is masterful
and informed. I reply to them both according to the merits of their individual
efforts. Such responses to this revival are, even in their mixed quality, far
reaching--a Dallas fundamentalist and a German authority in the
field--indicating the international impact the "revival" is having.
It should be added that Aland's essay is the single most important response to
the advocates of the Ecclesiastical (Majority) text to appear in print thus
far.
Chapter Eight
This is by far
the most controversial of all the chapters. It is also the longest and the most
well documented of all the chapters. It addresses what I consider to be the
major obstacle preventing the revival of the Ecclesiastical text from realizing
even more success than it has already attained. That obstacle is a community of
its would be defenders. By this I mean, the greatest harm to the cause of the
Ecclesiastical text are irresponsible publications written by ill-informed
advocates. Such misguided publications actually invite the scorn of our critics
and provide them with ample proof that the cause is a lost one if such
publications are the best that can be produced. Such groups and publications
have made the career of James White in the publication of his woeful: The
King James Only Controversy. The difference between D.A. Carson's earlier
book published back in late Seventies, The King James Version Debate,
and White's book, is the fact that Carson was addressing the scholarly
defenders of the Majority text, all of whom knew their material, more or less.
White hardly knows his way around the material and yet has found enough ammunition
to write an entire book addressing exclusively those who are not trained in the
field and who have damaged the cause with irresponsible publications and
erroneous arguments.
In this
chapter I attempt to show a parallel with the Sixteenth-Century Reformation,
acknowledged by all to have been the very hand of God renewing and restoring
His Church on its one true foundation, Jesus Christ, the head of the Church,
and on the inspired text of Scripture. The entire Reformation very nearly fell
to pieces, however, before it could get off the ground because a group of
fanatics took Luther's teaching to an extreme and caused havoc in Germany in
the process. They were Anabaptists, but of an extreme sort. Hence, in my essay
I make it clear that all Baptists are not my target, just the extremists who
hurt the cause of the Reformation Bible. On page 163 in footnote 22, I say the
following:
May this
treatise not be misunderstood as a polemic against all contemporary
independent-separatist Baptists. Some of my dearest and closest friends are of
this persuasion. Rather, I have in mind exclusively the radical fringe
separatists, found almost entirely on American soil, and unresponsive to any
other Christian tradition. I once had someone of my own tradition tell me that
to pray with someone other than a Lutheran is to indulge in "promiscuous
prayer," a more noxious phrase I would not want to consider. This
sentiment reflects the extremism of the anabaptist (Schwärmeri) spirit I have
in mind, though here it is actually found within a sub-set of the magisterial
Reformation tradition.
Here you see I
make clear that Baptists are not my target but extremists of any stripe are.
Moreover, I must point out that a Baptist serves on my board of the Institute
for Renaissance and Reformation Biblical Studies and I played a key role in the
formation of two Baptist organizations: I was a founding board member of the
so-called Dean Burgon Society (cir. 1978) and founded, under the auspices of
Dr. David Otis Fuller, the Institute for Biblical Textual Studies in Grand
Rapids, MI. (cir. 1986-7).
Finally, my
intentions were originally not to mention by name any of the individuals who
were cited in this chapter for having in one fashion or another misstepped in
their zeal to defend the TR/AV. But here I will now provide a key to the
players:
p.189, n.
76--Hollowood, founding member of the DBS
p.190, first
block quote--D.A. Waite
p.193ff. block
quote and following--Sightler
p.195ff. next
to last paragraph and following---Barnett
p.197ff, last
paragraph--Jay Green
p.198, n. 90,
second half--Mooreman
p.199, n. 91,
second half---David Could
Book Reviews
The book
reviews should be self-evident.
Appendices
A: These are
the various tributes written by well-recognized academics in the fields of
Church history, theology and text criticism regarding the ground-breaking
research I did on Warfield and the fall of Princeton Seminary (first chapter).
B: This is my
reply to James White and Gail Riplinger which shows that neither of them have
much at all to contribute to, or take away from, the revival of the
Ecclesiastical Text since neither of them get to the heart of the matter. They
virtually cancel each other out.
Theodore P.
Letis, Ph.D. August, 2000