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
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
