Another Quixotic Whiff for Mark Ward on the Bible and Its Preservation

With full disclaimer, from my childhood I recall Gilligan and the fearless crew on the uncharted desert isle.  Mr. Howell, the Professor, and Skipper are dressed as women in an attempt to fool some visiting natives looking for a "white goddess" to throw into their volcano.  Not expecting any of those three to pull it off, the Skipper orders first mate, Gilligan, to "dress up like a girl."  The words since stuck in my brain Gilligan repeated again and again, "You can't make me!  You can't make me!  You can't make me!"  Everyone knows how that ended.

Mark Ward has spent years working an argument with his "King James-Only brothers" for them to chuck the translation based upon readability, intelligibility, or understanding.  He wrote a whole book on it.  Ward made "a vow regarding the KJV."  He wrote:

I will not and cannot discuss textual criticism with my brothers and sisters in Christ who insist on the exclusive use of the King James Version. I will discuss only vernacular translation. 

"You can't make him!  You can't make him!  You can't make him!"  After years tilting at the vernacular windmill (tilting may be a false friend of Cervantes), Ward broke that vow in a recent published journal article, where he instead dusted off the very, very oft employed "Which TR?" argument instead (I have answered it here, here, here, here, here, and many more times).  Because I've already argued this, I'm not going to argue with Ward's article.  I'm saying, read what I already wrote.

I confess after these now several years, that Ward still fails to understand or at least not represent accurately the biblical and historical doctrine we teach.  I've written it directly to Ward and he still chooses to strawman it.  As a type of irony, the same journal makes this statement in an earlier article entitled "Role of Biblical Creationism in Presuppositional Apologetics":

Beyond the theological incompatibilities already discussed, the evolutionary model simply contravenes the clear and straightforward meaning of a number of other biblical passages that emphasize God’s direct and immediate role in creation as well as truth-affirmations about the context, timing, and goal of creation.

Modern textual criticism parallels "the evolutionary model."  The problem I and many others, including the "confessional bibliologists" (whom Ward inaccurately puts in a different category than me), would be represented by writing the same sentence above with a few changed words.

Beyond the theological incompatibilities already discussed, the modern textual criticism model simply contravenes the clear and straightforward meaning of a number of other biblical passages that emphasize God’s direct and immediate role in preservation as well as truth-affirmations about the context, timing, and goal of the preservation of scripture.

If someone believes what scripture says, then he has to believe what scripture says.  Not believing what scripture says isn't believing what scripture says.  Modern textual criticism does not buttress its position on the teaching of scripture, which is also confessional or historical.  Ward does not arrive at what scripture says, because scripture isn't the basis of his position.  In another bit of irony, Ward has attempted to tether himself to scripture when he makes his one vernacular argument from scripture, 1 Corinthians 14, that edification requires intelligibility.

I've followed Ward long enough to know that he didn't start with his intelligibility argument from 1 Corinthians 14 (read what I've written here, here, and here).  I contend, he noticed that our side takes its position from scripture, like a young earth creationist does, so he came late with the biblical argument as a corollary.  I'm open to be proven wrong on that.  As time passed, Ward referred to that argument more and more, seeing it as perhaps the one that could gain the most traction with people who started with the Bible.  If scripture is so important to which to refer for positions, I invite him to start doing that on the whole issue.

Presuppositionalism starts with the Bible.  Evolutionists presuppose too.  They aren't neutral, they just have different presuppositions.  However, we don't call evolutionists, which would be old earth creationists, presuppositionalists.  Ward doesn't follow biblical presuppositions.  He doesn't deal with anything related to this aspect of bibliology like a presuppositionalist.  By the way, just to head this off at the pass, someone could use the lame argument (I've read it) that Greg Brahnsen wasn't a confessional bibliologist and supported modern textual criticism, so the perfect preservation position must not be presuppositional.  That is an anecdotal apologetic that doesn't support a presuppositional one.  It's a loser.

To start any discussion on the Bible, someone should ask, "Does this represent what the Bible teaches on the subject?"  Starting with science led to numerous wrong positions on origins, that now must be unraveled with DNA and seeing a cell in detail under a microscope.  God wants us to believe what He says.  Ward and others like him do not take a faithful or believing view, because they don't establish what scripture teaches first and then believe it.  All "models" should start with scripture, because God's Word is truth, or what is accurate to call true science.

How do we know that God created the earth in six literal, twenty-four days?  Scripture says so.  Yes, but evidence shows something different.  Scientists list much evidence.  They've done that to the effect of many Christians rejecting what the Bible says or then going about to change what the Bible says to fit the "evidence."  How do we know God preserved His Word perfectly, every Word?  Words not just a general Word that allows for word changes?  Scripture says so.  That's also what Christians have believed.  Textual critics list much evidence.  They've done that to the effect of many Christians rejecting what the Bible says or then going about to change what the Bible says to fit the "evidence."

Jeff Riddle and the ones known as "confessional bibliologists" (why wouldn't I be referred to as one? See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and many other places) seem to merit Ward's attention by not settling on Scrivener as an answer to a written text.  Perhaps it seems to him like he could get some mileage from them, because if they believe there are some variances between TR editions like he illustrates in his article, then they will be willing to accept even more variances and everyone can then be a big happy family in a modern version world.

If the confessional bibliologists take Hill's position, then they take the same one I've been advocating.  There isn't a thin piece of copy paper between all of us in doctrinal position.  I've said for years though, that asking for the exact settled text is more of a trap being laid, to be used for the reverse engineer argument.  What I've written is that the words are preserved and available.  The translators of the TR translated from something and that is easy to see in the commentaries written in the 17th and 18th centuries.  This respects what the Bible says about itself, what God says about His own Word, honors and worships Him.  Even Kurt Aland reports ("The Text of the Church?" in Trinity Journal, Fall, 1987, p.131):

[I]t is undisputed that from the 16th to the 18th century orthodoxy's doctrine of verbal inspiration assumed this Textus Receptus. It was the only Greek text they knew, and they regarded it as the 'original text.'

He also wrote in The Text of the New Testament (p. 11):

We can appreciate better the struggle for freedom from the dominance of the Textus Receptus when we remember that in this period it was regarded even to the last detail the inspired and infallible word of God himself.

His wife Barbara writes in her book, The Text of the New Testament (pp. 6-7):

[T]he Textus Receptus remained the basic text and its authority was regarded as canonical. . . . Every theologian of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (and not just the exegetical scholars) worked from an edition of the Greek text of the New Testament which was regarded as the "revealed text." This idea of verbal inspiration (i. e., of the literal and inerrant inspiration of the text) which the orthodoxy of both Protestant traditions maintained so vigorously, was applied to the Textus Receptus.

Quoting the Alands is a debate technique.  The most scholarly of the enemies agree too.  Both sides should just agree on that.  The Alands, however, are just reporting though among many, many others what Richard Capel wrote:

[W]e have the Copies in both languages [Hebrew and Greek], which Copies vary not from Primitive writings in any matter which may stumble any. This concernes onely the learned, and they know that by consent of all parties, the most learned on all sides among Christians do shake hands in this, that God by his providence hath preserved them uncorrupt. . . . As God committed the Hebrew text of the Old Testament to the Jewes, and did and doth move their hearts to keep it untainted to this day: So I dare lay it on the same God, that he in his providence is so with the Church of the Gentiles, that they have and do preserve the Greek Text uncorrupt, and clear: As for some scrapes by Transcribers, that comes to no more, than to censure a book to be corrupt, because of some scrapes in the printing, and ‘tis certain, that what mistake is in one print, is corrected in another.

Mark Ward and others like him are taking the new position, the reactionary one, that arose out of mid-19th century modernism and rationalism.  His position, and the biblical and the true Christian one, the faithful one, do not and cannot meet.

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Watch this and others like it.  This is a real apologist in a biblical sense.

I have found the identical experience with Muslims to whom I have evangelized.  He's obviously directing this toward men like James White.  What a respectful, true servant of God here.  It's easy to see if you match him up against James White.