I think the vast majority of Bible believing Christians intuitively believe just as I do concerning the text of the Scripture. That is, we actually possess the infallible word of God, not in theory, but in fact. The rub doesn’t come until they turn a corner and run into lower criticism.
Once, when I was an advocate of contemporary textual criticism, I was explaining it to a man and he looked down dejectedly and said, “I guess the Bible is not quite what I thought it was.”
It makes me think of a similar instance in a lecture I heard by Michael Kruger where he was telling his students a story about how he went to a Presbyterian church to speak on the text of Scripture. He taught them that the long ending of Mark containing the resurrection account was not Scripture. The pastor’s wife approached him in tears afterwards about this and Kruger commented that she was influenced by tradition.
In reality, she had a view of the Bible as the infallible word of God and this renowned, trusted professor turned her understanding of the nature of the Biblical text up on its head. You’d cry too if it were you!
How can an infallible text contain a complete narrative, indeed a resurrection account!, for centuries and believers accepted it as authentic Scripture only now to be told it’s a fake? The implications of that are not well understood by believing proponents of lower criticism.
She thought she could approach the Bible with the same confidence as Jesus…
Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.
This is going to be jarring because it presents a different epistemology than that which the typical Bible believer holds to from upon their own reading of the Bible. “I can no longer just go to my Bible as the ultimate authority, I must always check it by the critics…for what my Bible says may or may not actually be the Bible. Furthermore, the critics are often not in agreement and what they affirm today they may deny tomorrow.”
Such is the mess you get when you disconnect the concept of Biblical canon from the text of the canon.
Criticism isn’t faith, and faith isn’t criticism. We can choose one, but not both. Sadly, most people are choosing both, which ends up being a choice for criticism. People are losing, or giving up, their faith for secular, unbelieving, critical academic credibility.
Keep preaching brother, don’t lose heart.
Thanks for sharing this. I am currently reading D.A. Carson’s work on this titled the King James Debate “A Plea for Realism.” While I think he has some valid points, I have been researching this issue since the late 90’s and there is a lot of information that modern scholarship doesn’t share when promoting Reasoned Eclecticism and the New Testament. Folks usually only point out the things that promote their view. My pastor just this last Sunday preached from John 5, and while he was gracious concerning the textual variant of John 5:3b-4, it was tough to listen to him question its authenticity. I don’t know if I can be around when he preaches on John 7:53-8:11. He said that when he gets to that text, he will deal more in depth with textual variants. He is obviously in the camp of modern scholarship (We went to seminary together). I shared with him the anecdote on Augustine where he said that “people were taking the story of the woman caught in adultery out of the text of John out of a prudish fear it would promote adultery.” Somehow I don’t think he will share that, but you never know. I am also struggling with the Old Testament only because it seems that the prominent text used until Jerome was the Greek Septuagint. While I like the Masoretic, I am not sure what to think since Apostolic and Ante-Nicene Fathers seemed to use the Septuagint more and they seemed to quote from Byzantine, Western, and Alexandrian texts when dealing with the New Testament. I would like to know your thoughts on this sometime. May God bless you in your ministry.