Hello and welcome to another episode of Word Magazine. This is Jeff Riddle, pastor of Christ Reformed Baptist Church. Today is Tuesday, February the 14th of 2017. As I said in the Word Magazine that was posted yesterday, Word Magazine 68, I'm trying to get back caught up. this year after falling behind. In this episode of Word Magazine, we're going to be looking at a sort of a philosophical issue, looking at the issue of epistemology or the doctrine of knowledge. And I owe a debt of gratitude for the idea behind this episode to a friend, John, who is a regular listener to the podcast and reader of my blog. And John had suggested this to me sometime back. Um, he had called to my attention, uh, some comments that were made by Peter Williams and Peter Williams is a biblical scholar who also serves as the warden or principal at the Tyndale house, which is a study center, uh, in Cambridge, England. And Williams was a speaker at this conference on the Bible, a conference on canon texts and translations. sponsored by the Gospel Coalition back in January of 2015. And John had pointed out a couple of lectures from that conference to me, including the one that I previously did a word magazine, looking at the comments of Dr. Del Husse on the ending of Mark. But he'd also called my attention to some comments by Peter Williams, on the issue of epistemology. And this was in a panel discussion, the session two panel discussion. And as always on my blog, jeffriddle.net, I'm gonna have a post and I'll have some notes from this episode. And also has a link to this discussion. that took place in which Williams makes some interesting comments on the doctrine of knowledge. And the thing that he addresses is a problem among evangelicals, a problem with a willingness to express certainty. And this is interesting for me and John pointed this out. He made the point as well. It's something that I've alluded to in some of these podcasts previously, that one of the problems with the reconstructionist model, for lack of a better word, of text criticism is that it leaves the Christian with uncertainty as to the text. Now, I don't want to pretend that Peter Williams is an advocate for the traditional text. He's not, I'm assuming he's a traditional, an advocate rather for the modern critical text. But I did certainly sense in his comments and uneasiness with one of the side effects of adopting the reconstructionist view of the modern critical text. And that is, there's uncertainty as to what the text of scripture actually is. And so anyways, let's just pick it up. This is in this, again, the session two of the panel discussion, Peter Williams and John Mead and Wayne Grudem are part of the panel. There's a pastor who's posing questions and so he's going to pose the question and Peter Williams is going to provide some answers. So I'm going to play this part of the discussion and I'll kind of maybe stop and start it make a few comments and then we'll make some further comments about it later. So let's listen to the question as it's about to be posed by the moderator. Here we go. I have a question that I thought was helpful that was texted in. And let me just read this and whoever feels so led to respond. This might be good for you, Peter. It says, if we rely on the manuscripts that we do have, which are not inspired or wholly reliable, then based on what methodology do you conclude that the original manuscripts are inspired? The conclusion seems arbitrary. All right, so it's a good question. So the person saying, if you're reconstructing the text of scripture and you're using modern methods to reconstruct the original autograph, how do you know that the end product is inspired? And I think it's addressing the question, the big problem with modern text criticism for evangelicals is it posits a theology of inspiration and inerrancy, but it doesn't posit a theology of preservation. And that's really the missing link. And so it creates problems. But let's listen to Peter Williams as he offers his response. If I understand the question rightly, the questioner is concerned about how you could get infallible information from a fallible source. So in one sense, I'd say there are plenty of analogies that you can get infallible information from the internet, which is a very fallible source. So you can get correct information, there's plenty of it out there. And I think I'd also want to say what we can do with the New Testament manuscripts and the Old Testament manuscripts is we can have a great deal of certainty. Now we got a very good transmission with both Testaments which gives you a rational confidence that something has been handed down correctly to you. What's happened is, over the last couple of centuries, the burden of proof has shifted. So if you read commentators from 200 years ago or more, they are presuming that they have access to the original text unless there's some overwhelming evidence to the contrary, whereas what happens nowadays is people say, that they need a huge amount of evidence before they actively believe that they have the original. And I think that's all part of the shift in epistemology that happened since David Hume, that people no longer want to say that they know anything. Okay, let me just pause here. I want to listen to what he's going to say coming up next. I think it's really important. But he's saying that people these days don't have much certainty. They're not willing to express a lot of certainty. And he says that's in contrast to the way Orthodox Christians looked at the scriptures, say, 200 years ago. When you read commentators 200 years ago, they said, we've got the word of God. When you read a commentator today, he says, we think we have the word of God. There's uncertainty. And he places this shift that's taken place, the reason for it, he places the source in the influence of a change in worldview or philosophy. And he cites Hume in particular, David Hume, the Scottish philosopher. And I just reached up on my bookshelf, and pulled down Hume's, one of his more famous works, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding and just flipped through before I turned the recorder on and looked at a couple of the chapters and even read a couple, just spot read a couple of the chapters and There's a chapter, chapter six is Of Probability, for example. And in part two, that's chapter six and part one of his An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding. In part three, chapter two, there's a chapter titled Of Probability and the Idea of Cause and Effect. And as I understand it, one of the things that Hume was doing was applying skepticism, and we only can predict things that will happen in the future based on probability, not based on certainty. We only have the evidence of our past experiences, and we can't say with certainty that particular things are going to happen. We can only say there's a highly probable There's a high probability that it will happen. Hopefully there's someone who's a philosopher out there can straighten me out on Hume. And so Peter Williams is saying we've basically, we're living in a post-enlightenment, a Humean influence world where people are uncertain about things. They're uncertain about religious beliefs. They're uncertain about the Bible. And this is being reflected in the way that they talk about the Bible. And I think I would agree with him. in large part, except that I think he's missing out on, again, a big, a corresponding, a complimentary reason as to why people are, even evangelicals and Orthodox are unsure about the scriptures. And that is because of the reconstruction method of modern text criticism, which says you're always tinkering with the text, And you're never completely sure that you actually have the word of God. You only think you have it. There's a high probability or high possibility that you have it. But I love his lament about the lack of certainty. And let me just pick up with him speaking again, because I think he does a nice job of talking about the problem of a lack of certainty. So here we go. They just have increasing levels of confidence until, as a shortcut, you say you know something. It's really just 99 point something percent certain belief. I love that. I mean, that's absolutely right. I'm going to read you in a few minutes a few citations from modern evangelicals talking about text criticism. This is essentially what they say about the text of the Bible using the reconstructionist method. They say, you know, we never really get there. We only have, you know, an increasing probability. Then as a shortcut, we say, well, we know this is the word of God, but what we really mean is we're only about 99% sure. We're not 100% sure. It's not total confidence. And the result, both of this post-enlightenment Humean worldview and the modern reconstructionist text-critical method is the undermining of confidence in the authority of the text of the Bible. And if you undermine the authority of the text of the Bible, you're undermining Theology, you're undermining the practice of believers, their faith in Christ, and just the entire Christian system because the scriptures are foundational. Let's listen to him just talk a little bit more about this. And I think that's all just completely wrong. that we as Christians promote an epistemology where we say we really do know things. And I think that God speaks to us in such a way that we can be certain that that is him speaking. And my certainty about let's say the wording in 2 Peter 3 10 or my lack of certainty about that does not in any way make me less certain about Deuteronomy 4. So what you find is... Okay well I was so pleased with him and then I'm kind of in this part of the conversation I'm kind of falling back with not being so pleased with him and it's interesting the example that he chose there 2 Peter 3 10 and there's a lot of conversation about 2 Peter 3.10 after the latest edition of the modern critical Greek New Testament, the 28th edition 2012, because for the first time there was applied to a portion of the New Testament, the Catholic epistles, a new method of text criticism that's being used in Germany, the coherence-based genealogical method. And one of the biggest changes in the Nessalon 28th was in 2 Peter 3.10, there is a conjectural reading. A conjectural reading is offered in the main text. That is one that is not found in any Greek manuscript, but is one that the scholars conjecture, they believe it was probably the reading that was there. And again, despite all the things that Peter William just said previously about problems with certainty about the text, now it kind of doubles back and says, well, we can't really be certain about 2 Peter 3.10, and we don't really know what it says. It could read this, could read that. But the fact that I'm uncertain about 2 Peter 3.10 doesn't undermine the fact that I'm certain about, you know, Deuteronomy 4. I'm certain about you know, other parts of scripture. So, I sort of feel like, even though I really liked what he said previously, his diagnosis of the problem, I feel like he kind of waffles and actually falls into the same problem. I mean, can we have some parts of the Bible that we're uncertain as to what the text is and other parts we are certain about what the text is. Isn't the Bible as a whole? Shouldn't we be sure and certain about the text of the entire Bible? Doesn't being uncertain about any part of it undermine its authority? But let's listen to a little bit more. God is speaking across the scriptures, we have very good witnesses to these things, and the fact that I have some personal uncertainty about something does not, in any sense, make any of the rest of things certain. So we're certain about a huge amount. Now, the other thing I need to do is unpack this word certain, which is a very ambiguous term. Because we sometimes say, and even Bible translations I would recommend, sometimes have in their footnotes, the text of the Hebrew is uncertain. That is completely wrong. The text of the Bible is completely certain. God is completely certain about it, you see. What they should really say is, we the translators are so ignorant that we are uncertain. And they tend not to do that. It's interesting as John, my friend pointed out in the email to me telling me about this. He noted that when William said this, that you sort of hear a nervous laugh and the nervous laugh is coming from Wayne Grudem, one of the prime movers behind the ESV and Peter Williams I think has been involved in the ESV as well. But it's an interesting point that he makes sort of criticizing, I'm assuming the editorial comments in the ESV. It's where it says the Hebrew is uncertain. He's kind of making the point, well, no, it's, it's the translators who are uncertain. God is not uncertain about his word. And you know, I agree with that completely there. I mean, God's Word is settled. God's Word, as the psalmist says in Psalm 12, is like silver refined in a furnace of earth purified seven times. Skepticism and criticism, unbelieving criticism of the Bible doesn't diminish its authority or its reliability. As it's been said, the Bible is an anvil that has broken many a hammer. But, again, I would just ask the question as to whether or not the use of modern text criticism and notes like the one he mentions that appear in modern translations of the Bible, modern editions of the Bible, do they contribute to supposedly a greater understanding and appreciation of the Bible? Do they contribute to confusion and uncertainty about the Bible? And is there a better alternative, for example, to affirm as our Reformed forebears did, the traditional text of the Bible, the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and the Textus Receptus of the New Testament, so that there is a stable text and a text that isn't being changed with the newest addition of the modern critical text, whether of the Hebrew Bible or of the Greek New Testament, and isn't changing with every new translation that is issued. So I think I'm going to stop there. I think he has a few more things to say and you can listen to it, but I'm going to make this word magazine a little shorter. Again, trying to get caught up a little bit, but again, I'm just thinking about this whole issue of epistemology. It's a big issue. And I think it's one of the biggest philosophical issues when it comes to the issue of the text of the scriptures. This issue of certainty, this issue of knowledge, and I mentioned earlier that I wanted to cite a few passages from evangelical works on the text of scripture to sort of relay this sort of underlying sense of uncertainty with regard to the text of scripture. I'm going to cite a few lines from three different works and I actually have a word document now on my computer where I'm reading through a text critical book or a book on text criticism, something like that. If I find a quotation, a citation that I think reflects the modern uncertainty, the modern reconstruction uncertainty about the text of the Bible, I sort of add it to my list of Quotations, but I'm just gonna share from three Works one is first of all from a book that's been around for a while Neil Lightfoot Wrote a book called how we got the Bible. The first edition was 1963 and And then there was a second edition in 1988 and a third edition in 2003. Kind of a popular level type work, introducing people to modern text criticism. And on page 106 of that book from the third edition, he says, using these tools, meaning modern text critical tools and methods with discretion, it is possible to come, he says, so near the original autographs that we can all but grasp them in our hands. Well, on one hand, you might say that sounds reassuring. With our modern methods, we can reconstruct the text of the Bible, and we can almost get back to what the Bible originally said. We can almost get back to the autographs. But here's the problem. If you can all but grasp something in your hands, What's another way of saying that? You can't fully grasp it. You can't completely grasp it. And you're left with a high degree of Humean probability, but not certainty. A couple, well, I'll just give one quote from another work. This one is Paul D Wegner's book, A Student's Guide to Textual Criticism of the Bible, subtitled It's History, Methods, and Results. And this was published by InterVarsity Press Academic in 2006. It's a useful book. It's one of the few that deals both with the Old Testament and the New Testament and has a lot of information. Although it comes from a modern text criticism affirming position, I've benefited from reading it and going back and looking at it. But this is a quote from page 301. Wegner says, careful examination of these manuscripts has served to strengthen our assurance that our modern Greek and Hebrew critical texts are very close to the original autographs even though we do not have those autographs. And again, that might sound possibly reassuring to some people, but when you first hear it, but then think about it for a second. So he's saying we've got good modern critical reconstructions of the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament, and they are very close to the original autographs. Notice he doesn't say they are the original autographs. The best he can say is they are very close to them and You know, what does very close mean? And, you know, how important is it not just to be very close, but to be completely certain of what the text is? There are some things where being very close, you know, might not be all that important, but there are other things where We're being very close to the finish line to come in first in a race, but somebody passes you and crosses the finish line before you do, even though you were very close, you still lost the race. So, is it good enough with something as important as the Bible to merely conclude that the best you can do is get very close, but you can't achieve or arrive at absolute confidence, absolute certainty? And the third one I'm going to read from is Jeffrey D. Johnson. His book, A Primer on Textual Criticism, this is from Solid Ground Christian Books in 2012. I wrote a review of this book right when it first came out. And it's a very brief little booklet, and I saw some useful things in the book, but I also saw some problems with it when I reviewed it. But on page 19, this is Jeffrey D. Johnson's comments. He says, although it is highly doubtful that we will ever know for certain that we possess in its entirety Line for line, word for word, letter for letter, dot for dot, the exact text of the original writings of the prophets and apostles. It is believed by the majority of textual scholars that we can come very, very close." Again, that's the end of the quotation, page 19. A lot of interesting things going on in there. Again, he's admitting, it's highly doubtful that we will ever be able to get the exact text, line for line, word for word, letter for letter, dot for dot. And you think of what Jesus said in Matthew 5.17, that not one jot, not one tittle will fall away until all things are fulfilled. And again, this assurance that Not only that, you know, we can come very, very, very close. We can't quite get there. We can get very, very, very close. And also there's sort of the appeal to the authorities that this is what the majority of textual scholars believe. But, you know, sometimes the majority are wrong. Sometimes the minority is right. So anyways, again, these are just illustrations and I could probably quote many, many other books that would say, similar things to those that I've just quoted. And that is the basic mindset of evangelicals in particular, who have embraced modern text criticism. They have posited that somehow it is a good, and even use it apologetically, to say it is a good that we can have a very close approximation to what the Bible is, even though we can never exactly know for certain what the Bible is. And Peter Williams in his talk was contrasting this approach with that of the way evangelical and orthodox men spoke in years past. And when he said that, I thought about John Owen. And I just pulled down again from the shelf of my library here, volume 16 of Owen's collected works. and in volume 16 there are two articles in volume 16 that are on the issue of the text of scripture and the transmission of scripture and One of those is an article titled, The Integrity and Purity of the Hebrew and Greek Texts of the Scriptures. And I just flipped through it and came to one place that I had underlined. And in light of thinking about this whole issue of certainty and epistemology, just notice the striking difference in the way Owen writes. This is on page 357. He's talking, first of all, about within this entire article about Brian Walton, who was a Church of England scholar who had come out with what was called the London Polyglot. And it was one of the first, we might call it one of the first modern critical texts. He made use of Codex Alexandrinus. as one of the sources when it was the first time essentially that Alexandrinus had been used to try to talk about the text of the New Testament. And more importantly, he had compiled a huge number of variants. And Owen's view was that although it might be beneficial for scholars to compile these variants, he was worried about the effect that it would have on average Christians to have their confidence in the text of scripture challenged. And of course, he did not believe that it was the task of text critics to reconstruct the original autograph. He believed that the word of God had been preserved in the existing copies or the opographs. And here he expresses some of his reservations about Brian Walton's London Polyglot. He says, let me just pick it up here at 357. He says, with regard to the work of these men, he said, that there hath the same fate attended the scripture in its transcription as have done other books." So he's worried that they're treating the Bible not as if it's a special book, but as if it's some uninspired book. And then he says, let me say without offense, This imagination asserted on deliberation seems to me to border on atheism. Surely the promise of God for the preservation of his word with his love and care of his church, of whose faith and obedience that word of his is the only rule, require other thoughts at our hands. And then he continues, we add that the whole scripture, entire, is given out from God without any loss, is preserved in the copies of the originals yet remaining. In them all, we say, is every letter and tittle of the word. These copies, we say, are the rule, standard, and touchstone of all translations, ancient or modern, by which they are in all things to be examined, tried, corrected, and amended, and themselves only by themselves. And so again, as Williams points out, that's a very different epistemological viewpoint than what is being expressed by otherwise evangelical and orthodox men in our day. Owen had a confidence that when he had the Hebrew Masoretic text, when he had the Texas Receptus, He was confident that he had the word of God that had been preserved down to every jot and tittle. So it's quite indeed a contrast. And again, I know I've heard some people, I know James White in particular, I've heard him before criticize those who hold to the Textus Receptus as being people who need certainty. And he has sort of lionized and um, um, um, you know, talked glowingly about how wonderful modern text criticism is because, um, it, it, it means you have to deal with doubt and uncertainty and, and you don't have to, you're, you're not slavishly seeking for certainty. And my question all has been, um, what's wrong with wanting certainty? What's wanting, what's wrong with wanting to be sure? And, um, It's interesting, you know, it's usually liberals who are the ones who praise the value of doubt and uncertainty. And I was thinking of the book that came out last year by Peter Innes. If you know Peter Innes, who had taught Old Testament at Westminster Seminary, and then a few years ago wrote a book called Inspiration and Incarnation. And, he was basically applying modern historical critical methodology to an interpretation of the Bible and was sort of reinterpreting inerrancy and inspiration in such a way that it was really basically applying liberal theological views to the interpretation of the Bible and he ended up leaving Westminster and since that time he's become kind of an outspoken, more outspoken sort of liberal theologian. And again, this book he published last year with Harper One is titled The Sin of Certainty. And the subtitle of it is Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our Correct Beliefs. Again, that's a mindset, not only of Peter Innes, but it's a mindset of many otherwise conservative and evangelical, even reformed men who've embraced the modern critical text. They've said there's something laudable about uncertainty and it's somehow wrong or sinful to want certainty. And again, I think it's related to, again, one of the philosophical problems that's inherent in those who have adopted the reconstructionist modern text critical view of the Bible. And I'm just saying, What is the alternative? Well, the alternative is, I think, the classic position of the men of the Reformation and the post-Reformation. The position I think was held by the framers of the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, and that is that they looked for certainty in the text of the Bible, in the Bible that was originally inspired, immediately inspired in the original language text and had been faithfully preserved by God. And they weren't uncertain about the text. They were certain about it. And they could stand and offer a defense for the hope that was in them. on the certain ground of an unchanging text of scripture. Well, I think that'll end it for this episode, some food for thought with regard to epistemology. And once more, I will put a blog post up at jeffriddle.net where you can have a link to the video with Peter Williams comments. You can listen to them in full. And I'll put up a few other notes from this episode, some quotes that I read. And anyways, I hope this will be profitable to those who listen. And I'm still trying to get caught up with 2017. This is the third Word Magazine I've done so far, and I said it's the seventh week, so I've got a few more to get caught up. It would be great if I could eventually get in the groove of doing about one a week. But like I said, I'm behind and I'm trying to sprint to catch up a little bit. Anyways, till the next time, take care and God bless.