Hello and welcome to another edition of Word Magazine. This is Jeff Riddle, pastor of Christ Reformed Baptist Church in Louisa, Virginia. Today is Friday, May 5th of 2017. In this issue I'm going to be offering some responses to a recent podcast from Reformed Baptist apologist James White. relating to issues of the text of the New Testament. I had kind of given up trying to give responses to James White, who's a defender of the modern critical text. I have done some previous issues of Word Magazine, which I've reviewed, interacted with some of his material. I really found in the end that it hadn't been all that fruitful to do that, but I had listened to his podcast this week. He had a podcast on Wednesday of this week on May 3rd, and the title of it, at least on YouTube, was Thoughts on the King James TR Ecclesiastical Text Movement, etc. And there were a few things in the presentation that I kind of wanted to respond to. And then I've had a couple people ask me to weigh in or give a response. And so that prompted me to want to do something. This is not going to be a polished presentation. I haven't written out a script. I'm just going to play a few clips. I'm not going to play the entirety of this dividing line in which James White presents these ideas. I'm just going to, again, play a few excerpts and then offer a few responses. So the background for this is a kind of an ongoing debate discussion that's happened between James White, who's an advocate for the modern critical texts of the Greek New Testament, and a pastor in Georgia, Robert Truelove, who's really not a, as I understand him, a TR advocate. but he is really an advocate for the majority text. But at any rate, apparently on April the 28th, Robert Truelove had done a video, and in that video he had a few citations from the scholastic, reformed scholar, Turretin, in which Turretin had defended what we would call the traditional text, the received text of the New Testament, including the so-called longer ending of Mark, the woman caught in adultery passage, and the Koma Yohaneum, the ending of 1st John 5.7, the beginning of 1st John 5.8, or the Three Heavenly Witnesses passages. And so James White took exception with this and offered this response. And so that's basically the backdrop. And again, I want to just play a few clips and just offer a few kind of more cursory responses. Again, this is just going to be more spontaneous. I haven't done a lot of research or writing, so it's not going to be as polished a response. I mean, the first thing I might notice with regard to James White and You know, previously I had done some responses to him. In the end, I found that I didn't think it was that fruitful. One of the problems I've had with him is that he has continued to confuse the issues. He isn't willing to distinguish between a KJV only position, somebody who would believe in sort of a special inspiration for the 1611 translation of the New Testament or the Bible in general. in the King James version as being specially inspired that kind of position, which is one held by a very small number, a very tiny minority of fundamentalist Christians in the English speaking world versus a position that holds to the, authority of the Texas Receptus, the received text of the New Testament, as it appeared in early printed editions of the Reformation era and became the basis for the vernacular translations of the Bible into the various European languages and held sway in translation, at least for several hundred years during the Reformation period and beyond. So he has a tendency to confuse KJV-onlyism with advocacy for the textus receptus or advocacy for the majority text. And there is a difference between those who advocate for the TR and those who advocate for the majority text. Those who advocate for the majority text and the TR have a lot in common. They both would defend the traditional ending of Mark. They both would defend the woman caught in adultery passage on 753 through 811, but they would not agree on other things like the Coma Ionaeum. Coma Ionaeum would be a text that the TR folk would defend, but the majority text people would not defend. So, and again, I'm not exactly sure what Robert Trullo's position on that. He might be a defender of the Coma Ionaeum, I don't know. But at any rate, So the beginning problem with James White is he has a tendency, when any question comes up about a position that defends the TR or the majority text, he associates it with KJV-onlyism. And he'll talk and talk and talk about KJV-onlyism. but sometimes doesn't address the real issue, which is, you know, what is the proper underlying Hebrew and Greek text of the Bible? So I'm not a KJV onlyist. I think that a true KJV only position is a heretical position. It's a position that is not consistent with confessional Christianity, but I am an advocate for the traditional text of the Bible, meaning the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and the received text of Greek text of the New Testament as the basis for translations and for scholarly study and pastoral study and application and exegesis and so forth. Um, so, uh, anyways, let's, I want to start off again. I'm gonna, I'm gonna hone in on four spots. And by the way, I will do a blog post as usual to jeffriddle.net and which I will have links both to Robert Trulove's April 28 video and James White's May 3rd, um, response, his YouTube video. And I'm going to start again, I'm going to look at four places. And the first one that I'm going to look at is James White's critique of the KJV only position. And what I want to suggest is that he rejects the KJV only position for What I think are all the wrong reasons to reject it as a position, which is, it's interesting because he's an apologist, self-styled apologist. I don't think this is the right apologetic approach in rejecting KJV-onlyism. so uh let's see the the whole entirety of this this presentation is about an hour and um this is going to be at about the uh six i'm going to try to get get it to about the 643 mark and um i downloaded the audio so i'm just doing this off the audio version and i'm not looking at uh the video version sometimes with my Internet connectivity, sometimes I have problems with interruptions with playing a video, so I'm using just the audio version of this that I downloaded from sermonaudio.com. So here's James White, again, arguing about the KJV-only position against it, I think for all the wrong reasons. Here we go. Do I promote what are called modern translations? Because I do believe that as tremendous a monument to the scholarship of the early 17th century that this is, as deeply indebted as we are, to the King James for so much of our language and terminology and how important it was and I think everybody should have a King James and should be familiar with the King James and so on and so forth. The reality is it was done between 1604 and 1611. Okay, so his argument's going to be against KJV only. First of all, he's going to start off saying, I'm not against, I don't hate the King James version. I think everybody ought to have one. But I'm against KJV only-ism, which by the way, the same time he's confusing with, he's doing this in a video in which he's responding against not a KJV only-ist, but someone who's advocating for what he calls the ecclesiastical text of the majority text position. But the argument he's going to make is the reason you shouldn't be a KJV onlyist is because it's an old translation. It's an outdated translation and we've made such great modern advances and you shouldn't be sort of stuck in the past and that's the reason why you shouldn't be a KJV onlyist. So let's listen to them. And I don't eat food from 1604 to 1611. I don't use the technology that existed between 1604 and 1611. I don't wear the clothing that was in existence between 1604 and 1611. And so I don't feel any particular requirement to have to use a translation into the English language that was produced between 1604 and 1611. All right, so why do I say this is the wrong way to approach KJV-onlyism? If you're really opposing KJV-onlyism, It seems to me that the reformed apologetic against KJV-onlyism is not that it's outdated. It was done between 1604 and 1611. I don't eat food from that time. I don't wear clothes from that time. It seems, in fact, that is essentially the essence of liberal theology. That's the way liberal theology argues. So they would say, how could you possibly hold to the views on gender roles that Paul advocates in the pastoral epistles? That is so culturally conditioned in the first century. I don't wear sandals today, so why should I have the same views on gender roles that Paul had in the first century? It's a kind of argument for modernism. Your views are outdated. We need to be progressive. We need to update. That's not the reason to argue against KJV-onlyism. The reason to argue against KJV-onlyism is on a confessional basis, because their viewpoint is in disagreement with chapter one of the Westminster Confession of Faith and chapter one of the Second Lenten Baptist Confession of Faith. Namely, the confession teaches, I believe what the Bible teaches, that the Bible is inspired, immediately inspired in the original languages, in Hebrew in the Old Testament, a few places in Aramaic, and in Greek in the New Testament. And that is the inspired word of God. It's inspired in the original languages. Translations are useful to the degree that they accurately reflect. what was written in the original languages. That's why we advocate for translations that follow a formal equivalence methodology. Uh, we don't argue against a, a translation because it's old. Uh, that would be like a liberal person again, who says, I can't believe you believe in the exclusivity of, um, of Christ, the scandal of particularity, that there's no salvation outside of faith in Christ. That's an outdated viewpoint. You need to update your views and have a more wide church and expansive view that universalism is the right teaching. That would be a modern, updated view, but it would be a wrong view. Not everything about the views that were held from 1604 to 1611 were wrong. The orthodox views we want to hold on to. And then there'd be a whole nother discussion about the usefulness of the King James Version as an English translation. I think that the argument against its usefulness and its clarity and ability to work well as a preaching, teaching, reading text is overblown, quite frankly. But he's making this argument against KJV-onlyism, not against the preference for the King James Version as a text to read or preach from. Anyway, that's point number one. Actually, the way he presents this is a bit like the liberal Episcopalian bishop, Shelby Spong, who said, we must change or die. So he wants to accommodate Christianity to contemporary modern life. And that means contemporary liberal modern life. And that seems to be the sort of the tack that White is taking rather than what I think is an appropriate confessional apologetic against KJV-onlyism. I'm going to move ahead. He says a few things. This is about the 9 minute and 56 second mark relating to Scrivener's edition of the Greek New Testament that is published by the Trinitarian Bible Society and is widely used by those who hold to the Texas Receptus. And he's going to argue that this isn't even really a proper edition of the Greek New Testament. So let me listen to just a little bit of what he says here. This is the second of the four points at which I want to stop and listen to him. Here we go. This actually only goes back to 1894. So what does that make us? 123 years old? And it's not technically a real Greek New Testament. Though there, this day, there were many students, well, there were students in various places that were utilizing this as their primary Greek text in classes at relatively small Bible colleges. Alright, so, again, he's very dismissive of anyone who holds to the Texas Receptus, obviously. Oh my goodness, if you're using the Texas Receptus, you're just one of a handful of people who are doing this, and you're in some off-the-wall small Bible college somewhere. It's another strange thing about his argument. So much of it is a bandwagon argument. If you're doing something that is in the minority, then you're probably not right. That seems to be a bit of the argument. Again, oddly enough, he doesn't use that argument when he talks about holding to, say, an orthodox view of the deity of Christ or an orthodox view of salvation being through faith alone, by grace alone, in Christ alone. That's a minority position. And it's a position that's pushed to the margins in modern secular society. Does that mean it's wrong? Because it's a minor position. It's a logical fallacy that because a position isn't the majority position, it must be wrong. The same people use this type of argument. with so-called climate change. Well, because all the scientists say that the earth is warming up, it must be so. Even if we don't, we can't give you the data to definitively prove this, it must be so. And you should believe it because the majority of the smart people think so. So anyway, he's being dismissive. What he says about Scrivener's edition of the Greek New Testament also is unfair. Yes, it was an edition of the Greek New Testament that Scrivener put together and edited in the late 19th century for use of scholars and churchmen. And it was not just, though, a sort of a hack job that simply took the King James Version It was based on the Reformation-era editions of the printed Textus Receptus, going back to Erasmus, going back to Stephanus, going back to Beza. It's primarily based on Bezas, the same printed texts that were used by the King James Version translators. And yes, he had a very practical end. Most people at that time were using the King James Version. among English-speaking people. And so he was trying to create a text that preachers could use, that pastors could use, that scholars could use. And there was something that existed there in the late 19th century, and that was unity, a unified text, Greek text of the New Testament that was widely used, and a unified English text that was widely used. There wasn't the multiplication, not only of English translations, but also of various editions of the Greek New Testament, various eclectic editions that took different positions. And also, he doesn't give us many details. Where exactly does Scrivener's Greek New Testament vary from other editions of the Texas Receptus? It would agree with all of them, including and accepting the longer ending of Mark as authoritative and authentic. It would agree with all of them. in including the woman caught in adultery passage. It would agree with all of them and including the Koma Yohannam. It would agree with all of them in having at 1st Timothy 3.16 the reading God manifest in the flesh instead of he was manifest in the flesh. So this Putting down of Scrivener's Greek New Testament is really a spurious and a misleading argument. So let's go on to the third point that I want to touch on. And this is another sort of a bandwagon argument that he makes. um i'm gonna go to let's see this is about the 19 minute mark he's gonna say something about uh the the TR only position must be an obscurantist position because it's not the position that's being used in the majority of currently of leading, whatever that means, reform seminaries and it's a position that's not even known about by the quote, leading scholars, end quote. So let's listen to what he has to say here. No one can produce a text with this belief system. And yet I could have done a comment on this too. And again, I'm jumping over a lot, a lot because his arguments on this are very repetitive and I've dealt with many of them in other places in previous word magazines. But one of the things he says is this, your textual receptus method, you can't produce, this methodology can't produce a text. The whole point is it's not a reconstructionist method. It's not an effort to come up with some pseudoscientific method that supposedly produces a text. No, it says the text that we have, the text that was produced during the providential circumstances of the emergence of the Reformation and the invention of the printing press, that that standard, stable text that was printed, that was received, that was agreed upon, that that is the proper text. And so we don't need a pseudoscientific method to produce a new text. The other question I would have is, what has the modern so-called scientific method of text criticism produced. Has it produced something upon which there is wide agreement? No. It's produced a text that is perpetually unstable. There have to be new additions. I've dealt with this in previous Word magazines, even most recently talking about the newest method, the coherence-based genealogical method. We're going to see continued revisions of the modern critical text as the method used to produce the Editio Critica Maior is applied to future editions of the modern critical text. And so let's not criticize the Texas Receptus position as failing to reconstruct a text. It's not attempting to reconstruct a text. That's the whole point for goodness sake. So it's just, you know, you kind of want to just bang your head sometimes against a rock when your position is so often misinterpreted, repeatedly misinterpreted and misunderstood. Let me let me continue. We have a small number of people who are arguing A small number. If you're a small number, you can't be right. Um, boy, it's too bad that, that, that Jesus and the early apostles didn't have this viewpoint because, you know, Jesus had the 12 disciples and they deserted him when he was on the cross. And then there are only 120 disciples in Jerusalem. Why didn't they just give up at that point? Because because they were just a small number and the majority didn't agree with them. They must have been wrong, right? Because it was only a small number. And so again, this repeated logical fallacy of your position must be wrong if it's held by fewer people than hold the majority position. That every major reform seminary, Um, is off the rails when it comes to having the proper Greek New Testament. And this ecclesiastical text movement is a retreat back into history. So as to, in essence, um, produce what I would say is a false feeling of certainty. All right, a lot to talk about here. So it must be wrong because it's not the view that's held in the majority of the reformed seminaries, and it holds that those seminaries have gone off the rail. I wouldn't say they've gone off the rail. Particularly in an academic institution, shouldn't you be able to have a discussion about what should be the proper text of the New Testament or the Old Testament? Isn't that a basic and a foundational question that should be asked? You know, is Puritan Reform Seminary, Joel Beeky's Puritan Reform Seminary, would that be listed among the major seminaries or is it not big enough or influential enough? I believe they hold to the traditional text position. Perhaps they're the only one. I don't know. I'm guessing there are probably some others. Maybe they are small. Maybe they are less influential with regard to their number. But again, is that what we're measuring things by? And is it possible that modern, even reformed, conservative men have been influenced by advocates and practitioners of the modern historical critical method? We don't accept the results of the modern historical critical method. in any other field. We wouldn't accept the things that modern New Testament critics say disparaging things like the authorship of the New Testament books or the late dating of the New Testament books or their rejection of an orthodox view of inspiration. Why have we automatically accepted the fruits of the modern historical critical method with regard to the view of the text and the transmission of the text and translations. Isn't this again a question that should be robustly debated? And if it's not being debated, shouldn't the question be introduced and shouldn't it be discussed even if it is a minority position. Every majority position was at one point a minority position. And so it's wrong to argue it. The other thing he says, this is again another, you feel like it's so repetitive with James White, the same things over and over again. He says the problem with the TR position is, um, it, it, it, it's a false appeal to certainty. It's wrong because they want too much certainty. And I've said this before. Um, again, it's part of the reason why I kind of stopped replying to him. Um, because it felt like it wasn't getting a hearing. It wasn't fruitful, uh, more frustrating to me, but, um, what's wrong with seeking certainty? Shouldn't we want in the sphere of our deepest religious convictions and beliefs and spiritual beliefs, shouldn't we want to have certainty? Shouldn't I have certainty about the identity of the God of the scriptures? Shouldn't I have certainty about the revelation of his truth, the inscripturation of his word, its infallibility? Don't I want to have certainty? And also, don't I want, as a minister, to speak with authority? And don't I want to have the people who are under my hearing and under my care, under my shepherding, don't I want them to come to sure and steadfast convictions? Really, again, this is another place where it's really more like a liberal argument. This is the argument that liberals make, and I've said this before, I haven't read it yet, but Peter Innes, who formerly taught at Westminster and left there after a conflict over his abandonment of a high view of the inerrancy and fallibility of scripture, has written a book in which he advocates for problems with too much certainty in religion. You know, this is a fundamental view and not, you know, he would argue, a normative Christian view. And here's James White essentially making that same argument, oddly enough. Let me listen to a little bit more of what he says here. in helping more and more sound biblical believers to understand where we got the New Testament, why we have such an incredibly strong testimony to the New Testament, and how we can then defend that New Testament in regards to the attacks that are so prevalent upon it from people like Bart Ehrman and others. For those of you who've listened to my podcast before, there is the fateful reference to Bart Ehrman. You can, you'll never almost never hear James White defend his advocacy for the modern critical texts without saying, well, if you don't do this, then you can't talk to Bart Ehrman. Um, it's kind of hilarious actually, but, um, I can assure you that Bart Ehrman doesn't think about James White nearly so much as James White thinks about Bart Ehrman. Um, and the odd thing is I pointed out before is, Essentially, James White has embraced the same view of the text of the New Testament, the same reason, eclecticism view as Bart Ehrman. They would agree completely. Bart Ehrman would say Mark 16, 9 through 20 is an original. Bart Ehrman would say John 7.53 through 8.11 is a floating tradition that was added much later to the text and isn't original to John. Bart Ehrman would say, of course, 1 John 5.7 isn't part of the original text of scripture. So there's really not a debate between James White and Bart Ehrman. They pretty much agree with each other. Now, the people who would have a debate with Bart Ehrman would be people who would advocate for the traditional text, who would advocate for the ending of Mark, who would advocate for the woman caught in adultery, or for the coma eunaeum. That would be, you know, a really vigorous debate and discussion that could be had with Bart Ehrman. I don't know of any reformed seminaries, any major reformed seminaries, that utilize this methodology. I just don't. I guess, again, Puritan seminaries must not be big enough to count. And in fact, when I have spoken to some of the leading scholars, and when I say leading scholars, I mean people who are publishing and are really taking the forefront of Christian theology, and especially in the area of the texts of the New Testament, things like that. When I've spoken to them, they're looking at me like, there are people pushing that? Reform people? And I'm like, yeah, you better keep an eye out because they're, yeah. Good thing James White has warned all those leading scholars. I'm guessing he's talking, thinking about someone like a Dan Wallace. Well, is that a big surprise that, you know, evangelicals who have embraced Wholeheartedly, mainstream evangelicals who've embraced the modern critical text don't think that it's a valid position to hold to the textus receptus. I'm not really surprised by that. However, I mean, you'd think perhaps they would be aware of the fact that the Trinitarian Bible Society has been long advocating for this position, and there have been various scholars along the way Um, whether it was Hills, whether it was Theodore Liedis, um, whether it's been some of the, particularly in the Dutch community, um, scholars, uh, who, uh, Jacob Von Brugge, uh, others who've argued for this position, um, you'd think Maybe they might be aware of it, possibly. Certainly they would be aware of those who advocate for the majority text, like Maurice Robinson, or the Dallas men, Arthur Farrstad, Wilbur Pickering. So surely they would be aware of that position. Maybe what they wouldn't be aware of is the resurgence of advocacy for the Texas Receptus among confessional and reform men. But anyways, again, it's this bandwagon argument. Well, if the quote, leading scholars, end quote, don't hold to it, then It must be wrong. If the leading climate scientists believe in global warming, then it must be right, right? So it's a false appeal to authority rather than making an overwhelmingly compelling rational argument for your position. They tend to be somewhat subversive in how they do it, but yeah, they're out there. And so I made some comments. OK, that's the what is that the third point? The last one I'm going to skip over quite a bit at this point in the his his podcast, he. talks about Robert Truelove's video, he plays part of it, and he goes on a couple of rabbit trails, and he takes exception with a couple of passages that Truelove apparently read from Francis Turretin. He talks in particular about a passage, 1 Corinthians 15, 47, in which Turretin had argued for the traditional reading And 1 Corinthians 15, 47, just pick my Bible up here. 1 Corinthians 15, 47, where it says, the first man is of the earth, earthy, the second man is the Lord from heaven. So that's the King James Version based on the Texas Receptus. And so in Greek, the traditional text says, has the word Anthropos and then Hakureos, where the second man, the second Anthropos, And then in apposition to that is the word Hakureos, the Lord from heaven. And he pulls up his page from his Bible software that has the Greek text on one side and the textual apparatus on the other. I'm wondering how many people who listen to his podcast. Sorry, if you listen to the podcast, you can't even see this, but if you watch it on YouTube, you can see the visual. I'm wondering how people can actually read Greek. Um, but, uh, and then he points to the textual apparatus and he says, Turretin is wrong because it's not so clear cut. There are variations here and indeed there are variations in the text. Um, And as he points out, there's one reading, it's actually chronologically the earliest of the manuscripts that I've witnessed to this passage is P46, Papyrus 46. But in that one, the reading is Anthropos Pneumaticus. So the spiritual man, it would read, verse 47 would be, Let's see, it would be the second man is the spiritual one from heaven or the second spiritual man is from heaven. And then the reading that is the reading adopted by the modern critical text is simply the word Anthropos. And so it takes out the word the Lord, and it's just the second man is from heaven. And that's the reading in Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus. Codex Aframi Rescriptus and the original hand of D. But you're looking at that apparatus for those who can read it. The traditional text, the one that Turretin was advocating for, it's not like it's a nonsense reading. The Lord from Heaven, it's the reading in Codex Alexandrinus, which is roughly contemporaneous with Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. So it's there in a very early unsealed manuscript. It's there in the corrected hand of D and K and L and P, and it's the majority or the consensus reading that develops in early Christianity. That's what Turretin was defending. The problem that the bind that white is in, is that these historical reformed men held to the Texas Receptus. It's not that they were ignorant. They knew that there were arguments and there were contested readings, but they advocated for the received text. I've got an article that's coming out in the July issue of Puritan Reform Journal on John Calvin and text criticism. And in that, I argue that John Calvin was far from ignorant of the various textual issues in passages like the doxology in the Lord's Prayer, the Woman Caught in Adultery passage, and the Coma Ionaeum for Shon 5-7 and 8. But despite that, he intentionally chose to go with the received text, even though it contradicted the Latin translation of Erasmus, even though it contradicted the Latin Vulgate, he went with the reading that we now know as the Texas Receptus reading time. And again, particularly in his mature years and his later commentaries, there was a time as I point out in the paper, where earlier he had used the Colonais Greek text, which in many ways was a forerunner of the modern critical text, but he intentionally rejected it, probably under the influence, personal influence of Stephanos and warmly embraced the text's receptus. When that article comes out, it'll be posted. So people who are reformed, like James White would claim to be confessionally reformed have a problem. And that is that these Protestant fathers didn't hold the position that they hold. And their response to that typically would be, well, they were just, the only reason they held that position is they were just ignorant. They didn't know all the issues. In this case, he's going to say, you know, you shouldn't hold up these men. They weren't perfect and they could be wrong. And I agree with that. They could be wrong. I think Calvin was wrong on baptism, for example. But where he's right, I think we should affirm him. Where he's wrong, we should respectfully disagree with him. And I'm not sure it's been proven that, in fact, I don't think it's been proven that he was wrong on the issue of the text of scripture. And so they're kind of at a pickle because they want to say, oh man, we admire Turretin. I know there's even You know, someone who is part of White's ministry who goes by the name Turretinfan. Well, if you're a Turretinfan, then why don't you hold the same view on scripture that Turretin held? And just ask yourself, you know, do a little research on it. Did Turretin hold this position out of ignorance? or out of conviction. And so let's go on now. I'm going to go jump ahead to the last one I want to look at. This is at about the 45 minute and 48 second mark where he's going to talk a little bit about Turretin and say Turretin was wrong. Here we go. Hold on. We'll start at 45, 40. Here we go. you're gonna have a major problem. And so, the fact is he's just wrong. And so you have to factually look at that. Okay, now, the section that was specifically read in the video is question 11, paragraph 10. There is no truth in the assertion that the Hebrew edition of the Old Testament and the Greek edition of the New Testament are said to be mutilated. Nor can the arguments used by our opponents prove it. Not the history of the adulteress, John 8, 1 through 11. For although it is lacking the Syriac version, it is found in all the Greek manuscripts. That's a factual error. OK. Is that a factual error? Turretin apparently wrote, that though the pericope adultery was lacking in the Syriac, it was there in all the Greek manuscripts. And he's gonna, he's gonna just hammer this home. Oh, that must've been an error. That's an error. That's an error. That's an error. I would just encourage you to read, if you have a copy of it, John Calvin's commentary on the woman caught in adultery. Calvin was certainly aware of the fact that that passage was missing in some Greek copies and in some, in some of the early versions, some Latin versions. So he was aware. And Turretin was no fool and certainly would have been familiar with the works of Calvin and others. And so here's the thing, what you have to read in to Turretin there is you simply have to add the adjective faithful. or received. So when he said it's not absent from any of the Greek copies, what he meant was it's not absent from any of the faithful or orthodox or received texts of our Bible. It has been classically received by the majority of believers as part of the Word of God. He's not making a technical point about it, whether or not it's missing from a single manuscript. Although he may not have known any, may not have personally seen a manuscript where it was missing, but I think he certainly, even if he'd read Calvin's commentary and the writings of others, he would have known that. And actually, As he'll go on and cite some more of this quotation, that becomes more evident because he'll talk about the fact that there are heretical groups that have denied certain passages. Well, that means they have suppressed them and they don't appear in either their versional translations or in Greek manuscripts that they have had copied. So obviously, even think about the precursor remarks where he's defending the Bible against mutilation. But that doesn't mean he doesn't know that there have been efforts to alter the text by Marcion in the early church and in later generations as well. But let's continue. What he has to say. He probably wasn't aware of it, but it's factual error. Not 1 John 5, 7, for although some formally called it into question, and heretics now do, yet all the Greek copies have it. That... Again, all the Greek copies, you should understand, all the faithful Orthodox received copies by the people of God. It's not only an error, it's an upside down error. In other words, I don't even know where he got that. I mean, that's just, that's not an error, that's a blunder. That's the only way that can be described. I think there has been a blunder, but I think it's probably on James White's part because I think he's misunderstanding what Turretin is saying. As Sixtus Senensis acknowledges, they have been the words of never-doubted truth and contained in all the Greek copies from the very time of the apostles. That's laughably untrue. Again, you've got to add the adjective, fateful, received, orthodox copies, that they have been there in the true copies, the fateful opographs. They have not been lacking from those manuscripts. Laughably untrue. Not Mark 16, which may have been wanting in several copies in the time of Jerome, as he asserts, Ah, see there, he knows. He knows the tradition from Jerome that Mark 16, 9 through 20 was missing in some of the copies. Certainly, this quotation proves he's aware of the fact that it is mutilated, missing in some copies, but he thinks that those copies are copies that originated in heretical groups trying to suppress the true text, but in the faithful copies, the correct reading has been preserved. And that would be very true, I think, for the so-called longer ending of Mark. It's only missing in two extant Greek manuscripts, the Codices Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. It's there in every other Greek manuscript that we have of the ending of Mark. But now it occurs in all, even the Syriac version, it is clearly necessary to complete the history of the resurrection of Christ. So, Brother Trillo's point was, well, see, for Turretin, it's the Percipate Adultery, the Commiohonium, and the Longer Ending of Mark. And that's exactly where the Ecclesiastical text differs from, well, again, what is the Ecclesiastical text? Who knows? It's not the Byzantine text platforms. Evidently, that's not the Ecclesiastical text anymore. Pointing out that if you hold the majority text of the Byzantine text, what he calls the ecclesiastical text, that's not the TR position, and it's not. There is a distinction. Although, again, there would be broad agreement among those who hold to the TR and those who hold the majority text on many passages, like the long reading of Mark, the doxology in the Lord's Prayer, that God was manifest in the flesh passage, 1 Timothy 3.16. The confession of, well actually no, the confession of Ethiopian eunuch would be a question some majority text people would accept Acts 8.37, others wouldn't. So from there he goes on and I'm going to skip to the end. I said I was going to do four things, it's actually five. I'm going to skip to the end. He talks about, uh, Vaticanus and he draws a, uses whiteboard and draws a diagram, uh, talks about how P75, uh, was, um, probably translated or copied from, uh, the same, um, a similar line as Vaticanus because P75, Papyrus 75 and Vaticanus are very similar to each other. And so they maybe were copied from the same archetype. Not that Vaticanus copied P75, but they came from the same archetype. And he draws a little diagram that's familiar to people who know the old genealogical method of attempting to understand the relationship between manuscripts. And then he comes to his conclusion And basically saying, well, if you want the ecclesiastical text, what about the P75? And what about Vaticanus? Weren't they created by churches and aren't they churchly readings? And therefore you should accept them. So I'm going to go on. Let's listen to some of the last things he says here. This is at the 57 minute and 57 minute 24 second mark. Let me see if I can find it and get it close to it anyway. Here's 57 16. So let's listen. So what is the, what, what's, what, what's our conclusion here? This is a tremendous, uh, reality, that once you understand it, can greatly increase your confidence in the text of the New Testament. But, how is it relevant to an ecclesiastical text person? You see, from my perspective, it's extremely relevant to the church, because this was the text of the early church. That's still the church. Okay, so his argument is you should accept the reading tradition represented by P75 in Vaticanus because it's the earliest and it's a churchly reading and that's why you should accept it. Bringing something in from, well, in this case, talking about what the text of the church, what, approximately 1500 years later was? Well, they used it when we wrote these great confessions of faith 1,500 years later. Well, that's wonderful! But if you can't see the danger of saying, and therefore we should read this, because it was used at the Westminster Assembly or it was used by the Framers at the London Baptist Confession or something. If you can't see that that's not how to deal with New Testament textual issues, that's sort of scary. All right, I'll stop it right there. So let me give us a couple of responses to this. It's an interesting argument that he makes. There are a couple of problems with it though. some factual and some logical problems with the argument. So he's saying we ought to accept the readings represented by P75 and B Vaticanus because they're older and they represent this primitive line of the church. As I pointed out in other places, particularly in the last podcast on the coherence-based genealogical method, I think it was number, what, 73. Modern text critics have abandoned, largely abandoned the idea of being able to reconstruct these family types and so forth. They no longer are looking at the manuscripts, but at the text. And in the use of the coherence-based genealogical method for the Catholic epistles, they often were choosing readings as more authentic that were coming from much later manuscripts, the Byzantine manuscripts, as opposed to even the papyri and the unseal manuscripts. Most of the changes of the 33 changes in the Catholic epistles were ones that actually favored the Byzantine tradition. So the argument he's making here is a bit outdated. Also, modern text critics have given up on attempting to reconstruct the original text. Now what they're trying to do is say, we can basically approximate the text the way it was in about 200 AD. That's the best we can do. His argument here about the antiquity of the modern critical text because of P75 and Vaticanus is a bit outdated. In addition, on the other side, he's downplaying the value of the traditional text as it came to be printed in the Reformation era, 1500s. It's not that it just appeared de novo in 1516 when Erasmus put it together. We have manuscript evidence that is just as ancient for the traditional text in most places as we do for the modern critical text. We can look at the example that he cites. We can go back to 1 Corinthians 15, 47. Well, the Texas Receptus reading defended by Turretin is there in Codex Alexandrinus. If we used his line of argument, then why don't you advocate for the reading found in P46? Why isn't it the spiritual man is from heaven? The Anthropos Pneumaticus. But that's a reading that is rejected, only singly attested. So he's wrong both in playing up the supposed value of a reading that agrees with P75 and Vaticanus, and also wrong in downplaying the manuscript evidence that lies behind the text that came to be placed in the standardized printed form, and then widely used by scholars, pastors, and translators in the Reformation era. Another question I would ask about that is, What do you know about the churchly setting for P75? What do you know about the churchly setting for Codex Vaticanus? The truth is you know absolutely nothing about it. It could have been a text that was used by a heretical group. Particularly in that period of time there was a swirling controversy over Arianism, rejection of the Orthodox view of the Trinity. Is it possible that some of these documents could have been used in heterodox groups? And also we can look at the fact that they did not continue to be copied. Their line came to an end. The text represented by P75 in Vaticanus did not continue to be copied and used. It essentially ceased and was only revived in the 19th century. So it went through a 1300 year period from maybe 500 to 1800. 1300 year period where it essentially wasn't being used and reproduced. And there was a consensus that developed around the traditional text so that the, uh, the longer ending of Mark was seen to be authentic. The woman caught in adultery passage was seen to be authentic. Again, the consensus on the Koma Yonam, I think didn't come till later, but it did eventually come. And then it did reach that standardized form when it appeared in the printed editions of the Greek New Testament according to the providence of God. So, again, I think the factual and the logical reasoning here is simply faulty on Dr. White's part. Well, again, this has been kind of an off-the-cuff review. I hope that some of this perhaps has been useful. Oh, I know one more thing I wanted to say on this, and I'll go ahead and add this. I happened on Sunday, I'm preaching through the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, and I happened to preach a message on the doctrine of the Trinity, because I'm on Chapter 2, Paragraph 3 of the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith. paragraph three is an affirmation of the Trinity. And it ends, let's see, the very last statement that's made is this, which doctrine of the Trinity is the foundation of all our communion with God and comfortable dependence on Him. And as I pointed out in the message, which you can listen to on sermonaudio.com, when it lists, the first proof text that it lists for proving scriptural arguments for the doctrine of the Trinity, it lists, the first one listed is 1 John 5, 7, and then Matthew 28, 19, baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. 2 Corinthians 13, 14, the Trinitarian blessing is there, but 1 John 5, 7 is there, the Koma Yohaneim. is cited as a proof for the Trinity. Now, if that verse wasn't there, certainly there would be enough scriptural evidence from other places to prove the doctrine of the Trinity. But the framers of the confession accepted 1 John 5, 7, for there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one. And let me just point out one more thing especially with regard to those of us who are Reformed Baptists who hold to the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith. There's a very interesting tabular comparison of the Westminster Confession of Faith of 1646, the Savoy Declaration, which was the Congregationalist version of the Westminster Confession of Faith, which was put together in 1658 with John Owen being a leading author of it, and the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. And James Anderson, who teaches at Reform Theological Seminary, you can go to his website, progonosco.com, and he has a very useful tabular comparison of those three confessions of faith. And it's really interesting, if you look at paragraph three, of this chapter two in all three confessions. Now the Westminster Confession of Faith reads, in the unity of the Godhead, there be three persons of one substance, power, and eternity, God the Father, the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. And it goes on and says some more things. I'm just going to focus on that. But there are three persons of one substance, power, and eternity, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost. And the Savoy Declaration, very similar, in the unity of the Godhead, there'll be three persons of one substance, power and eternity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, exactly the same, and it says some more things. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, though, is slightly different, and I want you to listen to how it's different. This is the opening lines of that same parallel passage in the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith. In this divine and infinite being, there are three subsistences. So it starts off, doesn't use the word persons, but subsistences. And then it names them. The Father, the Word or Son, and Holy Spirit. Now, here's what I find interesting. Westminster Confession of Faith, the Savoy Declaration, it says God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost. The Baptist confession of faith says the Father, the Word, or the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And the Second London Baptist confession of faith explicitly uses 1 John 5, 7. Where do they get the alternative to the Son? They get it from 1 John 5, 7. For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit. ghost. And so, you know, the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Savoy Declaration and the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith all affirmed the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. But the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith obviously, clearly uses the Koma Yohaneum to articulate its belief in the doctrine of the Trinity. And this presents a problem. Turretin presents a problem. Calvin presents a problem. The framers of the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith present a problem for modern Reformed men who have embraced the modern critical text. They must make some sort of conscientious exception to the proof texts that appear in the classical Reformed confessions because they have rejected them as spurious and do not believe they are part of the Word of God. And then they have to begin making They'll have to begin making corrections to the confession as well. Well, anyways, these are just some off-the-cuff comments. I hope, again, that this has been helpful, and I will look forward to presenting another Word magazine in the future. Till then, take care and God bless.