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Monday, April 10, 2017

Preservation of the Scriptures

Last week I read from The Master’s Seminary Journal an article titled Preservation of the Bible: Providential or Miraculous? The Biblical View by Jon Rehurek. Afterward I read Daniel Wallace’s Inspiration, Preservation, and New Testament Textual Criticism. The general conclusion of these authors is that “The preservation of God’s revelation is the lesson in many of the passages, but no explicit indication applies them directly to written Scripture or to how and when a promise of general preservation would be fulfilled” and that “the case for providential preservation must rest upon theological grounds through the historical (i.e., canonicity) and manuscript evidence (i.e., textual criticism) rather than upon exegetical grounds.”[i] Simply put, the Bible does not teach the preservation of the Scriptures, the only reason we know they are preserved is because we have them, and they have not been preserved in a way any more special than the writings of, say, Confucius or Machiavelli. Another leading author who takes this position is W. Edward Glenny in “The Preservation of Scripture” in the book The Bible Version Debate: The Perspective of Central Baptist Theological Seminary. This is included as Chapter 4 in One Bible Only?: Examining Exclusive Claims for the King James Bible.[ii]
Rehurek’s main point (as well as Wallace and Glenny) is that there is no doctrine of preservation of the written Scriptures taught in the Bible, or in other words, the Bible does not promise that the words of the Bible will be preserved in written form. In contrast to these authors W. W. Combs, in the The Preservation of Scripture, presents his view that the Bible itself teaches a doctrine of preservation of Scripture.

 Over the next few days I would like to investigate this topic (d.v.).
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