Criticizing criticizing

“We’ve stopped worshipping Christ and started worshipping ‘Nice’.” Charity Nicholson

It is certainly true that we can develop a hard and consistently critical spirit. However, try to combine criticizing and edifying. Criticism is most often viewed negatively in modern society – very negatively. But it isn’t inherently so (Galatians 2:11). Paul criticized Peter because he was “to be blamed.” Criticism is not mutually exclusive from encouraging, edifying, or helping. Sometimes we are in a place where we need to recognize what is wrong in order to do right!

Ironically, criticism is often criticized! The critics of criticism do not seem to see their critocrisy (critical hypocrisy). Nevertheless, criticism definitely serves a purpose. Over the years many criticisms I have received drove me to check my thoughts and beliefs. If taken seriously, the results will usually be that it causes you to confirm and strengthen your beliefs, or it causes you to modify and correct them. If we are the ones criticizing, we should consider to what end and to be careful to do it for the right reasons and in the right spirit. When we are receiving criticism, we should receive it in the right spirit (in order to benefit from it), whether or not it was given in the right spirit.

We must guard against developing a critical spirit. It is easy (perhaps natural) to develop one, and hard to guard against it. In many things in life and faith, I am and have been on the opposite end of the up side. In that position I have often found myself giving “the minority report,” so to speak. It can be a dangerous position to be in; one can develop a critical spirit, or just be perceived as having one. It was popular in our area in the 1960s-1980s (may still be, but I have relieved myself of the connection) to criticize folks who did not acquiesce to the prevailing new notions of how to do things. We were criticized as being “aginners” or “agin everything.” Certainly, there was some truth in the “against” part, even though we were the ones who had not changed, but it was not true in the “everything” part. (That charge was a carefully designed attack mechanism.) Sometimes it may be that diagnosing a critical spirit is in the eye of the beholder. All of us folks are often found being critical of being critical.

A person with a critical spirit delights in exposing the flaws of others, with an attitude of of fault-finding that seeks to tear others down rather than build them up. However, the popular secular definition of nice often does not align with the Christian worldview. Let us worship Christ, not nice. Let our criticisms proceed from the goal of building up, edifying one another.

...we speak before God in Christ: but we do all things, dearly beloved, for your edifying... 2 Corinthians 12:19.

Nitpicking

nitpicking, noun.

1. (literally) The painstaking process of removing nits (lice eggs) from someone’s hair.
2. (figuratively) A process of searching for, finding, and/or pointing out small details or errors.

Many folks criticize other folks for ‘nitpicking.” Yes, it can be a problem. On the other hand, it can be better to pick nits than to deal with full grown lice. Often, addressing seemingly insignificant issues early on is better than waiting for them to grow into larger, more problematic ones.

Review of “What Makes a Bible Translation Bad?”

Review of “What Makes a Bible Translation Bad?” by Mark Ward, posted on the Text and Canon Institute site June 13, 2023.

A few days ago, Christopher Yetzer called attention to “What Makes a Bible Translation Bad?,” an article by Mark Ward posted on the Text and Canon Institute web site. In it, Mark creates two categories in which to dump Bibles that he is unwilling to recommend: sectarianism and crackpottery.[i] Ultimately this article (“What Makes a Bible Translation Bad,” part 1) comes off as “yes, I know I in principle recommend all kinds of translations, but here is a way to get around recommending translations I do not like.”

In doing so, Ward creates a strange mix of “sectarian” translations. Surely one who likes many translations still wouldn’t want to recommend a sectarian translation, would he?

Ward defines sectarian translations as “those that have more than the natural bias inherent in the effort of any person or group to do something as complex as translating the Bible.” Isn’t this definition somewhat circular and subjective? Your translation shows a bias that does not fit my bias, so your bias is biased toward a certain position that is not my position. There is no solid objective method of judgment. In the final analysis, it boils down to: “I do not like it,” and/or “my friends do not like it.” Working that way, one should be able to exclude any translation he does not want to recommend, even though in theory he should be able recommend all kinds of translations.

The strange mix of translations in this essay is:

• The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (NWT). It is published by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, an arm of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, an unorthodox sect that denies the eternity and deity of Jesus Christ.
• The New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition Bible (NRSVue). It was managed by the Society of Biblical Literature and published by the liberal ecumenical National Council of Churches. They sought broad representation of “faith-based constituencies” and consideration of “modern sensibilities.”
• Certain Bible translations for Muslim nations. Ward mentions a couple by name, The True Meaning of the Gospel of Christ and The Honored Injil. These translations compromise the deity of Jesus Christ in deference to Muslim preferences (including references to Allah easily interpreted as Islam’s god).
• The Tree of Life Version of the Holy Scriptures (TLV). It is produced by the Messianic Jewish Family Bible Society[ii] and The King’s University. It is created by Messianic Jews with a flavor of Messianic Jewish Christianity, a Bible that “speaks with a decidedly Jewish-friendly voice,” sprinkling in lots of transliterated Hebrew words not in common use in English.

Mark Ward begins well. Step No. 1 – Start with the NWT. Everyone except the Jehovah’s Witnesses will get on board. He seems to scrawl a fairly clear X over the NWT and “certain Bible translations for Muslim nations,” but equivocates regarding the NRSVue and TLV. Ward wants to keep folks “from using the NRSVue as the main pulpit Bible in our churches,” but “will happily check the renderings in the NRSVue in my Bible study in years to come.” He is “not saying that the TLV is a ‘bad Bible’,” but rather “mostly a traditional Protestant translation with a bunch of Hebrew transliterations bobbing up and down on the surface.” The conclusion is subjective: “But I will say that the effort falls completely flat for me.”

Mark thinks “Bible translations need to do what they can to avoid the appearance of sectarianism.” So does Shively T. J. Smith, a professor at Boston University School of Theology who worked on the “sectarian” NRSVue.[iii] She said that the NRSVue project “attempts to reverse the historic trend in translation history from the 19th and 20th centuries in which some Christian communities and scholars of the Bible were historically excluded from the translation endeavors of our English Bibles.”

Mark writes, “I like the tradition, going back at least to the NIV, of involving many Christian denominations—from complementarians to Messianic Jews—in a Bible translation committee, as a method of both eliminating and of appearing to the public to eliminate denominational bias.”

The “sectarian” NIV translation committee’s membership was restricted to those who were willing and able to subscribe to biblical inerrancy. The “sectarian” NRSVue update was a product “carefully reviewed and updated by a wide variety of the finest scholars in the academy today,” that welcomed “teams of translators that were both ecumenical and interfaith in their composition.” What makes one team more inclusive or more sectarian than the other? The subjective bias by which we assess the process and the product.

This piece is quivering with equivocation, and necessarily so. For example, Mark points to one bad or biased translation in the NRSVue, 1 Corinthians 6:9–10. However, he can also admit to a bad or biased translation in his own beloved “sectarian” English Standard Version in Genesis 3:16. Why recommend one and not the other? Our subjective bias.

Mark acknowledges that we have passed the stage of enjoying one standard English translation, but advises that “translators (or rather revisers, because we don’t need any more mainstream translations) should still aim for that possibility instead of giving in to the temptations of sectarianism.” I would argue that the fact we produce “New Bible Galore” is a testimony that we are “giving in” to something in a bad way.

The “sectarian” Bible claim is something of a misdirection. Mark needs more carefully crafted categories. But might such nuance defeat his purpose? The cited Bibles certainly are not all sectarian in the same sense, and in a broad sense all Bibles might be called “sectarian.” The issue finally comes down to how a person who happily encourages using multiple translations can restrict which of those multiple translations one uses. I don’t like it. My friends don’t like it.

Mark Ward is a regular chider of King James Defenders. He must criticize us for criticizing multiple Bible translations. Now he criticizes multiple Bible translations. Pot, meet kettle. Watch where you step.

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[i] Sectarianism, “excessive devotion to a particular sect, especially in religion.” Crackpottery, “the behavior of a crackpot or loony person, madness.”
[ii] Apparently now called The Tree of Life Bible Society.

[iii] The NRSVue is founded on the RSV of 1952. Its translators had degrees from some big-name institutions, such as Harvard, Yale, and University of  Chicago. The guy criticizing the NRSVue got his degree from a school started by a man who called the RSV the biggest hoax the Devil ever pulled on Bible-believing Christians. If the average American decides for or against this version based on Credentialism, who wins?

Criticism of the Bible

Writing on “Criticism of the Bible,” James Orr (1844-1913) claims a survey of the subject “will show the legitimacy and indispensableness of a truly scientific criticism, at the same time it warns against the hasty acceptance of speculative and hypothetical constructions.”

“Criticism goes wrong when used recklessly, or under the influence of some dominant theory or prepossession. A chief cause of error in its application to the record of supernatural revelation is the assumption that nothing supernatural can happen. This is the vitiating element in much of the newer criticism, both of the OT and of the NT.”

“Criticism of Scripture is usually divided into what is called ‘lower or textual criticism’ and ‘higher criticism’...the latter—‘higher criticism’—while invaluable as an aid in the domain of Bib. introduction (date, authorship, genuineness, contents, destination, etc.) it manifestly tends to widen out illimitably into regions where exact science cannot follow it, where often, the critic’s imagination is his only law.”

“‘Higher criticism,’ having largely absorbed ‘introduction’ into itself, extends its operations into the textual field, endeavoring to get behind the text of the existing sources, and to show how this ‘grew’ from simpler beginnings to what now is. Here, also, there is a wide opening for arbitrariness.”

“Criticism of the Bible,” (748-753) James Orr, International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Volume II, James Orr, editor. Chicago, IL: The Howard-Severance Company, 1915. pp. 749

Daily Mountain Eagle, September 24, 1913, p. 2

A critic of the sacred book

From “The Progress of Error” by William Cowper

And of all arts sagacious dupes invent,
To cheat themselves and gain the world’s assent,
The worst is–Scripture warp’d from its intent...

A critic on the sacred book should be
Candid and learn’d, dispassionate and free;
Free from the wayward bias bigots feel,
From fancy’s influence, and intemperate zeal...

Whatever shocks or gives the least offence
To virtue, delicacy, truth, or sense
(Try the criterion, ’tis a faithful guide),
Nor has, nor can have, Scripture on its side.

The Trail of Blood

Just recently read a recommendation of J. M. Carroll’s The Trail of Blood. It reminded of some thoughts I have had on the booklet, which I see I have never included at “Seeking the Old Paths.”

James Milton Carroll (January 8, 1852 – January 10, 1931) was born in Monticello, Arkansas, the son of Benajah and Mary Eliza Carroll. His father was a Baptist preacher. So was his better-known older brother, Benajah Harvey (B. H.) Carroll.

J. M. Carroll was a Baptist pastor, author, and educator. He was an amateur ornithologist, and reputedly owned one of the largest collections of bird eggs in the state of Texas. Carroll founded the Education Commission of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. He was a founder and the first president of San Marcos Baptist Academy. He served as president of both Oklahoma Baptist University and Howard Payne University.

In addition to his well-known book The Trail of Blood,[i] he compiled several other books, including Texas Baptist Statistics (1896), A History of Texas Baptists, B. H. Carroll, The Colossus of Baptist History, The Eternal Safety and Security of all Blood Bought Believers, and Just Such a Time: Recollections of Childhood on the Texas Frontier, 1858-1867. Carroll died in Fort Worth, Texas, and is buried at the San Jose Burial Park in San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas.

The Trail of Blood is neither “academic” nor comprehensive. It is a book for the Baptist people; a booklet to put iron in Baptist blood. The booklet is a compilation of notes of five lectures that J. M. Carroll gave on church history. J. W. Porter encouraged Carroll to prepare a manuscript for publication. He died before the book was produced, and Porter brought it out after his death. (However, letters between Carroll and the Baptist Sunday School Board indicate that he sought to have them print it several years prior to this. See, “The Dead End Trail,” Harrison, pp. 58-62.)

The thesis of The Trail of Blood is that there has been a continuation of biblical teachings and a succession of biblical churches from the time of Christ to the present. J. M. Carroll believes this succession was always Baptist in principle, if not in name.[ii] These churches stood outside of the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches, refused to accept their legitimacy in either faith or practice, rejected infant baptism, and practiced believers’ baptism by immersion.[iii]

In modern times, The Trail of Blood has become something of a “whipping boy” for those who deny the premise that Baptists (or baptistic churches) existed in all ages from the time of the New Testament. James Edward McGoldrick produced a book titled Baptist Successionism, somewhat of a response to Carroll’s work. He writes:

Since The Trail of Blood appears to remain the most widely circulated expression of the successionist interpretation, this study will, with the exception of the Bogomils and the intriguing question about St. Patrick, be confined to those sects cited by Carroll. (pp. 3-4)

To date [1994] no one has produced a point-by-point reply to The Trail of Blood... (p. 149)

Since the time of McGoldrick’s work, there are a number of internet refutations of The Trail of Blood.[iv]

It is much easier to critique a little booklet of 50 or so pages than to take on critiquing Joseph Ivimey’s 4-volume A History of the English Baptists; the almost 600-page Baptist History: From the Foundations of the Christian Church to the Close of the Eighteenth Century, by John Mockett Cramp, President of Acadia College, Wolfville, Nova Scotia; the two-volume A History of the Baptists, by John Tyler Christian, Professor of Church History at the Baptist Bible Institute, New Orleans, Louisiana (later renamed the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary); or any of the large new works on Baptist perpetuity.

The Trail of Blood is a little booklet with which I have been familiar for as long as I can remember. At times in the past, I have included it in packets given to new church members. On the one hand, I believe Carroll errs in identifying some groups as Baptists or baptistic when they cannot be positively demonstrated as such. Some of this history is shrouded in too much mystery to determine at this late date whether all of these anabaptist anti-paedobaptist groups were most assuredly Baptist in faith and practice.[v] Curiously, however, those quickest to condemn Carroll for identifying heretical groups as Baptists are often those who will reject almost no modern Baptists as heretics (and therefore not Baptist), whatever freakish things they believe. I guess it is only heretics of the past who can’t be Baptists, and not those we know to be heretics in the present!

On the other hand, even if Carroll may have misidentified some, he got others right. While some may suffer in our eyes because of insufficient evidence, there is sufficient evidence to identify them as persecuted and despised. I believe there is merit in remembering that Christians who simply tried to follow the principles of the Bible (whether Baptist or not) often left a “trail of (a lot of) blood” let by their persecutors who held the power of state.[vi]

One final point and I close. J. M. Carroll was an ecclesiological “Landmarker.” Nevertheless, the position of Carroll on Baptist succession is not solely a Landmark view, as some modern anti-Landmarkers would attempt to pigeonhole it. It has been held by many Baptists, including non-Landmarker Charles Spurgeon and anti-Landmarker R. B. C. Howell. It was once the dominant Baptist historical view before the modern critical views of the late times. That in itself does not make it right, no more than the current dominant English Separtist view’s majority status makes it right. It does indicate, however, it is not merely a “Landmark” view of Baptist history.

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[i] The full title is The Trail of Blood, Following the Christians Down through the Centuries. The History of Baptist Churches from the Time of Christ, Their Founder, to the Present Day. Note this especially in reference to those who claim that Landmarkers believe John the Baptist started the church. Carroll calls Jesus Christ Their Founder.
[ii] I agree with the doctrine of church perpetuity, church successionism, or “Baptists in all ages.” I believe Jesus promised to build and be with his church and has kept that promise through the ages of time to the present. I love history, and I love the Lord’s churches. However, I think the “trail of faith,” often identified by the “trail of blood” those of that faith left, is not historically demonstrable at all times from the first century to today. Sometimes the stream flows underground, so to speak, moving forward and onward, while not visible to the human historians’ eyes. As a doctrine, church perpetuity stands or falls on the infallible word of God rather than the fallible record of human historians.
[iii] In his introduction to The Trail of Blood, Clarence Walker noted that Carroll’s research for the truth “led him into many places and enabled him to gather one of the greatest libraries on church history. This library was given at his death to the Southwestern Baptist Seminary, Ft. Worth, Texas.”
[iv] A Primer on Baptist History: The True Baptist Trail, by Chris Traffanstedt is apparently considered one of the primary online answers to The Trail of Blood. The Cardinal Stanislaus Hosius Baptist succession quote has been regularly dismissed as illegitimate. However, pastor historian Thomas Ross has discovered the source of this quote. He has written about it HERE and HERE. Even though The Trail of Blood is just a popular work, because of its great popularity as well as its voluminous critiques, there is need for an annotated edition; it could correct citations, add citations, and acknowledge where there are citations that cannot be substantiated.
[v] I just read a “refutation” of Carroll in which a Greek Orthodox “proves” that most of Carroll’s succession groups were Gnostics. Intriguingly, though, in doing so he admits the existence of one group (the Waldensians) that held views “like those of baptists today” and then acknowledges them back to the 4th century and up to the 16th century, when he mentions the rise of the Anabaptists, whose views are “similar to the baptist views now.” While he falls short of admitting these are direct predecessors of the Baptists, he nevertheless shows that a Baptist succession would not necessarily even need, at least after the 4th century forward, any of the groups that he identifies as Gnostics! (In mentioning that this writer views Montanists, Donatists, Paulicians, etc., as Gnostics, I am not admitting he is right. I have found this history too mixed up to sort it out, and do not agree that this writer has done so either.)
[vi] Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and van Braght’s Martyr’s Mirror demonstrate this point in great detail.

Give me my Model T

Dan Wallace speaks of King James Bible advocates “clinging to...an outmoded translation which, though a literary monument in its day, is now like a Model T on the Autobahn.” No great surprise then, when we see some graduates of DTS come out with an attitude of superiority and an anti-KJV mindset.

Criticizing Professor Wallace

Twenty-six years ago Professor Daniel Wallace from Dallas Theological Seminary wrote the essay, “Inspiration, Preservation, and New Testament Textual Criticism”. In the following blog posts, Kent Brandenburg responds in the following blog posts.

• Criticizing Professor Wallace part one
• Criticizing Professor Wallace part two
• Criticizing Professor Wallace part three
• Criticizing Professor Wallace part four

Linking here since they are related to my topic under discussion.

Don't be too critical

[I don't remember when I first heard the following story (I want to think it was related about or by D. L. Moody), but I've always liked it. I relate it as I remember it, which may not be exactly how I heard it. If anyone knows the origin of the story, I'd be glad to know. Thanks.]

An old preacher traveling by train was trying to sleep, but a young man had a baby with him that was constantly crying. The preacher said to the father, "Why don't you get that baby to shut up. Take it to its mother!" The man with the baby replied, "I would, but she's in a casket in the cargo car. We are going home to bury her." The preacher was struck with his own selfishness and insensitivity, however unintended. He sat down and said, "I've raised several kids; let me take the baby." And as the tired father fell asleep, the preacher walked the baby up and down the car and sang lullabies. 

Don't criticize until you see the big picture -- know the whole story. Things are not always what they appear to be. (We often never know the whole story, so perhaps we should generally crucify the critical spirit).