What is a Ruckmanite?

Anyone who engages in the Bible Versions debates will become familiar with the name of Peter S. Ruckman. Some elevate him as a demigod and others despise him as the devil. My opinion about him can be found here: The King James Bible and Peter Ruckman.

Because Ruckman is such a lightning rod, it has become a popular tactic to identify a King James Bible supporter as a “Ruckmanite.”[i]

What is a Ruckmanite?

Is there a standard definition that is useful and consistent when using the term “Ruckmanite”? Here are three explanations I found online, with one being very broad, and the other two relatively close.

• A Ruckmanite is one who follows the teachings (or most of the teachings) of Peter Ruckman and defend his divorces and cursing and such.
• A Ruckmanite is anyone who is King James Version Only.
• A Ruckmanite position is one that is hyper-dispensationalism (e.g., OT saints saved by works, etc.) and hyper-KJVOism (advanced revelation, KJV corrects the Greek and Hebrew, foreign language Bible should be translated from the KJV, etc.).[ii]

Valid or not, like the wording or not, these represent explanations that I found online. I think the term “Ruckmanite” gets used in all three of those ways. Based on the comments I have read in Facebook discussion groups and elsewhere, the terminology “Ruckmanite” is undefined (i.e., it has no standard and easily recognized meaning). It means anything and everything – whatever the person using it wants it to mean. It is not worth much other than as a pejorative. (It really fits the modern secular divide-and-conquer methodology.) Calling a KJV supporter a “Ruckmanite” is the equivalent of calling a person a racist, Nazi, and such like .The term is not very useful beyond that, and should be avoided.

Is there a proper, standard, and consistent way to define a “Ruckmanite”? What are your thoughts?

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[i] -ite is a suffix of nouns denoting especially persons associated with a place, tribe, leader, doctrine, system, etc. (for example, Campbellite; Canaanite; Hittite; Israelite).
[ii] When Peter Ruckman speaks against hyper-dispensationalism, I think he means the view that starts the church mid-Acts or later. On the other hand, those using it in reference to Peter Ruckman are pointing out his teaching of different ways of salvation in different dispensations.

In other words, some isms

• Adoptionism, noun. A (heretical) theological teaching within Christianity that holds that Jesus Christ was essentially nondivine, but that he was adopted by God the Father (e.g., at his birth, or at his baptism).
• Bibliophilism, or Bibliophilia noun. The love of books.
• Complementarianism, noun. The religious view that men and women are equal in value before God but that their God-given roles in the family and the church are distinct (e.g., that some governing and teaching roles in the church are reserved only for men).
• Credentialism, noun. Undue emphasis on credentials (such as college degrees) as prerequisites to employment or promotion; Excessive trusting credentials in deciding what is correct or incorrect.
• Egalitarianism, noun. The religious view that men and women are equal before God and that any and all the functions and roles in the church are open to men and women alike.
• Exorcism, noun. The religious or spiritual practice of evicting demons and/or other malevolent spiritual entities from a person or place.
• Experientialism, or experimentalism, noun. The doctrine or teaching that all our knowledge has its origin in experience, and must submit to the test of experience; the practice of relying on experimentation empiricism, or empirical evidence.
• Mormonism, noun. A religion that originated with Joseph Smith in the United States in the 19th century, with teachings based on the Bible, the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price; more formally known as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
• Open theism, noun. A movement that denies the historic Christian view of God’s omniscience; a teaching that God does not know the future exhaustively, because he cannot know for certain the choices and actions of free moral agents.
• Pacificism, noun. The belief or teaching that peaceful relations should govern human intercourse and that methods such as arbitration, surrender, or migration should be used to resolve disputes; the rejection of all forms of warfare.
• Presentism, noun. Interpreting the past or past phenomena in terms of current attitudes and experience; the belief that only current phenomena are relevant.
• Presuppositionalism, or presuppositional apologetics, noun. An approach to apologetics that starts with the foundational axioms of the existence of God and his divine revelation given in Scripture.
• Schism, noun. A separation or division into factions; in Christianity, a formal breach of union within a religious body.
• Unitarianism, noun. A theological view that there is only one God (that is, as opposed to a Trinity) and that Jesus Christ was not divine, at least not in any literal sense.
• Yahwehism, noun. The modern movement to replace Jehovah as the name of God with Yahweh as the name of God.

In other (theological) words

• adiaphora, noun. Actions or beliefs which are neither commanded nor forbidden in scripture; theological or moral issues of which scripture does not speak definitively.
• Apollinarianism, noun. A 4th-century Christological teaching (by Apollinaris of Laodicea) that Christ had a human body and a human soul, but not human mind.
• apophatic theology, noun. A method or way of describing God by saying what he is not (also called via negationis, by or through denial, negation).
• Ausgangstext, noun. The initial or earliest source text of the Scriptures; the one ancestor of all the extant Greek copies (nor or not necessarily the autographa).
• decretive will, noun. A sovereign and efficacious will by which God brings to pass whatever he pleases by his divine decree; the plan of God which contains everything he has determined to bring to pass (also called sovereign will or secret will).
• ecclesiology, noun. The branch of theology that investigates what scripture teaches about the church or assemblies of Christ.
• eschatology, noun. The branch of theology that investigates what scripture teaches about final things (or last things, e.g., the return of Christ, the millennial kingdom, the final judgment).
• Eutychianism (or monophysitism), noun. A 5th-century Christological teaching (by Eutyches of Constantinople) that Christ had only one nature, a nature that was a mixture of divine and human nature that resulted in a third kind of nature.
• Frankentext (or Franken-text), noun. Reconstructed textual readings which can be found in no extant manuscripts; – textual units (e.g., a verse) of the Greek New Testament that cannot be found in any extant Greek manuscript (portmanteau of Frankenstein and text).
• Nestorianism, noun. A Christological teaching (identified with Nestorius) that taught that Jesus was two distinct persons, a human person and a divine person.
• norma normans non normata (or norma normans), noun. (Latin: the norm of norms that is not normed) The one standard which has no higher standard; a description of Scripture as the standard by which all other standards or rules of the Christian faith are measured.
• pactum salutis, noun. (Latin: salvation agreement) An agreement or covenant made in eternity past among the three persons of the Trinity to save a people (also called the covenant of redemption).
• perichoresis, noun. A theological term, derived from the Greek, used to express the intimate union of the three persons in the Trinity as they mutually indwell or interpenetrate each other.
• pneumatology, noun. The branch of theology that investigates what scripture teaches about the person and work of the Holy Spirit.
• preceptive will, noun. The will of God as related to his revealed law or commandments; what God has declared that we should do (also called revealed will).
• scariant, noun. Any textual variant that people are very worried (portmanteau of scary and variant).
• smudge, noun. A stain, fingerprint, drip, or other found splotch in/on a manuscript.
• soteriology. noun. The branch of theology that investigates what scripture teaches about salvation.
• worldview, noun. The overall perspective from which one sees and interprets the world; a network of ultimate beliefs, assumptions, values, and ideas about the universe and our place in it, held by an individual or a group.

Hyper…ism

In religious speak, various views are often labeled some type of “hyper-ism” – Hyper-Calvinism, Hyper-Dispensationalism, Hyper-Arminianism, and so on.[i] 

“Hyper…ism” can be a useful description. The English prefix “hyper” means excess or exaggeration. It comes from the Greek ὑπέρ (huper), which means over or above. Some belief systems go “over and above” what is normally described by certain theological terms, such as Calvinism or Dispensationalism. A “hyper” belief may take some point of a particular theology to excess. Hyper-Calvinism probably most generally and historically describes a view that says it is unbiblical to exhort someone to repent and believe the gospel unless the preacher has some evidence that the person so exhorted is one of God’s elect.[ii] Hyper-Dispensationalism normally describes a belief that the church age or New Testament age does not begin until sometime in the middle of the book of Acts or later. This can get really confusing because some people divide these “hyper” views into “Hyper-Dispensationalism” (church begins Mid-Acts, e.g., Acts 9 or Acts 13) and “Ultra-Dispensationalism” (church begins in Acts 28 or later).

“Hyper…ism” can be an unhelpful description, because it often has no set meaning. The meaning often is determined by its distance from or relation to the speaker or writer using the term. For example, some non-Calvinists may speak of any type of Calvinism as “Hyper-Calvinism.” A non-dispensationalist may speak of any kind of dispensationalism as “Hyper-Dispensationalism.” Such uses are usually pejorative and polemic. It is also problematic because such a description is usually used about or against someone rather than it being how a person or group describes themselves. In other words, a church or denomination will not likely say, “Oh, yes, of course we are ‘hyper…ists.” They see their view as correct, not hyper. “Hyper…ism” is describing by comparison and according to the extreme, whether correctly or not.

When used for the better, a “hyper” issue is an overemphasis on a part of the Bible or theological teaching while disregarding a corresponding part of the Bible or theological teaching. The terminology exists and cannot be avoided. Nevertheless, it is probably best used sparingly, and when using it we should carefully define what we mean.

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[i] “Hyper-Arminianism” seems never to have gained much traction, though sometimes it might be applied to Easy-Believism, Pelagianism, Open Theism, and such like.

[ii] Additionally, one must deal with “High Calvinism” and “Low Calvinism.”

Defining Confessional Terms

I’ll just sit this here.

Authoritas Divina Duplex: “twofold divine authority; a distinction between (1) the authoritas rerum, or authority of the things of Scripture, the substantia doctrinae (substance of doctrine); and (2) the authroitas verborum, or authority of the words of Scripture arising from the accidens scriptionis, the accident of writing.”

“The authority of the substantia, or res, is a formal, inward authority that belongs both to the text of Scripture in the original languages and to the accurate translations of scripture. The authoritas verborum is an external and accidental authority that belongs only to the text in the original languages and is a property or accident lost in translation. Thus the infallibilitas of the originals is both quoad verbum and quoad res, where as the infallibilitas of the translations in only quoad res.”

Textus Receptus: “Textus Receptus: the Received Text; i.e., the standard Greek text of the New Testament published by Erasmus (1516) and virtually contemporaneously by Ximenes (the Complutensian Polyglot, printed in 1514 but not circulated [i.e., published] until 1522), and subsequently reissued with only slight emendation by Stephanus (1550), Beza (1565), and Elzevir (1633).”

“The term was adopted as a standard usage only after the period of orthodoxy, although it does refer to the text supported by the Protestant scholastics as the authentic text quoad verba, with respect to the words of the text.”

Richard Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2017