Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Christianity

  • Francis S. Collins on Religion and Evolution

    Courtesy of the Florida Citizens for Science blog, I found this article on Francis S. Collins, an evangelical Christian who sees no incompatibility between religion and science, including acceptance of evolution. The article can be found at Relgion Today (HeraldToday.com).

    I could add little to what Dr. Collins had to say. I came at the question from the other end, starting from a religious point of view and looking for compatibility with science.

    I do believe that the expectation that people reject evolutionary theory, which is supported by overwhelming evidence as Dr. Collins says, puts a stumbling block in the path of well-educated people who are considering the gospel message. Dr. Collins provides a good response to that problem.

    While I want consensus science, and that means evolutionary theory, taught in the public school classrooms of this state, I believe Christians should regard the “how” of creation as a non-essential, one that can be debated openly in the church without accusations of heresy.

  • Is It About Mel Gibson?

    I’m not an early responder to stories, especially when there’s still a question as to precisely what happened. But this one has gotten pretty clear, and I think there are some things that need to be said. Before I do that, however, as a starting point, you might try looking at this: Arresting deputy didn’t want to ‘defame’ Gibson (AP news story via MSNBC). This brings up the simple question of whether celebrities are treated differently than ordinary people. Of course they are. The situation is different. If I got arrested for drunk driving (as a teatotaller, that’s unlikely) only a few people would be interested. No reporters would camp outside the police station, and nobody inside would be particularly interested in protecting my good name. For the contrast, behold Mel Gibson.

    But that’s an old story, repeated in the case of one celebrity after another. So I move on to what I think is a more important story–Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitic remarks, and their relationship to The Passion of the Christ (the movie) and the passion of Jesus (the historical event). In all the debate over the historical Jesus, the movie, and anti-Semitism in connection with both, I think many important things have been left unsaid and undone.

    (more…)

  • How to Waste $25 Million

    A $25 million creation museum is under construction in rural Kentucky, with the intention of challenging the scientific consensus view of origins. MSNBC tells us about it in a story titled High-tech museum brings creationism to life. They quote Ken Ham, of Answers in Genesis saying,

    “If the Bible is the word of God, and its history really is true, that’s our presupposition or axiom, and we are starting there,

  • Suzanne McCarthy on Complementarianism

    Suzanne McCarthy has been blogging on complementarianism over on the Better Bibles Blog. I have been following her posts with interest, and I would like to commend them to my readers. The entries to date are: Modes of Communication I, Modes of Communication II, Modes of Communication III. Suzanne obviously doesn’t subscribe to the “snazzy but inaccurate title” school of thought–just tell them what you’re talking about. 🙂

    I’ve written about this topic a few times myself, largely out of my frustration with the number of women I see in the church who are gifted and called from my observations and yet are not being used to their full potential. Even amongst those who claim to affirm leadership roles for women in the church there is often an inertia, or perhaps a sort of default that suggests that women must be exceptional to be in leadership.

    What Suzanne has done in these last several entries is point out some of the inconsistencies in how one applies the complementarian position, and I think she makes some good points. I’m not sure I’m going to get the time or the tolerance any time soon to read her complementarian source material.

    Nonetheless, it seems to me that the key here is that the wrong principles are being used. We’re setting up the category of “women” as a spiritual entity, with a prescribed set of spiritual roles. That ignores the reality that while women and men are truly different–and I’m not egalitarian in the sense of saying women and men are somehow interchangeable!–women differ from women and men differ from men as well.

    The principle I would suggest is that we observe both the men and the women, as well as our children and young people, and simply choose for leadership roles those whom God has gifted for those roles. If we do so honestly, I think we will find that God is, in fact, calling many women to leadership and wonderfully gifting them for it.

    When we ignore the call and gifts of God, we’re putting God in a box and we are a barrier to the building of the kingdom. Let’s not do that!

  • Working in your Call

    And YHWH spoke to the fish, and it spit Jonah up on dry land.
    Then YHWH’s word came to Jonah a second time, saying, “Get up! Go to Nineveh! . . . ” — Jonah 2:11-3:2a

    I knew a man who almost got a law degree, but dropped out during the last year of law school. He was incredibly intelligent and creative. He could have done many things. His parents thought a law degree was a good idea so that he could make money and have a respectable profession. Once he dropped out of law school he lived a life of frustration, always “almost getting there” with the things he really wanted to do.

    In secular life and in the church, you can create a life of frustration for yourself by not doing what it is that you’re actually called and gifted to do, something that usually corresponds to what you want to do deep down in your heart. I’m not talking about that desire to go fishing, or to spend your life on the beach and get someone to pay for it, but your genuine desire the accomplish something with your life.

    Too often, the people who are already out there, living their own frustrating lives, take out their frustration on the next generation by telling them that their goals and their dreams are somehow not respectable enough or important enough. We tell the talented musicians, artists, and actors that the church really needs pastors, secretaries, and administrators, and if they want to earn enough money and make it in the world, they need to be doctors, lawyers, or nurses. Sometimes instead we point them to easier paths than they would choose, because we think they can’t make it.

    I don’t mean we don’t need to encourage our young people to count the cost and decide on a realistic basis what they really want to do. I do mean is that we need to let people look inside themselves, listen to God, and choose where it is that they can really be fulfilled and can really make a contribution that counts eternally.

    As a Christian and member of the United Methodist Church, I believe I see this in our church structure. We are overwhelmingly focussed on the offices of the church and church staff positions that are aimed at maintaining what we already have. If we want to see revival in the United Methodist Church, and in the broader Church we need to start recognizing roles other than pastors and our standard staff. We need to have career paths for evangelists, teachers, apostles, and prophets, the other four from the traditional five-fold ministry. But that’s not enough. We also need paths for artists, dramatists, multimedia experts, and internet specialists.

    And when we have all those paths open, we must encourage people to find their call and follow it, and gear up the church membership to support it financially and with their time.

    Business as usual isn’t working now, and it’s not going to start working. For the church to answer God’s call we need members who answer God’s call. We need to let God out of the box, get out of our box, and be ready to affirm and empower others as they apply and share the gospel in the 21st century.

    Avoid the frustration! Get with God’s program!

  • Professional Arrogance

    Over on Locusts and Honey, John has a post On the Dangers of Being a Professional Wiseman, that I think should be read by everyone involved in pastoring, spiritual formation, professional counselling, or even just prayer ministry.

    The temptation to believe that because one has certain professional training, experience, ordination, licensure, or any one of many professional rites of passage is with us all. I know I don’t have that good of insight into other people, and yet the temptation is there to have the answer without taking the time to get to know the person. That makes me wonder about the temptation level for those who are gifted with insight. The call to go beyond one’s knowledge and wisdom and just solve the problem must be incredible. Time factors get involved as well, and that’s especially dangerous with spiritual formation.

    In any case John has given us all some things to think about.

  • Honoring God with your Mind

    I’m going to write today about a neglected part of God’s creation–the human mind. It is a wonderful element of creation, one that has provoked some of the most profound philosophical and scientific writing. No, I don’t mean merely that people think with their minds and then write philosophy and science. I’m referring to writing about how the mind evolved, how it functions, what consciousness actually is, and why the mind malfunctions from time to time. Those are all interesting topics.

    My topic, however, is how Christians can choose to honor God with their minds, and why they should. (I’m addressing Christians because that’s my own faith group, not to imply that other people cannot honor God with their minds.) Sometimes it seems that every element of our faith is used against the human mind instead of in cooperation with it.

    1. Our saving faith is sometimes seen as a termination of our ethical decision making
    2. Dependence on God is often seen as dependence on him solely in a supernatural sense, what God can do for you miraculously, but not in the natural sense
    3. The inspiration of the scriptures is seen as bypassing the people involved, whether, prophets, secretaries, or readers
    4. The church offices, especially those of teacher and prophet, are seen as bypassing good thinking
    5. Laziness replaces the hard work of good thinking, as when we accept something just because we saw it in a book, and it was written by someone holy
    6. An appearance of piety can replace wisdom. When someone announces–“God said it, I believe it, that settles it!”–without being certain that God says it, that bypasses the human mind.

    It would seem that simply from observation and logic we could discover that God wants us to use our minds. He provided them. They are necessary to our survival. Even if we didn’t have scriptural statements to confirm this, it is pretty obvious from nature. But we do, in fact, have scriptural confirmation.

    How long, simple-minded folks, will you love being simple?
    How long will scoffers delight in scoffing?
    And fools hate knowledge? — Proverbs 1:22

    Now I could spend my time listing texts that back this up further, texts that talk about thinking, wisdom, using our minds, and our choice. They are a strong theme in scripture. But I’m going to assume you either know or can find the texts. I’d just like to call your attention to two texts. The first is from the words of Jesus.

    15Watch out for false prophets, who come to you dressed like sheep, but inside they are ravenous wolves. 16It’s by their fruit that you’ll recognize them. 17People don’t gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles, do they? 18A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. 19That’s why you will recognize them by their fruit. — Matthew 7:15-19

    This is a sentiment that Paul repeats in Galatians:

    7Don’t be deceived! God won’t be mocked! Whatever a person plants is what he’ll harvest! — Galatians 6:7

    These two texts make it clear that God has not abrogated the law of cause and effect in his kingdom. The law of cause and effect is one that is basic to human thinking. It’s clear that God wants you to think about the consequences of your own actions, not to mention the words and actions of others. What people think, what they say, and what they do does have consequences. (I discuss choice and the kingdom in the pamphlet Seven Kingdom Principles of Choice, and its relationship to salvation in my essay A Fruitful Faith. I believe that the twin principles of choice and fruit operate throughout the kingdom of God.)

    So how can one honor God with one’s mind? Primarily by using it!

    Our saving faith is sometimes seen as a termination of our ethical decision making

    Some may have wondered about this first point in my list of excuses above. Aren’t we saved by grace? Are we not to accept salvation as a gift? Indeed we are. But Paul noted the same problem I’m noting. My point is certainly not original with me–it’s Biblical! Paul uses most of Galatians 5 and the first several verses of Galatians 6 dealing with the possibility that some would take their salvation as permission to sin. He makes it clear that’s the point. I think the best antidote to this type of thinking is for us not to think of salvation merely as a ticket to heaven, but as spiritual healing. When we think of it like that, we might find the question rather silly. If the doctor provides you with a cure for your disease, and does not charge you (a true miracle, I know), you have received the free gift of healing. But if you go home and say, “I want the disease, I’m going to get it back,” you may well be able to make yourself sick again. You can’t then complain to the doctor that his free gift failed. You set his gift aside.

    Christians sometimes depend on Jesus to save them from sin, while at the same time they indulge themselves in destructive behavior. I’ve been working on a paraphrase or representation of the story of Susanna (Daniel 13, from the apocrypha) for my literature and fiction blog, The Jevlir Caravansary. Update: The article is now completed, Susanna: A Transformation. What struck me as I read that story is that the elders who falsely accuse Susanna do everything possible to lead themselves into sin and eventual destruction. They dwell on their temptation. They hide the fact that they are being tempted. They get as close to sin as they can. When eventually they are caught, everything that follows is inevitable. Christians are often like that. “Why won’t God free me from my addictions?” someone asks, at the same time sitting with the object of his addiction readily available. Grace opens the door, grace makes it all possible, but no number of gifts will make you rich if you throw them all away.

    Dependence on God is often seen as dependence on him solely in a supernatural sense, what God can do for you miraculously, but not in the natural sense

    In my second point I mention depending on God only supernaturally. The problem here is that Christians take actions that will bear one form of fruit while expecting God’s supernatural intervention to produce other results. I am not denying miracles, or asking anyone not to pray for them. I pray for God’s power and God’s action myself. But I also know from scripture that God normally folllows the simple law of planting and harvesting, or as Jesus said, of bearing fruit.

    God’s supernatural power is not there to provide you with a license to ignore God’s laws, whether moral or natural laws written in the fabric of the universe.

    The inspiration of the scriptures is seen as bypassing the people involved, whether, prophets, secretaries, or readers

    This laziness is generally manifested when people simply use “God said” for anything in the Bible. There are portions of the Bible that are identified as the words of God, but there are also large portions which are not. I have even heard Job’s friends quoted as what “God said,” and they are soundly condemned by God right in scripture. It takes more work to find out what God is doing when he acts in history or in our own lives than it is simply to find a phrase that says what we want it to, and then to quote it, but it also means that very often we are ignoring what God actually meant, while taking on the appearance of affirming his word.

    The church offices, especially those of teacher and prophet, are seen as bypassing good thinking

    God put prophets and teachers in the church for a purpose–to help bring his word to the people. I’m going to be brief about this, but it’s very important! Please think about it! Now that we can all enter the sanctuary with confidence (Hebrews 10:19), we have as our goal getting everyone to approach God for themselves. The goal is not to teach people to accept what we, as teachers, prophets, or leaders, say, but rather to get them to think for themselves, and to listen to God for themselves.

    For the individual, the goal is to approach God individually, and not to depend on the teacher, preacher, or even prophet. It may be harder, but it’s the right goal.

    Laziness replaces the hard work of good thinking, as when we accept something just because we saw it in a book, and it was written by someone holy

    This is the printed version of the previous point. Some people think that just because it’s in a book it must be true. Many who know that one can’t trust it just because it’s in print, will trust it because it’s in print written by someone well known. But I have a secret (not really!) to tell you. There are plenty of Christian books in print that contain misinformation. I’m not talking about differences of opinion–I’m talking about things that people from many different perspectives could agree were just factually wrong. I find, for example, that a distressingly large number of “insights” brought from Greek or Hebrew in popular books are simply wrong, while many others are at least misleading because they don’t have the proper context.

    When you get information from a book, you need to check references, and then you need to assure yourself that the references themselves are reliable. There are some facts making the rounds in Christian books that have simply been quoted so many times that everyone “knows” they are right, but nobody knows precisely where those facts came from. You need to check back to a primary source–the person who actually observed and recorded the data in the first place–whenever possible.

    You are responsible for planting seeds in your mind. You are the one who is going to bear the fruit. You need to honor God with your mind by looking up the information.

    An appearance of piety can replace wisdom. When someone announces–“God said it, I believe it, that settles it!”–without being certain that God says it, that bypasses the human mind.

    It’s easy to dishonor God while sounding extremely pious. I cannot count the number of times I have heard someone say, “I’m just doing what the Bible says,” or “That is just God’s word!” when they are not, in fact, correctly quoting the material or are taking it badly out of context. (For some help with context, see my essay Understanding Context.) What God says for a specific situation should settle it, but what God says and what people say God says may well be two very different things.

    Always remember: You will harvest what you plant, and you are the one who chooses what to plant!

  • Mission and Prosperity

    In God’s economy, there is never prosperity without mission.

    I’ve been thinking about this in the last few days in connection with a number of issues, and I think it is a scriptural principle. I think you can replace “prosperity” with other terms of blessing, such as peace, joy, and fulfilment. This is where, in my opinion, modern prosperity preachers are missing the point. It’s not that they don’t mention mission, it’s that they put prosperity in the first place, and then mission follows after. I believe God puts mission first.

    Is this Biblical? Let’s look at a few examples.

    Many of my friends frequently remind me to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” (Psalm 122:6). Now I don’t want to diminish in any way the need to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. But there is some baggage that comes along here. Read the rest of Psalm 122. You will find there a call for worship, a call for obedience, a call to carry out justice, and the call for prayer itself is aimed directly at the house of God and the presence of God. Mission is implicit throughout the passage. This is not an either/or situation. The peace of Jerusalem does not occur in scripture without justice and righteousness in Jerusalem.

    But as gentile Christians, we need to look just a little further out. This Psalm calls upon us to preserve centers of worship, to be glad to go into the presence of God, and to aim our prayers in that direction. Don’t miss the physical Jerusalem over in Israel, but don’t miss the presence of God here and now either.

    A friend once told me that praying for Jerusalem was a way to get a cheap blessing. But I don’t think there is such a thing as cheap blessing. The blessing has to go with commitment. A friend of mine passed a way a couple of years ago. She was a friend of Israel, and definitely prayed for the peace of Jerusalem. One time when she returned from Israel she came back with a new understanding and sympathy for the Palestinians as well. Her love of Israel was undiminished, but God had made a place in her heart for someone more. I could sense the blessing and the anointing that resulted from that growth. Her prayers were not cheap prayers, nor were they a means to an end. She not only prayed for the peace of Jerusalem, she invested heart and soul, time and money in it.

    Some may think the mission in Psalm 122, as clearly as I see it, is not so clear. Let’s look at a couple more passages from the time of the exile. Isaiah announced:

    ?6? I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness,
    I have taken you by the hand and kept you;
    I have given you as a covenant to the people,?a?
    a light to the nations,
    ?7? to open the eyes that are blind,
    to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
    from the prison those who sit in darkness.
    ?8? I am the Lord, that is my name;
    my glory I give to no other,
    nor my praise to idols.
    ?9? See, the former things have come to pass,
    and new things I now declare;
    before they spring forth,
    I tell you of them.

    Isaiah 42:6 (NRSV)

    Note the call and the covenant are brought in a context of mission. God affirmed the same thing through Ezekiel when he said:

    Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. — Ezekiel 36:22

    I commend all of Ezekiel 36 to you to read.

    But why should this be at all surprising? The concept goes back to Abraham who is told that God will bless him and that he will be a blessing. From that first call, blessing came with mission, and mission was the focus of blessing.

    Jesus expressed the same concept when he said:

    First look for God’s kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. — Matthew 6:33

    Notice the focus! Mission is at the center, and “all these things” follow from mission.

    If you are praying for peace, prosperity, joy, or any blessing, and feel that you are not receiving it, perhaps you need to consider two possibilities. First, God may be working on you, preparing you for mission. With him, the kingdom comes first. But second, it may be possible that you haven’t gotten the mission, you haven’t gotten the vision, and thus the blessings can’t follow. God isn’t going to give you the blessings of a great and powerful mission for you to hoard.

    Get the mission, catch the vision, the blessings follow.

  • KJV Only: Anatomy of an Argument

    Recently I’ve talked a fair amount about using numbers as a means to dress up lies and make them look more respectable. I even discussed the issue in a Sunday School class I was invited to teach last Sunday, using the various ways in which grocery (or any) prices and sales can be stated and how those various ways can be used to deceive the consumer into buying something more expensive while thinking he’s getting a bargain.

    (As an exercise, if you’re not sure you understand this idea, make a list of all the ways in which prices and specials on particular items are stated. Your list should include things like 1/2 off, 20% off, $x.xx off, 2 for the price of one, buy one/get one free, and so forth. Then think about how these numbers might be used to make the price of any particular item look better. The bottom line is that you have to bring all prices into relation to a single standard by calculating a price per unit, thus comparing the actual value you’re getting. You do have to be careful with the units used as well. I found myself comparing the price on two rolls of packing tape, one was $3.47 for 54 yards, and the other was $2.38 for 60 meters. You should be able to do that one on sight! Now consider that when people present statistical arguments to you, they have more ways even than the grocer does to make the numbers appear the way they want them to, all without actually telling a direct lie.)

    It’s interesting that just as I’m writing about numbers, I get an e-mail in response to my Bible Translations FAQ that brilliantly illustrates precisely the type of misdirection and lying with numbers that I’ve been talking about.

    The e-mail consisted of a text, badly abused, followed by a table of numbers, followed by a paragraph containing his challenge. I’m going to look at the last paragraph first. The correspondent identified himself simply only by his initials, so I’m going to call him C, for correspondent.

    C states:

    So, as you have so aptly put it in some of your responses to others, “Them’s just the facts”.

    Well, no, them’s just the lies, as I will show below. Claiming something is a fact doesn’t make it one.

    Let’s see you include this e-mail to your web site section on “KJV Bible Translations FAQ”;

    I’ll include a link to this blog entry. How’s that?

    if you truely don’t have a hatred for the KJV (as you’ve stated), then you would have no problem presenting the facts as they stand, without your commentary, and let the reader decide for themselves based on the factual evidence!

    My rejection of your arguments has nothing to do with hating the KJV; it has to do with the fact that your “facts” are wrong, and your logic incorrect. You would, of course, like me to post your table without my commentary, because falsehood hates the light. You know that any commentary on your table will show it to have no evidentiary value whatsoever. The only hope you have for such arguments to work is that people who don’t know better will read it quickly and think the numbers and your assurance in presenting them is impressive in themselves. You absolutely can’t afford to have anyone think about your little number table.

    I sure hope this e-mail contains enough “substance” worthy of your response!

    Actually, your argument is simply a repetition of the argument I answered in my Bible Translations FAQ, #12, based on the majority of the manuscripts. The only reason I’m responding to it is because you provide such an excellent example of abuse of numbers in making an argument.

    Concerned for the lost,

    Bluntly, I doubt it. If you were concerned for the lost, you would likely be more interested in the gospel message and less interested in the support of a nearly 400 year old Bible translation that now more often than not stands in the way of people who want to understand the Bible. The KJV Only position is not a position that honors the word of God. It is not “Bible believing.” It is man serving in two ways: First, because it elevates the work of human beings–a translation–into the position of God’s actual word, and second because it serves primarily to support the positions of spiritual power of its advocates over others. It is destructive spiritually and intellectually.

    Now, let’s look at the table:

    The KJV Greek Text Attested by the Evidence

    Manuscripts

    Total

    WH/TR

    %MSS
    WH/TR

    Papyrus

    81(88)

    13/75

    15%/85%

    Uncials

    267

    9/258

    3%/97%

    Cursives

    2764

    23/2741

    1%/99%

    Lectionaries

    2143

    0/2143

    0%/100%

    Totals

    5255

    45/5210

    1%/99%

    Now let’s consider this chart briefly. I’m not going to deal with the actual numbers, though there appear to be some errors there. For example, it is quite doubtful that the editors of the Textus Receptus actually consulted 2143 lectionaries. But even if all of these numbers were correct, the chart as it is would convey a lie. Numbers require a context; they do not have independent meaning. In this case, the numbers are tabulated so as to suggest that many less manuscripts were used in producing the Westcott & Hort text than in producing the Textus Receptus (TR), and the TR is inturn equated to the KJV Greek text. In some way, not stated, this is supposed to convince us that the KJV text is correct.

    No reference is given for these numbers, but one is quite easy to locate. A google search provides us with The Bible Believer’s Baptist web site has their Bible Tidbit #65: Westcott & Hort which is itself a disgusting ad hominem attack, contains such a chart, and they reference it to THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE BIBLE AND CHRISTIANITY without providing further information. This tactic is used by KJV Only advocates to make their arguments look more respectable–after all, the source is an encyclopedia. But a little more checking leads us to the encyclopedia web site, The Way of Life Encyclopedia of the Bible and Christianity. Here we discover of this “encyclopedia” that:

    “It is the only Bible dictionary/encyclopedia that is written by a Fundamental Baptist and based strictly upon the King James Bible.”

    and

    It does not correct the Authorized Version of the Bible . . .

    So it is a KJV Only advocates encyclopedia, giving them a respectable sounding reference for misinformation–and this chart is definitely misinformation.

    Here are the issues with the context and presentation of these numbers:

    1. What does it mean to “use” a manuscript? We are told how many manuscripts were used by the editors of each text, but we are not told what is meant by this. I am not nitpicking here. As an undergraduate, I had to produce a critical text of a passage working solely from available manuscript photocopies and collations. I worked with about a dozen manuscripts, and based on my knowledge of family relationships and so forth was able to produce a reasonably accurate text, certainly better than the TR. Does “use” mean simply to have them around? Does it mean to examine each reading in each one? Do you “use” a manuscript when you reject its reading, or does only acceptance of a reading count as using? Clearly, we don’t know what these numbers represent. This in itself would render the chart useless as evidence. But there’s more.
    2. The TR is equated to the Greek text of the KJV. It would be easy to claim that the two are “close enough” because they are, indeed, very close. And yet we’re dealing here with KJV Only advocates, who believe that any deviation is too much. Thus the equation of the TR is deceptive.
    3. There is an implication that the TR is based on the majority of the manuscripts, and thus is equivalent to the majority text–a text based simply on counting manuscripts. But this too is false. The KJV includes the long text of 1 John 5:7-8, for example, which is definitely a minority reading, and is also definitely a significant variant, and yet a consistent majority text would have to exclude that passage.
    4. Why is the Westcott and Hort text being used in comparison at all? Westcott and Hort advanced knowledge of the Biblical text and were pioneers of modern textual criticism, and yet almost nobody actually uses their text any more. Go to any Christian bookstore, and you will not find any version produced within the last century that uses the Westcott and Hort text. Besides the simple fact that the text criticized is not the one used in preparing modern versions, this particular piece of misdirection prevents people from checking the numbers as easily. The United Bible Societies 4th edition, commonly used as a starting point by modern translators lists 69 lectionaries, for example. Anyone who understands the study of textual criticism will realize that 69 lectionaries is actually a substantial survey, provided these are chosen from different text groups.
    5. Finally, why is it that one should be concerned simply with the number of manuscripts? That is the implication of the chart. It suggests that modern versions are using a minority of manuscripts, and that this practice is bad. But the simple fact is that the more time that passes between the writing of the autograph and the creation of a copy, the more likely it is that manuscript generations have passed. This is not the only criterion in determining which is a better manuscript, but it is a very important one, and one which makes the entire chart completely ridiculous. Manuscripts are not equal, and because of the nature of manuscripts–they decay–the majority of manuscripts are relatively recent. We only have a few manuscripts from the first few centuries of Christian history

    All this chart does is wrap the respectability of numbers around a much repeated lie. If you stop and examine the numbers, and consider what they actually mean, you will find that these “facts” do not convey what their author has dressed them up to convey. That is what you need to do with all deceptive numbers.

  • KJV Nostalgia and Standards

    Suzanne McCarthy, on the Better Bibles Blog has blogged somewhat about nostalgia for the KJV language and for the standard English Bible that was accepted by everyone in a post titled The 1611 King James Text. I like Suzanne’s work, and this is not intended as a critique of her comments, but she collects the various links quite nicely and I’m saving time (and being lazy) by linking to her and you can follow the rest from there. Besides, Better Bibles is a good blog for you to look at anyhow, and I have a list of posts there that I intended to comment on, but haven’t had time. (Hmmm! Having read this again, I want to repeat that nothing here is aimed at Suzanne’s post; I thank her for the convenient references and for her useful comments.)

    I want to examine briefly the key element that most of the nostalgia posts about the KJV have in common, which is the element of moral authority. In the past, the argument goes, there was the KJV which all regarded as a standard, and which was used to settle all arguments. This admirable (to some) state of affairs has now been shattered by the existence of multiple translations so that nobody is sure anymore what the Bible really says.

    This reminds me of a young man who came by our booth at a show where I was displaying my book, What’s in a Version?. His major question, repeated often through about a half an hour of discussion (it was a slow show) was this: “What is your absolute standard? Where do you have a book that you can hold in your hand and say, ‘This is the Word of God’?” What he wanted was something in English, accessible to him, that gave the absolute answers.

    The answer to his question is that no such book exists, no such standard exists, and none has ever existed.

    Previous generations may have been sure that they held the absolute one and only Word of God in their hands when they held their KJVs, and modern KJV only advocates may try to stand in their footprints, but they are both surely wrong! The fact is that even if we had only the KJV to guide us, there would remain substantial differences of interpretation. We might be pointing back at the same book, but we would not be getting the same standard things from it. But that’s not really the issue or the state of affairs.

    • When the autographs were penned, there was no Bible, there was just a collection of scrolls. There was no single book that one could hold and say, “This is the Word of God!”
    • When the New Testament canon was finally collected, the autographs were probably no longer in existence, and certainly not collected into a book. Differences between manuscripts, sometimes substantial, already existed. There was no single book that one could hold and say, “This is the Word of God!”
    • When the New Testament and the Hebrew scriptures (as the Old Testament) were first collected together into books, the version of the Old Testament used was a translation, and one of quite variable quality. There was no single book that one could hold and say, “This is the Word of God!”
    • When the KJV was translated, based on several earlier English versions, there were both numerous translation options in English, and numerous variations in the available manuscripts. There was no single book that one could hold and say, “This is the Word of God!”

    This search for the supposed “standard” in the form of a book is simply a search for security where none is available. There is no great benefit in being sure but wrong, as our ancestors were in regarding the KJV as the one authority. The weakness of that position is demonstrated by the collapse of that position when contrary evidence was discovered. Now there are many who thought that such assurance was available in Christianity give up because they find that it is not available. It was a false trust, and it failed because it was false. There is no benefit in trying to step back towards an imagined standard.

    Let me be blunt. I think the problem here is much the same as the problem with idolatry–we put our trust in something less than God. Stealing from Tillich, we make our ultimate concern the KJV, which is considerable less than ultimate, and thus fall into idolatry.

    In supporting this idolatry, we use the standard arguments of idolatry, which go back at least to Exodus 32. Moses is missing. We don’t know where God is. We need something to hold on to, we need assurance, we need a standard. So we make a calf.

    There is no such standard, indisputable, not subject to misinterpretation, easily accessible to everyone. It does not exist. Short of God, that is. Inventing an alternative is idolatry and is doomed to failure.

    God has given us minds. He has created and he sustains a universe that is susceptible to serious study using those minds. He has given us the Spirit of Truth, the Holy Spirit, as our guide, and he has provided the guidance of the past experience of those who were in communion with Him through the Bible. Now we just have to use the tools God has given us to make good, Godly decisions for our lives and for our communities.

    It’s not really that hard. But our natural human laziness asks God to provide us with clearer answers, ones that don’t take work. We are like a man provided with a stream filled with fish, rod, reel, hooks, and bait, who complains that he lacks fish because they won’t jump out into the pan. What God doesn’t provide we simulate, and because God knows that is our tendency he has forbidden us simulation as idolatry. He wants us to have the real thing.

    He could make us with finished characters, but he doesn’t. He lets us mature.

    14Solid food is for the mature, for those who through practice have exercised their understanding to distinguish good and evil. Hebrews 5:14 (from my project)