A Question, Some Answers, and an Exhortation

Question: Where did God send His Word when he wanted to preserve it?

But more on that later.

First, Sam Gipp produced a video about the KJV controversy. It is, as others have said, pretty well done. It sets Gipp up as a wise and gracious teacher, taking the time to talk to a student about the Bible.

But there are some problems with it, and James White has produced some excellent responses here (which includes Gipp’s video). White systematically dismantles many of the arguments of Gipp by showing how they are simply not true for a variety of reasons. IMO, teachings such as “KJV-Onlyism” (in its various forms from Ruckman to Gipp to Cloud) thrive only in a culture where teaching the truth is undervalued. There are some legitimate differences and discussions that surround the discussion of Bible texts and translations. But none of those legitimate issues can lead to the dogmatic or certain elevation of one Greek text or one translation above all others.

I bring it up here because I think there are some well-meaning and well-intentioned people who are the victims of teaching that actually appeals to something outside of Scripture.

Here’s some evidence for that: One of the primary contentions in the KJV-Only movement is that “God only wrote one Bible” (or a close approximation).

Yet every argument that identifies that “one Bible” does not use Scripture to identify that “one Bible.”

The best attempt I ever had to root this argument in Scripture was someone who quoted Ecclesiastes 8:4 which says (KJV), “Where the word of the king is, there is power.”

The king, of course, was King James.

It was a laughable attempt to be sure. But give the guy credit for trying.

The fact is that God never identifies the KJV (or any other version) as “the only Word of God” or even “the best translation.” That always arises from outside of Scripture, and is based on the logical conclusions and the philosophies of men. It is not revealed by God. It is, by definition, a different authority.

When Sam Gipp argues that the Bible comes from Antioch, he has asserted a “final authority” that does not come from Scripture, because the Bible never identifies Antioch as the source of good copies of Scriptures, and the Bible never identifies Alexandria as the source of bad ones.

My friend, beware of these slick sounding, dogmatic arguments.

Ask for verses.

And then read them. And notice how the verses do not say what they are being accused of.

And then ask what the final authority is: The Bible? Or Sam Gipp?

Sam Gipp wants you to believe it’s the Bible. And he tries to prove it by asking you to believe him.

I think we should just believe the Bible, and judge Sam Gipp by that. And when we do, we will find that his arguments aren’t nearly as attractive as a slick video.

So where did God send His Word when he wanted to preserve it?

Egypt.

You can read it for yourself in Matthew 2.

Beware of people who tell you you can’t trust your Bible.

You Have No Idea What You Are Doing

… but you do it pretty well … most of the time.

That’s my conclusion after reading (again) Grant Osborne’s chapter on semantics in The Hermeneutical Spiral.

You see, when you read the above sentence, you didn’t think about the historical uses of the word “conclusion” or the root meaning of the word “read.” You didn’t think of the multiple dictionary definitions (the semantic domain) of “chapter.”

In fact, the only thing you may have tripped over for a minute is the word “semantics.” And you probably didn’t care enough to look it up.

Why?

Because language is actually pretty easy.

Simply put, we know what words mean by the way that we use them every day. And when we don’t know what a word means, we explain it (i.e., define it) by using other words that we do know. (Remember, that’s what a dictionary does … explain a word you do not know by using words you [hopefully]do know.)

People have written tomes on how we use language. Some people use words like locution, illocution, perlocution. There is talk of generative grammar and transformational grammar, of surface structure and deep structure. There’s semantics and pragmatics. And of course, hermeneutics.

And you probably don’t know what any of that means.

And yet you communicate just fine.

Or at least you use words just fine. Your communication problems actually stem from things that usually have nothing to do with understanding what the words mean.

Here’s the rub: When we come to the Bible, we tend to forget everything we actually know and do with language. We treat the Bible like it’s some sort of special language.

So we know that a word only has one meaning in a sentence (when you tell your teen daughter that she can’t go to the mall, she knows that you aren’t telling her she can’t go do the dishes in the sink).

Yet we read a verse and say that a word has two or three or four meanings and spend twenty to thirty minutes building a case for all these meanings as part of the meaning of Scripture.

We know that that “close the door when you come in” means to swing the big slab of wood in the direction that covers up the hole in the wall you that you just walked through. But you don’t think of that long definition, and certainly don’t spend time explaining that long definition. And your mind doesn’t go back to the root meaning of “close” or “door.” You simply do it.

As students of the Bible, we need to recognize that the Bible is not a special use of human language.

It is normal human language just like we use today. Yes, it is between 2000 and 3500 years old, and therefore, we need to do some work on it in translation and definition of words. But we need to recognize that Bible words mean only what they meant back then. And most translations do a good job of putting that into the language that we use today.

For the most part, the language of the Bible is a lot easier than many preachers make it sound like.

And by the way, pastor, at the risk of sounding elitist, if you are quoting “Strong’s” to establish the meaning of a Greek or Hebrew word, then you are unqualified to speak about Greek or Hebrew. And most of the time, it’s unnecessary anyway. Get two or three or four good translations, and a couple of good commentaries, and go with it.

When it comes to the words of God, Let’s not confuse it. Let’s just do what we always do.

Noble-Broadmindedness

There’s a certain noble-broadmindedness about this claim:

On the historicity of Genesis, I suspend judgment, officially.  For rhetorical and investigative purposes, however, I'm going to proceed AS IF every word in Genesis speaks of historical fact.  If that's true, goody.  If that's not true, so what?

If Genesis isn’t true, then so what?

There is a lot of stake here.

There is the inspiration of Scripture. If God-breathed it out, then it must be true. Simplistic? Perhaps. But what else do we say about a God for whom it is impossible to lie? There is nothing in the Genesis account that would cause us to read it any way other than as historical fact. And there’s nothing in the character of God or the Bible’s teaching about itself that allows us to read it as anything other than historical fact.

There is the reality of brokenness in the world. If not for the historical fact of Genesis, there is no explanation for brokenness and fallenness in the world. Sin makes no sense other than as a cultural category rather than a moral category. Death is not the result of sin, and if not for sin, we would all die anyway.

There is the sufficiency of the atonement of Christ. If not for the historical fact of Genesis, there is no expectation that sin is a real problem that can only be dealt with by the seed of the woman conquering the serpent. Jesus’ death becomes only a moral example, a parable about the cost of sin, which really doesn’t matter anyway because sin doesn’t bring death.

And there are myriads of other implications.

The fact is that we cannot treat Genesis so glibly. There is a renewed battle over inerrancy, I think. And it starts where the word starts and where the Bible starts—in Genesis.

These superficial treatments of Scripture are unworthy of the grandness of God’s revelation that alone provides a rational metanarrative for life in this world.

Let us not be intimidated by those with no anchor. Their high-sounding language is really worldly and empty chatter, falsely called “knowledge.”

We know better.

Or at least we should.

Horton on Sola Scriptura

“In the experience of many evangelicals, sola scriptura has become transferred from its ecclesial habitat to the domain of private spirituality. Downplaying the sacramental Word, through which God works his own magic, the Bible becomes a resource for “personal growth.” In some cases, criticism of sola scriptura is fueled by yet one more attempt to escape the clutches (imaginary and real) of “fundamentalism” and “modernity,” particularly in what has come to be called the emergent movement

Michael S. Horton
People and Place: A Covenant Ecclesiology, p. 91.

An interesting perspective, and assuredly correct at least in part, that sola scriptura is often not so much a theological commitment as a personal one. It is doubtless sometimes born, not out of a desire to honor the life-giving and transformative Word of God, but out of a desire to honor selfish ambition of all types.

The way for some to escape the “oppressive nature of man-made religion” (by which they mean churches who believe that the gospel is more a transformative tool than a catchy slogan) is to claim sola scriptura—which being interpreted is, “You can’t tell me what to do. I can decide for myself.”

Whether we like conservatism or not, we must wrestle with the fact that things that we do now have been conserved for generations for a reason. Before we use sola scriptura to jettison them as being “oppressive legalism,” we should at least consider more seriously the fact that they may have been conserved for good reason that have nothing to do with power and control, and that our commitment to sola scriptura may be more personal than theological.

Human History, Evil, and Solutions

Human history is, in one sense, the story of man trying to fix brokenness through what some have called “functional Saviors.” Functional saviors are the things in which we place our hope for atonement, our hope for satisfaction and joy.

Rather than submitting to the righteous plan of God, mankind has continually sewed together fig leaves in an attempt to cover their nakedness before God. They think they can appease God through a variety of religious rituals, philosophical ideas, and moral reformation.

Human history is littered with the remains of man’s religious institutions that try to fix the brokenness in lives. Early on, it was the creation of gods, complete with religious rituals, temples, priests, and holy books. In more recent times, particularly in our culture, it is the elevation of education, medicine, rehabilitation, ignorance or atheism, all attempting to fix the problem of brokenness. They essentially by redefine the problem to a problem of health (fixed by the medical establishment), a problem of ignorance (fixed by the educational establishment), a problem of control (fixed by government legislation), or a problem of superstition (fixed by atheism, a superstition in itself).

The truth is that only the Bible gives us a worldview in which evil even exists. Apart from the Bible’s teaching, there is no legitimate explanation for the existence of evil, much less its problem. There is no moral reasoning by which evil can be asserted apart from the existence of the God described in Scripture. The very existence of evil presupposes that there is a God with a moral standard by which evil can be determined. 

Man, while living in the world perfectly describe by the Bible, rejects the Bible as revelation and therefore rejects the Bible’s solution. They attempt to find a solution on their own.

But God had a different way to fix the problem. And that is the gospel as found in the Bible.