A Gail Riplinger and Calvinism post

Every self-identified Calvinist/Reformed Christian currently laboring under the fear and reverence of academic priests and thus mocking Christians who value the traditional text of the Word of God (in English: Authorized Version, 1611) needs to read this comment from another blog written by 'Thomas', and read it complete...all the way to the end...

Dear Truth Unites and Divides,

You asked:

“If I may ask, if they [the reformers] did not approach this from an Enlightenment philosophy with its attendant extrabiblical standards, then whence or how did they approach the doctrine of Inspiration, Inerrancy, and Infallibility?”

Francis Turretin, a Geneva Reformer and author of the Helvetic Consensus, explains the matter plainly. For more see that Consensus:

“By the original texts, we do not mean the autographs written by the hand of Moses, of the prophets and the apostles, which certainly do not now exist. We mean their apographs which are so called because they set forth to us the word of God in the very words of those who wrote under the immediate inspiration of the Holy Spirit.” Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 1992 1:106.

For a much more expansive answer I would refer you to Richard Muller’s, “Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics.” Here is a pertinent quote:

“By “original” and “authentic” text, the Protestant orthodox do not mean the autographa which no one can possess but the apographa in the original tongue which are the source of all versions. The Jews throughout history and the church in the time of Christ regarded the Hebrew of the Old Testament as authentic and for nearly six centuries after Christ, the Greek of the New Testament was viewed as authentic without dispute. It is important to note that the Reformed orthodox insistence on the identification of the Hebrew and Greek texts as alone authentic does not demand direct reference to autographa in those languages: the “original and authentic text” of Scripture means, beyond the autograph copies, the legitimate tradition of Hebrew and Greek apographa. The case for Scripture as an infallible rule of faith and practice and the separate arguments for a received text free from major (non-scribal) error rests on an examination of the apographa and does not seek the infinite regress of the lost autographa as a prop for textual infallibility…. [In related footnote 165 Muller observes: “A rather sharp contrast must be drawn, therefore, between the Protestant orthodox arguments concerning the autographa and the views of Archibald Alexander Hodge and Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield.”] p. 433

The principle held today in modern criticism of this “infinite regress” to “inerrant autographa” is the textual heterdoxy of BB Warfield when he departed from the Westminster Confession and then redefined it in terms of his departure standing upon the enlightenment presupposition of Wescott and Hort. His departure from Protestant orthodoxy created a need to establish and maintain a scientific definition of Biblical inerrancy under attack by naturalistic scientific theory, walla, “inerrant autographa.” It is a new and novel idea in terms of historic Reformed Orthodoxy, none of the Magisterial Reformers held to the concept, on the contrary, that was Rome’s claim.

To the Reformers the Bible was infallible because it was the very word of the Living God. They simply identified the legitimate tradition of the preservation of the text and received it.

So, they approached it in the way they approached Nicene and Chalcedonian orthodoxy, thus they did not create a second classification of Scripture based upon hypothetical and hellenic presuppositions (”inerrant autographs”) in which God by His “singular care and providence” becomes required to abide by. Once you take the Bible in your hands and pit the autographa against the apographa, you are attempting to hold it in dialetical tension in the hellenic Form/Matter dialetic; you then become a wordless “Christian Mime.” Which is why the Gospel only speaks today in terms of “relevancy,” instead of an authoritative word from the Most High God.

Thus, they didn’t philosophize about the text, they received the Scriptures that was common to Greek and Protestant Church through the ages. The modern heterdoxy of “inerrant autographs” would have been seen by the Reformers as a concession to Rome, and the modern fundamentalist “KVJ Only” baptist clearly senses this. He simply doesn’t have the ability to deal with the problem of Biblical Authority with the philosophical tools at hand to him, this is because he is standing upon Reformed Orthodoxy in receipt of the Authorized Version but theologically denies the doctrines of that Orthodoxy. Hence, he necessarily creates the “inspiration” of the translation to maintain his theological independence. If you look at Riplinger, for example, whom James White disparages; she receives the Bible of Chalcedonian Orthodoxy (e.g., Calvinism) and sets out on anti-Calvinistic tirade because the Reformed caved to naturalistic scientific criticism ala BB Warfield and published that Romish NIV. James White, then, in his championing of Warfeldian heterdoxy simply confirms, in their eyes, every word she wrote.

We need to consider that the fundamentalist Baptist dogmatic stand upon the Authorized Version is the greatest opportunity for an evangelistic explosion of Reformational Orthodoxy since the Reformation itself. We should be embracing this, not disparaging it.

The Reformers did not try to stand upon a presupposition of neutral objectivity, they were biased against Rome and championed that bias. It is a matter of presuppositions by and through which one interprets the data, EF Hills explains this very well in his work, King James Version Defended.

The same problem exists, for example, in the way the evolutionist pretends to be capable of standing upon neutral ground to interpret the creation, instead of being analogical and thinking God’s thoughts after Him, in his definition he becomes a maker of facts, and stumbles. Likewise, the principles of eclectic criticism is the academic equivalent of the Scopes Monkey Trial in its quest for the inerrant autographa, which is why the Authorized Version is scorned and disparaged.

From a concluding post by 'Thomas':

Gentlemen,

It was my intention to demonstrate what the Reformers believed in regard to the spurios claim that the “Providential…theory of textual criticism” was something that was made up. While this may have been merely a “name” of a category that was made up, I believe anyone is going to associate that the same way I did and it was coupled to a charge broad-brushing anyone that held to such a thing stood in the camp of the fundamentalists.

I believe I have provided an adequate amount of evidence that demonstrates there was and is a completely different orientation to the issue that is silently glossed over in the modern critical claim. The Church, at best, is left with the impression that the Reformers just didn’t have the evidence to make a correct determination, or at worst, were nincompoops and must be dismissed out of hand.

What troubles me most about that is that these were men that were hunted down and many died horrible deaths in order to secure for their posterity the words of God. Modern criticism works without risk or threat casting aspersions upon great men of the faith.

I believe that Christians, who receive the Bible as the very word of God, have a right to know the truth of history and not merely the opinions of modern textual critics that advance their cause without hardly ever a mention of the varying views of history which was responsible for the English Protestant Reformation, upon which all of the American settlement rests.

Every man is born into history on grounds inheriting the past, he has a right to the truth of that history. While Mr. Wallace may wish to charge me with some agenda, that simply isn’t the case. I simply offered a post demonstrating their was another view in history, and then simply answered some questions of others that seemed to me, at least, to be ignorant of this (even if they disagreed with its conclusions) or interested in it.

There is one correction I need to make, in my haste of response - which I too admit was too lengthy for blog comments, and for that I apologize - I stated they held to it as the inerrant original. I should have said “infallible original” As they did hold the inerrancy and infalibility as two separate things and did not seek an inerrancy. Their orientation was completely different - they simply worked to identify what they believed was the preserved word of God.

Finally, then, Mr. Wallace claims that the Protestant claim of “Ad fontes” was sought independent of ancient catholic orthodoxy, that is simply false. “Ad fontes” was coupled to a return to the Faith of the early Church as contained within the Creeds. There is no irony here, nor a Catholic method - it is fundamentally dishonest to equate ancient catholic orthodoxy to medieval scholasticism’s shift in the locus of Authority to the visible Church.