Critical Text hard truth

[From an email exchange...]

Warfield has two marks against him. One is the evolution thing, but he seemed to have come off that later in life. The other is he established the Critical Text and the presuppositions behind it at Princeton Theological Seminary. This is his worst legacy. Those types forever after want to make it a silly argument between 'King James Onlyism' vs. serious adult scholarship. It's really an argument between faith in the supernatural preservation of Scripture vs. naturalism, empiricism, rationalism. People who hold to the latter regarding the Bible get stunted. Spiritually stunted. The Bible becomes something that needs them (scholars) more than they need it. It becomes a document no different from any other ancient document like Plutarch or Plato. They now look down on the text and determine what the text should be, what should be included, what should be excluded, rather than looking up to the Bible as being above them with real authority. 

Once you concede error in the Bible it establishes a priesthood of scholars as being above the Holy Spirit. It establishes their necessary human authority.

James White and canon scholar Michael J. Kruger gave a talk. They said the books of the Bible (the canon) were set by the Holy Spirit, not man or the Catholic Church. They gave all the good reasons for the necessity of believing this. THEN they continued to talk of the actual WORDS of the Bible and hemmed and hawed their stance that the actual WORDS of the Bible  COULD be determined by man. Because otherwise they'd have to come away from their Critical Text stance, and that is a bridge too far for them. So they have come 50% of the way to the faith position, but refuse to go 100% of the way. It was very telling...

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One sentence often got me banned on pro Critical Text forums: 

There's a difference between editing a similar stream of manuscripts vs. reconstructing a manuscript based on diverse streams and sources. 

This sentence is in response to the challenge that the manuscripts underlying the KJV had to be edited.

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There's also another important distinction in this general subject of the Bible that I never saw and wish I had: there's a difference between teachers and leaders of Christians vs. everyday believers regarding how they are effected by the Critical Text product.

A person who innocently engages a Critical Text Bible is not necessarily being stunted by the presuppositions that accompany such a product. They are getting an imperfect Bible, yes, but they are taking it in purely, or, like a child, to use the biblical metaphor.

It's the scholars, pastors, and knowing so-called lay people who are getting stunted spiritually. Not only that they are influencing those not privvy to the Satanic downgrade and narcissistic demands of fallen nature that are producing the imperfect Bibles. The Critical Text Bibles get more and more radically changed in time. The original NIV comes out with queer and gender theory changes to the text. Let that stand as enough of an example. 

In time Critical Text Bibles reflect the Satanic influence that powers them. 

The Bible itself makes the distinction between leaders and teachers of Christians vs. everyday believers. I.e. God comes down harder on heresy and false teaching or incompetent leadership and teaching than He does on believers who are not assuming positions of influence over others.

So I wish I'd seen this distinction whenever a Critical Text devil conflated innocent readers of their downgraded product with themselves. 

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This historical adoption of the Critical Text paradigm over the faithful Holy Spirit inspired paradigm destroyed the power of the faith and the power of biblical doctrine in both the institutions teaching the faith and individuals who adopt the Satanic approach. 

I used the word stunted intentionally. The churches, the institutions, the people in them are spiritually stunted. The power of the faith is lost. The ability of the faith - the Word - to speak individuals into awakened real beings is lost. 

Go Satanic at the fount, the very word of God, and you can be doctrinally sound on everything else and still be no different than a worldly unbeliever.

Though I don't question anybody's state with God regarding salvation. I do say though that you can be a Christian while being absolutely worthless in Christ's army.

TULIP

1. Total depravity. Both because of original sin and their own acts of sin, all mankind, excepting Christ, in their natural state are thoroughly corrupt and completely evil, though they are restrained from living out their corruptness in its fullness by the instrumentalities of God’s common grace. Accordingly they are completely incapable of saving themselves.

2. Unconditional election. Before the creation of the world, out of his mere free grace and love, God elected many undeserving sinners to complete and final salvation without any foresight of faith or good works or any other thing in them as conditions or causes which moved him to choose them. That is to say, the ground of their election is not in them but in him.

3. Limited atonement. Christ died efficaciously, that is, truly savingly, only for the elect, although the infinite sufficiency of his atonement and the divine summons to all to repent and trust in Christ provide the warrant for the universal proclamation of the gospel to all men. I personally prefer the terms “definite atonement,” “particular atonement,” or “efficacious atonement” over “limited atonement,” both because of possible misunderstanding of the word “limited” and because every evangelical “limits” the atonement either in its design (the Calvinist) or in its power to accomplish its purpose (the Arminian).

4. Irresistible grace. This doctrine does not mean that the nonelect will find God’s grace irresistible; indeed, God’s saving grace is not even extended to them. Nor does it mean that the elect will find God’s saving grace irresistible the very first time it is extended to them, for even the elect may resist his overtures toward them for a time. What it does mean is that the elect are incapable of resisting forever God’s gracious overtures toward them. At his appointed time, God draws the elect, one by one, to himself by removing their hostility and opposition to him and his Christ, making them willing to embrace his Son.

5. Perseverance of the saints. The elect are eternally secure in Christ, who preserves his own and enables them to persevere in him unto the end. Those professing Christians who have apostasized from the faith (1 Tim. 4:1), as John states, “went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us” (1 John 2:19).

From Robert L. Reymond's A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith

Out of the study, into the world

On another subject, do this...read a basic book on biblical doctrine, like that Brief Compend of Bible Truth (Archibald Alexander, free over at Monergism), and go out into the world and SEE what you've read. Look at some guy... there's a son of Adam, a fallen man, under the power of death and Satan .. there's a woman, daughter of Eve, same thing ...there they go struggling to survive, to make a living, just like God said they would. By the sweat of their brow. 

Do that with all doctrines. See yourself in them. 

Look around at this created world. Look how it hangs together by the hand of God. 

Do it with providence, do it with grace. See how nobody is conformed to the image of God. Of Jesus. Very few anyway. 

Constantly go over the basics. Drill down into the basics by getting experiencial with the basics. 

Get truth out of the study and into the real world.

In a higher state you will recite these truths to yourself, see them clearly, in real time and place and in real people and yourself. It can be powerful.