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Old 06-29-2009, 02:23 PM
magicref magicref is offline
 
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: VA
Posts: 16
Default Swayed by intellectualism

Will,

I applaud you for your stance on the BB and for putting up with the name-calling. I was appalled at Mexdeaf's statement that you are just "an attention whore who jumps around from board to board and spews his heretical notions just so he can show off his gnostic superiority." Please know that there are truth seekers out here who appreciate your very understandable (not gnostic at all) explanations of the KJVO stance.

Your conversations with Annie were going quite well, except for her accusations that you weren't being truthful, which I didn't see at all. I think you were both just coming at things from a different direction.

I had an additional thought about the NIV discussions. Since she doesn't trust that the NIV is inspired or inerrent, then how can she put any credence to the "other" verses that DO prove Christ's deity? That is, she is ready to admit that there are some poor translations in the NIV, so how do I know if ANY of the translations in the NIV are any good?

I'm not just saying that to be facetious. I have been struggling with this issue for many years. I came to Christ too late in life (28 years old, am 46 now), and wished I hadn't wasted those school years outside of Scripture. I am convinced of the truth of God's Word, and read a lot on inerrancy, but always had some of the questions that you and others on this board have pointed out.

What if we find a new set of even older scrolls in the desert? What if those scrolls don't have The Gospel of John in them, but perhaps have the Gospel of Thomas? Will we find that the Davinci Code is right? Have the various translators since the time of Constantine pulled a fast one on us and obscured the real truth? Since, according to many, God's infallible Word is just "out there" somewhere, how are we to find it, and how are we to know it if we do?

Now, I don't want to just stick my head in the dirt and declare that the KJV is true because I believe it! That's essentially what we are being accused of doing (and not that I'm even quite there yet myself!)

Let's look at some of the paths:

I think we all start out with these similar presuppositions:

a. Throughout the centuries, God has directed paths of men, fallible and fallen, to construct his Word and to preserve it. The Jews were faithful to this and preserved His Word through the time of Jesus' day, including COPIES of the Word. Similarly, the words of the Apostles and other NT writers were preserved through time, to include copies that were made. I'll call the True versions of God's Word the "Golden" texts.

b. All this time there were also intentional corrupted manuscripts made, and many copying errors made throughout the centuries. Today's mix of over 5000 manuscripts include all of the above (both Gold and Dross)

c. It should be noted that a corrupted text includes much of the Gold of Scripture, though it is a mix of "wheat" and "tares" with lots of dross included.

So:

KJVO believe that around the late 1500's God began orchestrating things to bring the jealousy of King James and the learned Scholars (not perfect in any sense) to the right place and the right time, along with the appropriate Greek and Hebrew texts. These texts were not necessarily all GOLD in themselves, but were sufficient for the job. God, through His inspiration, enabled these fallible men, working off the base of other great men raised up by Him previously (Coverdale, Tyndale, etc.), to create a "very good" Bible in 1611 of almost pure "gold". By the time of 1769, this version was cleaned up, and is now contains ALL the GOLD, none of the dross, and is the perfect Word of God in the English language. The fruit of the KJV has been its widespread use throughout the World and its proven accuracy. Also, if all English speaking believers would use it as their base, we would ALL have the same standard to work from.

Textus Receptus believers would apply similar logic to the preservation of the TR, with perhaps naming the Theodore Beza edition (I forget which year) as the Golden, or perfected version. I don't know, however, that there is the same fruit that can be said of the TR, as the number of Greek readers is simply much smaller and I can't say that the TR has taken the world by a storm.

All others are still "working in the dark", so to speak.

Majority Text believers would believe that we can properly construct an "original" Greek NT if we could only get access to all of the documents (many which are kept hidden by their owners). Using the Scriptural basis of two or more witnesses, manuscripts that "stand alone", no matter how old, would NOT be used as part of the weighting and would be thrown out. These eclectic texts that are so prized by the modern translations but disagree with Majority Text would be thrown out.

MT Believers would have to say that God is still working on producing the perfect Book, but at least see a path toward getting there, especially with the invention of the computer and the ability to handle mass amounts of data.

Ecclectic Text believers would believe....I don't know what. Can they think we will ever come to a perfect Book? I guess Annie's opinion is the "right" conclusion from this approach, that we never will and never can have one translation (or collection) of the 66 Books of the Bible that is the inspired and infallible Word of God (unless we play with what those words mean, of course).

From a seemingly "practical" sense, the ET believers would say that we have a 95% infallible Bible. That out of any of the Bibles, including the TNIV and the Message, we can "prove" the essential messages of the Scriptures.

In the _real_ practical sense, however, we believers are CONSTANTLY coming to issues with all these different translations. How many times do we hear the Preacher saying, "this is better translated as", or as someone here just posted, "what the Bible really says is..."

When God says that ALL Scripture is profitable, and that we see even ONE WORD can be pivotal (seed vs. seeds), I for one don't feel too content thinking the real Bible is just lurking out there in the ether.

Also, since we have Greek and Hebrew experts on every corner now with all the electronic Bible Study helps, we're back to allowing the Bible to say almost anything we want it to. We are running into real issues in our Churches in areas such as marriage and divorce, and even whether homosexuality is really a sin, because of this five percent that we "can't really know."

Now, to be fully open to the possibilities, could it be that the ET believers are right, and that God through his Holy Spirit will "fill in" that final 5% for the true believer? Jeremiah 31:33-34 "But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more."

I would have to admit that the fruit of the Churches does not seem to support this. I don't see Christ's Church getting stronger and stronger, but rather more and more tepid and mixed up in the World.

Thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

Doug A.