The
subject of Text Criticism raises a number of sometimes painful problems
for the thoughtful Christian. It is a highly technical discipline; requires
superior knowledge of and skill in a number of languages; demands an almost
encyclopaedic grasp of history, theology, philosophy and philology. In
light of this, how can the average Christian be expected to defend a particular
text of Scripture against the onslaughts of both infidel scholars and,
increasingly, the market strategies of giant corporates pursuing nothing
but financial gain?
There have been a number of solutions proposed. Some, seeing the magnitude, nay impossibility, of the task have quite simply abandoned it, caring neither what versions they read nor worrying about the theological problems they raise. Others get a smattering of knowledge, often misconceived, from those who do know, learn a few fancy phrases, a few Latin or (transliterated) Greek terms, and pass themselves off as knowledgeable apologetes. Their clear-cut, black-and-white, fixes convince no one outside their own tiny circle of devotees. A few decide to take the bull by the horns and get down to some serious long-term study and after a decade or two emerge with something worthwhile to say to the Christian church.
There is no doubt in my mind that Dr Letis is one of those few scholars who are currently doing significant scholarly work along Christian lines in this field. A major work from him is yet to appear, but this selection of some of his best essays is an excellent introduction to subject. These essays rarely venture into the more arcane technical topics that would be as far beyond most of us as Einstein's Theory of General Relativity. Nevertheless, they exhibit the marks of a genuine and extensive scholarship, and they discuss areas of concern that certainly are within the grasp of the average 'educated layman.'
Letis has subtitled this volume: Text Criticism, Biblical Authority and the Popular Mind. It encapsulates many of the concerns that are central to the message he is seeking to convey. For as the reader will discover, far more is at stake than simply determining what the Greek text of the New Testament should actually contain. Nowhere is this more clearly seen than in his first essay: B. B. Warfield, Common-Sense Philosophy and Biblical Criticism. Warfield thought he could use modern scientific text criticism to kill two birds with one stone. On the one hand, he believed that text criticism would enable him to defend the Reformed confession of the Scriptures as the very Word of God. On the other, he believed that text criticism would enable him to recover the original text which alone he believed was fully inspired and therefore inerrant.
In this he goofed, as Letis has ably shown. First because he miserably failed to understand that his doctrine of inerrancy was both against the Reformed confessions and second because the project was to backfire dramatically. The abandonment of the infallibility of the manuscripts we do have, in favour of the inerrancy of the autographs - the actual manuscripts written by the apostles - leaves us with no trustworthy Bible at all. We have to wait on text critical experts to do their work before we can trust Scripture. The experts' decision is as far off as Microsoft's bug-free version of Windows.
Implicit in Warfield's position is the fact that the books of Scripture have come down through history just as any other books. He never questioned this, though such a stance undermines the Christian view of God and history from the word go. It is also problematic: How can we be sure that Paul's amanuenses (secretaries) were as infallible as he himself was when writing down his dictated letters? Unless we have the original manuscripts how could we ever be certain that our 'scientific' method had recovered the true original?
Even more importantly, what is it about Scripture that is inspired? Modern consensus is that it was the writers. Yet the only mention of inspiration - 2 Timothy 3:16 - refers it to the writings themselves, not their authors. What's more, that passage has clear reference to the actual manuscripts of the Old Testament that Timothy was then using - hardly originals and probably Greek translations!
Letis draws attention to one of the most devastating effects of the Warfieldian approach to Scripture: its study and preservation has now become the domain of the academy rather than the Church. The Church, claims Letis, with evident justification, has lost sight of Scripture as a 'Sacred Text.'
He has powerfully and rightly preached that we must return the Scripture to its rightful place at the centre of the Church's life. It is not a lifeless cadaver, fit only for cool analytic dissection by those who have no interest in its life-giving power. It is the breath of life that created and maintains the Church. It is both sad and oppressive to see the casual way it is used in the Church. In most churches it seems to be read for no other purpose than to give a brief context for the sermon, what modern evangelicals regard as the real Word of God. Readings are never prepared beforehand (contrary to Paul's injunction - 1 Timothy 4:13), and are often hurried, cursory and extremely short. This is in stark contrast to the pattern we find in Scripture itself, particularly the incident recorded in Nehemiah chapter 8 of a really long public reading. This passage is often misunderstood as referring to a week of sermons but in fact it was nothing of the sort. When the King James Version speaks of 'giving the sense' it means they were translating. For a whole week this congregation of 50,000 men women and children stood up to hear the Pentateuch read aloud in a language they did not understand, with interspersed, and seemingly off-the-cuff, translations by the Levites. I have often heard this passage used to justify sermons and wooden pulpits but never for what it represents: the public reading of Scripture in the original languages even when they cannot be understood. If the revival of the practice itself could not be justified, the spirit in which Scripture was regarded by them is something that is badly needed in our midst. It is what Letis is on about so much in these pages. When the Church lost that attitude, it abandoned Scripture to the unbelieving academy and lost the life-giving force in its midst.
A corollary of this is Letis' preference for preservation over against restoration. This quest for the historical text is, according to Letis, a program that began with Erasmus and that culminated in the nineteenth century's quest for the historical Jesus. Both quests abandon the reality of what they claim to seek. Letis opposes his 'catholic preservationist' principle to what he calls a 'primitivist restorationist' principle. He claims that the 'majority text' was so precisely because it was "the text used in catholic ecclesiastical practice. (p.81)" The subtle nuance may be lost on many. Indeed it has been. But it has significant theological fallout. Restorationist agendas are always romanticist and utopian. They want to get back to a golden age, to a better state of things. Such agendas are embarked upon by a plethora of constituencies, ranging from pentecostals eager to restore the miraculous element of apostolic Christianity to Calvinists eager to restore a seventeenth-century puritanism. Whatever following they might initially attain they all ultimately end in failure because they do not deal with the real issue: heeding Holy Scripture as a sacred text and applying it to our own lives and culture. In addition, the academic high-jacking of Scripture for restorationist purposes in the last two centuries has created a wholly new approach to Scripture. "For many," claims Letis, "the dirty business of examining the text of Scripture in such a clinical way desensitizes them from ever again being able to appreciate the Bible as a living, Sacred Text. (p.83)" He continues: "This is because they never move into the final phase where one steps back and rediscovers the Bible's true function within the ecclesiastical community, both historically and in the contemporary situation. What is needed is the critical awareness of the human circumstances involved in the compilation and transmission of Holy Scripture (it is the legitimate work of the Academy to provide this), and an equal awareness of its divine purpose and function (the Church alone, the only authentic matrix for the proper use of the Sacred Text, can provide this)."
Letis reserves his ultimate criticism for the current state of affairs not to the inadequacies of the Academy but for the failure of the Church: "If the Bible is not rediscovered as a Sacred Text, it will not be the fault of the Academy's Biblical criticism; it will be the failure of the confessing Church, into whose hands it was placed. (p.85)"
This thoughtful and penetrating volume ought to be studied by every Christian concerned about the state of the modern Church in general and the parlous state of the Scriptures in the Church in particular.
Colin Wright
Reproduced by king permission of the Editors of Christianity & Society - in which it first appeared (vol.X, No.2) - published by the Kuyper Foundation.