From: Carlton Winbery (winberyc@popalex1.linknet.net)
Date: Wed Dec 06 1995 - 11:12:52 EST
John Calvin Hall wrote;
>Never claimed that Biblical Textual Criticism [BTC] avoids the use of reason
>- instead human intellect is subserviant to the Word of God. I had the
>opportunity to dialogue with an aquaintance here on B-Greek quite a few
>months ago on the issue of the superiority of the Received Text over the
>Critical Text. He could not understand how I could hold to such a text,
>because he had the misconceptions that my foundation was the same as his.
>
>It wasn't.
>
>The Modern Textual Critic's [MTC] desire, whether sincere or not, is to
>recover the closest reading to the original text. BTC claims that since God
>has promised to preserve His Word, we must therefore have it. With this
>axiom as a base, it is then the Bible-scholar's responsability to identify
>which is the correct text. To be quite honest, it's not as hard as the task
>of the MTC's.
>
>>in its effort to "identify" the original text is unsupportable, to put it
>mildly.
>
>Unsupportable?? By who's standard of authority?? Yours or mine?? My
>authority is the Bible. Pray tell - what is yours?? Please, don't get me
>wrong. I'm just clarifying my point as to the nature of Authorities.
>
>My foundation is Scripture. I can go to the Word of God and prove what I
>believe from the Bible. The MTC cannot, because their authority is not
>Scripture, but human intellect. During the early years of our great nation,
>many of our intellects and scholars got wrapped up in the Enlightenment.
>The misconception that man can exist and flourish without the aid of God
>carried over into German Higher Criticism and Liberalism. Today, its
>results is that anyone that can show to have some factor of intellect is
>considered to be a "scholar." This is nothing more than (if I may borrow a
>coloquial term) "hog-wash." It is _vital_ to have excellent reasoning
>skills, but biblical-scholasticism ought not be based on the level of a
>person's intellect alone, but must rest mainly on the subserviance of their
>intellect to the Word of God. There are many people today who are
>considered to be Bible-scholars, but are not. So what if he sits on the
>Council of Five, and has written X number of books on Textual Criticism; if
>that man rejects the inerrency of Scripture, he's nothing more than a
>foolish man.
It is extremely unfortunate that you equate the "Word of the Lord"
mentioned so many times in Scripture with the text of Scripture. That
borders on bibliotry at the worst and at best leads you to make statements
that can neither be supported by Scripture or reason.
Calton L. Winbery
Prof. Religion
LA College, Pineville, La
winberyc@popalex1.linknet.net
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