“In keeping with the wishes of the Holy Father, Benedict XVI, Loreto Publications has published this truly unique edition of the Bible in Latin and English. Suitable either for students of theology and the Scriptures, for those studying Latin, or just for Catholics who wish to conduct themselves according to the mind of the Church, this edition brings together two classic versions of the Bible which have served Catholics well, down through the centuries.”
One Volume
Clear Typeface
Satin Ribbon Page Marker
Burgundy bonded leather cover
English column opposite Latin column
This is a book about the fascinating intellectual history of post-Renaissance early modern England. As she has pointed out in some of her other books, this period of time, shortly before the rise of modern science, was shot through with occult beliefs which, as she tells us in this book, took the form of Christian Cabalism in early modern England. By the end of this period, this rather obscure occult philosophy had morphed into what we now know as Science.
Many people don't believe it when you tell them modern science was an outgrowth of occult beliefs, but it's true. As Thomas Kuhn explained in his fascinating book The Copernican Revolution(pp. 128-132), Copernicus and Kepler believed the sun was at the center of a solar system of planets because of their having been influenced by neoplatonic thought via the writings of Renaissance occultist Marsilio Ficino, who is someone Francis Yates also writes about in this book. As Yates tells it, the old philosophy of Aristotle and medieval Scholasticism, which had used Aristotelianism as a philosophical framework for its theology, was being replaced with a new belief, that of a Hebraic-Christian occult 'Christian Cabalism'. Christian thinkers of the time having been influenced by the Hebrew writings of the Old Testament and the mystical Kabbala, which were being printed for the first time in Italy (as was the Talmud, with papal permission no less). Oddly enough, in time, this new occult philosophy did replace Aristotle and Scholasticism, eventually becoming what we, today, consider modern science.
I was especially interested in reading this book because of a related subject I have an interest in, that of English Christian Hebraism and the Puritan emphasis on the Old Testament along with its creation of a somewhat Judaized Christianity, including the belief in a coming earthly golden age (i.e., the Puritan Hope, or postmillennialism). Yates tells us that "Some English Puritans took their convictions to their logical conclusion by emigrating to Amsterdam and adopting Judaism as their religion" (p. 215) (!).
This is a book worth reading if you're at all interested in the time period and subject matter.
It's really quite fascinating!
“The Rosicrucian movement had failed on the continent. Refugees from that failure poured into Puritan England as the refugees from Antichrist. And the Puritan revolution took over some of the aspects of the projected Rosicrucian revolution. This is why there was a ‘Puritan occultism’, why an English translation of the Rosicrucian manifestos was published in Cromwellian England, and why the philosophy of John Dee was cultivated by earnest Parlimentarians… The argument, in oversimplified form, is that ‘the occult philosophy of the Elizabethan age’ was a Christian Cabalist philosophy, with its particular Rosicrucian blend of magic and science.”
I recently finished reading the Luther’s Works (Volume 54) edition of Table Talk. I found it to be, as expected, a very good introduction to the man’s thought. Below are a few quotations I wrote down as I was reading through the book:
“One ought to love one’s neighbor with a love as chaste as that of a bridegroom for his bride. In this case all faults are concealed and covered over and only the virtues are seen.” (p. 28)
“For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love.”(Galatians 5:6)
“Concerning the verse in Galatians [5:6], ‘faith working through love,’ we also say that faith doesn’t exist without works. However, Paul’s view is this: Faith is active in love, thatis, that faith justifies which expresses itself in acts. Now, it is assumed by some that the fruits of faith make faith to be faith, although Paul intends something different, namely, that faith makes the fruit to be fruit. Faith comes first and then love follows. This also happens to be the case of God’s works. Circumcision, in so far as it is a work by itself, is of no account. But this, he says, is what counts: ‘Believe in me and be godly.’” (p. 74)
“When somebody asked about Moses and how he could write about the creation and other things that happened so long before his time, he [Martin Luther] said, ‘I think many things had been written before Moses and that Moses took these things and added to them what God commanded him. No doubt he had the story of the creation from the tradition of the fathers.’” (pp. 40-41)
“This is especially so if the devil turns the gospel into law. The teachings of the law and gospel are altogether necessary, but they must be distinguished even when they are conjoined, otherwise men will despair or become presumptuous. Consequently Moses describes these teachings well when he speaks of an upper and lower millstone (Deut. 24:6). The upper millstone rumbles and pounds. This is the law. It’s very well set up by God so that it grinds. On the other hand, the lower millstone is quiet, and this is the gospel. Our Lord God has suspended the upper millstone in such a way that the grain is crushed and ground only on the lower stone.” (pp. 276-277)
“In the cart [wagon] he [Martin Luther] spoke about Italian marriages [pederasty]. “These [he said] exceeded by far all the lewdness and adulteries of the Germans. The latter are nevertheless sins, but the former uncleannesses are satanic. God protect us from this devil! By God’s grace none of the native tongues in Germany was at all acquainted with this heinous offense.” (p. 278)
“This is what that fellow [Copernicus] does who wishes to turn the whole of astronomy upside down. Even in these things that are thrown into disorder I believe the Holy Scriptures, for Joshua commanded the sun to stand still and not the earth.” (p. 359)
“For a long time I went astray [in the monastery] and didn’t know what I was about. To be sure, I knew something, but I didn’t know what it was until I came to the text in Romans 1 [17], ‘He who through faith is righteous shall live.’ That text helped me. There I saw what righteousness Paul was talking about. Earlier in the text I read ‘righteousness.’ I related the abstract [‘righteousness’] with the concrete [‘the righteous One’] and became sure of my cause. I learned to distinguish between the righteousness of the law and the righteousness of the gospel. I lacked nothing before this except that I made no distinction between the law and the gospel. I regarded both as the same thing and held that there was no difference between Christ and Moses except the times in which they lived and their degrees of perfection. But when I discovered the proper distinction—namely, that the law was one thing and the gospel another—I made myself free.” (pp. 442-443)
Then somebody said, “It is nevertheless asserted in the Creed ‘he descended into hell.’” Luther responded, “This must be believed. We can’t understand it. That’s the way it is. There will be debate about how the Trinity is in the unity (when there’s no relation between the infinite and the finite), how nature can produce such a strange marvel as the God-man, etc. [While occupied thus with disputation] men will let the article concerning justification go. If only we would study in the meantime how to believe and pray and become godly! We’re not content with that which we can understand and insist on disputing about something higher, which we can’t possibly understand and which our Lord God doesn’t want us to understand. That’s the way human nature is. It wishes to do what is forbidden; the rest it ignores and then starts asking Why? Why? Why? This is what happens when philosophy is introduced into theology." (pp. 447-448)
Pastor Jeff Riddle recently did a Word Magazine episode (WM 109) discussing an article Peter Gurry wrote about the quiet Renaissance in New Testament (NT) text criticism:
After 27:00, Pastor Riddle makes some important points,
“There was a consensus on the Textus Receptus, on the received text, and that consensus held among Protestants [i.e., the Protestant church] from the 16th on through to the 19 century… and I believe we had a consensus during the early church about the proper text of the Bible”
Pastor Riddle points out that the situation we have today regarding the Greek New Testament (GNT) is something similar to Build-A-Bear stores at the mall. But instead of building stuffed toy bears people are building their own New Testaments…
“You create the New Testament you like. You look at the different variants and the readings and you adjudicate which one you think is best. If you think the traditional ending of Mark is original you keep it in there, if you don’t like it you take that out, or you substitute the shorter ending. Or if you don’t like the woman taken in adultery just put it down in the footnotes and take it out of the text. Again, I don’t see that as an improvement I see that as creating a lot of chaos, a lot of anarchy, with the text of the Christian Scriptures and undermining the authority of Christian theology, Christian teaching, confessionalism… but other people see this as a Renaissance, as something wonderful that’s taking place.”
I would go further and say such people are undermining the authority of the church.
Until recently, there has been something of a standard GNT (various editions of the Nestle Aland and United Bible Societies (NA/UBS GNTs), but this is changing. As Peter Gurry points out, we have arrived at the end of the NA27/UBS4 era,
"Having these new editions of the Greek text [i.e., Tyndale House GNT] may well require exegetes and teachers to pay closer attention to textual criticism than in the past. Not only will we hear “but my translation says ...” in the classroom, but we are increasingly going to hear “but my Greek edition says ...” Although there has never been a consensus on the Greek text, the end of the NA27/UBS4 era (if we may call it that) requires a renewed level of engagement from those of us who teach." (Peter Gurry, The Quiet Renaissance in Textual Criticism (click here)
As I said above, I’m thinking about the authority of the church.
I’m not surprised when Protestants like Pastor Riddle speak hesitantly about the church and the authority of the church. Protestants have an aversion to speaking about the authority of the church, especially when it concerns the church being an authority on the text of Scripture.
This aversion is, I think, an overreaction against Catholicism.
The Protestant church does have the authority—and the responsibility—to recognize, receive, and delineate the canonical text of Scripture.
It is the church—not the individual—who says: “These writings are canonical and no others.”
As Bruce Metzger put it,
“The Church did not create the canon, but came to recognize, accept, affirm, and confirm the self-authenticating quality of certain documents that imposed themselves as such upon the Church.” (Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance (p. 287)
When Protestantism came into being, what was the Protestant canonical text of Scripture?
The Protestant canonical text of Scripture was that text which the Protestant religious community—the church—regarded as authoritative.
“A biblical canon or canon of scripture is a set of texts (or ‘books’) which a particular religious community regards as authoritative scripture.” (Wikipedia)
“The status of the sacred text is canonical: as well as being normative for a community or tradition, it is also that community or tradition’s canon or canonical text. The term ‘canon’ has a variety of meanings, but in the context of sacred texts it means the defined groups of texts for the community or tradition . . one does not add to or subtract from them.” (Ninian Smart and Richard D. Hecht, edd., Sacred Texts of the World: A Universal Anthology (p. xiii-xiv.)
What was the canonical New Testament (NT) text of this Protestant church?
“Finally it is undisputed that from the 16th to the 18th century orthodoxy’s doctrine of verbal inspiration assumed this Textus Receptus. It was the only Greek text they knew, and they regarded it as the original text.” (Kurt Aland, The Text of The Church (click here)
What is the canonical text of the Protestant church today?
This is the question.
But first we must ask, “What is the Protestant church today?” The answer to this question is not as clear cut as it was from the 16th through the 19th centuries. There were minor difference in doctrine in those days, but none regarding the canonical NT text (i.e., Textus Receptus).
Today many Protestants don’t agree on major doctrines, and most Protestants have rejected the Textus Receptus as the canonical NT text.
There are a variety of Protestant religious communities today, ranging from those who completely reject Christianity to those who hold traditional 16th and 17th century Protestant doctrines.
In short, the Protestant church (or Protestantism) today is in a state of confusion and chaos. Questions like “What is doctrine?” and “What is the Bible?” receive various answers, depending upon which Protestant and which Protestant community we ask.
Likewise, the question “What is the Protestant church” also receives various answers, depending upon which Protestant and which Protestant community we ask.
The following are some concise truths about these issues and how they relate to the authority of the church vis-à-vis the individual:
We cannot divorce canon from text.
We cannot divorce the canonical text from the church.
It’s not up to the individual to decide what the canonical text is.
We cannot divorce doctrine from the canonical text.
We cannot divorce doctrine from the church.
It’s not up to the individual to decide what doctrine is.
Until we realize these are the issues we are facing we won’t be able to organize our thinking on this important subject (i.e., the canonical text).
As I see it, skirting the issue of the authority of the church (as I believe Pastor Riddle did in his recent audio) by referring to it as “Christian theology”, “Christian teaching”, or “confessionalism” isn’t moving us forward. It’s avoiding an important—albeit uncomfortable—subject: the authority of the church.
There's a reason for why Theodore Letis referred to the canonical text as the ecclesiastic text, and for why Jeff Riddle refers to the canonical text as the traditional or confessional text.
Letis knew that the answer to the question “What is Scripture?” is, in the final analysis, answered by the church. Not by a church hierarchy, nor by church councils, but by a consensus of believers led by the Holy Spirit who form the Protestant church. It is this church that recognizes Scripture as Scripture, defines and delimits the Protestant canonical text, and formulates its doctrines based upon that canonical text (sola Scriptura).
Pastor Riddle carefully avoids speaking about the church (I think) because he believes that by mentioning the authority of the church he will come too close to the error of the Catholics (i.e., church authority over and above Scripture) and perhaps fall into it.
Notice how carefully he speaks of theology, tradition, and confessionalism instead of speaking about the church… I can almost hear him thinking to himself, “Don’t make the mistake of saying ‘church’ while you’re explaining this!”…
“Again, I don’t see that as an improvement I see that as creating a lot of chaos, a lot of anarchy, with the text of the Christian Scriptures and undermining the authority of Christian theology, Christian teaching, confessionalism…”
Who but the church gives us authoritative Christian theology?
Who but the church gives us authoritative Christian teaching?
Who but the church gives us authoritative confessions?
All of these have Scripture as their foundation (sola Scriptura) but Protestant theology, teaching, and confessions have been brought into being by the Protestant church.
The authority of these—theology, teaching, confessions—rests first upon Scripture and second upon the church.
Those who are joined to Christ by the Holy Ghost are united to his church; are under the authority of his church; and his church is under the authority of Scripture (and ultimately Christ).
New believers are taught by his church: 1) what Scripture is; and 2) what Scripture teaches.
I’m sure when a new Christian joins Pastor Riddle’s church she’s told 1) what the Bible is, and 2) what the Bible teaches.
And herein lies the authority of the church regarding both Scripture and doctrine.
The 16th century Protestant church has handed down to us both its Bible and its doctrine.
We can call this Christian theology, tradition, confessionalism, or whatever else we want to call it but, in the final analysis, what we are saying is: the church.
This is why Letis speaks of the ecclesiastical text. The text we use today is the canonical text the church has used and has handed down to us.
The traditional canonical text we use today is not the modern critical text the academy uses.
The ecclesiastical text is the confessional text; it is the traditional text; it is the text the Protestant church handed down to us, just as the Protestant church handed down to us its doctrines.
I believe we need to stop shying away from speaking about the authority of the church because, at the end of the day, only the church can answer the questions: “What is Scripture?” and "What is doctrine?"
Is Scripture self attesting? Yes, it is. Is the Holy Sprit guiding us to recognize Scripture? Yes, he is. Who should we join ourselves to when we join a church? We should join to those whom the Holy Ghost has led to formulate similar doctrines and to recognize similar canonical texts (and translations thereof).
Is this always possible? No, it’s not. But, in a sense, those of us who recognize the authority of the traditional Protestant canonical text do form a particular religious community, even if we can't always occupy the same physical space.
There are as many religious communities—churches—as there are canonical texts.
Those religious communities that use the modern critical academic text and the translations based upon them form particular religious communities. Why? Because their canonical text is particular to them.
By definition, a church that uses the English Standard Version of the Bible and adopts the criticism of the academy is not the same church as one that uses the King James Version and rejects the criticism of the academy.
These churches may have many similarities but they are not on the same page regarding the questions: “What is the canonical text?” and “What is doctrine?”
Protestants have a choice: embrace the historic and traditional Protestant canonical text and doctrine, or reject it.
It seems most Protestants today have chosen to reject this canonical text. And those who have chosen to do so have also rejected at least some of the traditional Protestant doctrines by doing so (e.g., providential preservation; verbal, plenary inspiration).
Many more Protestants are rejecting even more doctrines (e.g., eternal punishment, vicarious atonement). And this is no surprise. In so doing they are, in fact, creating new religious communities… new churches… while still claiming to be Protestant.
This is all the more reason to cling—not only to traditional Protestant doctrine but—to the Protestant, confessional, traditional, ecclesiastical, canonical text.
“Unto this catholic visible Church Christ has given the ministry, oracles, and ordinances of God…” (Westminster Confession of Faith (25:3)
The “oracles” the confession speaks of here are the holy Scriptures, which are the church’s “infallible oracle and rule of faith and practice.” (A.A. Hodge, A Commentary on the Confession (p. 408).
The Protestant canonical text doesn’t belong to Bible publishers, academic critics, Christian theology, tradition, or confessionalism.
The Protestant canonical text of Scripture belongs to the Protestant church.
“The defense of the Textus Receptus, therefore, is a necessary part of the defense of Protestantism.” (E. F. Hills, The King James Version Defended (p. 193)
“If Catholic interpretation gives a preeminent place to religious authority, and if mainline Protestantism does the same for technical expertise, evangelical interpretation assigns first place to popular approval. Another way of putting these differences is to say that the magisterium for Catholics has been, at least officially, the church’s teaching officers who, it is true, regularly solicit the counsel of scholars and acknowledge the sentiments of the people. Mainline Protestantism, on the other hand, has given magisterial authority to ‘scientific’ study proceeding from university-level research, while attempting to adapt such learning to the needs of the pew and while recognizing the importance of popular leaders as mediators of the technical expertise. Evangelicals, by contrast, regularly speak of ‘the church’ in its entirety as the magisterium… And while the evangelical community respects its scholars, it also expects them to communicate the results of research in a style that is both understandable and supports treasured beliefs. The root of this evangelical bent toward democratic interpretation is the Reformation teaching on the priesthood of all believers.” (Mark A. Noll, Between Criticism and Faith: Evangelicals, Scholarship, and the Bible in America (pp. 150-151)
“The dangers of the Bible slipping from the ecclesiastical life in which it gives its life’s blood, namely the church, however you conceive that... the Bible slipping out of the hands of the church and into the hands of Bible societies and profit making Bible and book publishers so that now the church, if we can speak in broad terms of that, and those confessional and conservative Christians throughout the world who still find the Bible authoritative are now in bondage to profit making publishers who reconfigure the canon of Scripture to make it marketable so that the actual content and parameters, the borders and the boundaries of the text of Scripture itself is no longer determined within the believing community, it’s being determined by extraneous corporate entities. I call them the Bible landlords. They now control the Scriptures and dictate to believers and the institutional church what they will accept as Scripture. This is a deplorable state of being and is, perhaps, the last gasps of the life of Protestantism as we know it. It’s an indication of the disarray of worldwide Protestantism.” (Theodore P. Letis, Lecture on The Woman Taken in Adultery (audio here)
Milwaukee girl cut down by gunfire wrote of senseless violence
Two years before her death, by bullets that shattered her bedroom window Monday night, 13-year-old Sandra Parks wrote about the violence that plagues many Milwaukee neighborhoods.
"We are in a state of chaos," Sandra wrote as a sixth-grader in an award-winning essay commemorating the life of the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
"In the city in which I live, I hear and see examples of chaos almost every day. Little children are victims of senseless gun violence," she wrote. "Many people have lost faith in America and its ability to be a living example of Dr. King's dream!”
In reality, all solutions, all economic, political, and other achievements, are temporary. Christians cannot at any time or to any extent believe that they are complete and will endure. They are always contaminated by the sin that binds them, by the very environment in which they exist. Thus Christians are constantly obliged to renew God’s demand, to bring this order repeatedly into confrontation with an order that is moving constantly toward disorder. And because of God’s always-fresh demand on the world, Christians are placed in this way in a permanently revolutionary situation. Even when the institutions, laws, and reforms that they advocate come to pass, even if society is reorganized along the lines that they have advocated, they must remain in opposition and require yet more, because what God demands is infinite, as is his pardon. Thus Christians are called to continually question all that is termed progress, discoveries, facts, established results, reality, and so on. They cannot be satisfied at any time with all this toil, and, as a result, they must demand that it be surpassed and replaced. They exercise their judgement according to the Spirit---they do what is essentially revolutionary. If it is not so, it is because in some way Christians have betrayed their vocation in the world.
Jacques Ellul, Presence in the Modern World (p. 30)
“For even that which was made glorious [the Law] had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth.”
2 Corinthians 3:10
“The English expresses it very fairly. ‘In this point,’ as compared with the gospel, the Law has lost its glory; it is thrown into the shade by ‘the glory that excelleth.’”
Ellicott’s Commentary on the Bible
“There is such an excelling glory in the Gospel, that the other [the Law] is swallowed up and lost in it.”
These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple: and he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.
Estos son los que han venido de grande tribulación, y han lavado sus ropas, y las han blanqueado en la sangre del Cordero. Por esto están delante del trono de Dios, y le sirven día y noche en su templo: y el que está sentado en el trono tenderá su pabellón sobre ellos. No tendrán más hambre, ni sed, y el sol no caerá más sobre ellos, ni otro ningún calor. Porque el Cordero que está en medio del trono los pastoreará, y los guiará á fuentes vivas de aguas: y Dios limpiará toda lágrima de los ojos de ellos.
How smartphones and social media are changing Christianity “This more relaxed approach to phones is not the only tech-related update the Church has undergone in the past few years. The rise of apps and social media is changing the way many of the world’s two billion Christians worship – and even what it means to be religious...” Read more: How smartphones and social media are changing Christianity http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170222-how-smartphones-and-social-media-are-changing-religion via @BBC_Future
“Those who will not yield to pardon the faults of brethren judge very ill for themselves, and subject themselves to a very hard and severe law; for they will find God to be equally stern and inexorable towards themselves.”
John Calvin, Commentary on Matthew (18:21-35)
“Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.” (Matthew 5:7)
“For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” (Matthew 6:14-15)
“Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” (Matthew 7:1-2)
“Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets. (Matthew 7:12)
“How justly will those be condemned, who, though they bear the Christian name, persist in unmerciful treatment of their brethren! The humbled sinner relies only on free, abounding mercy, through the ransom of the death of Christ. Let us seek more and more for the renewing grace of God, to teach us to forgive others as we hope for forgiveness from him.”
"The Bible is not a dogmatic handbook but a historical book full of dramatic interest." ~ Geerhardus Vos
It remains to say something about the practical uses of the study of Biblical Theology. These may be enumerated as follows:
a) It exhibits the organic growth of the truths of Special Revelation. By doing this it enables one properly to distribute the emphasis among the several aspects of teaching and preaching. A leaf is not of the same importance as a twig, nor a twig as a branch, nor a branch as the trunk of the tree. Further through exhibiting the organic structure of revelation Biblical Theology furnishes a special argument from design for the reality of Supernaturalism.
b) It supplies us with a useful antidote against the teachings of rationalistic criticism. This it does in the following way: The Bible exhibits an organism of its own. This organism, inborn in the Bible itself, the critical hypothesis destroys, and that not only on our view, but as freely acknowledged by the critics themselves, on the ground of its being an artificial organism in later times foisted upon the Bible, and for which a newly discovered better organism should be substituted. Now by making ourselves in the study of Biblical Theology thoroughly conversant with the Biblical consciousness of its own revelation structure, we shall be able to perceive how radically criticism destroys this, and that, so far from being a mere question of dates and composition of books, it involves a choice between two widely divergent, nay, antagonistic conceptions of the Scriptures and of religion. To have correctly diagnosed criticism in its true purpose is to possess the best prophylaxis against it.
c) Biblical Theology imparts new life and freshness to the truth by showing it to us in its original historic setting. The Bible is not a dogmatic handbook but a historical book full of dramatic interest. Familiarity with the history of revelation will enable us to utilize all this dramatic interest.
d) Biblical Theology can counteract the anti-doctrinal tendency of the present time. Too much stress proportionately is being laid on the voluntary and emotional sides of religion. Biblical Theology bears witness to the indispensableness of the doctrinal groundwork of our religious fabric. It shows what great care God has taken to supply his people with a new world of ideas. In view of this it becomes impious to declare belief of subordinate importance.
e) Biblical Theology relieves to some extent the unfortunate situation that even the fundamental doctrines of the faith should seem to depend mainly on the testimony of isolated proof-texts. There exists a higher ground on which conflicting religious views can measure themselves as to their Scriptural legitimacy. In the long run that system will hold the field which can be proven to have grown organically from the main stem of revelation, and to be interwoven with the very fiber of Biblical religion.
f) The highest practical usefulness of the study of Biblical Theology is one belonging to it altogether apart from its usefulness for the student. Like unto all theology it finds its supreme end in the glory of God. This end it attains through giving us a new view of God as displaying a particular aspect of his nature in connection with his historical approach to and intercourse with man. The beautiful statement of Thomas Aquinas is here in point: "Theologia a Deo docetur, Deum docet, ad Deum duci” [“Theology teaches of God, is taught by God, and leads to God”].
Good News Publishers, owner of Crossway Books, publisher of the English Standard Version of the Bible (ESV), in cooperation with the Institute for New Testament Textual Research at the University of Münster, Westphalia, Germany (INTF), has announced it will soon be releasing an app that will be updating the text of the ESV New Testament in real time.
Crossway liaison officer Otto Nobetter said, "With the incredible reliance upon smart phones and tablets by Christians today, along with the endless radical changes being made to the Greek text of the New Testament at INTF, due especially to use of the new Coherence-Based Genealogical Method, we thought the time had come for an app that will provide Christians with the latest changes being made to the text of the New Testament as soon as possible. Thanks to a special agreement between Crossway and the INTF, Crossway will be notified every time a change is made to the Greek text of the New Testament. Once we've been notified, we will immediately provide the appropriate English translation and update the text of the ESV accordingly via the app."
Apologist James White was pleased with the announcement saying, on his popular Dividing Line program, "What this means is that, thanks to modern technology and scholarship, the ESV Bible you have on your phone today won't be the same ESV Bible you have on your phone tomorrow, because the text of the New Testament is always changing. As things stand now, because of the new Coherence-Based Genealogical Method, I have to wait for the INTF to publish hard copies of the Editio Critica Maior (ECM) in order to know what the latest accepted readings are. But, thanks to this new app from Crossway, we'll be able to know what the accepted readings are in real time, as soon as they're released from the INTF in Münster."
At the time this article was published, Crossway hadn't yet set a release date for the app, saying it was still in the development stage. It will likely be released sometime before 2020.
“For the message of television as metaphor is not only that all the world is a stage but that the stage is located in Las Vegas, Nevada.” ~ Neil Postman
“I had a chance to give a talk to some newspaper publishers last May. They wanted me to say something sensible about the future of newspapers. I suggested to them that instead of organizing their paper according to international news, national news, regional news and so on, they should use the seven deadly sins and have lust, greed, gluttony, sloth, and so on, and then categorize the stories in those ways.” ~ Neil Postman
“If you have not read Neil Postman’s, Amusing Ourselves to Death, it’s not too late, but don’t put it off. If you love TV, you must read it now before you’re completely brain-dead. If you still watch TV, but it irritates you to no end, then you probably have foresight into Postman’s argument. If you abandoned TV years ago, then Postman will bolster your sagacity with a host of historical, philosophical, anthropological, and sociological insights. Whichever category you fit in to, the time has come to read Postman...” Continue reading: Neil Postman's Description of Reading http://kuyperian.com/neil-postmans-description-of-reading/
The Disappearance of Childhood
“The telegraph created an audience and a market not only for news but for fragmented, discontinuous, and essentially irrelevant news, which to this day is the main commodity of the news industry.”
Neil Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood (71)
“Civilization cannot exist without the control of impulses, particularly the impulse toward aggression and immediate gratification. We are in constant danger of being overrun by violence, promiscuity, instinct, egoism. Shame is the mechanism by which barbarism is held at bay, and much of its power comes... from the mystery and awe that surround various acts”
Neil Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood (85-86)
“Television, to put it simply, does not call one’s attention to ideas, which are abstract, distant, complex, and sequential, but to personalities, which are concrete, vivid, and holistic. What this means is that the symbolic form of political information has been radically changed. In the television age, political judgement is transformed from an intellectual assessment of propositions to an intuitive and emotional response to the totality of an image. In the television age, people do not so much agree or disagree with politicians as like or dislike them.”
Neil Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood (101)
Amusing Ourselves To Death
“Is there any audience of Americans today who could endure seven hours of talk? Or five? Or three? Especially without pictures of any kind? . . . These audiences must have had an equally extraordinary capacity to comprehend length and complex sentences aurally. In Douglas’ Ottawa speech he included in his one-hour address three long, legally phrased resolutions of the Abolition platform. Lincoln, in his reply, read even longer passages from a published speech he had delivered on a previous occasion. For all of Lincoln’s celebrated economy of style, his sentence structure in the debates was intricate and subtle, as was Douglas’. In the second debate, in Freeport, Illinois, Lincoln rose to answer Douglas in the following words:
‘It will readily occur to you that I cannot, in half an hour, notice all the things that so able a man as Judge Douglas can say in an hour and a half; and I hope, therefore, if there be anything that he has said upon which you would like to hear something from me, but which I omit to comment upon, you will bear in mind that it would be expecting an impossibility for me to cover his whole ground.’
“It is hard to imagine the present occupant of the White House being capable of constructing such clauses in similar circumstances. And if he were, he would surely do so at the risk of burdening the comprehension or concentration of his audience. People of a television culture need “plain language” both aurally and visually, and will even go so far as to require it in some circumstances by law.”
Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves To Death (45-46)
Literacy Lost
“When a culture disdains literacy for the important functions of public discourse and replaces that with a medium that focuses on format and style -- and therefore entertainment -- then you begin to get... you have a situation comparable to what Huxley meant by the drug soma... that everyone is kept sort of pacified, amused, entertained. President Regan is entertaining... Dan Rather is entertaining... even the nightly news, for all of its gory stories, is entertaining, because the film footage is exciting. The religion on television is amusing. Commercials are very amusing and entertaining. So that, as we move into this imagistic culture of short duration, dynamic, and amusing images, we have a population that becomes pacified... that no longer is capable of the kind of sustained reflection and analytical thought that I think is usually characteristic of literate cultures where typography is vital to every day’s functioning.” ~ Neil Postman (PBS Currents Literacy Lost)
Neil Postman - PBS Currents (Literacy Lost) https://youtu.be/VWNHLKW7n5c
Technopoly
Neil Postman’s Seven Questions For New Technologies
1. “What is the problem to which a technology claims to be the solution?”
2. “Whose problem is it?”
3. “What new problems will be created because of solving an old one?”
4. “Which people and institutions will be most harmed?”
5. “What changes in language are being promoted?”
6. “What shifts in economic and political power are likely to result?”
7. “What alternative media might be made from a technology?”
WM 100 offers a review and critique of the article and closes with a suggestion of three ways to respond to those who suggest Christians should only use modern translations. Here are my notes for those three suggestions:
First: If they are willing to listen and understand, help them to understand the difference between a truly heretical KJV-Onlyist position and a KJV preferentialist position. Help them also to understand those who are Majority Text advocates and Confessional Text advocates. Help them to understand that it is not helpful or charitable to confuse these categories into a mishmash.
Second: Talk about a confessional view of text criticism. Walk them through WCF/2LBCF 1:8. Explain the historical roots of modern text criticism in the Enlightenment. Explain the difference between a reconstructionist view of the text and a preservationist view of the text. Explain how post-modern text criticism is no longer even interested in finding the original text and no one really knows what future editions of the modern critical text (and thus modern translations) will even look like.
Third: Talk about how important the KJV is as a treasure not only for the Protestant Christian English-speaking world, but for all of Western civilization. Suggest that rather than dumbing down the liturgical language of the church we should be lifting it up. Ask them why the KJV is loved in the English department but villainized in the religion department. Suggest they read Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death or T. S. Eliot’s review of the New English Bible (listen here). Explain that using the KJV might just be one small way in which we might swim against the tide of this world.
“It is strange that in the realm of modern textual criticism all types of searchers and sceptics are given a place, but that those who revert to a former certainty are disqualified as renegades.” ~ Jakob van Bruggen
Among all uncertainties of this 20th century, we, however, can point to one great, lasting certainty in the modern textual criticism - a certainty that serves as starting point and keeps stimulating much conscientious work and constant research. One can even say that the modern textual criticism of the New Testament is based on the one fundamental conviction that the true text of the New Testament is at least not found in the great majority of the manuscripts. The text which the Greek church has read for more than 1000 years, and which the churches of the Reformation have followed for centuries in their Bible translations, is now with certainty regarded as defective and deficient: a text to be rejected... This rejection of the traditional text, that is the text preserved and handed down in the churches, is hardly written or thought about any more in the 20th century: it is a fait accompli...
It is striking how emotionally people often speak about this one certainty. The textus receptus, which stands very close to the Byzantine text, is considered a "tyrant" that finally "died a slow death". Sometimes it seems as though a certain frustration about the continual absence of certainty concerning the right text of the New Testament leads to aggressive statements about the old certainty of the textus receptus. It is striking how Epp in his earlier mentioned retrospection leaves room for many questions and uncertainties, yet suddenly speaks very denigratingly about some people who in the 20th century have dared to make positive statements concerning the textus receptus. It is strange that in the realm of modern textual criticism all types of searchers and sceptics are given a place, but that those who revert to a former certainty are disqualified as renegades.
Jakob van Bruggen, The Ancient Text of the New Testament (11; 13)
Those who First Advanced the Heresy of Artemon; their Manner of Life, and How they Dared to Corrupt the Sacred Scriptures
But that those who use the arts of unbelievers for their heretical opinions and adulterate the simple faith of the Divine Scriptures by the craft of the godless, are far from the faith, what need is there to say? Therefore they have laid their hands boldly upon the Divine Scriptures, alleging that they have corrected them.
That I am not speaking falsely of them in this matter, whoever wishes may learn. For if any one will collect their respective copies, and compare them one with another, he will find that they differ greatly.
Those of Asclepiades, for example, do not agree with those of Theodotus. And many of these can be obtained, because their disciples have assiduously written the corrections, as they call them, that is the corruptions, of each of them. Again, those of Hermophilus do not agree with these, and those of Apollonides are not consistent with themselves. For you can compare those prepared by them at an earlier date with those which they corrupted later, and you will find them widely different.
But how daring this offense is, it is not likely that they themselves are ignorant. For either they do not believe that the Divine Scriptures were spoken by the Holy Spirit, and thus are unbelievers, or else they think themselves wiser than the Holy Spirit, and in that case what else are they than demoniacs? For they cannot deny the commission of the crime, since the copies have been written by their own hands. For they did not receive such Scriptures from their instructors, nor can they produce any copies from which they were transcribed.
But some of them have not thought it worth while to corrupt them, but simply deny the law and the prophets, and thus through their lawless and impious teaching under pretense of grace, have sunk to the lowest depths of perdition."
Eusebius (Ecclesiastical History, Book V Chapter XXVIII)
There’s nothing innocent or innocuous about trying to find the historical text, because there’s a presupposition in the enterprise of questing for the historical text that is identical with the higher critical presupposition, and namely it is this: that the church has fabricated the data and the evidence about who Jesus was, what he said, and what he did. And in order to find out the truth and the reality of the Christ experience and event of the first century AD we have to go behind what is called the ecclesiastical text and rummage through the fragmentary sources that exist behind it from the second and third centuries, and speculate on into the third century, in order to find out what really happened, because the church [via the received text] told us a colossal lie.
Theodore P. Letis, The Quest for the Historical Text
