Trinitarian Bible Society, Verbal Plenary Preservation, and the Texts Underlying the Authorised Version
Life BPC and others2 have been arguing, in a most misleading manner, that the Trinitarian Bible Society (TBS) position is in contradistinction/opposed to the position of VPP of FEBC. Notwithstanding, that the TBS has issued no public statement to this effect, let us compare the TBS official position with both Life BPC and FEBC. All of the following quotations have been drawn from The Statement of Doctrine of Holy Scripture3 issued by “all the Members of the General Committee, the Vice-Presidents and the General Secretary” in 2005. The TBS state very clearly that: “In conformity to God’s purpose, promise, and command, faithful and accurate copies were made (Deuteronomy 17:18; Proverbs 25:1) and, through God’s special providential care, His Word has been preserved in all generations (Psalm 119:152; Matthew 5:18; 24:35; Luke 16:17; 1 Peter 1:25).”4
The TBS also state in the Preface that they hold to, “The Reformation Confessions such as the Westminster (1647), the Savoy (1658), and the London Baptist (1689), state regarding Scripture that, ‘The Old Testament in Hebrew, (which was the native language of the people of God of old,) and the New Testament in Greek, (which at the time of the writing of it, was most generally known to the nations,) being immediately inspired by God, and, by his singular care and providence, kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical … (WCF 1:8).”
So we can conclude from these statements that the TBS believes all the Words of God have been providentially preserved “pure” and “in all ages.” Also, the preserving of these Words has been done by God and not man so we cannot believe that this would be done carelessly or by accident. We cannot play semantics and say that “pure” only means really 99.9% as it can only rationally mean 100% and perfect as the WCF state that it was done by God, who cannot err as any impurity as “a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.” The question now is: where does the TBS state the “pure Words of God are?” They say, “The Lord Jesus Christ and His Apostles received the preserved and standard Hebrew text of the Old Testament as Scripture (Luke 4:16-19, 21; 2 Timothy 3:16). This serves as our pattern for accepting the historically received text of the New Testament also as Scripture (1 Timothy 5:18 cf. Luke 10:7; 2 Peter 3:15-16)… These texts of Scripture reflect the qualities of God-breathed Scripture, including being authentic, holy, pure, true, infallible, trustworthy, excellent, self-authenticating, necessary, sufficient, perspicuous, self-interpreting, authoritative and inerrant (Psalm 19:7-9, Psalm 119). They are consequently to be received as the Word of God (Ezra 7:14; Nehemiah 8:8; Daniel 9:2; 2 Peter 1:19) and the correct reading at any point is to be sought within these texts.”5
So, these “texts” are to be received the same way Christ and the apostles received them i.e. as the perfectly preserved and inspired Scripture (2 Tim 3:16), as they are “pure, true, infallible, trustworthy, excellent, self-authenticating, necessary, sufficient, perspicuous, self-interpreting, authoritative and inerrant.” Therefore, we can safely conclude that the TBS believe that these “texts” can be said to be the perfect 100% inspired Words of God. Now, which “texts” are they referring to? The TBS state, “The Trinitarian Bible Society maintains that the providentially preserved true and authentic text is to be found in the Masoretic Hebrew and the Greek Received Texts. In so doing, it follows the historic, orthodox Protestant position of acknowledging as Holy Scripture the Hebrew and Greek texts consistently accessible to and preserved among the people of God in all ages. These texts had remained in common use in different parts of the world for more than fifteen centuries and they faithfully represent the texts used in New Testament times.”6
So, the TBS states very clearly that the “true and authentic text” is “found in the Masoretic and Received Texts,” but only those from the Received text family. It adds a further limb of proof here which is important as it must only be in those texts that are “consistently accessible to and preserved among the people of God in all ages.” This would appear to expressly rule out any such concept of a “Majority Text” position that “preservation is throughout the ages in all the extant manuscripts, versions and the citations by the Church fathers.” However, how does the TBS define as the, “Masoretic Hebrew and the Greek Received Texts?” “The Society accepts as the best edition of the Hebrew Masoretic text the one prepared in 1524-25 by Jacob ben Chayyim and known, after David Bomberg the publisher, as the Bomberg text. The Greek Received Text is the name given to a group of printed texts, the first of which was published by Desiderius Erasmus in 1516. The Society uses for the purposes of translation the text reconstructed by F.H.A. Scrivener in 1894.”7
It should be noted carefully that the “Greek Received Text” is defined by the TBS as “the name given to a group of printed texts, the first of which was published by Desiderius Erasmus in 1516.” This clearly does not include any other so-called “Majority Text” from any other Byzantine Family manuscripts that are extant today that differ from any of the “printed texts.” We can only logically conclude that the TBS only accept these “printed texts” as having the “true and authentic text” of the “pure” Providentially Preserved Word of God.
Life BPC have tried to argue that the TBS statement does not mean this and that the TBS allow latitude of interpretation in that they believe all of the “Words of God” are preserved somewhere in the extant manuscripts within the “Byzantine Text” family. However, the TBS clearly state they only view the “printed texts” not the extant manuscripts as the “Greek Received Text,” which they also state is “definitive and the final point of reference in all the Society’s work.” However, in a final and surely decisive blow to the Life BPC position, the TBS also, in their definition of the “Majority Text,” expressly and definitively rule out any such view as Biblically valid: “Majority Text: A text based on the majority of manuscript witnesses. The Greek New Testament According to the Majority Text, edited by Zane C. Hodges and Arthur L. Farstad (1982), is a modern example of the Majority Text. Although close to the Received Text, there are a number of differences and some of these are significant (e.g. John 7:53-8:11; Acts 8:36, 37). Furthermore, as no detailed collation of all surviving manuscripts has taken place, the exact majority text cannot yet be determined; and even if one day that became possible, the resultant text could only be provisional and tentative, because the discovery of further manuscripts might change minority readings to majority readings, or vice versa. The doctrine of providential preservation, however, teaches that the Church is—and always has been—in possession of the true text of Scripture.”8
In other words, the TBS have adopted a faith-based test for determining the exact words of Holy Scripture which is “the doctrine of providential preservation, however, teaches that the Church is—and always has been—in possession of the true text of Scripture.” What the TBS are stating here is that there is no further examination needed of extant texts within any of the textual families as we already have the exact words of the autographs in the “printed texts” of the “Greek Received Text.” In simple terms, it is crystal clear to anyone who reads with an open mind, that the TBS believe in VPP in the various editions of the printed Greek Texts of the Textus Receptus! This is very different from the Life BPC position that only holds to a nebulous and undefined view that “God has fully preserved His Word in the body of manuscripts (or texts or copies) after the original autographs were lost.”9
By contrast, FEBC state that: “The infallible and inerrant words of Scripture are found in the faithfully preserved Traditional/Majority manuscripts and fully represented in the Printed and Received Text…that underlies the Reformation Bibles best represented by the KJV.”10
The TBS position, from the deductive and logical analysis above can only differ from FEBC in one marginal aspect; that they would change this statement to “fully represented in the Printed and Received Texts,” as they state “the scope of the Society’s Constitution does not extend to considering the minor variations between the printed editions of the Textus Receptus.” It would also seem logical that the TBS would probably lean more to the view of FEBC as no doubt it makes more sense to assume that the KJV translators made the right choices with the greater evidence before them in determining the true text when comparing what the TBS say are “variations” that are “not of great significance and rarely affect the sense” 11 in the various printed editions of the Received Text.12
Despite, Life BPC accusations that FEBC is “divisive” on this issue, the reality is that FEBC readily embraces the TBS position as a legitimate interpretation and state, “FEBC concedes that others can differ with them ‘over the absolute certainty as regards the underlying texts or words’ but as long as other VPP and KJV defenders ‘…maintain VPP in the lineage of Byzantine/Majority manuscripts and the Textus Receptus…’ and deny the Westcott-Hort Text and also deny the existence of scribal errors, ‘…slight differences of opinion over the verbally preserved texts/words among KJV defenders should remain as non issues…’.”13
Life BPC claim that the conviction of VPP, “is not held by the majority of fundamental, Bible-believing institutions, churches and writers.” Notwithstanding, that their distinctives of Reformed Premillennial Presbyterianism is in a relative minority in these categories and they do not consider that a problem, a quick survey around the “Fundamentalist world” will show how worthless such as observation is. For instance, in the USA, it is reckoned that the number of independent Baptist churches is roughly 10,000 and most of these are KJVO/VPP. We will list just a few examples:
(1) Crown College of the Bible and Temple Baptist Church is an Independent Fundamental Baptist Bible college and seminary in Powell, Tennessee with more than 1,000 students. The founder and President, Dr. Clarence Sexton has spoken at many Free Presbyterian Churches in Northern Ireland and is a close friend of Dr. Ian Paisley and have exchanged pulpits many times.14 The Reformers’ portraits line the halls of Temple Baptist Church. In 2007, Dr. Sexton gave the opening address to the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship International (FBFI) Annual Fellowship.15 His Church, Bible College and Seminary are openly KJVO and clearly state in their “Statement of Faith” on the Scriptures: “We believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Bible, ‘as it is in truth, the Word of God …’ (I Thessalonians 2:13). We believe in verbal, plenary inspiration in the original writings, and God’s preservation of His pure words to every generation (II Timothy 3:16, Psalms 12:6-8). The Masoretic Text of the Old Testament and the Received Text of the New Testament (Textus Receptus) are those texts of the original languages we accept and use; the King James Version of the Bible is the only English version we accept and use.”16
(2) Pensacola Christian College has 4,500 undergraduate students and has recently appointed Dr. Lloyd Streeter as copastor of the Campus Church17 who has published a book fully endorsing VPP in which he says, “We have no original language manuscripts for the book of Job except those copied in A.D. 900 by Massorite scribes. That is a gap of approximately 3,000 years. Actually, we do not even know the language in which Job was originally written. Think of it, dear reader – 3,000 years with no manuscripts? How would you know that Job is God’s Word if you had to depend on ‘early manuscripts’? There is ONE way to know and that is by faith. God said He would preserve His Word and He kept His promise… The perfection and trustworthiness of the King James Bible should be looked upon as a winnowing or refining process extending from Tyndale through 1769.”18
(3) David Cloud runs the Way of Life website ministry which has the largest list of subscribers and viewers of any Fundamentalist ministry. Cloud receives 2,500 and more personal letters and e-mails each month. Hundreds of Independent Baptist Churches are associated with him and list in his Directory of Churches.
(4) Singapore has a number of Independent Baptist Churches, listed in David Cloud’s Directory that are clearly VPP.19 For instance, Shalom Baptist Church states, “We believe that God preserved His Word in the Traditional Masoretic and Traditional Greek Text (the Textus Receptus) and we hold the King James Version which is based on these texts as the best English translation of the Bible.” 20
(5) The Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland clearly embrace the TBS’ position that all the “Words of God” have been preserved in the Received Text of the Textus Receptus editions. Speaking of the WCF, they disagree with the Life BPC interpretation and state, “Note how the Confession emphasises ‘in all ages.’ The claim of biblical criticism is that manuscripts discovered over the past 150 years which were not used or available to the Church in the preceding 1500 years are more authentic than the standard text (often called the Received Text) which form the vast majority of available manuscripts which the Westminster Assembly spoke of as having been kept pure in all ages. This text is witnessed to by the general consensus of the Church in each generation. God has preserved the Scriptures down through the ages for the salvation of men and the edification and comfort of His church, not buried away secretly but publicly in the usage of His Church. It is significant that Isaiah 59:21 speaks of the Church’s continuous possession of the Word, this verse is, as John Owen, put it, ‘the great charter of the Church’s preservation of truth.’ Any close consideration of the following verses will show that the providential preservation taught in relation to the Word of God extends beyond its doctrines to all of its words. Every word of the Scriptures as originally given was fully inspired of God and in the same way every word preserved by God is also fully inspired (See Matthew 5:18; 24:35; Matt 8:20; Mark 13:31; Luke 16:17; Luke 21:33; 1 Cor 11:23; 1 Pet 1:25; Rev 22:18-19).
“Any Church that holds fully to the teaching of the Westminster Confession must recognise that the Bible teaches the full providential preservation of the text of Scripture. Not least because various parts of the wording and teaching of the Westminster Standards depend on verses that are only in the Received Text and have therefore been omitted in most modern versions” (e.g. Matt. 6:13, 1 John 5:7).21
(6) Dr. Ian Paisley, the Joint Chairman of the World Congress of Fundamentalists and Founder of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, Rev. Dr. Ian Paisley M.P., in his book My Plea for the Old Sword (KJV), wrote: “Divine Revelation plus Divine Inspiration plus Divine Preservation equals the Divine Bible. These all, without exception, cover the whole field of every Word of God. There is no such thing as verbal Revelation without verbal Inspiration and there is no such thing as verbal Inspiration without verbal Preservation. In all cases it is not partial but plenary i.e. full, complete, perfect. …
“The Divine Revelation, put into writing the verbally Infallible Scriptures through Divine Inspiration, must have Divine Preservation in order to be available to all generations. The verbal Inspiration of the Scriptures demands the verbal Preservation of the Scriptures. Those who would deny the need for verbal Preservation cannot be accepted as being really committed to verbal Inspiration. If there is no preserved Word of God today then the work of Divine Revelation and Divine Inspiration has perished.
“In such a case any Bible is as good as any other. Hence the multiplication and continuing changes of perverted English versions of the Bible on the market today.
“Those who believe in a partial preservation are not much better. To say that God has preserved most of the Original Scriptures but not them all, robs us of every Word of God. Therefore we cannot live [by His every word, Matt 4:4]. This is but another way to pen-knife God’s every Word.
“Those who do not believe that God preserved His Word are really going down the path of final rejection of that Book of which the Lord Jesus Christ said, ‘The Word of God cannot be broken.’ Thank God, no potency can disintegrate this Rock.22
Dr Paisley went on to defend the VPP of Scripture and the KJV from Psalm 12:6-7: “Surely here we have the Doctrine of Divine Preservation divinely revealed. The preserved Scriptures cannot be lost or caused in any way to perish. As of the God who uttered them, so we can say, ‘Thou remainest!’
“It is interesting to note that the new Bibles vary the words of Psalm 12:6-7 and so eliminate the testimony of that verse to the Divine Preservation of the Scriptures. They insist that the ‘them’ of verse seven is not a reference to God’s words but to God’s people …and destroy the text’s testimony to the Preservation of God’s Word.
“God’s providential preservation of His own Word ensured that the true Scriptures were not hidden away in the library of the Antichrist nor in a monastery of ‘Greek Catholic’ idolatry at the time when Tyndale prepared his Bible. Faithful and true copies of the originals were at hand for the Divine Bombshell (Tyndale’s translation of God’s Holy Word into English) which would smash the Roman Antichrist. He translated into English the Preserved Word of God, not the Perverted Word of God.
“A return to the Apostolic Gospel comes as a result of Tyndale’s work. A return to the Apostate Gospel comes as a result of the translation of Rome’s long hidden, perverted text and other such perverted texts in the Modern Perversions of the Scriptures.
“The Authorised Version translated into English the Preserved Word of God and so preserved for the English speaking peoples of the World, the Word of the Living God, the only infallible Rule of Faith and Practice.”23
It is axiomatic, from all of the evidence presented above, that a “new formulation” of an historic doctrine is not necessarily characteristic of “heresy.” It is also clear that Life BPC have not even carried out the basic steps of collating the evidence properly and analyzing it objectively. This was the very evidence that they used to act in a discriminatory, inconsistent and unbiblical manner in their inflammatory and unjust action. They are simply willing to tolerate any view on preservation, save that of FEBC.
It is clear from these quotes that Dr. Ian Paisley believes that the “true Scriptures” were only preserved in a “full, complete, perfect” manner in the Authorised Version. Will Life BPC denounce now the Joint Chairman of the World Congress of Fundamentalists, Dr. Ian Paisley as a “heretic?” Will they do this also for the TBS, Crown College, Dr. Clarence Sexton, Way of Life, hundreds (if not thousands) of KJVO churches across the world, and Dr. Lloyd Streeter, co-pastor of the Campus Church at Pensacola Christian College? Will they issue a statement banning all of these groups from the premises of Life BPC for their “heresy?” In accordance with Titus 3:10 and their claim to practice in their Constitution “Ecclesiastical separation from all churches or groups of churches who are doctrinally impure,” will Life BPC “reject” and separate from the TBS, Dr. Ian Paisley, the Free Presbyterians of Ulster and Scotland, Fundamental Baptist Fellowship International, Crown College, Pensacola Christian College, and the World Congress of Fundamentalists for promoting “heresy” and allowing “heretics” into leadership.
Again, if Life BPC do not, it is manifestly obvious that their threatening statements of intent and accusations against FEBC are grounded on a “personal grudge” and not on principle, as they are currently maintaining.
In light of the above evidence, we can only plead that Life BPC formally retract their visceral and clearly unfounded and unbiblical accusations against their founding pastor, Dr. Timothy Tow and the Board of Directors of FEBC. Further delays will only compound the great wrong of these terrible slurs and slanders, which as they themselves stated, “brings no glory to God, and will only discredit the Church of God”24 for the infallible and perfect Scripture warns, “For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again” (Matt 7:2).
— A foreign observer
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http://www.lifebpc.com/ourstand/godlypath.htm – so desperate are Life BPC to buttress their misrepresentation of the TBS view that they have resorted to citing A J Brown, former editorial secretary of the Trinitarian Bible Society (TBS) in a 24 year old document, “Faith and Textual Scholarship”, TBS Quarterly Record (Oct-Dec 1984). They have acted, at best, carelessly in failing to study the clear statements of the latest Statement of Doctrine of Holy Scripture by the TBS. This error is compounded when the TBS has rejected the validity of the statements of A J Brown, as Mr. David Larlham, the Assistant General Secretary of TBS, recently wrote to Dr. Jeffrey Khoo of FEBC “we would suggest that neither you nor the Rev. Wong should place any such reliance upon the comments of Mr. Andrew Brown going back around 20 years.” David Cloud lists correspondence from Mr. Brown (www.wayoflife.org/articles/majoritytext.htm) clearly endorsing the “Majority Text” position in the 1980s, but he states that Mr. Andrew Brown was “dismissed from the Trinitarian Bible Society in 1991.”
2 http://www.truth.sg/tbsnonvpp.htm.
3 http://www.trinitarianbiblesociety.org/site/statement.pdf.
4 Preface, Section 4.
5 Section 6.
6 Note 1, p.6.
7 Note 3, p.6.
8 See definition of “Majority Text” in Word List, p.9.
9 http://www.lifebpc.com/ourstand/stmtfaith.htm.
10 The Burning Bush, Vol 12 Number 1, Editorial, p 2
11 “A Brief Look at the Textus Receptus” in Appendix 3.
12 Indeed, the TBS state in Appendix 2, (footnote 4) that “the Society believes that the latest and best edition is the text reconstructed by F. H. A. Scrivener in 1894.”
13 The Burning Bush, Vol 12, No 2, pp.80-81, Non issues.
14 http://www.wbir.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=31306.
15 http://www.fbfi.org/content/view/61/29.
16 http://www.thecrowncollege.com/Future/Faith.aspx.
17 http://www.pcci.edu/CampusChurch/PastorBios.html.
18 Streeter, Lloyd, Seventy-five Problems with Central Baptist Theological Seminary’s Book ‘The Bible Version Debate’ (First Baptist Church, P.O. Box 1043, LaSalle, IL 61301), 2003, pp. 98, 99, 104.
19 http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/churchdir/!churches.htm.
20 http://shalom-baptist.com/index.html.
21 http://www.fpchurch.org.uk/Beliefs/AuthorisedVersion.php.
22 Ian R K Paisley, My Plea for the Old Sword: the English Authorised Version (KJV) (Belfast: Ambassador, 1997), pp. 102-3.
23 Ibid, p.106.
24 http://www.lifebpc.com/ourstand/godlypath.htm.
