The Bible of the Bible College of East Africa
Rev Dr Mark Kim Kyung Soo Principal, Bible College of East Africa
The principle of maintaining the primacy of Scripture in the academic curriculum has led the Bible College of East Africa (BCEA) to devote teaching efforts to defending the inerrancy, sufficiency, and integrity of God’s Word. Study of Scripture was the purpose for which the institution was founded; Scripture forms the foundational weapon against battles raged against unbiblical movements in all forms.
The African mission field has not been immune from the influence of ecumenical and liberalist tides that held strong in the Western world in the first half of the twentieth century and prevailed in later decades in the less developed world. It is evident that the first decades of BCEA’s existence entailed confrontation with notions of the social gospel espoused by missionaries with a greater concern for the general “fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man” than on the spiritual salvation of the lost. In a BCEA Sunday worship services brochure of 1965, Dr Hawks wrote the following: “We are being told… that we should forget our theological differences and all work together for the upbuilding of humanity and the reconstruction of the social order. This sounds good, but it is not according to the Word of God, and it will not bring our souls to heaven.”2
Fellow missionary Miss Judith Collins expressed a similar sentiment in 1978: “Our ecumenical friends will give sewing machines, bags of food or seed, financial help to the Kenyan people, but never do we read of their gift of Bibles. Of course, we are not against gifts of sewing machines, and food; we too do the same whenever we can, but the most important thing for us in the EACA is the Word of God and it is our goal to put a Bible in the hands and heart of every literate Christian in our EACA churches. Many Christians in ICCC churches abroad, from Australia to America, have sent us money…to help in the buying of Bibles for our people… How precious is the Word of God to us!
“We want our churches to be full of men, women, and youth who daily read and feed upon the Word of God. When visitors come to our churches, we want them to see many, many Bibles in the hands of our Christians – not covered up inside a cloth or a briefcase, but open and carried for all to see.”3
Indeed, BCEA’s singular focus on the Bible and its central message of truth coincided with, and continue to coincide with, the defining mission of the ICCC and EACA.
Just a few years later in 1982, Rev Edward N Gross reiterated BCEA’s founding mission when he stated that the institution exists to train “specialists in understanding and proclaiming the Word of God… God’s spokesmen…entrusted with the truths of Scripture.”4 Maintaining this stance throughout BCEA’s history has entailed making additions to the curriculum to counter new movements. As stated in the previous section, the addition of original languages to the curriculum was in response to the increasing prevalence of liberal translations in the region.
It may be said that the continued inclusion of Greek and Hebrew at BCEA, even at pre- Bachelor levels, is also in defence against the tides of so-called “biblical scholarship” that adopts unbiblical presuppositions. In particular, BCEA’s curriculum does not subscribe to the textual theories of Westcott and Hort, reasoned eclecticism, or thoroughgoing eclecticism, based on the stance of BCEA regarding the sovereignty and providence of God in relation to the preservation of His Holy Scriptures. Although a detailed discussion of this issue is beyond the scope of this paper, inasmuch as the issue marks a distinct departure of BCEA from mainstream biblical scholarship today, it merits at least a cursory discussion here.
Firstly, to the common “evangelical” contention that Scripture does not promise an inerrant transmission of Scripture, it must be stated here that Scripture does explicitly warn against altering Scripture. The act of amplifying or subtracting from God’s Word is an offence that is deemed as extremely grave (Revelation 22:18). If God is a God of precision whose sovereignty governs the smallest details of the universe (cf. Matthew 5:18; 10:30; etc.), then it must be maintained that He would have preserved His own words if it is true that every word is God-breathed. It must be conceded that He provided copyists throughout the ages obedient to the biblical injunction to pass on God’s Word as it is, available to churches throughout time. That is, such a group would have copied with a spirit that disallows incidental human improvement on God’s Word (attempts to improve clarity, to harmonise, etc.).
Secondly, the doctrine of biblical inerrancy, to be relevant for believers today (indeed, of all ages), requires the corollary of preservation. The view that BCEA holds of preservation is that of verbal plenary preservation. Those who hold to a less “rigid” form of preservation emphasise that the extant manuscripts agree in a vast majority of places, and that the variants do not affect any major pillars of the faith. This view implies that preservation to the degree that allows believers to understand and assent to these so-called “major doctrines” must somehow be sufficient in the sight of God. For a professing believer who is navigating the nuances of life and must consult Scripture on every point, however, the possibility that a verse he/she is meditating on may not have been accurately transmitted undermines the text’s function to convey relevant truths. That is, since God chose the text as the sufficient and essential means to convey His will, His provision must extend to ensuring that the text serves this intended function effectively, not only for articulating the so-called “major doctrines,” but for articulating all truths, including those that apply to life’s nuances.
Thirdly, if one denies that the entirety of God’s Word was preserved in one piece, the only alternative is to attempt to reconstruct the text from a multiplicity of choices. This necessitates the church to rely on scholars to ascertain the original text. The notion that intelligence and reason guarantees arrival at truth is contrary to God’s method of revealing Himself, identical to the man-honouring worldview that pervades secular institutions of higher learning.
“Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?… But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty” (I Corinthians 1:20, 27).
“Thus saith the LORD, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches: But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the LORD” (Jeremiah 9:23-24).
The following are statements of scholars in support of textual criticism:
“To date there are over 200,000 known variants, and this figure will no doubt increase in the future as more manuscripts are discovered.”5
“By way of conclusion, let it be emphasized again that there is no single manuscript and no one group of manuscripts that the textual critic may follow mechanically. All known witnesses of the New Testament are to a greater or lesser extent mixed texts, and even several of the earliest manuscripts are not free from egregious errors… one must seek not only to learn what can be known but also to become aware of what, because of conflicting witnesses, cannot be known.”6
“It must be emphasised here that the logical conclusion of textual critical methods is that of doubt regarding the Word of God, which must be deemed as incongruent to God’s will for His children regarding His Word. God is light (1 John 1:5), Revealer of truth and knowledge, contra the darkness of ignorance and uncertainty.”7
On this issue, the stance of BCEA on the Scriptures is akin to that of the ICCC as articulated in Jerusalem at the World Congress in 2000. Some of the major points merit mention here: (1) The Holy Scriptures on the originals are fully inspired with its words and genders and being complete as God’s revelation to man without error. (2) God not only inspired the Bible without errors in fact, doctrine and judgment, but also preserved the Scriptures in all ages for all eternity. (3) The Old Testament has been preserved in the Masoretic text and the New Testament in the Textus Receptus, and these comprise the complete Word of God.
It is my prayer that each successive generation of BCEA graduates will be fully equipped to defend the sufficiency and integrity of the Scriptures against all new movements that undermine BCEA’s founding position as well as the believer’s absolute confidence in the Word of God. The kind of spiritual strength required for this defence is, again, to be grounded in the Word of God: “I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the wicked one” (1 John 2:14b). I hope and pray that the words of Pastor Kipkorir Langat (ADipTh, BCEA, 2005) will be echoed by all future graduates: “…the Bible was the main textbook for all subject taught in class and also we had time for Scripture reading before we went to chapel in the morning where we gained a lot of knowledge of the Bible.” (An extract from Dr Mark Kim’s EdD dissertation.)
______________________________________________________________________
Earle E Cairns, Christianity Through the Centuries,
3d ed (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996), 438.
2 William S Hawks, Welcome / Karibuni, Ukaai
(BCEA Sunday Services Brochure, 1965).
3 Judith Collins, “Bibles for Kenya,” Biblical Missions 44.6 (June-July 1978), 11.
4 Lynn Gray Gordon, ed, Biblical Missions 48.7 (August-September 1982), 13. Reprinted from The Christian Morning Star of Nairobi, Kenya (January 1982).
5 Norman L Geisler and William E Nix, A General Introduction to the Bible (Chicago: Moody Press, 1986), 468.
6 Bruce M Metzger and Bart D Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, 4th ed (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 343.
7 For a helpful overview of fundamentalist bibliology and the pitfalls of textual criticism, I recommend: Timothy Tow and Jeffrey Khoo, Theology for Every Christian: A Systematic Theology in the Reformed and Premillennial Tradition of J Oliver Buswell (Singapore: Far Eastern Bible College, 2007), 65-123.
