by Rev. Terence H. Brown, Secretary, Trinitarian Bible Society
[Remarks on the Rev. Donald MacLeod’s article in the June 1972 issue of the “Banner of Truth.”]
Several readers of the “Banner of Truth” have drawn our attention to the article on this subject by the Rev. Donald Macleod, Associate Editor of the magazine and minister of Partick Highland Free Church of Scotland, and we have been requested to write in reply. The article will be read by many members of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, and as the A.V. is respected and used by Free Presbyterians, readers need to be assured that Mr. MacLeod’s criticisms of the A.V. are unwarranted and that his view of the underlying text is fundamentally unsound. Mr MacLeod advocates the kind of textual criticism approved by Professor B.B. Warfield, Gresham Machen, and William Cunningham, whom he describes as a “master dogmatician”. The reader is entitled to enquire — whose master, and by whose appointment, and in what field? In the field of textual studies too many have been prepared to accept the opinions of eminent men without question and without testing their conclusions by a detailed and searching examination of the evidence. The present century has produced a generation of docile pupils who never alarm their tutors by showing any tendency to exercise independent judgment. It should be recognised, however, that a superficial study of the tabloid text-books of Warfield, Souter and Lake, does not qualify a man to reconstruct the text of the Greek New Testament, or to eliminate important verses from our English translation.
Misguided criticism
Professor Warfield was sadly misguided by Professors Westcott and Hort and other critics of the same school, whose textual theories he delivers at second hand in his own little book on textual criticism. The effect is that the reader is encouraged to adopt a form of the text dominated by the 4th century Vatican manuscript known as codex B, the Sinai copy known by the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet — Aleph, and the group of manuscripts, versions and “fathers” which exhibit the same text. It is now generally regarded as the hall-mark of sane scholarship to accept this view, although it is fundamentally wrong. The result is that many preachers who continue to use the Authorised Version are constantly attacking the text from which it was translated, and denying the authenticity of many words, phrases and sentences — sometimes whole paragraphs — which were omitted by the B-Aleph group of authorities.
That those authorities were far from reliable is clearly shown by Dr. R.L. Dabney (1820-1898). In the opinion of Dr. Archibald Alexander of Princeton, Dabney was “The best teacher of theology in the United States, if not in the world,” and T.C. Johnson regarded him as entitled to “the first place among the theological thinkers and writers of this century.” Lecerf recognised him as one of the leading theologians of America, and Professor Freundt described him as “a man of extraordinary gifts of perception and analysis . . . absolutely certain that the day would come when the divinely revealed truth which he held and taught would be also divinely vindicated.”
Dr. Dabney’s solemn warning
Dr. Dabney wrote a useful article on the doctrinal various readings of the New Testament Greek, in which he refers to “the objectionable and mischievous feature of the later criticism” and asserts that, “Its natural result will be that the Church of God will finally have no New Testament at all.” He contended that “the judicial canons by which these critics attempt to discriminate the true readings are not only still unsettled, and in part contradictory, but obnoxious to grave objections.” The gravest objection to the abbreviated form of the text of the B-Aleph group was that it shows a distinctly Arian bias, and omits or weakens many passages which have a bearing upon the Trinitarian doctrine of the Bible.
The influence of anti-Trinitarian heresies
Dr. Dabney comments upon the character of these documents — “The significant fact to which we wish especially to call attention is this: that all the variations proposed on the faith of these manuscripts which have any doctrinal importance, should attack the one doctrine of the Trinity; nay, we may say even more specifically, the one doctrine of Christ’s Deity . . . Their admirers claim for them an origin in the 4th or 5th century. The Sabellian and Arian controversies raged in the 3rd and 4th. Is there no coincidence here? Things do not happen again and again regularly without a cause . . . some deliberate hand has been at work in these instances. When we remember the date of the great Trinitarian controversy, and compare it with the supposed date of these copies of the sacred text, the ground of suspicion becomes violent.” A large measure of responsibility for the corruption of the text of the B-Aleph group is attributed by Dabney to Origen, who was, during the time of the Sabellian and Arian controversies, the Magnus Apollo of oriental Biblical scholars, and his critical opinions were regarded by them as almost infallible. Dabney continues — “Somebody has played the knave with the text, either the so-called orthodox by corruptly interpolating, or some anti-Trinitarians by dishonestly mutilating. The alternative is between the two hypotheses. Let the candid reader choose between them in the light of these facts. We think that he will conclude with us that the weight of probability is greatly in favour of this theory — that the anti-Trinitarians, finding certain codices in which these doctrinal readings had been already lost through the licentious criticism of Origen and his school, industriously diffused them, while they also did what they dared to add to the omissions of similar readings.” Dabney concluded that these considerations restore the claims of the received text to be a faithful one, and invalidate the claims of exclusive accuracy made by recent critics in favour of the so-called oldest codices.
The critics not infallible or unanswerable
Mr MacLeod draws support for his very weak case from Warfield, Lightfoot, Spurgeon and Bruce, but it must be remembered that these men were not infallible oracles upon every subject, and that there were some matters upon which they may all have been mistaken. Warfield was convinced that Bishop Lightfoot was fundamentally mistaken on the subjects of the Christian ministry and liturgical worship. Each was convinced that the other had sadly misunderstood and misapplied every verse of Holy Scripture on these two subjects. Both Warfield and Lightfoot were sure that Spurgeon was mistaken in his understanding of the Scriptures relating to Baptism and congregational independence. On the subject of textual criticism Dr Dabney would have assured them that they were all mistaken in commending a form of the text characterised in many places by a strong anti-Trinitarian bias.
Mr MacLeod asserts that “the case which Lightfoot presents is unanswerable”, but this only demonstrates that docile acceptance of unsound theories of textual criticism that is so characteristic of the present generation of “evangelical” and “reformed” students. There is nothing in Lightfoot’s book that is “unanswerable”. The short answer is that he presented his case for a fresh revision of the English New Testament, and that in due course the revision was undertaken in accordance with the principles that he advocated. This Revised Version was published in 1881 and was soon seen to be sadly deficient in style and utterly unacceptable as an alternative to the Authorised Version. After the first wave of interest the sale and use of the R.V. rapidly declined, and by 1923 less than 2% of the English New Testaments circulated by the British and Foreign Bible Society were in this version. The complete and rapid failure of the R.V. shows the fundamental weakness of Lightfoot’s “unanswerable case.”
Spurgeon’s treatment of Romans 8.1
A substantial portion of Mr MacLeod’s article is devoted to C.H. Spurgeon’s misguided treatment of Romans 8.1. Spurgeon insisted that the revisers were right in omitting the second half of the verse — “who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” — and he said that “the oldest copies are without it.” And that the words had been added to guard against “the Antinomian tendency which would separate faith from good works”, and that this “tampering with Scripture was unjustifiable”. Spurgeon did not realise that in advocating the revisers’ text he was returning to ancient copies, which in the opinion of Dr Dabney had been dishonestly mutilated by the anti-Trinitarians.
Scrivener’s vindication of John 1.18
With reference to John 1.18 “The only begotten Son”, Mr MacLeod recommends the substitution of “the only begotten God”, and suggests that this shows that departures from the received text are not always in the interests of a lower theology or Christology. On this text F.H. Scrivener remarked — “Instead of ‘the only begotten Son’, Tregelles, with Westcott and Hort, ventures to set in the text what Lachmann had long since placed in the margin, the startling novelty ‘God only begotten,’ an expression whose doctrinal importance is obvious, and which it will require much proof before we can persuade ourselves to accept it as genuine . . . The heretic Arius also upholds ‘God only begotten’, which circumstances does not help to reconcile us to a term that reverential minds instinctively shrink from . . . We note the present as a case where A and the mass of copies, well-supported by the versions, afford us a purer text than codices Aleph BCL33”. (“Six Lectures on the Text” pages 154/5). In his Plain Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the N.T. Dr. Scrivener adds, “It may be that the term suits that heretic’s system better than it does the Catholic doctrine: it certainly does not confute it.” (2nd. Edition page 525). “That heretic’s system” certainly results in a “lower Christology” than that defined by the Westminster Confession of Faith.