Presuppositional Analysis of T. Garnet Howard Milne’s
Has the Bible Been Kept Pure? The Westminster Confession of Faith and the Providential Preservation of Scripture
1. Introduction to the Presuppositional Method
God’s Self-Attesting Revelation
T. Garnet Howard Milne’s Has the Bible Been Kept Pure? is anchored in a robustly confessional Reformed tradition that begins with God’s sovereign, triune self-disclosure in Scripture. The entire thrust of his work is that God—having inspired the words of Scripture—has also providentially preserved those same words in a continuous stream of authentic copies in Hebrew and Greek. Milne insists that the Bible is the Church’s foundational rule of faith, because Scripture is, in its essence, God speaking. Consequently, it is under the final authority of God’s Word that all controversies of religion must be judged.
This argument differs markedly from approaches that prioritize neutrality, rational probability, or purely historical evidences. Milne’s starting premise is that the Word of God is self-authenticating (autopistos) and that human beings, by virtue of the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit, come to recognize the Bible as the ipsissima verba of God. Milne repeatedly shows how Reformed forebears such as John Calvin, William Whitaker, Thomas Cartwright, and others uniformly insisted upon this principle: the self-attestation of Scripture is not validated by an external authority such as Rome’s magisterium or the speculations of textual critics, but rather by the internal witness of the Spirit and by Scripture’s own claims.
The Myth of Neutrality
Milne implicitly combats any assumption that textual scholars, Christian or otherwise, operate on neutral ground. He carefully underscores how 19th-century textual critics—especially those influenced by Benjamin Warfield’s reinterpretation of the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) 1:8—brought new philosophical and methodological assumptions about the transmission of the text. Neutrality, as Milne interprets it, is an illusion; every academic or church historian who addresses the question of the text’s purity comes armed with presuppositions about the nature of God, divine providence, and whether or not God’s Word can remain preserved in a stable textual stream through centuries of manuscript copying.
The Impossibility of the Contrary
Running throughout Milne’s volume is the presuppositional logic that, if indeed the text of Scripture is not providentially preserved, one teeters on the brink of epistemological chaos. If the Church did not have, in every age, the very words originally given by divine inspiration, then the Reformation principle of sola Scriptura would be gravely undermined. In Milne’s telling, the entire Reformed (or “Protestant orthodox”) tradition rests on the conviction that Scripture is not merely an abstract, lost “original,” but is concretely present in the extant Hebrew and Greek copies. The inability to affirm the text’s real availability in every generation is tantamount to ceding the question of ultimate authority to (1) the church’s institutional decisions (as Rome claimed), or (2) rationalistic textual criticism that risks subjugating Scripture to endless revision.
Milne’s insistence fits squarely within the presuppositional approach laid down by Cornelius Van Til and later refined by Greg Bahnsen: unless we start with God’s revelation as the final reference point, we cannot meaningfully maintain a coherent worldview of knowledge, morality, or authority. In that sense, Has the Bible Been Kept Pure? is as much a reflection on biblical authority and epistemology as it is a historical-theological treatise on the text’s transmission.
2. Identifying the Author’s Presuppositions
A. View of Scripture and Divine Revelation
Milne unequivocally treats Scripture as the ultimate, self-attesting standard for truth. While he converses with historical critics (such as those who worked with Westcott-Hort theories), he views modern textual criticism as dangerously close to granting “human reason the final authority.” He shows how Warfield, though in many ways a defender of biblical inerrancy, opened a methodological door for rationalistic textual theory. For Milne, the “myth of neutrality” surfaces here: Warfield’s acceptance of ongoing, open-ended purification of the text (via new manuscript discoveries or scientific principles) contradicts the Confession’s statement that the original Hebrew and Greek Scriptures are “by His singular care and providence, kept pure in all ages.”
Thus, Milne presupposes that the final form of Scripture in Hebrew and Greek—which Reformed theologians of the 16th and 17th centuries called the “authentical text”—is securely in the Church’s possession without requiring perpetual recourse to hypothetical reconstructions. In line with classical presuppositional theology, he sees any denial of the text’s stable accessibility as subverting scriptural authority itself.
B. Role of the Church, Confessions, and Historical Theology
A central focus of Milne’s inquiry is the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF). He devotes large portions of the book to demonstrating that the Assembly divines, ad fontes of Reformed orthodoxy, taught the real (not merely hypothetical) preservation of the text. Milne’s presupposition is that Scripture’s authority is prior to and independent of the Church’s pronouncements, yet the Church (and its confessional documents) recognizes and defends Scripture’s authority.
Far from using confessions as a separate yardstick, Milne sees the confessional tradition as the Church’s faithful reflection on Scripture’s own self-witness. He also appeals to earlier Reformed writers—Cartwright, Whitaker, Calvin, Jewel—to show that this view of textual purity preceded and outlived the Westminster era. In all these, he affirms a Reformed Catholic continuity that locates sola Scriptura in the context of the Church’s subordinate but crucial role in testifying to the text’s authenticity.
C. Starting Point: God’s Sovereignty vs. Human Autonomy
Milne’s starting point is plainly God’s sovereignty in preserving the biblical text. He cites explicit statements from Calvin, Cartwright, and others: if God promised that not a single “jot or tittle” would fall away (Matt. 5:18), then either God’s promise is false or the text is indeed preserved. Any suggestion that the Church must sift through manuscripts to discover or partially reconstruct God’s Word effectively places the Church—fallen, finite, and prone to error—in a quasi-autonomous role of “judging” Scripture.
This resonates with the classical presuppositional stance: the creature must not set itself up as the ultimate arbiter of truth. For Milne, Warfield and other 19th-century textual critics inadvertently made human autonomy (under the banner of “scientific textual criticism”) the final decider of God’s Word.
D. Apologetic Aims: Proof or Probability?
Milne’s tone is decidedly that Scripture needs no further proof or external scaffolding for its authority. Its authenticity is recognized as a certainty, not a probabilistic guess that emerges from evaluating textual variants. He repeatedly shows how 17th-century theologians believed they had the very words and not merely a probable approximation. The difference is stark: a “merely probable” text can never serve as an infallible rule of faith, because it is open to incremental (or major) future revisions.
Hence, Milne’s book is saturated with the apologetic principle that “without the God of Scripture, nothing can be proven at all.” A fully certain Scripture is part of the Christian’s entire worldview package. If the text is uncertain, the worldview built upon it becomes correspondingly uncertain.
3. Presuppositional Critique
A. Two-Step Method (Prov. 26:4–5)
“Don’t Answer the Fool According to His Folly”
Milne’s positive presentation of Scripture is that it comes from God, who cannot lie, and that He superintends its preservation. The “necessary foundation” of logic, science, and especially theology and ethics is the pure Word of God. Because this Word is from God Himself, it carries its own credentials, and the Holy Spirit confirms it to believers’ hearts.In Milne’s telling, the original Reformed orthodoxy recognized no middle ground. Either one stands under Scripture’s authority (including textual purity) or one subordinates Scripture to external authorities. Thus, the Christian worldview, for Milne, supplies the only coherent basis for textual confidence.
“Answer the Fool According to His Folly”
Next, Milne performs an internal critique of the assumptions behind Warfield’s reading of WCF 1:8 and modern textual skepticism more generally. He argues that Warfield’s perspective “cannot account for” the authoritative clarity with which sola Scriptura functioned at the Reformation. Warfield’s acceptance of textual-critical methods implies that, at the time of the Westminster Assembly (and earlier), large portions of the text might have been uncertain or awaiting future “purification.”From Milne’s vantage point, this yields an inconsistency: you cannot vigorously assert that Scripture is the supreme judge of all controversies while also admitting you may never fully recover the text from copyists’ mistakes and lost manuscripts. Milne insists that Warfield’s desire to align confessional theology with modern textual science ended up distorting the plain meaning of the Confession’s words (“kept pure in all ages”).
B. Impossibility of the Contrary
The “impossibility of the contrary” for Milne is that, once you concede that the biblical text may have been lost or hopelessly corrupted for large stretches of church history, you forfeit a truly infallible standard. Protestant claims against Rome’s authority—and indeed the entire Reformation emphasis on Scripture as the final court of appeal—fall apart if one suspects that fundamental sections of the text might be in doubt or missing.
Milne quotes numerous Puritan voices (Cartwright, Whitaker, Ussher, Goodwin) who declared it “impossible” that God would allow the original words to vanish, given His covenant commitment to His people and the function of Scripture as the rule of faith. Conversely, if Warfield and modern textual critics reduce Scripture’s textual basis to an ongoing or incomplete reconstruction, the Christian stance that “Scripture alone” reigns becomes ephemeral.
C. Transcendental Challenge
Milne’s entire project mounts a Van Til–style challenge: “What must be true of reality for textual certainty to exist?” His answer is that Scripture’s self-authenticating nature (backed by God’s providence) must be assumed. Non-Christian or semi-rationalist approaches to textual transmission collapse into arbitrary guesswork, because they treat the Bible as a purely human artifact, ignoring the theological promises of its divine origin and preservation.
He also contends that Warfield’s partial capitulation to textual critics introduced contradictions. By labeling the text “substantially pure,” Warfield inadvertently made textual reliability a matter of degrees rather than the historical Reformed stance of entire preservation. Milne sees this as a subtle retreat from the transcendental claim that “Scripture alone (in its purity) is the necessary foundation of truth.”
4. Theological and Practical Consequences
Authority of God’s Word vs. Autonomy of Man
A central theme is how quickly Christian epistemology unravels if one treats Scripture as uncertain. Milne marshals historical data to show that early Protestant polemicists forcefully rebutted Roman Catholic claims of “corrupt Greek texts.” They did so precisely by affirming that no authority stands above God’s Word to judge it—thus Scripture could not be partially lost or beyond retrieval.
Practically, if believers concede that uncertain or incomplete text can serve as God’s Word, they open a wedge for the autonomy of human scholarship. Milne’s warning is that once you go down this road, you inch closer to a liberal Protestantism that can’t decisively rule out any textual variant or question. Ultimately, you risk undermining the clarity, authority, and sufficiency of Scripture itself.
Role of the Holy Spirit and Regeneration
Throughout his book, Milne highlights the older Reformed principle that “the Spirit and the Word” are inseparably joined. The spiritual certainty believers enjoy includes not only the sense or doctrine of Scripture but also the authenticity of its words. Regeneration by the Holy Spirit transforms the heart so that one recognizes God’s voice in Scripture; no prior submission to some “higher court” of textual criticism is necessary to validate Scripture’s authority.
He quotes frequently from Calvin, who taught that “the Scriptures manifest themselves to be the Word of God by their majesty and purity,” confirmed by the Spirit’s testimony. This direct connection of internal witness to scriptural authority effectively bypasses the Roman Catholic argument that one needs a hierarchical church to authenticate the text’s content—and likewise bypasses the rationalist assumption that textual critics can determine the Word of God’s boundaries.
Worship and Intellectual Life
Milne also underscores a pastoral dimension: if God indeed speaks now through a fully reliable text, worship and discipleship take on a directness and immediacy. Milne’s Puritan sources (e.g., Anthony Tuckney, Thomas Manton, John Owen) consistently taught that the minister preaches with confidence only if he holds the fully preserved text in hand. That dynamic fosters doxology: the faithful respond in worship to “every jot and tittle,” trusting that God’s voice is present in all of Scripture’s words.
Conversely, if one is always waiting for the next critical edition or newly discovered manuscript to settle a reading, preaching and teaching can become destabilized. In this sense, Milne’s message is that a stable text undergirds stable worship, stable exegesis, and stable Christian piety.
Polemic Aims: Humility and Gentleness
While Milne at times writes with polemical force, he reminds the reader that the original aim of Reformed orthodoxy was not a harsh dogmatism but a robust defense of the Church’s only saving message. He cites how, in all major controversies, Puritan and Reformed writers appealed to the consistent tradition that God had preserved Scripture entire—and did so with pastoral concern for those plagued by doubt.
Milne’s style is direct but rarely vitriolic; he seeks to expose the danger in Warfield’s revision more than attack Warfield personally. The mood of humility emerges when Milne acknowledges the universal practice of collating manuscripts or comparing the Old Testament to the New (e.g., Calvin’s method). Such comparisons, however, do not entail opening the text to wholesale revision but rather demonstrate the Church’s reverent handling of the very words God preserved.
5. Conclusion: A Clash of Worldviews
Summary of the Author’s Presuppositional (or Non-Presuppositional) Coherence
Milne’s book, read as a whole, is presuppositional to its core. He begins by rejecting “autonomous human reason” as the final arbiter of textual purity and ends by affirming that the same God who inspired the text has protected it in a stable form for every generation. His analysis of the Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter one, is extensive and can be reduced to this central thesis: the divines did not teach that the text was approximately true, partially lost, or in need of indefinite future restoration; they taught that God’s special providence guarantees the pure text is available.
He observes that Warfield—though a champion of inerrancy—unwittingly introduced a shift away from the older confessional theology, opening the door to the indefinite “search” for the biblical text. Milne believes such a stance undermines the Confession’s “myth of neutrality” critique, since Warfield’s acceptance of “scientific textual criticism” effectively cedes final authority to human scholarship.
Where He Reflects the Van Til/Bahnsen Approach, and Where He Deviates
Milne’s approach, in principle, greatly mirrors Van Til’s or Bahnsen’s. He asserts that the knowledge of God, Scripture’s authority, and biblical textual security all stand or fall together. The “impossibility of the contrary” is fully on display: absent God’s providential supervision of the text, the entire Reformation principle of sola Scriptura collapses.
A possible difference is that Milne does not delve extensively into philosophical nuance or formalize the transcendental argument. His interest is more historical-theological than philosophical. Nevertheless, his argument’s structure is thoroughly presuppositional.
Key Observations
- Strongest Points of Alignment: Milne’s unwavering defense of Scripture’s verbal preservation and emphasis on the Church’s immediate possession of the genuine text echoes the classical presuppositional refrain that God cannot contradict Himself, nor can He permit His Word to vanish.
- Areas of Concern: Some might question whether Milne at times overstates the unity of the Reformed tradition or underestimates the nuance in Warfield’s thought. Yet his entire project underscores the urgent necessity of a textual apologetic consistent with Reformed confessionalism.
Final Reflection / Exhortation
In summation, T. Garnet Howard Milne’s Has the Bible Been Kept Pure? challenges the Church to forsake any posture of neutrality or half-measures that place Scripture’s text “on trial” before modern critics. He urges readers to return to the “self-attesting Word of God” principle that launched and fueled the Reformation itself.
Milne’s core exhortation stands as a modern echo of the Westminster divines’ original conviction: the living God who has spoken in His Word keeps that Word whole for His Church, in every age, by His sovereign care. In so doing, He renders us without excuse: either we submit to that Word as the supreme judge, or we are left in the uncertain labyrinth of textual revision and churchly magisteria.
This call for unwavering commitment to Christ’s lordship over all our thought, including textual matters, is a clarion summons to stand firm in the classical Reformed apologetic tradition. For Milne, to compromise on textual preservation is to compromise on biblical authority itself. The final takeaway: if Scripture is the foundation of knowledge, worship, and discipleship, then presupposing its full availability and purity is not optional but indispensable for consistent biblical faith.
