Article 13 of 27 in the series “When the Canons Collide.”
Romans 5:1 and Acts 20:28 force the debate beyond simple appeals to the oldest or best witnesses. At Romans, the external case can be acknowledged as much stronger for one form while internal reasoning leads editors to print the other. At Acts, both principal readings can be called hard, but not for the same reason. One presses grammar and expression; the other presses theology and the wording of the clause. Such cases reveal the critic's true task: not applying one rule, but choosing among different kinds of weight.
Controlling question: What do two doctrinally weighty variants reveal about the critic's power to rank external, grammatical, and intrinsic evidence?
Case 3: Romans 5:1—When Internal Evidence Overrules the Better Witnesses
The readings
The difference is a single Greek vowel:
- echomen, indicative: “we have peace with God”;
- echōmen, subjunctive: “let us have peace with God.”
Because omicron and omega had become very similar in pronunciation, dictation or copying could readily produce interchange. The forms differ little on the page and almost none to the ear.
Metzger reports that the subjunctive has far better external support. Yet a majority of the committee printed the indicative with an “A” rating because Paul's argument states the benefits of justification rather than exhorting believers to obtain peace. To explain the attestation, the commentary proposes that Paul dictated the indicative and Tertius, his amanuensis named in Romans 16:22, may have written the subjunctive.1
The collision
The case turns the usual rhetoric of “earliest and best manuscripts” inside out. The committee expressly lets internal evidence take precedence over far stronger external support. It also declines the harder reading: the subjunctive is harder in context, but that difficulty is judged not authorial roughness but an error.
The possible histories include:
- Paul wrote or dictated the indicative; auditory or visual interchange produced the subjunctive, which spread early.
- Paul wrote the subjunctive; copyists altered an exhortation to the doctrinally familiar statement “we have peace.”
- The earliest written stage itself contained an ambiguity or error of dictation that an editor now corrects toward authorial intention.
The third possibility raises the definition of the sought text. Is the target the words first physically written by the amanuensis, the wording Paul intended, the form he reviewed and authorized, or the initial state reconstructed behind all surviving witnesses? Textual criticism cannot avoid the question by appealing to the autograph if the proposed error is placed in the production of the autograph.
The role of intrinsic probability
The committee's contextual reading is strong: Romans 5:1–2 recites possessions flowing from justification—peace, access, and rejoicing in hope. But exhortatory subjunctives could also occur in a paraenetic transition. The question is exegetical, and the chosen exegesis controls the text while the chosen text reinforces the exegesis.
This need not be a vicious circle if the broader argument is clear enough. It remains a case in which the internal model overrides the documentary pattern. A reader told that modern editions simply follow older witnesses would be misled.
Audit verdict: Romans 5:1 demonstrates that external priority has no fixed jurisdiction and that the master explanation can reach behind the best-attested form to a conjectured act of dictation. The result may be exegetically persuasive, but it is not documentary compulsion.
Case 4: Acts 20:28—Two Kinds of Harder Reading
The readings
In Paul's address to the Ephesian elders, witnesses refer to:
- “the church of God” (tēn ekklēsian tou theou);
- “the church of the Lord” (tēn ekklēsian tou kyriou);
- “the church of the Lord and God,” generally treated as a conflation;
- a few other secondary combinations.
The immediate clause says that the church was obtained “through the blood of his own,” often rendered “with his own blood,” though some construe “his own” substantivally as God's own one or Son. The printed Textus Receptus and modern critical text agree on “God” at the principal variation, even though the critical committee described the decision as difficult and assigned a “C” rating.
Balanced external evidence
Metzger calls the external evidence between “God” and “Lord” singularly balanced. The abbreviated forms differ by one letter. Internal usage then pulls both ways:
- “church of the Lord” occurs in the Septuagint but nowhere else in the New Testament;
- “church of God” occurs repeatedly in the Pauline letters but nowhere else in the New Testament outside this speech in Acts.
A scribe familiar with the Septuagint could change God to Lord. A scribe influenced by Pauline usage could change Lord to God. The author Luke is reporting Paul, so both Lukan and Pauline profiles can be invoked.
Which reading is harder?
“God” is theologically harder if the following phrase means “his own blood.” A copyist may recoil from speaking of God's blood and substitute “Lord.” On the other hand, “Lord” is lexically harder within the New Testament because “church of the Lord” is unique there, while “church of God” is a Pauline formula. The canon of difficulty points in opposite directions depending on the dimension measured.
The committee preferred “God,” judging it more likely to be altered to “Lord” than the reverse.2 That is a reasonable abductive decision. It is also a transparent example of critical art: balanced documents, reversible assimilation, ambiguous syntax, and two kinds of rarity are adjudicated by an overall sense of the passage.
Agreement does not vindicate the method
Because the Textus Receptus and critical text agree here, this case guards against partisan simplification. The critique is not “critical canons always remove a received reading.” The issue is whether their inference has authority to constitute the text. A method can reach a true reading through reasoning that remains non-necessitating; a flawed argument can have a true conclusion, and a fallible argument can be strong without becoming revelation.
Audit verdict: Acts 20:28 shows why “prefer the harder” is incomplete. Difficulty must be located—doctrinal, lexical, grammatical, or authorial—and the categories may favor different readings. The committee's choice is a ranked explanation, not a result inherent in the word harder.
What This Article Establishes
- Romans 5:1 is a clear case in which a committee lets internal evidence defeat stronger external support.
- Acts 20:28 shows that difficulty must be typed before it can be weighed.
- Confidence ratings and editorial candor do not remove the judgment that creates the printed norm.
Conclusion
These passages show why neither external nor internal evidence can be invoked as though it had an invariant right of precedence. The critic must decide when witness weight yields to context, when grammar yields to a scribal account, and how doctrinal effect relates to motive. Once those decisions are visible, the result may be debated more honestly. It can no longer be presented as the bare voice of the manuscripts.
Previous: Canon Collision Casebook I: Mark 1:2 and Matthew 24:36 · Next: Canon Collision Casebook III: 1 Timothy 3:16 and 1 John 5:7–8
Comments
Share a question or response to this article.