Difficult Variants Must Be Resolved Within the Received Text
The previous thesis argued that the traditional text must be evaluated as a providential whole. That conclusion immediately raises a practical question.
Open record →Category: Doctrine of Scripture
Constructive doctrinal treatments of Holy Scripture.
Evidence Is Not the Instrument: Manuscripts, Editions, and the Rule of Faith
Manuscripts and critical apparatuses are indispensable witnesses, but the rule of faith is the divine text to which they witness. Confusing evidence with Scripture reverses their proper authority.
Open record →The Self-Attesting Word and the Impossibility of a Higher Court
An ultimate authority cannot be certified by a more ultimate tribunal. The doctrine of Scripture must therefore explain how the self-attesting Word is recognized in extant words without…
Open record →
The Traditional Text Must Be Evaluated as a Providential Whole
Modern textual criticism habitually presents each textual variant as an independent contest.
Open record →Correcting the Scrivener: Mistake, Reformation, and the Testator’s Actual Intention
A copyist’s mistake is corrected by returning to the author’s actual words, not by improving his general purpose. Modern will-reformation cases sharpen the line between ministerial correction and…
Open record →No Neutrality—Not Even in Textual Criticism
Collation can be technical, but no scholar interprets manuscript age, genealogy, scribal habits, or internal probability apart from controlling beliefs about God, history, authority, and preservation.
Open record →