The Church Must Receive, Confess, and Use the Text God Has Preserved

From Doctrinal Conviction to Ecclesiastical Duty

Thesis 25. The church must receive, confess, preserve, translate, proclaim, and transmit the authentic text God has preserved. The church does not create Scripture’s authority, determine its canon by decree, or constitute its text through critical judgment. She is the witness and keeper—not the author or lord—of the divine oracles entrusted to her. Churches must therefore identify the Hebrew Masoretic and Greek Received texts as their authentic textual standards, judge translations according to their fidelity to those texts, require textual scholarship to remain ministerial, and teach believers to receive Scripture with settled confidence. Ministers must preach the preserved Word; translators must render it faithfully; scholars must document and defend it honestly; and Christian households must read, memorize, and transmit it. To remain officially indifferent concerning the identity of the biblical text is not neutrality but a failure to confess and discharge the church’s stewardship.

The doctrine of Scripture cannot end in a library.

It must enter the pulpit, the prayer meeting, the catechism class, the mission field, the Christian school, and the family home. The text that God inspired and preserved must be read aloud, preached with authority, translated into the languages of the nations, memorized by children, confessed before persecutors, and carried by believers into death.

Confessional bibliology is therefore not complete when it has formulated a correct doctrine of preservation. It must ask what obedience that doctrine requires.

If God has preserved his Word, the church must receive it.

If the preserved Word is identifiable, the church must confess it.

If the text has been entrusted to the church, the church must use and transmit it.

The preceding theses have defended the divine origin, intrinsic authority, self-attestation, canonical identity, providential preservation, and continuing authenticity of Scripture. They have distinguished the text from its witnesses and editions, translations from their original-language sources, and ministerial criticism from magisterial reconstruction. They have argued that the Hebrew Masoretic and Greek Received texts constitute the providential textual inheritance of the church.

The final thesis gathers these doctrines into one ecclesiastical obligation:

The church must act as though the doctrine it confesses is true.

The church receives; God gives

The first verb is receive.

The church does not produce the Word of God. Scripture does not become authoritative when a council approves it, a scholar reconstructs it, a publisher prints it, or a congregation reads it. Its authority arises wholly from God, its author.

The Westminster Confession states the matter plainly:

“The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed, and obeyed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man, or church; but wholly upon God—who is truth itself—the author thereof: and therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God.”

The order cannot be reversed.

Scripture is not the Word of God because the church receives it. The church receives it because it is the Word of God.

This distinction separates Protestant bibliology from every form of ecclesiastical magisterialism. Rome may claim that the church authoritatively identifies the canon and supplies the certainty by which Scripture is known. Confessional Protestantism answers that the church hears the voice of her Shepherd in the self-attesting Scriptures. Ecclesiastical testimony is real and valuable, but it does not confer divine authority.

The same order governs textual identity.

The Hebrew and Greek texts are not authentic because the Reformers chose them, the Westminster divines confessed them, or later churches used them. They were received because God preserved his inspired Word in them and caused that Word to function publicly among his people.

Reception is therefore an act of submission.

The church does not stand over an array of possible texts as a sovereign judge deciding which shall become Scripture. She stands beneath the Word, recognizing what God has given and yielding herself to its authority.

This is why the language of reception must not be confused with a theory of ecclesiastical inspiration. The church may err. Councils may err. Editors may err. Yet the fallibility of those who receive does not imply the uncertainty of the object received.

Israel was entrusted with the “oracles of God” (Romans 3:2). Israel’s sins did not transform those oracles into an unidentified collection. The covenant people could be unfaithful custodians while God remained faithful to the Word committed to them.

Likewise, the Christian church may neglect, mishandle, or obscure Scripture without creating or destroying its intrinsic authority. Her duty remains to receive faithfully what God has preserved infallibly.

The church is a witness and keeper of Holy Writ

Westminster calls the church a witness and keeper of Holy Writ.

Both terms matter.

As a witness, the church testifies to the divine qualities, canonical identity, historical reception, and spiritual power of Scripture. Her testimony may move and induce men to esteem the Scriptures highly. Her worship, preaching, martyrs, confessions, translations, and public use bear historical testimony to the Word she has received.

As a keeper, the church has a stewardship. She copies, preserves, translates, publishes, teaches, and transmits the Scriptures. She guards them against suppression, corruption, neglect, and false interpretation.

Neither office makes the church lord over Scripture.

A witness does not create the event to which he testifies. A keeper does not own the treasure entrusted to his custody.

Paul describes the church as “the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15). Rome has sometimes abused this language as though truth depended upon the church’s authority. Paul’s imagery teaches the opposite. A pillar supports and publicly displays something distinct from itself. The church is appointed to uphold the truth before the world, not to manufacture it.

The steward’s responsibility is measured by the owner’s command.

“Moreover it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful” (1 Corinthians 4:2).

Faithfulness requires the church to preserve the identity of what has been entrusted. A steward who admits that he possesses a treasure but refuses to identify it has not fulfilled his office. Neither has a steward who surrenders its identification to experts who continually revise their inventory.

The church’s stewardship is therefore textual as well as doctrinal.

She must guard not only a general Christian message but the words in which God gave that message.

Confession must include textual identity

Many churches confess inspiration while remaining officially silent about preservation and textual identity.

Their statements may declare that the Bible is inspired, infallible, or inerrant “in the original manuscripts.” Since those manuscripts no longer exist, the confession’s strongest language is directed toward an absent object. The church’s present Bible is then described through weaker terms: reliable, substantially accurate, trustworthy in doctrine, or sufficient for salvation.

This produces an unstable doctrine.

An inspired text that no longer exists cannot function as the church’s present rule. A preserved text that cannot be identified cannot be appealed to in controversy. A Bible whose precise wording remains provisionally reconstructed cannot operate consistently as the supreme judge.

The Reformed confessional doctrine is stronger.

The Old Testament in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek were immediately inspired by God and have, by his singular care and providence, been kept pure in all ages. They are therefore authentic.

The church must confess that complete order:

1. God inspired definite Hebrew and Greek words.

1. God preserved those words through all ages.

1. The preserved Hebrew and Greek Scriptures remain authentic.

1. Those authentic texts are the final textual standards for doctrine, translation, and controversy.

1. The Holy Spirit speaking in Scripture remains the supreme judge.

A church that confesses preservation only in the abstract has not yet completed its confession. It must identify the historical object to which its doctrine refers.

For the Old Testament, that object is the Hebrew Masoretic textual tradition, represented in the standard Hebrew text received by the Reformation churches and given stable printed expression in the Bomberg–Ben Chayyim tradition.

For the New Testament, it is the Greek Received Text, represented through the Reformation-era editions and their continuing ecclesiastical reception.

This confession does not require the church to pronounce one manuscript or printed edition independently perfect. It does not require every officer to resolve every difference among Erasmus, Stephanus, Beza, the Elzevirs, or Scrivener. Those are subordinate editorial questions within an identified textual tradition.

But the church must identify the tradition.

Otherwise, preservation becomes a promise without a known fulfillment.

Neutrality is impossible

Some churches may prefer not to adopt a textual position. They wish to avoid controversy, preserve peace, and permit pastors or members to use whichever translations they prefer.

This may be administratively convenient, but it is not neutral.

Every church uses a text.

When Scripture is read publicly, a textual choice has been made. When pew Bibles are purchased, a textual choice has been made. When a pastor selects a translation, a textual choice has been made. When a church recommends study Bibles, adopts a catechetical curriculum, supports a missionary translation, or trains candidates for ministry, textual decisions are already being made.

The only question is whether those decisions are governed by a confessed doctrine.

Official silence usually transfers authority rather than eliminating it. The church that refuses to identify its text ordinarily accepts whatever text publishers, seminaries, Bible societies, or scholarly committees currently provide.

The result is practical submission to an external critical magisterium.

The church may insist that textual matters are too technical for ecclesiastical judgment. But the theological identity of Scripture is not merely a technical matter. Specialists may assist the church by supplying historical and linguistic expertise, but they cannot relieve her of doctrinal responsibility.

A physician may advise a family, but he does not become the father. An accountant may assist a steward, but he does not become the owner. Likewise, a textual scholar may serve the church, but he does not become the supreme judge of the Word entrusted to her.

The church may delegate research.

She may not delegate confession.

The responsibility of church courts and assemblies

Churches acting corporately should address bibliology with greater precision than is common in modern evangelical statements.

At minimum, ecclesiastical standards should affirm:

• the immediate inspiration of the Old Testament in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek;

• the verbal and plenary character of that inspiration;

• God’s singular providential preservation of those Scriptures through all ages;

• the present authenticity of the preserved Hebrew and Greek texts;

• the identification of those texts with the Hebrew Masoretic and Greek Received traditions;

• the derivative authority of faithful translations;

• the ministerial and subordinate role of manuscripts, editions, versions, citations, and textual scholarship;

• the rejection of conjectural emendation and indefinite textual reconstruction as governing methods for establishing Scripture;

• and the supremacy of the Holy Spirit speaking in Scripture over every council, scholar, institution, and tradition.

Church courts should also establish fair procedures for addressing textual disputes.

They should distinguish between denial of the doctrine of preservation, disagreement over an intra-traditional editorial question, translation preference, and ordinary ignorance. These are not the same offense and should not be treated as though they were.

A minister who openly teaches that the church does not possess an identifiable text presents a confessional problem. A minister who prefers one Received Text edition at a difficult reading over another has entered a narrower editorial question. A member who uses a different translation may require patient instruction rather than discipline.

Confessional precision should produce proportionate judgment.

The doctrine must be guarded without turning every textual question into a test of Christian fellowship.

The responsibility of ministers

Ministers are called to preach the Word.

Paul did not command Timothy to preach a hypothetical original, a recoverable doctrinal core, or the latest scholarly approximation. He commanded:

“Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine” (2 Timothy 4:2).

That command presupposes an accessible object.

The minister must therefore know what text he is preaching. He should understand the basic doctrine of inspiration and preservation, recognize the difference between original-language texts and translations, and be able to explain why the church receives the traditional Hebrew and Greek Scriptures.

Where possible, ministers should acquire competence in biblical Hebrew and Greek. The original languages are not ornaments of advanced education. They equip the minister to appeal to the authentic Scriptures, assess translations, and teach with greater precision.

Not every pastor will become a specialist in manuscript studies. He need not. His primary calling is to preach, administer the sacraments, shepherd the flock, and defend sound doctrine. But he should not be wholly dependent upon critical commentaries for his knowledge of textual questions.

Pastors should also avoid destabilizing the congregation from the pulpit.

The familiar sermon remark—“The oldest and best manuscripts omit this verse”—often imports an entire theory of textual history without explanation. It teaches the congregation to distrust the words before them while supplying no doctrine of how Scripture is to be known.

If a textual question genuinely affects the passage, the minister should address it honestly and pastorally. He should explain the evidence within the doctrine of providential preservation, distinguish the text from particular witnesses, and avoid presenting the verdict of a critical edition as though it were the voice of an infallible academy.

The pulpit is not a laboratory for cultivating uncertainty.

It is the place where Christ addresses his sheep through his written Word.

The responsibility of seminaries and theological educators

Seminaries shape the future pulpit. Their doctrine of the text therefore has ecclesiastical consequences for generations.

A seminary faithful to confessional bibliology should not teach textual criticism as an autonomous technical discipline and then append a doctrine of inspiration afterward. Bibliology must govern the method from the beginning.

Students should learn:

• the biblical doctrine of inspiration and preservation;

• the self-attesting character of Scripture;

• the history of the Hebrew Masoretic and Greek Received texts;

• the distinction between autographs and apographs;

• the distinction among the text, its witnesses, and its editions;

• the history and character of early printed Greek editions;

• the derivative authority of translations;

• the proper use of manuscripts, versions, Fathers, and internal evidence;

• the difference between ministerial correction and magisterial reconstruction;

• and the presuppositions governing modern critical theories.

Students should read the major Reformed sources, including the theologians who wrote before Enlightenment assumptions reshaped the discipline. They should encounter Owen, Whitaker, Ussher, Turretin, and the confessional standards themselves—not merely modern summaries of what those men are said to have believed.

They should also study the strongest modern arguments with accuracy. A confessional education must not caricature opposing methods. It should distinguish the facts of manuscript history from the philosophical and theological conclusions drawn from them.

The goal is not to produce ministers who fear textual evidence. It is to produce ministers capable of interpreting that evidence under the authority of Scripture.

The responsibility of translators

Translation is both necessary and subordinate.

Because the Scriptures were not given in the languages of every nation, they must be translated. Westminster states that all the people of God have an interest in Scripture and are commanded to read and search it. The Word must therefore be translated into the common language of every people to whom it comes.

A faithful translation is truly the Word of God derivatively.

Its authority does not arise from inspiration of the translators. It arises from its accurate representation of the inspired Hebrew and Greek text. Where it faithfully communicates that text, God speaks through it. Where it departs from the text, the translation possesses no independent authority to sanctify the departure.

Translators must therefore work from an identified source.

For the Old Testament, that source should be the traditional Hebrew Masoretic text. For the New Testament, it should be the Greek Received Text.

A translation committee should publish its textual basis openly. Readers should not be required to infer the source text from scattered footnotes. Where the committee departs from its stated base or encounters an intra-traditional difficulty, the decision should be documented.

The translators must also distinguish textual decisions from translational ones. A different English rendering does not necessarily imply a different Greek or Hebrew reading. Syntax, idiom, semantic range, and style must be considered separately from the source text’s wording.

The Authorized Version remains an exemplary and faithful English translation of the preserved texts. Its authority is derivative, not original. It should not be treated as inspired in English, superior to the Hebrew and Greek, or incapable of being examined by them.

This distinction allows the church to honor the King James Bible without entering KJV-onlyism.

It also leaves room in principle for faithful new translations from the same authentic source texts. The decisive questions are textual fidelity, translational accuracy, theological soundness, literary competence, and ecclesiastical usefulness—not novelty for its own sake.

The responsibility of textual scholars and editors

The Christian scholar’s calling is ministerial service.

He may collate manuscripts, compare editions, investigate early translations, examine patristic citations, trace printer’s errors, study the sources used by translators, and construct critical apparatuses. These are valuable labors.

But the scholar must remember what he is studying.

He is not reconstructing Homer or repairing an anonymous inscription. He is handling the words of the living God.

That fact should produce both confidence and fear.

Confidence arises because God has preserved his Word. The scholar does not work among ruins from which Scripture may or may not emerge. He works within a stable textual inheritance.

Fear arises because careless claims, concealed evidence, exaggerated certainty, and ideological manipulation concern God’s own words.

A confessional editor should therefore:

• declare his theological and textual assumptions;

• distinguish facts from inferences;

• identify the precise sources behind his claims;

• represent opposing evidence fairly;

• document editorial dependencies among editions;

• distinguish manuscript testimony from versional and patristic evidence;

• separate verbal variants from punctuation, spelling, and typographical errors;

• disclose changes from the chosen base text;

• record uncertainty honestly;

• and preserve a revision history.

The scholar should resist both academic pride and defensive overstatement.

He must not imply that ordinary Christians possess Scripture only through his expertise. Neither should he defend the Received Text by making claims the evidence cannot bear.

Truth does not need false witnesses.

The best defense of confessional bibliology will combine theological firmness with unusually careful historical work.

The responsibility of Bible societies and publishers

Bible societies and publishers exercise enormous practical influence over the church’s text.

Their decisions determine which editions remain available, which translations enter churches, which apparatuses shape students, and which textual assumptions become ordinary.

A confessional Bible society should therefore do more than reprint a favored English translation. It should support the entire chain of faithful transmission:

• accurate editions of the Hebrew Masoretic and Greek Received texts;

• full and reader-friendly apparatuses documenting their editorial history;

• faithful vernacular translations;

• affordable editions for churches and households;

• durable editions for long-term use;

• digital texts with transparent revision histories;

• original-language resources for ministers and students;

• missionary translation projects;

• historical editions and high-quality facsimiles;

• and public research into neglected manuscripts and early printed sources.

Publishers should not silently alter the wording, spelling, punctuation, or marginal apparatus of historical editions. Modernization may sometimes be useful, but it should be declared and documented.

Digital publication also introduces new responsibilities. Electronic texts can be altered instantly and distributed globally. Version control, source verification, permanent archiving, and transparent correction policies are therefore part of contemporary textual stewardship.

The printing press once multiplied the church’s ability to transmit Scripture. Digital technology does the same on a greater scale. The moral duty remains unchanged: greater power of distribution brings greater responsibility for accuracy.

The responsibility of Christian households

The preservation of Scripture is not only an institutional responsibility.

God commanded Israel to teach his words diligently to their children:

“And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children” (Deuteronomy 6:6–7).

The pattern continues in the New Testament. Timothy knew the Holy Scriptures from childhood. The faith was transmitted through generations. Christian parents are commanded to raise their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

Families should therefore possess, read, and use faithful translations of the preserved text.

They should read Scripture aloud, memorize it, sing it, discuss it, and build family worship around it. Children should learn that the Bible is not a provisional religious document whose words await expert verification. It is the voice of God in written form.

This confidence should not be maintained through ignorance. Older children and mature believers can be taught that manuscripts and editions contain variants. They can learn the distinction between the text and its witnesses. They can be shown why ordinary copying errors do not invalidate preservation.

Proper instruction prevents two opposite dangers.

One is naïve confidence resting upon the mistaken belief that no variants exist. Such confidence may collapse when the believer first encounters a critical apparatus.

The other is cultivated uncertainty, in which every footnote becomes evidence that no one knows what Scripture says.

Confessional instruction produces informed confidence. It acknowledges the history while interpreting that history under the promise of God.

The responsibility of individual believers

Every Christian has an interest in Scripture.

The Bible does not belong exclusively to clergy, scholars, universities, or ecclesiastical courts. Christ speaks to his whole flock.

Believers should therefore read Scripture regularly and receive it with faith. They should not imagine that meaningful Bible reading requires prior mastery of textual criticism. The perspicuity and sufficiency of Scripture are not privileges reserved for specialists.

At the same time, Christians should cultivate reverence rather than consumerism.

The proliferation of translations can encourage believers to choose a Bible according to ease, novelty, marketing, or personal taste. But a translation is not merely a devotional product. Its source text and translation philosophy matter.

Believers should ask:

• What Hebrew and Greek texts underlie this translation?

• Does the publisher disclose its textual basis?

• Does the translation preserve theological and grammatical precision?

• Does it distinguish translation from commentary?

• Does it omit, bracket, or question received passages?

• Is it suitable for public worship, memorization, and sustained study?

The ordinary Christian need not become a textual expert to ask responsible questions.

Nor should believers allow debates over editions and translations to become occasions for pride. Possessing a faithful Bible does not justify contempt toward those who have been taught differently. Truth must be defended with patience, clarity, and love.

Confidence in Scripture should produce obedience to Scripture.

It is possible to defend the perfect preservation of every word while ignoring those words in practice. Such orthodoxy condemns its possessor.

The final purpose of preservation is not victory in textual debate. It is that God’s people may hear, believe, obey, and proclaim everything he has said.

The responsibility of the church in missions

Christ commanded the church to teach all nations.

That mission necessarily includes translation and textual stewardship. Missionaries must not carry merely a generic Christian message. They must place the Scriptures into the languages of the peoples among whom they labor.

This requires more than rapid translation.

Languages must be studied carefully. Terms must be chosen with theological precision. Local readers must be trained. Editions must be reviewed and corrected. Translation decisions must be preserved so that later revisions do not drift from the source.

Most importantly, missionary translations should be based upon the authentic Hebrew and Greek texts.

It is inconsistent to confess providential preservation at home while exporting translations based upon a reconstructionist text abroad. Believers in every nation possess the same interest in the words God inspired.

Missionary urgency should encourage accuracy rather than excuse carelessness.

A rapidly produced but textually unstable translation may create problems lasting generations. A faithful translation can shape preaching, theology, worship, and Christian vocabulary throughout an entire culture.

The church must therefore treat translation as a long-term ecclesiastical trust.

“No doctrine is affected” is not an adequate standard

One common response to textual controversy is that no essential Christian doctrine depends upon a disputed text.

This statement, even where substantially true, does not resolve the issue.

God did not promise merely to preserve enough words to maintain a minimal system of doctrine. He inspired all Scripture. Every word belongs to the revelation he intended the church to possess.

The authority of a reading is not measured by whether its removal destroys a doctrine. A verse concerning travel, geography, personal names, or historical sequence is no less inspired because no creed depends upon it.

Moreover, textual differences may affect exegesis, preaching, theological emphasis, harmonization, and the accumulation of biblical evidence. A doctrine supported in many passages is not unharmed in principle when one of those passages is unnecessarily removed. Its truth may remain secure, but part of its inspired testimony has been obscured.

The proper question is not merely, “Can Christianity survive this variant?”

The proper question is, “What has God said?”

A servant does not preserve his master’s letter by keeping only the sentences he considers essential.

Peace must not be purchased through silence

Churches often avoid textual questions because they fear division.

That concern is understandable. Textual debates have sometimes been conducted with recklessness, exaggeration, and personal hostility. Defenders of the Authorized Version have occasionally condemned faithful Christians without distinction, while advocates of modern criticism have often dismissed confessional concerns as ignorance or extremism.

The answer is not silence.

Peace purchased by refusing to confess truth is only postponed conflict. Eventually, pastors, students, and members encounter variant readings, critical footnotes, and competing translations. If the church has supplied no doctrine, the academy or marketplace will supply one.

Faithful peace requires patient teaching.

Churches should begin with positive doctrine: God speaks, Scripture is self-attesting, inspiration is verbal, preservation is providential, the authentic text remains extant, and translations possess derivative authority.

Only then should specific controversies be introduced. The believer who understands the whole doctrine will not be easily unsettled by a local variant.

The church should also maintain proper proportions. Not every textual disagreement warrants separation. Not every use of a modern translation proves conscious rebellion against preservation. Many Christians have never been taught the issues.

The church must distinguish teachers from learners, systematic denial from inherited practice, and theological principle from local editorial judgment.

Charity does not require doctrinal indifference.

Confession does not require indiscriminate condemnation.

A practical program of ecclesiastical stewardship

The final thesis can be translated into a concrete program.

A church committed to confessional bibliology should undertake the following:

1. Adopt a clear bibliological statement affirming inspiration, preservation, present authenticity, and textual identity.

1. Identify its textual standards as the Hebrew Masoretic and Greek Received texts without canonizing one uninspired printed edition.

1. Establish a translation policy for public worship, teaching, memorization, and church publications.

1. Teach the doctrine positively before responding to individual controversies.

1. Train ministers and candidates in the original languages and confessional textual principles.

1. Maintain recommended resources explaining textual history at introductory, pastoral, and scholarly levels.

1. Support accurate editions of the original-language texts and faithful translations derived from them.

1. Encourage transparent scholarship through apparatuses, source documentation, and open discussion of genuine difficulties.

1. Develop missionary translation standards grounded in the authentic texts.

1. Equip parents to teach children why the Bible can be trusted.

1. Preserve historical editions digitally and physically so the church’s textual inheritance remains publicly accessible.

1. Review new editions and translations carefully rather than accepting them through market popularity or academic prestige.

1. Correct errors transparently without pretending that any editor or institution is incapable of mistake.

1. Cultivate cooperation among churches, scholars, publishers, and Bible societies committed to the same confessional standard.

1. Pray for fidelity, remembering that textual stewardship is a spiritual duty rather than merely a technical enterprise.

Such a program would move confessional bibliology from defensive controversy into constructive labor.

The final ecclesiastical choice

The church cannot avoid making a choice.

She may receive a text already preserved and recognized through providential history.

Or she may accept a text continually reconstructed by scholarly institutions.

She may confess that God has kept his Word pure in all ages.

Or she may confess only that enough evidence survived for experts to approximate it.

She may require criticism to serve Scripture.

Or she may permit criticism to decide what Scripture will presently be.

She may transmit a stable textual inheritance to her children.

Or she may hand them a succession of provisional editions accompanied by assurances that the changes do not matter very much.

The confessional choice is not a retreat from history. It is the interpretation of history under the promises of God.

It does not deny scholarship. It assigns scholarship a lawful office.

It does not worship tradition. It recognizes the ordinary historical means through which providence has operated.

It does not canonize the Authorized Version. It honors faithful translation while preserving the supremacy of the Hebrew and Greek texts.

It does not claim omniscience concerning every editorial question. It distinguishes the perfect preservation of the text from the fallible presentation of an edition.

Above all, it refuses to believe that God gave his church an infallible rule and then permitted the identity of that rule to disappear.

Confessional summary

The church is the witness and keeper of Holy Writ.

She is not its author, creator, or magisterial judge. Scripture possesses authority wholly because God, who is truth itself, is its author. The church receives the Word because it is already God’s Word.

That reception creates a stewardship.

The church must confess not only that Scripture was inspired but that it has been preserved and remains authentic. She must identify the Hebrew Masoretic and Greek Received texts as the providential textual inheritance to which final appeal is made.

She must translate those texts faithfully, preach them authoritatively, examine their witnesses ministerially, and transmit them confidently.

Church courts must confess the doctrine.

Ministers must preach the preserved Word.

Seminaries must train men to interpret evidence beneath Scripture.

Translators must work from the authentic texts.

Scholars must clarify rather than reconstruct.

Bible societies and publishers must preserve and distribute the textual inheritance.

Missionaries must carry it to the nations.

Parents must teach it to their children.

Believers must read and obey it.

No manuscript, edition, translation, editor, church, or scholar is thereby made infallible. God alone is infallible. His preservation is perfect even though the human instruments through which he accomplishes it remain fallible.

The church’s final duty is therefore one of faithful reception.

She must not approach Scripture as an unfinished object awaiting completion. She must not speak as though Christ’s sheep require a scholarly guild to discover their Shepherd’s voice. She must not hide from textual difficulties, and she must not permit those difficulties to become a pretext for skepticism.

She must receive the Word God gave.

She must confess the Word God preserved.

She must use the Word God has placed in her hands.

And having received it from those who came before, she must transmit it faithfully to those who come after—until faith becomes sight, preaching gives way to the immediate presence of Christ, and the church militant becomes the church triumphant.