Source and Claim Audit

Controlling confessional claim

The series uses the original wording and grammatical sequence of Westminster Confession of Faith 1.8:

• the Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament were immediately inspired;
• those Scriptures were kept pure in all ages by singular care and providence;
• they are therefore authentic;
• the Church finally appeals to them in controversies of religion.

The articles do not substitute a modern revision of the Confession.

William Whitaker

Verified in the supplied Disputation on Holy Scripture:

• Scripture is described as autopistos, possessing its authority and credit from itself because it comes from God: printed pages 279–80.
• The Church is assigned four ministerial offices concerning Scripture: witness and guardian, discerner, herald, and interpreter: printed pages 283–84.
• The notary and goldsmith analogies distinguish recognition and custody from the conferral of authority: printed pages 283–84.

James Ussher

Verified in the supplied 1645 Body of Divinitie:

• making Scripture’s credit depend upon the Church makes the Church’s work greater than the Word: approximately printed pages 16–17.
• Scripture is a “rule of steel” rather than a pliable rule: printed page 21.
• the Hebrew and Greek originals are authentic “for the letter” and judge translations: printed pages 24–25.
• Ussher acknowledges diversities of reading in Greek copies while maintaining authentic possession and ordinary discernment of the true reading: printed page 25.

Louis Gaussen

Verified in the supplied 1863 edition:

• science and faith have distinct functions in verifying the canon: printed pages 412–16.
• historical and critical science is valuable but cannot lay the foundation of Christian faith: printed pages 416–28.
• science properly prepares, accompanies, and defends faith: printed pages 426–28.
• God guards the written Word because He guards the Church, and providence preserves the sacred deposit: printed pages 424–32.

Bibliographic metadata was checked against the supplied Internet Archive edition: London, James Nisbet, 1863.

Greg Bahnsen

Verified in the supplied dissertation edition:

• the section “Specific Characterization: Inferential Reliance” occurs at printed pages 56–61;
• belief is discussed as a map “by which we steer,” manifested in reasoning and action.

The series uses this category only to evaluate the operative reliance of a method. It does not infer personal self-deception, dishonesty, or motives.

Official current descriptions of reconstruction

Verified against primary institutional pages on July 23, 2026:

• The Institute for New Testament Textual Research states that the initial text is not extant and must be reconstructed; it describes the CBGM as contributing to a well-reasoned reconstruction of that text.
• The German Bible Society states that UBS6 incorporates textual changes from the ECM work on Acts, Mark, and Revelation and differs from UBS5 in well over one hundred places.

The articles use these statements to establish fallibility and revisability, not to allege bad faith by editors.

Exact-doctrinal-entailment controls

The series expressly avoids the following overclaims:

• It does not claim that rejection of the received text makes every later sentence semantically meaningless.
• It does not claim that logic is grounded in a printed edition.
• It does not claim that every church using a critical edition has ceased to be Christian.
• It does not claim that Christ’s universal Church can be extinguished.
• It does not equate Christ’s person with a textual edition.
• It does not treat all manuscript study or modern textual data as hostile.

The exact conclusion is:

A text-critical system that treats the authoritative text as non-extant and reconstructs it by fallible, revisable judgment cannot make its present product the self-authenticating and final Word of God without borrowing divine authority from a Scripture identified prior to that system.