Monthly Archives: May 2020

Creeds & Confessions – Ten Things

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Article by Craig Van Dixhoorn (original source: https://www.crossway.org/articles/10-things-you-should-know-about-the-churchs-historic-creeds-and-confessions/)

1. Creeds are honest.

Honesty is the original impulse behind almost every statement of faith. Cults hide what they believe until you’re so far into the riptide that you can’t do anything about it. Honest churches do the opposite: they announce what they do believe and (in the best creeds and confessions) even a few things that they don’t. We want everyone to know the most important facts and ideas revealed in the Bible and denied by the Bible, so we summarize them in our creeds.

2. Creeds promote unity.

The best doctrinal summaries promote church unity. They help us to identify, through a common set of priorities and teachings, what we have in common with other Christians. And that is not all. These summaries also have the potential to create peace in the church, since people coming to the church will readily be able to see what it teaches, and will be able to compare it with the Scriptures, which is the only basis on which Christian teaching should be built. Avoiding doctrinal disguises minimizes unhappy surprises.

3. Creeds are old.

The classic Christian Creeds were written in the early history of the church. Most confessions were written sometime during the Protestant Reformation. This is useful. When it comes to doctrinal statements (and much else besides!) age is more of a benefit than a liability—it is good to study texts which remind us that Christianity was not invented last Tuesday.

4. Creeds and confessions can be long.

Lengthy creeds and confessions are a good thing! Evangelical statements of faith are often too short and not sufficiently theological. As I see it, the church needs to experiment with theological maximalism, in place of its current minimalism, if we are to maintain a faithful witness to Christ in our generation. A dozen doctrinal points on a website is probably inadequate for the church’s thriving, for its mission not only to evangelize but also to teach the nations. Big creeds and confessions hold out a large faith for us to own, offering a welcome view of the triune God and his work and more robust statements of the gospel of Christ.

5. Creeds remind us we are not alone.

Classic creeds remind us that we don’t simply read the Bible by ourselves. We read the Bible as one body and find unity in so doing. Reciting a creed as a church declares that we read the bible in ways similar to other Christians in the depth and in the breadth of the church—over time and around the world.

6. Creeds and confessions expose disagreements.

Creeds also show how we disagree. This, too, is good. Discussing our differences is better than papering over them and pretending they don’t exist. By the time of the Protestant Reformation of the 1500s, so much had been learned—and so many doctrines were disputed between the Reformers and Rome—that the category of creed was supplemented by longer lists of doctrines that Christians confessed. Creeds were still in use, most often in worship, but now confessions were written to expound what Lutheran and Reformed Christians believed. These confessions carefully articulated what doctrines were shared in common with the old faith of Rome, and where the Reformers were forced to disagree with Rome in their recovery of the teachings of the early church, and most basically, of the Bible. They also explain where Reformers disagreed with one another. This is helpful, for knowing where we disagree allows us to talk at the curb. Living with labels, but without understanding, results in verbal grenades being lobbed over walls.

7. Creeds and confessions help us learn.

Creeds and confessions pay careful attention to precise wording. They provide the kind of labeling that allows for Christian learning. These documents function as teaching materials that lead us deeper into the Christian faith. With texts like these, Christians no longer need to be content with speaking of “salvation”, for example, only in general. Once alert to fuller teaching, Christians can then celebrate justification, discover adoption, and bless God for sanctification, perseverance, and glorification.

8. Creeds and confessions help us to avoid error.

Even as creeds and confessions served as bulwarks against doctrinal error in time past, they continue to do so in the present. Errorists and heretics are often uncreative. The basic shape of their faults remain the same over the centuries. Creeds set doctrinal parameters that safeguard the principles of the church against the increasingly common tendency to be inclined toward everything new and fancy. Tip: It’s helpful for pastors to read the relevant section in a creed or confession before preaching a tricky doctrine, or one that is easy to state incorrectly.

9. Creeds and confessions help us worship.

Creeds function not only as a teaching tool but as a worshipping tool as we remember why it is that we gather together: it is because of who God is and because of what he has done. While not usually used in worship, confessions are also useful for worship. Careful distinctions provide richer material for praise than do broad generalizations. Saying more about the character of God and the grace of the gospel encourages more confidence in prayer and praise.

10. Creeds and confessions are biblical.

From the beginning, the word of God has offered, and the people of God have employed, statements of faith. Old Testament readers encounter such a statement in the capstone of the books of Moses: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deut. 6:3). It is what New Testament readers see when Paul provides the Corinthians with a summary of his own teaching: “I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve” (1 Cor. 15:3-4). In Paul’s instruction to Timothy, he reminds Timothy to follow the pattern of sound words (2 Tim. 1:13) so that the church would not be tossed about in uncertainty. Biblical summaries are biblical!

The Two Clocks

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According to U.K. law, each Post Office has to have the right time displayed in its clock. Inspectors regularly visit each Post Office to make sure all is in compliance.

An inspector visited a certain Post Office in the south west of England and while everything else on his list seemed to be ok, he determined that the clock was slow.

He went in to see the head Postmaster informing him, “your clock is slow!”

The Postmaster said, “That’s impossible! It can’t be slow. I correct it every day.”

The inspector said, “It’s definitely slow.”

The Postmaster said, “it can’t be” and took him outside the Post office and pointed across the street and said, “now do you see that house there? If you look into the window, there is a ship’s chronometer on the mantel piece, and you know, don’t you, that ship chronometers are never wrong. Now I adjust the Post office clock by that ship chronometer.”

The inspector then knocked on the door of the house and an old Sea Captain answered the door. The inspector introduced himself and said, “Excuse me, but is that a ship’s chronometer I see on the mantel piece?”

The Captain said, “oh yes!”

“May I see it? asked the inspector.

The Captain showed him inside and showed him the clock.

“Oh, its a lovely clock!” said the inspector.

“Yes, it is,” the Sea Captain said, “the only trouble is that it got salt water in it some time ago and its never really kept very good time since then.”

The inspector then asked, “so how do you keep it right?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” the Captain said, “I adjust it by the Post Office clock over the road, because by law, the Post Office has to display the correct time, so I know its right.”

(These two clocks, neither of which was authoritative, were trying to correct one another and because of that, both of them were incorrect.)

Application: Many do this with the Bible. They set themselves up as ‘the’ authority as to what is true or not, or else look to something other than God’s word for truth, they then judge the Bible by that standard, making themselves prone to error and deception. The Bible alone is the word of God and therefore the sole, inerrant, infallible source for truth.

How We Got the Bible

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Article by Dirk Jongkind, academic vice principal and senior research fellow in New Testament text and language at Tyndale House, Cambridge. He is also the author of An Introduction to the Greek New Testament. (source: https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/how-we-got-the-bible)

Countless lives are changed by the preaching of the word of God. Since human beings tend to look at the outside and not at the inside, we often attribute the power of this transformative teaching to the preacher. We all know on reflection, though, that the real power does not rest in humans but in God’s word itself.

Reading Scripture is the most immediate exposure to the word of God. In practice, this means picking up a physical book and opening it to a specific page, or opening up an app on our phones and scrolling to a specific location. In either case, we trust that the word has not been corrupted and that the message of the Bible we hold in our hands was not changed or lost altogether. We believe that we are reading the actual words that God spoke.

In what follows, we will think about what has gone before that moment when we open Scripture and read it. What happened to the Bible between the earliest times and the twenty-first century? How did God bring his word to us? The reverse of this question — how he brought us to his word — is part of our individual testimony. But the way in which God brought about the Bible is the story of his providence in history, played out over thousands of years. And by understanding what God had done over the ages, we will see that it is reasonable and justified to trust that the Bible in our hands is a translation of the trustworthy words of Scripture. We could talk about ten reasons why to trust the Bible. But it may be more effective if we understand the larger narrative of the history of the Bible.

From God’s Breath to Israel’s Books

Because the Bible is the word of God, it naturally starts with God speaking, both in practice, as in Genesis 1:3 (“And God said, let there be light”), as well as logically, as in John 1:1 (“In the beginning was the Word”). And since we are talking about an infinite God, it should not surprise us that he uses an array of ways to communicate with his creatures.

God spoke directly to Moses from a burning bush (Exodus 3:2), and immediately after the exodus to the whole people from a burning mountain (Exodus 19:18). God speaks through the inspired recording of the history of his people, and through his prophets who heard his word — sometimes directly, but also through visions and dreams. We find personal reflections on the futility of life under the sun (Ecclesiastes), which is also part of God speaking to his people. And this in addition to the book of Proverbs, a collection of divinely crafted wisdom. In the New Testament, we have the records of how the apostles taught about Jesus and about what Jesus himself taught (the four Gospels). And we find the responses by the apostles to various situations within the churches, as well as positive teaching about the salvation that Jesus brought about.

There are many ways in which God spoke his word, and there are many ways in which it was written down. God shows his character even in the diverse ways that he used to form the Scriptures. And the Scriptures themselves testify to their formation.

‘Write This in a Book’

Of all the named authors in the Bible, Moses is the first. Immediately after the exodus, and still before the giving of the law at Mount Sinai, God tells Moses to start writing God’s words down (Exodus 17:14). Amalek had come out to fight Israel, and Moses commanded Joshua to lead the army while Moses would lift up the staff of God. It is after this fight that God speaks to Moses (the text does not tell us how) and commands him to write down what God’s ultimate judgment over Amalek will be as a memorial. The first command to record God’s words in a book comes in order that this book would become a memorial, a testimony, to the acts of God and the fulfilment of his promises. An interesting detail is that already this first Scripture is to be recited to Joshua. The future leader is to be formed by the word of God from its very beginning.

Soon after the fight with Amalek, Israel arrives at Mount Sinai. Here God speaks directly from the mountain, but the people cannot bear it (Exodus 20:19–21). Therefore, Moses goes up the mountain alone and receives the two tablets (Exodus 31:18; 32:15–16). The first set is made and written by God himself, but Moses breaks them in anger because of the idolatry of the people (Exodus 32:19). Moses then brings up a second set so that these can be inscribed with the same words of the covenant (Exodus 34:1, 28; Deuteronomy 10:4). It is also at this occasion that Moses is commanded to write down all the words, “for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel” (Exodus 34:27).

Numbers 33:2 teaches that Moses did not just write down the laws God gave to the people, but also the historical account of the journey of Israel.

In the book of Deuteronomy, at the end of Israel’s time in the wilderness and just before the entrance into the Promised Land, Moses addresses the people and reminds them of what had happened, what God had told them, and what it meant to be the covenant people of God. As expected, the written basis of the covenant is again mentioned. In Deuteronomy 10:5 we learn that the two tablets are kept in the ark. Deuteronomy 31:9 adds that the whole law is given to the Levites who carry the ark, but that it is also given to the elders of the people. The actual book that Moses wrote is to be kept near the ark “for a witness against you” (Deuteronomy 31:26). This is the beginning of the tabernacle, later replaced by the temple, as the place where the word of God is kept and preserved.

Deuteronomy gives us one unexpected insight into the actual practice of copying the law. We read about the stipulations for the future kings in Deuteronomy 17. Once the king sits on his throne, he has to write for himself a copy of the law “from before” the Levitical priests in order that he may read in it all the days of his life (Deuteronomy 17:18–19). The expression “from before” has been interpreted as meaning “approved by,” which is certainly possible. However, there is a more direct interpretation. It seems likely to me that the king is allowed to make his personal copy from the master scroll that Moses deposited with the Levites. This was a true privilege for the king, but also a serious responsibility. The king is supposed to be a faithful scribe. And as with Joshua, the leader of the people is supposed to be formed by the written word of God.

Authors and Compilers

Many of the books in the Old Testament remain without a named author, which is significant in itself. Apparently, the circumstances of their production are not necessary for their interpretation. We also read about books that were in existence but have not been preserved — for example, the book of the rights and duties of the king, written by Samuel and “laid . . . up before the Lord” (1 Samuel 10:25) — that is, put in the tabernacle together with the Scriptures.

We know David mainly as king, yet he was also the author of many psalms. He is called a “prophet” (Acts 2:30), and he calls himself “the sweet psalmist of Israel” (2 Samuel 23:1). Other authors of Psalms are named too — Moses, Solomon, Asaph, Heman, and Ethan. When considering the book of Psalms as a whole, however, we hit another boundary to our knowledge. Who collected all the individual psalms into their canonical order? Was this a gradual process that happened over time? When did this book gets its final shape?

The same questions are raised by the book of Proverbs. Solomon is presented as the source for the wisdom tradition in the book (Proverbs 1:1), but the final two chapters name two other persons, Agur and Lemuel (Proverbs 30:1 and 31:1). In addition, Proverbs 25:1 adds a fascinating detail, as it says that the men of Hezekiah brought together the content of the following chapters — several hundred years after Solomon! Like the book of Psalms, we do not know who gave the book of Proverbs its final shape. But in this case, Scripture tells us that it was centuries after the oldest parts were produced.

Books such as Proverbs seem to be the exception, though. Most books do not give us explicit information about how they came into being. Scripture tells us, however, that later authors were often very much aware of what had been written before. Psalm 119 assumes the presence of the law, the prophet Hosea refers back to Genesis (Hosea 12:3–5), Zechariah alludes to prophets such as Isaiah and Jeremiah, and Daniel reads the prophet Jeremiah (Daniel 9:2). Throughout most of this period, the tabernacle or the temple would be the central location for the preservation of Scripture. It is not without reason that when Josiah restored the proper worship of the true God, it was the temple where the Book of the Law was rediscovered (2 Kings 22:8–11). But as would be expected, it was not just the temple that was active in the preservation of Scripture, but also faithful kings such as Hezekiah, and possibly the schools of prophets, which were not necessarily connected closely to the central sanctuary, played a role in the transmission of God’s word.

Israel’s Book Culture

If, however, the temple is of such great importance, what happened when the temple was destroyed and the people went into exile? Interestingly, around this time we see more and more signs of the book culture that we know must have existed. Jeremiah writes a letter to the Babylonian exiles (Jeremiah 29), and dictates his prophecies again to Baruch the scribe after the king burnt the first copy (Jeremiah 36:1–4). Only a little later, Daniel had a copy of Jeremiah’s prophecy in exile (Daniel 9:2). The prophet Ezekiel is ordered to eat a scroll (Ezekiel 3:1–3), and just after the exile Zechariah sees a flying scroll (Zechariah 5:1–2). Texts, scrolls, and scribes are part of the religious world and religious imagery.

Perhaps the capstone of this development is found in Ezra and Nehemiah. Here we find the scribe Ezra repeatedly expounding the Law that Moses had written. (See the expression “as it is written” in Ezra 3:2, 4; 6:18; Neh. 8:14; 10:34, 36; 13:1.) Nehemiah 8 especially is a glorious description how the people of Israel have now become a people gathered around the written word of God.

The biblical history is by and large silent about the period between Ezra and the New Testament. But when the New Testament tells us about the birth of Jesus, it mentions faithful believers who were expecting the salvation of Israel (Luke 1–2). The only story about the growing up of Jesus tells us about him questioning and answering the teachers of the law in the temple (Luke 2:41–51). Later, Jesus would say of these teachers that “they sit on the seat of Moses” and that the people were to do what they said, but not do as they do (Matthew 23:2–3). Throughout Jesus’s ministry, not only does he teach from the Scriptures (Luke 4:16–30), which were available in the synagogues, but he also fulfills prophecy by his actions (Matthew 21:4). Even when the evangelists record what Jesus had done, they use language directly derived from the Old Testament (compare, e.g., Luke 2:52 with Proverbs 3:4). Yet now we have arrived at the finale phase in writing God’s word, because all of the New Testament was written after the death and resurrection of Jesus, even though it extensively deals with the ministry of Jesus before the arrival of the new covenant.

Stewards of the Gospel Story

The four Gospels teach us about Jesus: what he said, what he did, what he taught. Each of the Gospels helps us also to see the significance of the One who died and rose again. Matthew does this openly by explaining how Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament. John teaches the eternal and divine truth about the Word who came down from heaven and returned to the Father. Mark shows the depth of Jesus’s obedience by not even mentioning the name Jesus as he is mocked, stripped, spit upon, and crucified (Mark 15:16–33), until his final moments and last words (Mark 15:34). The Gospels teach us about Jesus, but told from after the resurrection (John 2:22), from after the moment that the witnesses had received the power of the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit who enabled the apostles to be his witnesses (Acts 1:8), and who reminded them of everything Jesus had said (John 14:26). The apostles had two powerful impulses at their disposal: the Spirit-sharpened memory of Jesus’s teaching and the Spirit-taught understanding of the existing Scriptures (Luke 24:44–45).

In the time immediately after Pentecost, the apostles started their teaching ministry (see Acts 4:2; 5:21, 42; 11:26; 15:35; 18:11; 28:31). There are some differences but also some similarities with how the old covenant started. At Pentecost, there was a loud sound (Acts 2:2), as in Exodus 19, but this time it did not strike fear into the hearts of the listeners. There were also flames, not on top of the mountain but on the gathered believers. The words of the law, the first covenant, were inscribed on stone tablets. But, just as Jeremiah 31:33 foretold, the new covenant was written directly on the hearts of people. The primary place of God’s word was now internal, written on hearts by the Spirit.

So what was happening to the teachings and events recorded in the Gospels between Pentecost and their writing down? When were the Gospels written? Scripture is not silent about this time, but we have to read carefully. In short, the apostles taught the content of the Gospels, the life and ministry of Jesus. And this teaching was remembered and shared among the churches. Therefore, initially the main source for knowledge of Jesus was found in the oral teaching of the apostles, rather than in a written record of this teaching.

We find a good example of this in 1 Corinthians 11. At the beginning of this chapter, Paul commends the church in Corinth for maintaining “the traditions just as I delivered them to you” (1 Corinthians 11:2). Both the words tradition and to deliver have the same root in Greek, having everything to do with handing down. Paul comes back to this language a little later: “I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you” (1 Corinthians 11:23). The words of the institution of the Lord’s Supper are a “tradition” that Paul received and had taught to the Corinthians. Later, these words would be written down almost word for word in Luke’s Gospel.

In fact, Luke at the beginning of his Gospel tells Theophilus that his book is “just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us” (Luke 1:2). The resemblance to Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 11:2 is striking.

There are other references to the teaching of Jesus in 1 Corinthians. That Greeks seek wisdom and Jews seek signs goes at least partly back to Jesus’s words later written down in Mark 8:12. Jesus’s teaching about divorce is mentioned in 1 Corinthians 7:10–11, distinguished from the apostolic teaching in the next verse. That is, there was no explicit teaching of Jesus on the situation described in 1 Corinthians 7:12, and the Corinthians should not think that there was some saying they had missed somehow. And elsewhere in the New Testament, it pays off to read the letter of James side by side with the Sermon on the Mount. The similarities are clear, and it is not difficult to see how James’s teaching has started out from the words of Jesus himself.

Tradition Becomes Scripture

The apostles had a special ministry and authority. The traditions they had taught and the letters they had written, combined with their physical presence, contained all the guidance the churches needed. However, apostles would not be around forever (John 21:22–23), and they were faced with the question of whether the traditions they had taught would be remembered “just as they had delivered them.” In 2 Peter 1:15, Peter shares that this consideration was a real concern. This brings us to the closing stages of the formation of the New Testament, the writing down of the Gospels.

Luke knew about many others who had attempted to write a Gospel (Luke 1:1). Likewise, John wrote his testimony down after having preached its content for a long time. He had the benefit of looking back and being able to select those parts of the story that are sufficient for a saving knowledge of Jesus (John 20:30–31). For each of the four Gospels, the church retained the tradition of how they were linked to apostolic authority, directly (Matthew, John) or indirectly (Mark to Peter, Luke to Paul).

Entry into the new covenant remained an inward work, the word of God written on hearts by the Holy Spirit, yet the written accounts of Jesus’s life and ministry, and the teaching of how his salvation shapes the life of his people, were now entrusted to paper and ink — sometimes almost reluctantly (2 John 12), yet ultimately in the expectation that the apostolic writings were sufficient to make our joy complete (1 John 1:4).

This transition from remembered traditions to written accounts is reflected in Paul’s letters. As we have seen, Paul praises the Corinthians for keeping the traditions as he had delivered them. Later, however, in 1 Timothy 5:18, Paul introduces a double citation with the phrase “for the Scripture says.” The first of these, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,” comes from Deuteronomy 25:4. The second citation from Scripture is “the laborer deserves his wages.” These exact words are found only in Luke 10:7, with a less exact parallel in Matthew 10:10. Therefore, by the time 1 Timothy was written, the Gospel tradition as written down by Luke was used — and approved — by Paul as being Scripture. (Alternatively, it is possible to read “for the Scripture says” as covering only the first of the two citations. But this reading is somewhat forced; the most natural reading is to apply the phrase to both citations.)

The implications of 1 Timothy 5:18 and its use of Luke are considerable. Just as in 1 Corinthians 11, again we have a link between the preaching of Paul and Luke’s Gospel. Moreover, though Paul must have taught the content of Luke 10:7 as part of the “Jesus tradition,” he decides to appeal to the written form, the Gospel, and by doing so Paul signals that there has been a transition from the remembered tradition to the written form. Scripture now includes the gospel and is part of all Scripture that is God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16). Also, the use of Luke in 1 Timothy seems to indicate that the Gospels were written earlier rather than later, and mostly before the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70.

Scripture Copied and Translated

When the time of the apostles was over, scriptural revelation was also complete. Because of the wide acknowledgement that the apostles, brothers of Jesus (James, Jude; see also 1 Corinthians 9:4), and those who recorded their teaching were a special gift to the church, their writings were rightly accepted as the word of God, in the same way the Old Testament was. There are some indications that certain memories from the time of the preaching of the first generation lasted well into the second half of the second century, but more and more the writings of the New Testament became the sole authoritative link to the apostles. In the absence of special revelation, our knowledge of what happened in the transmission of the New Testament text after its completion can only be inferred from the surviving manuscript evidence and from what is said by church fathers.

Some things had changed in comparison to the situation under the old covenant. No longer was there a central sanctuary. The apostles may have formed the figurative pillars of the spiritual temple that is the church, yet after their passing away there was no authoritative central location that could function in the way the temple in Jerusalem did. Jerusalem functioned as the center where approved copies of the Scriptures could be obtained (compare Acts 7:27–28). Yet the early church was spread out all over the Roman Empire and beyond, and everywhere the Scripture was copied. It is telling that in these early centuries no church claimed to have an original letter or Gospel in their possession, even though it is clear such originals must have been sent at some point.

Comparing Manuscripts

Printed Bibles have been in existence for a little over five hundred years. For the preceding centuries (1,400 years for the New Testament, and much longer for the Old), the original Hebrew and Greek were copied by hand. For those who are used to a printing culture, the idea that a copy is not necessarily identical to the original is somewhat disturbing. Yet for the early church, this was part of everyday reality. We have examples from every century of church fathers who discussed the difference in wording that existed between manuscripts.

It is important to distinguish between the transmission of the text of the Hebrew Old Testament and that of the Greek New Testament. Quite early on in church history, the main text used for the Old Testament was a Greek or Latin translation (or further translations made from these versions). The transmission of the Hebrew text was carried out in rabbinic circles. The Masoretic text of the Middle Ages reflects the text preserved in the temple in great detail and accurately records not only how the text was pronounced but also differences that existed between the major scrolls kept in the temple before its destruction.

As we have seen, the Greek New Testament does not go back to a temple text or to a single, central location. And manuscripts of the New Testament differ in their wording of the text. Sometimes these are big differences, sometimes small. Already in the late second century, the church father Irenaeus discussed the issue of some manuscripts of Revelation giving the number of the beast as 616 instead of 666. These discussions give us insight into how the problem of differences in wording was dealt with at the time. One important argument for Irenaeus was that 666 was used in the “oldest and approved” manuscripts (even though “oldest” could not mean more than 100–120 years or so). The term “approved” suggests that, already by the end of the second century, some places or some churches were in possession of manuscripts that functioned as normative. But most of these normative manuscripts have perished, either because of age or violent destruction. So what sort of manuscript do we have left?

There are about four hundred manuscripts that come from before the big transition in Greek writing from individual capital letters to a joined-up cursive script in the ninth century (majuscule script and minuscule script, respectively). The majority of these manuscripts are incomplete or even fragmentary. The three manuscripts that are often dated to the second century are all single fragments from a single page from one of the Gospels. We would need hundreds of these to form one complete book. However, we do have manuscripts that are more extensive, and from the fourth and fifth century we even have manuscripts that have a near-complete New Testament in Greek. What we learn from these manuscripts is that in the early centuries the copies were not always made very carefully, to the extent that sometimes one wonders if some of these were written from memory rather than copied from an existing master copy. What we also learn is that the vast majority of differences are easily resolved because they are obvious errors. The more difficult problems require deeper consideration.

Here it helps that we have so many manuscripts, because now we can look for the type of thing that can go wrong (and likewise the type of error that is rarely made). So it is much more common to make the wording of one Gospel similar to that of another, than to do the reverse. For example, Luke tends to abbreviate citations from the Old Testament, while Matthew gives the longer version. As a result, later manuscripts of Luke often have expanded citations that resemble the longer versions found in Matthew. The King James Version is based on such later manuscripts, so its longer wording in Luke 4:4, 5, and 8 (compared to, for example, the ESV) is all due to influence from Matthew.

The discussions of church fathers of some of textual differences shows that most of the important differences have been talked about over the last sixteen or seventeen centuries. It also shows that the existence of such differences was never a reason to give up trust in the Scriptures.

Evaluating Variants

There seems to be a tension between God preserving his word and the existence of differences between manuscripts. How can we trust our English Bibles if they are the result of comparing the manuscripts that have, in places, a different wording of Scripture?

First, the existence of textual variants often makes little or no difference to the wider meaning of the text. For example, in Romans 1:1, there is a question whether Paul wrote “a servant of Jesus Christ” or “a servant of Christ Jesus.” If someone specializes in particular details of Paul’s language, he or she may be very much interested in solving the problem. Yet on a wider scale, say if we look at Romans 1:1–7 as a whole, the issue has no effect on our understanding of what is going on. In general, this is true of all communication. We can cope with noise in the room and still understand perfectly well what our conversation partner is saying.

Second, of all the textual variants in existence, the vast majority can be resolved with relative ease. It is clear how the error came into being and also why it managed to survive in the textual transmission.

Translating the Word of God

The final step in that long journey from the moment that God inspired his word to us reading his word is that of translation. Translation is not easy. One language (English, for example) tends to use grammar and syntax differently than Hebrew or Greek, which are also quite different languages from one another. It is good to realize that any translation has made choices as to which features of the original to represent and which to leave out. For example, it is traditional to represent the Greek name Iakobos (the Greek form of the Old Testament name Jacob) with James, and as a result we lose something of the feel of this name (Iakobos writes his letter “to the 12 tribes” [James 1:1]!).

Also on a sentence level a translator needs to make difficult choices. How we do present the focus of a sentence in Greek into English, which uses different techniques to show which part of the sentence is prominent? How do we represent the repetition of the same word but used in different shades of meaning? To what extent is the translation intended to be understood the first time of hearing, and to what extent do we expect the reader to make considerable effort to dig deeper into the text? And how do we present some of the bigger issues in the different manuscripts? Do we simply ignore them and choose one text to translate, or do we add the occasional footnote? Translations have to make difficult choices, and different translations make different choices.

How can we trust our translations if a single translation cannot give us the full glory of the original? We may fall into the trap of thinking that because we do not have all the knowledge and insight into what God exactly said, we have nothing at all.

Yet we should not be sucked into such a false opposition. It is important to distinguish carefully between two different words: being accurate and being exhaustive. For example, if we look at a map that gives us only the capital cities of each state, we can learn a lot. This map can be of great benefit in learning the lay of the land. It is accurate, but not exhaustive; there is more to tell. We need a map with more information when we are planning a car journey, also accurate but with more information. And think also of the different map we need when preparing for a long hike; a road map will not get us very far. Each of these maps is accurate, but each also gives a different level of detail.

A good translation will render the Scriptures in the original language accurately into English, and will therefore be the word of God, able to teach, to rebuke, to correct, to build the church up. But the level of detail will be different from translation to translation, and will again be different when we read Scripture in the original languages.

For almost all purposes, our translations give us all that we need to study God’s words and to meet him in his word. Yet it is good to know that many of our pastors and other scholars are also reading Scripture in Greek and Hebrew, as it helps them to understand God’s word more precisely. It is as if they are zooming in with a higher magnification and resolution. As we have seen, sometimes the circumstances prevent us from zooming in as far as we would like. This happens when there are some remaining problems in the wording of the Greek and Hebrew originals. We can see the lay of the land, but the fine detail is less clear. But again, these textual problems are mostly small, and none of them influences what Scripture teaches as a whole.

The Word About the Word

The story of how the Bible came into being is largely told in the Bible itself. Perhaps we would like to know things that are not revealed. There are limitations to our knowledge. Yet the Bible is God’s revelation that tells us in great detail about the whole of salvation history, about the coming of the Messiah and his death and resurrection, and about the great hope of glory that is revealed in the Word who became flesh, the Lord Jesus Christ. And this word is fully trustworthy.

The Priesthood of All Believers

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Article by J. V. Fesko (original source – https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/the-priesthood-of-all-believers/)

DEFINITION

The doctrine of the priesthood of all believers states that all believers in Christ share in his priestly status; therefore, there is no special class of people who mediate the knowledge, presence, and forgiveness of Christ to the rest of believers, and all believers have the right and authority to read, interpret, and apply the teachings of Scripture.

SUMMARY

In contrast to the beliefs of the medieval church, the Protestant doctrine of the priesthood of all believers holds that there is no longer a priestly class of people within God’s people, but that all believers share in Christ’s priestly status by virtue of their union with Christ. Although there was a select group of priests in the OT, who mediated the knowledge, presence, and forgiveness of God to the rest of Israel, Christ has come and fulfilled the priestly role through his life, death, and resurrection. Therefore, Christ was the final priestly mediator between God and his people, and Christians share in that role through him. This means that Christians are not dependent upon the priests within the church to interpret Scripture for them or affect God’s blessing of forgiveness for them; all Christians are equally priests through Christ and stand upon the same ground before the cross. This does not mean that we should do away with pastoral or ministerial authorities. While those authorities are a part of the way that God blesses his church with instruction in sound doctrine, those with churchly authority need the rest of the body just as much.

Medieval Views vs. Protestant Understandings

Medieval theologians believed that salvation came from God through the church. In these simple terms, this sounds very similar to the way most Christians understand it. There are, however, significant differences between medieval and Protestant understandings of how God works through the church. The medieval church taught that God works exclusively through a select class of priests as they administered the seven sacraments of the church: baptism, the Eucharist (Lord’s Supper), confirmation, penance, extreme unction, marriage, and holy orders. Protestants, on the other hand, believe that all people in the church are priests, or in the language of the 16th century reformer, Martin Luther, the priesthood of all believers. What are the differences between these two views? In short, the medieval view rests on the teaching of church tradition whereas the Protestant view grows out of Scripture.

Medieval Christians believed that the church was part of a celestial hierarchy where everything in the heavens and earth had its place in a great chain of being. The great chain begins with God, then archangels, and angels; this heavenly hierarchy finds its earthly parallel through the sacraments, those who are inspired by God to comprehend them, and those initiated by them. God passes his knowledge and grace down the chain to the angels, who in turn invest this information in the sacraments, and those who administer the sacraments (priests), who then give them to the laity. Salvation chiefly comes through the sacraments and the priests who administer them, and the priests are a unique class of individual who have been gifted by God to contemplate the things of God. They are of a higher order than ordinary people who have no capacity for such sublime truth. This view of a hierarchy prevailed in the church through the middle ages until the 16th century Protestant Reformation. Luther challenged this prevailing notion because he rejected the church’s claims; he believed the church rested its idea of the unique priestly class on tradition rather than the authority of Scripture. Luther instead believed that offering the sacrifice of the mass did not make one a priest but rather anyone who had faith in Christ, our great high priest, was indeed a priest of God. In Luther’s typical pithy manner, he claimed: “Faith alone is the true priestly office.” Luther’s idea of the priesthood of all believers versus the priesthood of only a select few rests in the priestly office of Christ and in the believer’s blessing to share in all that Christ is through union with him.

Scriptural Teaching

Scripture clearly identifies Jesus Christ as our great high priest: “Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession” (Heb. 4:14). The Old Testament whispered and hinted about the priestly office of Christ through types and shadows, such as Aaron, Israel’s first high priest, and the Levites. God instructed Aaron, for example, that he had to cleanse Israel of their sins through the protocols of the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16). Aaron, and Aaron alone, had to sacrifice a bull to cleanse ceremonially himself (Lev. 16:11) and then take some of the blood, enter the holy of holies, and sprinkle it on the mercy seat (Lev. 16:14). God instructed him to take two scapegoats and sacrifice one of them and sprinkle its blood on the altar (Lev. 16:18) and take the second goat, lay his hands on it, confess Israel’s sins over it, and then send it out of the camp into the wilderness (Lev. 16:21). In this act the goat was to “bear all their iniquities” and carry them away (Lev. 16:22).

As the Old Testament progressively unfolded God’s plan of redemption, the prophets revealed that the Messiah was the ultimate sacrifice. No longer would Israel look to the blood of bulls and goats but to the blood of the Messiah, who would be pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, bear our griefs, and carry our sorrows (Isa. 53:4–5). No longer would the scapegoat bear Israel’s sins but rather Jesus would, “And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:6). The Messiah would be both sacrifice and priest: “But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption” (Heb. 9:11–12).

In his baptism, God anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit to carry out his threefold office of prophet, priest, and king (Luke 3:1–21; Matt. 3:1–17; Mark 1:1–11). Likewise, we who are in union with Christ share in this same anointing through Christ’s outpouring of the Spirit upon the church (Acts 2:1–41, esp. 33, 38; cf. Gal. 3:14). Through Christ’s priestly office, all believers who are united to him share in his anointing. Two chief texts of Scripture teach us this truth. The first is 1 Peter 2:9, “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” Within the context of Peter’s statement, he rests the church’s identity as a royal priesthood in their union with Christ. They have come to the living stone rejected by men but chosen and precious in the sight of God, and as such, they have become living stones “to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 2:4–5). Our priestly office finds its fount and source in Christ’s priestly office.

The second text is like this first one, “And they sang a new song, saying, ‘Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Rev. 5:9). What is an implication of Christ’s redemptive work? What is one of the things he accomplishes through his shed blood? “You have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall rein on the earth” (Rev. 5:10). Believers united to Christ share in all that he is and does, and in this case, they share in his priestly office. Unlike the Old Testament priests, who offered sacrificial animals, New Testament believers rest in the finished work of Christ, the one true sacrifice. Now, as Peter writes, we proclaim the excellencies of the God who called us out of darkness into light and offer spiritual sacrifices to God through Christ, the sacrifices of our bodies as “living sacrifices” (Rom. 12:1) and praise to God, that is, “The fruit of lips that acknowledge his name” (Heb. 13:15). The implications of this scriptural teaching are profound.

The most significant blessing is that there is no hierarchy of beings (archangels, angels, archbishops, bishops, and priests) standing between the believer and God. Rather, we have union, communion, and fellowship with God through our great high priest, Jesus Christ. When Christ uttered his last breath on the cross, he tore in two the temple veil that shrouded the holy of holies. Christ’s priestly work opened the new and living way through the veil of his flesh so that all believers have immediate access to God who is in the heavenly holy of holies. As Christ taught his disciples, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them” (Matt. 18:20).

Implications

That all believers are priests means that not only ministers but also the person in the pew has the right and authority to read, interpret, and apply the teachings of the Bible. A caste of priests does not have this right. No longer must we place our implicit faith in the teaching of the church magisterium (the official teaching arm of the church), but like the Bereans in the days of the apostle Paul, we can learn immediately from the word of God and the instruction of the Holy Spirit (Acts 17:11).

Every person, therefore, who is united to Christ, shares in his priestly office, but this great blessing does not mean that we should reject the authority, function, and office of minister. We are indeed a holy nation and kingdom of priests. Christ dispenses this holy office to all Christians through the outpouring of the Spirit. But in addition to this blessing, Christ has also given to the church gifts: “And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:11–12). The shepherds and teachers of the church are priests just like the rest of the body of Christ, but the Spirit uniquely gifts them so they can equip the church for their own growth in grace and the proclamation of the gospel. These shepherds and teachers do not belong to a higher order of being, as in the medieval understanding. Rather, they are one part of the body of Christ, not greater than any other part but necessary nonetheless. The shepherd cannot say to the person in the pew, “I have no need of you because the Spirit has gifted me to be a shepherd.” Conversely, the person in the pew cannot say to the shepherd, “I have no need of you because I am a priest in Christ.” God has sovereignly arranged the body of Christ in such a manner that each part, though different in function and gifts, needs every other part (1 Cor. 12:4–26).

Rejoice that because of your union with Christ you share in all who he is and does. In this case, his high priestly office means that you too are a holy and royal priest.