Word Magazine # 76: Rejoinders to TurretinFan

Image: Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener (1813-1891)

I have posted Word Magazine # 76: Rejoinders to TurretinFan. This is a follow up to my recent dialogue with TF which began with his response to my critique of James White in WM 75. I have already pointed out what I believe is the major flaw in TF's critique: anachronistically asserting that (the real) Turretin took the same approach to text criticism as contemporary reconstructionist (restorationist) advocates for the modern critical text (see this post and this one).

It might be overkill on this subject, but I thought I'd share some of my other notes on TF's initial critique. This includes rejoinders on various other issues, including a confessional apologetic against KJV-Onlyism, the value of Scrivener's Greek NT (1881), logical fallacies in JW's arguments against the TR, a defense of the antiquity of the traditional text, the problem of lack of ubiquity for the "Alexandrian" text, and the significance of the comma Johanneum as a prooftext in the 1689 confession.

JTR

Even more thoughts on Muller and (the real) Turretin

TurretinFan (TF) posted a rejoinder yesterday (5.15.17) regarding whether it is accurate to say that (the real) Turretin took the same approach to the text of Scripture as James White (JW) and other evangelicals who embrace the modern critical text. In my post I had cited the work of historical theologian Richard Muller on the Bibliology of Turretin and the other Protestant orthodox.

In his new post TF dismisses my rejoinder by saying the following:

Unfortunately, brother Riddle's post entirely misses the main point of my response. I argued:

Moreover, methodologically, Turretin agrees with JW. For example, Turretin endorses the approach of using the collation of various copies to restore the original readings.

Riddle responded by quoting Richard Muller's discussion of views of issues related to inerrancy, contrasting folks like Turretin with later folks like B.B. Warfield. Even assuming that what Muller says is correct, Muller is addressing a different issue from the one I was addressing.

So, TF says I have completely missed the point. He suggests that the citations I offered from Muller, contradicting his thesis that (the real) Turretin’s views on text were identical with JW, are irrelevant, because I am confusing Muller’s discussion of inerrancy and text criticism.

I’ll have to leave it to those who read Muller for themselves to make their own judgments as to whose reading of his views on (the real) Turretin are accurate. Let me just say that I agree that Muller’s whole point is indeed to say that (the real) Turretin did not, in fact, hold the view of “inerrancy” as originated and articulated in the nineteenth century by Hodges and Warfield, and which continues to be embraced today by evangelicals, like JW and TF. Where TF goes off the rails, however, IMHO, is in failing to see that this discussion of inerrancy is inextricably and vitally related to this issue of text criticism.

What Muller is saying is that the Protestant orthodox, like (the real) Turretin, did not seek the “infinite regress” of the reconstruction (restoration) of the hypothetical inerrant “original autograph.” This reconstructionist method was not, in fact, articulated until the nineteenth century, by Hodges and Warfield, as an apologetic response to modernism’s gleeful attacks upon the integrity of Scripture in light of the accumulation of textual variants. Just look through the writings of the Protestant orthodox, whether the WCF, the 1689 confession, Owen, Turretin, etc., and you will not find the term “inerrancy.” Instead, they speak of the “infallibility” of Scripture. The term “inerrancy” was not coined until the nineteenth century. To say that (the real) Turretin held the same views as JW (which is to say, the same views as Hodges and Warfield) with regard to text is, therefore, a historical anachronism.

The point is that (the real) Turretin did not think his task was the reconstruction of the original, inerrant autograph through the method of text criticism, but that he believed the autograph was present in the preservation of the text in the existing apographs (copies), which had now achieved a standard form in the most widely used and available printed text of the Reformation.

As for the other longer quote he shares from Muller, noting that the printed editions of the textus receptus were established by the Protestant orthodox as “a normative or definitive text of the NT” but that it did not ultimately provide “some sort of terminus ad quem for the editing of the text of the Bible,” I’d suggest one read the quote in context to get Muller’s point. Yes, this era saw continued study of the text of the NT, which would eventually flower in modern text criticism. This was seen in the text critical works of the likes of the French Protestant Louis Cappel and in the Anglican Brian Walton’s Biblia Polyglotta. His point, however, is to say that this approach to the text was not embraced by the Protestant orthodox but resisted by them. See John Owen’s critique of Walton’s Polyglotta in A Vindication of the Purity and Integrity of the Hebrew and Greek Texts of the Old and New Testament (in Volume XVI of his Collected Works).

BTW, in citing Muller’s scholarship I do not mean to suggest that he in any way supports the authority of the textus receptus as the normative text of the NT. In fact, he makes plain in PRRD, Vol. 2 that he thinks Owen’s critique of Walton was ill conceived (see, e.g., p. 134). Where Muller is helpful is in his historical description and analysis of the Protestant orthodox and their defense of the traditional text (Hebrew MT of the OT and TR of the NT).

So, to sum up:

1.    (The real) Turretin did not approach the text of Scripture in the same manner as JW and other evangelicals who embrace the modern critical text.

2.    One cannot separate Muller’s discussion of inerrancy and text criticism.

Finally, to understand the confessional text movement (if we can call it that), one has to undergo a “paradigm shift” (though I hate to use that over-used term). The goal of text criticism is not to use an empirical method to “reconstruct” the text. The goal of text criticism is to establish and defend the text that has been providentially preserved.

JTR 

Responding to TurretinFan on (the real) Turretin

A friend pointed out to me that an associate of James White (JW) who goes by the name TurretinFan (TF) had posted a critique on Friday (5.12.17) of my recent blog post introducing WM # 75 (read TF's critique “Responding to Jeff Riddle” here).

Though I would take exception to most of TF’s critique I wanted to offer an initial response to what I believe to be the central intellectual area where this critique is problematic (if I have time I’ll try to record a WM next week with a more detailed response to this and other issues raised in his critique).

Here is the central problem/question with his critique: Did (the real) Francis Turretin and others of the Protestant orthodox embrace the same methodological approach to the NT as modern evangelical advocates of the critical text (like JW). In other words: Did Calvin, Owen, Turretin, etc. hold to a reconstructionist (restorationist) view of text criticism, which envisioned its goal as the accumulation of textual variants in order to approximate a reconstruction (restoration) of the lost autographa?

This is the view that is suggested by TF when he writes the following in criticism of my views:

Moreover, methodologically, Turretin agrees with JW. For example, Turretin endorses the approach of using the collation of various copies to restore the original readings.

And later:

As mentioned above, Turretin (and other Reformers) methodologically agreed with the use of collation to obtain the original readings. We have more knowledge of the text than they did. Thus, the difference between JW's position and FT's position is not so much … because of different convictions, but because of different information.

So, again, TF contends that my view is flawed since (the real) Francis Turretin held a view that is essentially identical with that held by Bruce Metzger, Dan Wallace, D. A. Carson, John Piper, John MacArthur, James White, and a host of other men who have embraced the modern reconstructionist (restorationist) view of text criticism. The only difference is that the men of the past had less information (textual data) with which to work than we have today.

This is, indeed, a very intriguing historical question. It is also at the heart of the distinction that must be drawn between those who embrace the modern critical text (and the restorationist methodology that has produced it) and the small but apparently growing number of those, like me, who prefer the traditional text (and the confessional, preservationist theology that affirms it).

I admit that I do not consider myself to be an expert on the writings of Francis Turretin, and I do not claim to have studied his Bibliology in detail. I’ve done much more detailed work on John Calvin and John Owen on this topic. My sense, however, is that Turretin is in essential agreement with Calvin and Owen and that their view is, in fact, fundamentally different from that which has emerged since the rise of modern text criticism in the nineteenth century.

My understanding of (the real) Turretin’s Bibliology has been influenced by reading the views of historical theologian Richard A. Muller, especially as expressed in his Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 2, Holy Scripture: The Cognitive Foundation of Theology (Baker, 1993). Muller would be considered among the most preeminent contemporary scholars of Reformation and post-Reformation theology. I highly commend this book as must reading to those who are interested in this topic.

What does Muller say in this work about the question of how Turretin and other post-reformation dogmatic theologians approached the text of Scripture?

Here are a few excerpts from Muller (p. 433):

By “original and authentic” text, the Protestant orthodox do not mean the autographa which no person can possess but the apographa in the original tongue which are the source of all versions…. It is important to note that the Reformed orthodox insistence on the identification of the Hebrew and Greek texts as alone authentic does not demand direct reference to the autographa in those languages; the “original and authentic text” of Scripture means, beyond the autograph copies, the legitimate tradition of Hebrew and Greek apographa.

Footnote 165 for the statement above on p. 433:

Cf. Turretin, Inst. theol., II.xi.3-4, with Mastricht, Theoretico-practica theol., I.ii.10. A rather sharp contrast must be drawn, therefore, between the Protestant orthodox statements concerning the autographa and the views of Archibald Alexander Hodge and Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield. This issue must be raised because of the tendency to confuse these two views…. The point made by Hodge and Warfield is a logical trap, a rhetorical flourish, a conundrum designed to confound the critics—who can only prove their case for genuine errancy by recourse to a text they do not (and surely cannot) have….

Muller continues on p. 434:

The orthodox discussion of autographa and apographa was designed, therefore, to point toward continuity of text-tradition between the original authors and the present day texts…. For them the autographa were not a concrete point of regress for the future critical examination of the text but rather a touchstone employed in gaining a proper perspective on current textual problems…. The orthodox tended to address issues of infallibility of Scripture in matters of faith and practice from an entirely different vantage point.

And on p. 435:

Even so Turretin and other high and later orthodox writers argued that the authenticity and infallibility of Scripture must be identified in and of the apographa, not in and of lost autographa…. The orthodox do, of course, assume that the text is free of substantive error and, typically, view textual problems as of scribal origin, but they mount their argument for authenticity and infallibility without recourse to a logical device like that employed by Hodge and Warfield.

Muller’s conclusion is clear: The Protestant orthodox view of the text of Scripture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was NOT equivalent to the modern reconstructionist (restorationist) view of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as popularized among evangelicals by Hodges and Warfield. This distinction was not due to differences in the amount of data each had but to a fundamental difference in intellectual (theological) outlook. TF is, then, in error when he states that (the real) Turretin embraced the same modern textual methodology as JW. According to Muller, this would be an example of “the tendency to confuse these two views” (p. 433, n. 165).

The small but growing number of those who embrace the traditional text (the MT of the Hebrew OT and the TR of the Greek NT), driven by confessional considerations, are simply saying that they prefer the approach of Calvin, Owen, the 1689 framers, and Turretin to that of Metzger, Piper, and White.

JTR