What was the Puritan view of Scripture? William Ames' Marrow of Theology was a standard Puritan textbook in systematic theology Ames lived from 1576-1633 and was actually forced to leave England due to persecution. He taught in Holland, where he gave a series of theological lectures that became the Marrow. It was first published in Latin in 1623, and remained in use until the 20th century in Reformed seminaries. Quotations are from the 1997 Baker edition.
"In all those things made known by supernatural inspiration, whether matters of right or fact, God inspired not only the subjects to be written about but dictated and suggested the very words in which they should be set forth. But this was done with a subtle tempering so that every writer might use the manner of speaking which most suited his person and condition." P. 186
"Among interpreters, neither the seventy who turned them into Greek, nor Jerome, nor any other such held the office of a prophet; they were not free from errors in interpretation." - p. 188
From these human versions all those things may be known which are absolutely necessary, provided they agree with the sources in essentials. Hence all the versions accepted by the Churches usually agree, although they may be defective at several minor points." - P. 189
"We must not rest forever in any accepted version, but faitfully see to it that a pure and faultless interpretation is given to the Church." - p.189
Note that in the first quotation Ames states that, while God inspired thewords, yet the style is that of the author. This is to say that the words in the Bible are both the words of God and of the human writers. To deny one or the other is a species of rationalism.
By 'Interpreters' in the second quotation is meant 'translators', and thus 'interpretation' means 'translation'.
Ames and the Puritans were not bothered by differences between translations as long as the translations agreed with the original texts in essentials. So I am in good company, then! I'd much rather agree with Ames than Riplinger, even though Ames did come from Ipswich. Ames was, incidentally, a student of some of the AV translators at Cambridge.
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>Ames and the Puritans were not bothered by differences between translations as long as the translations agreed with the original texts in essentials.
Considering the versions they'd be comparing were the Geneva and the AV1611 (both traditional text versions) your point is a bit empty in the context of the AV vs. the modern versions.
>So I am in good company, then! I'd much rather agree with Ames than Riplinger,
You're too focused on people and personalities. You should rather desire to agree with wherever truth is to be found. And if you, by the way, were to go back in time and present Sinaiticus and Vaticanus to Ames and tell him they are 'better' he might have turned you in to authorities of the day based on heresy laws of the day.
I doubt Ames would be so petty. As for focusing on persons, I go with the truth wherever I find it. Including in Riplinger. Only SHE is the one utterly focused on persons and personalities, as Hazmat shows perfectly.
The Ad Hominem and Genetic fallacies loomed large in that one, I can tell you.
It has been pointed out by smarter individuals than myself that ad hominem is not fallacious, or not even pertinent, when one is discerning the background and motives of people involved in textual criticism and construction of texts and translation of the very Word of God itself. It's called due diligence, and in the world you can be sued for not engaging in it. When it involves the Word of God the consequences are worse.
But if all one has is ad hominem, then it IS fallacious. Unless you really want to say that Bibloe translators have to be men without gross sin, in which case you have to question the AV because of Thompson's heavy drinking and worldliness, and the persecution engaged in by Bishop Bancroft and others. Oh, and add the fact that Bishop Miles Smith, who wrote the preface to the AV, once walked out of a boring sermon to go down the pub.
There you see the point of my post about the AV translators, to show that Riplinger's ad hominem IS fallacious.
You said of me: "You're too focused on people and personalities."
Of Riplinger you said: "ad hominem is not fallacious, or not even pertinent, when one is discerning the background and motives of people involved in textual criticism and construction of texts and translation of the very Word of God itself."
Which is it, chum? You simply cannot have it both ways. Either you have to say that God overruled the sinful AV translators supernaturally - in which case you have to prove either that there is a specific promise in the Bible that God would do so for them AND FOR NO SUBSEQUENT ENGLISH TRANSLATION, or you have to prove evil intent in modern Bible translators IN THEIR TRANSLATING. Obviously I leave out the NWT here, as well as the New Age 'bible' (babble would be more like it) 'Good as New', which sank without a trace.
You went astray in your first sentence:
>But if all one has is ad hominem, then it IS fallacious.
Corrupt, Arian, Romanist manuscripts. Manuscripts twice, thrice, many more times worked over by Unitarians and generic apostates and liberals. These things don't apply to the pure and whole - received - text. The Traditional Text.
You replace ad hominem with straw man.
And Thou hast set up thine own homunculus of chaff and stubble, my good fellow, for dost thou not know that it is notorious that while Arius was a Presbyter in the Church of Alexanderia, it was the very prelates of that see who did condemn him and seek to have him cast from the office of the ministry? Wottest thou not that he was of Antioch, and that there doth exist none evidence to show that his influence was upon the Alexandrian Bible manuscripts?
Apparently not. Art thou also unaware that while Arian Bishops were intruded into the see of Alexandria, yea into the great cathedral itself, the very eremites who copied the sacred texts were all the while sheltering the great Hercules of Orthodoxy, to wit, Athanasius?
And wottest thou not, then, that it is that notorious Antioch, the natal borough of the heresiarch, that was the centre of production for the Byzantine text?
All of which (to drop the King James English) proves absolutely nothing. The See of Alexandria was the centre, not of Arianism, but of OPPOSITION to it. And in case you can't decipher my King James English, let me put it in modern English, the monks of Egypt were the greatest allies of Athanasius, many of them died rather than submit to Arianism - and THEY are the ones who copied the manuscripts.
It is ROMAN CATHOLIC manuscripts that contain 1 John 5.7, but you want that in the Bible. So there's another problem. And then you're caught with an Anglican translation. I doubt you'd let Lancelot Andrewes, a chief AV translator, conduct worship in your Church, you'd object to the altar, the images and the candles, for one thing.
>It is ROMAN CATHOLIC manuscripts that contain 1 John 5.7, but you want that in the Bible.
Roman Catholics weren't Arians. They would have not motive to remove verses on the Trinity. (You need to save these comments of yours and read them in a few years. Hopefully you will be more awake at that time and get a real shock seeing where you are currently.)
My dear chap, I point out that Alexandrians weren't Arians, but opponents of Arius, and that Antioch was Arius' place of origin (incidentally, he also had some pretty strong support in Constantinople at times), and you ignore that. Why? Because then you can't call Sinaiaticus and Vaticanus and other manuscripts from Egypt "Arian manuscripts". Then I point out that only Roman Catholic manuscripts (you brought that up) contain 1 John 5.7. Which, by the way, is not quoted by Athanasius, which it surely would have been had it been in his Bible. It is found in no Greek manuscripts before the 14th century, but it is found significantly in the Latin Vulgate, the Roman Catholic Bible, and those Greek manuscripts that contain it are influenced by the Latin.
Now, were a modern version to contain a reading unknown in Greek until the Middle Ages, but seen in the Latin before that date, Riplinger would cry 'Popery!' Why does 1 John 5.7 get a pass? Please note that I am not accusing the AV translators of popery, they had to work with the materials they had, and those materials included 1 John 5.7.
In fact, of course, you have made an English translation the standard, just as Gail Riplinger has. Thus it is self-serving to say "all pure manuscripts read like the AV", as she has made 'reading like the AV' the test of purity!
In his hometown Arius routinely stated "Jesus is God." It was out in the world (much of the current satanic Islamic strongholds) where Arius taught and had success in planting his heresy. You have a ways to go to understand the behaviour of heretics.
And arguing 1 John 5:7 with you guys is like arguing accusations from Romanists that James teaches works righteousness. It gets old. You guys never give up. Until the return of the King.
Puritan. Christianity is growing in Egypt. True, biblical Christianity. I salute the suffering Church there, a faithful remmnant who are doing much in the face of great persecution. You will find that Arianism was far more popular in the West, among the Goths and Vandals, who overthrew the Roman Empire, than in the East. What did for the Church in the East was the controversy over the nature(s) of Christ.
Again, you can't discern big, obvious things, such that Islam is a Christian heresy based on the Arian heresy. These are things 'scholars' avoid for worldly reasons and fears such as the necessity to be politically-correct and to not upset the devil, the world, and the administration that pays their salary.
Puritan. You'll take this the wrong way, I suspect, but it is quite irrational to say that the Alexandrian text, copied by the VERY MONKS WHO SHELTERED ATHANASIUS was influenced by Arianism! That Islam is influenced by Christian heresies is a fact, but no Arian would say as the Koran does that Jesus is a mere mortal prophet. That is the heresy of Photinus (Bishop of Sirmium) , who was never associated with the Arians, who in fact tried to depose him. If anything, Islam follows Photinus, not Arius, in its view of Christ.
You need to get your heretics straight.
HH, if heresy's line of influence was as clean and direct as a seminarian's mathematically naive notions of such things you have a point. Also, if you strike 'degree' from the process, again you have a killer point. If you're operating in the real world, with real history, and if you take your wisdom from the Word of God you know a little leaven leavens (poisons, in this case) the whole lump. Perhaps that has been taken out of the modern versions. I've stopped keeping track what critical text scholars have deemed unworthy to be called God's Word, so many new versions, so many new updates of new versions...
It's a good thing God has preserved the Rock in the AV. His elect are grateful.
My dear Puritan. That a man who defends Hislop should lecture anyone about operating in the real world with real history is frankly silly. If you think 'The Two Babylons' is real history, you are on a level with Riplinger's view of the Templars culled from Leigh and Baigent and their misbegotten ilk.
Tell me (because I wish to know), what sources are you referring to?
>My dear Puritan. That a man who defends Hislop should lecture anyone about operating in the real world with real history is frankly silly. If you think 'The Two Babylons' is real history, you are on a level with Riplinger's view of the Templars culled from Leigh and Baigent and their misbegotten ilk.
Quote me where I've said *anything* regarding your Hislop or his book. And I stopped having interest in Templars and 'things templarish' long ago. So your disputes with Riplinger on that subject are between you and her.
Again, though, I don't see Templar in the title of her book. Such things never stop critical text defenders from doing their unique reviews of her books...
Maybe the next installment of your review of her books can talk about the types of font she uses...
My dear Puritan, perhaps you have forgotten that it is YOUR Hislop whom you have apparently tried to defend. You know, under that post with a picture of his book? Either that or you're just spam-commenting on posts. Ignorant of the fact that small errors have large consequences, you want to make out that I am some sort of expert on the Knights Templar, when I have read three books on the Knights Templar, and that in the interest in the case of two of them of refuting Dan Brown. You say that you are not interested. Why, then, do you keep frequenting the comment box?
I would not dream of commenting on the font in Riplinger's books, especially so long as she has so many other things to refer to. To put the use of conspiracy-laden trash literature as a reliable source on the level of typeface is, frankly, disingenuous.
Of course, it is apparently fine for Gail Riplinger to spend ten pages talking about the publisher's logo on Archbishop Trench's book. Has anyone ever explained to you that double standards are a bad idea?
Riplinger is defending the pure and whole - received - Word of God. What are you defending? The wounded vanity and the worldly pride, and the rebellious self-will and demand of the critical text scholars and their academic priesthood to determine what God's Word will be.
Riplinger's not defending the King James, she's defending herself and her own pseudo-scholarship. She's ATTACKING every other Bible on the market, while evidencing no ability to distinguish between manuscript variants and translational differences, and misunderstanding the AV into the bargain. This is the woman who thinks 'peculiar people' means 'oddballs' in the AV, when 'peculiar' in that context means 'specially belonging to' (as in the line from Watts:
"Let every creature rise and bring
Peculiar honours to our King...")
A defence of the AV would include a discussion on manuscripts that did not condemn every Greek manuscript now in existence for having passed through the hands of Greek or Roman Catholic monks, and a discussion on translation that did not rely on illegitimately linking certain expressions with the New Age movement, even though those expressions occur elsewhere in the AV.
The Trinitarian Bible Society is defending the AV, Gail Riplinger is not.
>The Trinitarian Bible Society is defending the AV, Gail Riplinger is not.
The Trinitarian Bible Society doesn't gore your sacred cows, Gail does.
Gail is not lukewarm. The academic priesthood had never been challenged effectively (while at the same time gaining a real audience) until Gail Riplinger wrote her first book. The hornets nest was never disturbed or threatened effectively enough to make the hornets fly into lunatic pandemonium defending what until now they had been doing in darkness.
My dear chap, I was going to say something about sacred cows, but I fear it would be misunderstood and taken as it would not have been intended, so I forebear.
Actually the TBS are not promoting the idea that the English text is inspired, and that there is no way that today we can have access to the Textus Receptus. I regard Riplinger as the lunatic fringe, and a pretty easy target. It would need months of serious study to answer the TBS publications where they are answerable.
Riplinger is about as academic as my mother's dog in her NABV. The academy has as a whole ignored her. Only in your strange world has she actually had any impact outside of the world of fundamentalism. In England she is almost completely unknown, even in the most conservative of circles.
Now here's a point! You and I would both be clapped in jail by Lancelot Andrewes and Archbishop Bancroft, two leading AV translators, and Overall, Saravia, and many others (including of course Roger Andrewes, Lancelot's brother, who samehow always got a post where his brother was working). Separatists had a little Church in the Fleet Prison back then.
Academics ignore the subject of the manuscripts issues altogether. They do this because they don't value the subject enough to defend the critical text side nor to attack the received text side.
They go along to get along. The money involved bleeds into their publishing contracts as well, so they have myriad motivations to keep silent on the subject.
It is non-lukewarm, regenerated by the Word and the Spirit Christians who discern what is at stake in this subject and who defend the pure and whole - received - Word of God. The critical text side, like James White, who attack us are apple-polishers, in their minds, to the, again in their minds, 'big boys' (the real academics) and like little dogs they think they are "doing good" to do such "dirty work."
In other words, we get the most juvenile of their side coming at us. The bigger guns stay far away from the subject because they discern it is not something they can defend, nor do they have valuation for the importance of the subject to begin with.
On our side we are being watchmen and sounding the alarm. God would condemn us if we know the truth and didn't stand up for it and sound the alarm.
Far too many modern academics in the field of textual criticism have followed the way of Bart Ehrman (also known here as Errorman), who denies that there is such a thing as the original text. They spend all their time making uneducated guesses about why a variant came into existence. These stand as a warning.
On the other side, Gail Riplinger has given up the defence of the TR by postulating her IVOr theory (hey, I had to use the acronym once more), that the text is preserved not in Greek and Hebrew, but in vernacular versions given by inspiration in Acts 2 and subsequently. This also is to deliver the text into the hands of these uncircumcised Philistines. Better to do what the TBS do, actually defend the TR. I can at least respect that position (I incline to the TR myself, and always have). To have recourse to a highly speculative theory about inspiration of translations is in fact ac act of surrender. Better to hold the field.
>Now here's a point! You and I would both be clapped in jail by Lancelot Andrewes and Archbishop Bancroft, two leading AV translators, and Overall, Saravia, and many others (including of course Roger Andrewes, Lancelot's brother, who samehow always got a post where his brother was working). Separatists had a little Church in the Fleet Prison back then.
I like to think I'd have been on my way to the New World. Maybe you would have too, back then.
That's if King James' men let us. You will recall that it took the Pilgrim Fathers several attempts to get out of Lincolnshire!
With men like Andrewes on the committee, no wonder it took the AV more than a generation to get established - it took that long to forget what some of the committee members had done to Puritans and Separatists.
Once again, remember that I don 't think this means much
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