The Burning Bush - Far Eastern Bible College

The Burning Bush 16/1 (January 2010)postulates of modern scientific textual criticism are antithetical to faith inthe perfect word of God being available today.McCune goes on to attack the Received Text position by trying tostack the deck by arguing that “it is based on proof texts allegedlyteaching miraculous preservation and, also, because there is no empiricalevidence of such preservation in the totality of extant manuscripts” (54).This is because he intones,It is important to note, too, that no one copy or translation perfectly reflectsthe message (much less the words) of the original documents. This is thecase simply because the original documents do not presently exist, and theextant manuscripts which do are, in each case, unique, no two fully agreeingin every detail. Therefore, without infallible criteria for determining originalreadings, infallible determinations of original readings are impossible. Insum, copies and translations are authoritative insofar as they faithfullyreflect the message of the original text. And, insofar as they do, they may becalled the Word of God (97-98).This is a nonsensical position as we do not have the autographs, so itis impossible for the integrity of any text to be judged by the autographs.It is intellectually dishonest to say that they can ever be regarded as“authoritative insofar as they faithfully reflect the message of the originaltext.” How does McCune prove his claim that, “no one copy ortranslation perfectly reflects the message (much less the words) of theoriginal documents?” By a hunch or a vision? Clearly, he does not evenbelieve his “Creed of Unbelief” for how can the Critical Text or theTextus Receptus be judged by an autograph that does not exist? No doubtMcCune would argue that there are apostate scholars who can determinewhich manuscripts are closest. However, as the logical conclusions ofguilty man on spiritual matters will always be in error he needs to explainwhat makes a modernist an expert on something that does not exist?Statements such as this of McCune only delineate the depths into the seaof absurdity that those who reject the Biblical presuppositional approachwill go rather than face up to the biblically obvious.One should note, paradoxically, that those who proclaim to speakfor the Bible seldom seem to allow the Bible to speak. The Bible doesexplicitly promise that God will preserve every one of His Words foreverdown to the very jot and tittle of the smallest letter (Pss 12:6, 7, 33:11,119:152, 160; Isa 30:8; 40:8; 1 Pet 1:23-25; Matt 5:18; 24:35). InMatthew 5:18, Christ did not say “one concept” or “one doctrine” would48