“A fallible authority is not defined as one that is wrong all the time. This is a good thing, as it turns out, for it is the fallible teaching authority of the historic Church which pointed us to the canon of Scripture. A fallible Church made an infallible (true) judgment when it determined the boundaries …
Tradition As Servant
[Speaking of tradition as servant] “But notice how this leaves us with room for a necessary doctrine of subordinate spiritual authorities. The elders of a local church, Christian parents bringing up children in the fear of the Lord, and convocations of theologians three centuries ago are all lawful authorities, deputized as such in Scripture. They …
A Reformed Magisterium
“On the other side of things, we have the ‘exalted tradition’ contingent. The traditions of men are frankly acclaimed as the requirements of God. This may be held with doctrinal consistency, as the Roman Catholics do, or furtively, as inconsistent ‘strict subscriptionists’ within the Reformed tradition do. This is the ‘tradition as monarch’ school. The …
Tradition is Contrary to Our Historic Practice
“The unthinking fundamentalist wants to reduce the whole problem to a very simple equation — ‘just stick to the Bible.’ His belief is that fooling around with traditions in the first place is what cause the problem. We may call this the ‘tradition as demon’ position. ‘We don’t believe in tradition. We have never believed …
The Primal Confession
“After all, the Table of Contents in our Bibles is one of the Church’s first and most important confessional traditions” (Mother Kirk, p. 61).
Selling Bibles In Every Possible Configuration
“We should all be realists by now and not expect the solution to come from those who are profiteering off the problem. If a serious reform of this particular publishing travesty ever got large enough for anyone to notice it, the caterwauling of Textual Critic and Businessman, in close harmony with one another, would lead …
University of Whatzit
“A more biblical vision would see the Church as guardian or custodian of the sacred text. Just as the Jews, the Church of the Old Testament, discharged their obligations with regard to the Scriptures, so should the Church under the New Covenant. What God had spoken through His prophets was entrusted to His covenant people. …
Bible Mongery
“So through a series of complicated circumstances, we have come to the last point, which concerns the handlers or marketers of the text. We see that text of Scripture now established by the neutral Academy, and is afterwards packaged, copyrighted, marketed and sold by hustling and enterprising entrepreneurs. The Church today has no authoritative role …
Another Thing Science Can’t Do
“The reconstruction of the autographic text is a task outside the competence of science, and any attempt to submit the task to scientific canons will only result in increasing confusion. A process of scholarly reconstruction here makes sense only when undergirded with faith in the living God who controls the flow of all historical events. …
Providentially Protected and Preserved
“So we must understand there are two different approaches to textual work. One expresses confidence that God has protected His Word down through history. This is a faith position — faith in God. The other presupposition says that it is up to man, through neutral, scholarly, and scientific means, to determine what the original text …