Why I Preach from the Received Text
Spring 2023
“Are you sure your Bible is the purely inspired and infallible Word of God?” has been the often-raised question ever since the serpent asked Eve in Genesis 3:1, “Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” The devil was tempting her to doubt God’s Word, and he succeeded, resulting in her sin against God. Since that moment the servants of the devil have continued to sow the seeds of doubt in unsuspecting souls concerning the truth of God’s Holy Word.
In the late 20th century, and even now, Evangelical New Testament scholars dare to foster doubts in Christians’ minds about the truth and infallibility of God’s Word. For example, Dr. Kurt Aland wrote the following:
“If the catholic (general) epistles were really written by the apostles whose names they bear and by people who were closest to Jesus, then the question arises: was there really a Jesus? Can Jesus really have lived, if the writings of His closest companions are filled with so little of His reality? The catholic epistles, for example, have so little in them of the reality of the historical Jesus and His power, that it suffices for James, for example, to mention only Christ’s name in passing… When we observe this— assuming that the writings about which we are speaking really come from their alleged authors—it almost then appears as if Jesus were a mere phantom….” (Kurt Aland, A History of Christianity, Vol.2, 106. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1985).
His Nestle-Aland-Greek New Testament rejects the authenticity of many words and some whole passages of the New Testament.
More recently, the presumed leading New Testament Greek authority, Dr. Daniel Wallace, wrote, “We do not have now—in our critical Greek texts or any translations—exactly what the authors of the New Testament wrote. Even if we did, we would not know it. There are many, many places in which the text of the New Testament is uncertain” (Hixson and Gurry, eds., Myths and Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism, xii. Madison, WI: Intervarsity, 2019).
These humanistic authorities have assumed the office of declaring to the church and to the world which words may have come from God and which words probably did not. Roman Catholicism assumes the same office as the sole dispenser and interpreter of God’s Word to the masses. Providentially, God took from Romanism their most distinguished New Testament scholar, Desiderius Erasmus, and used him to publish the cream of all the extant New Testament manuscripts, gifting the church the Received Text. That text provided all of the Protestant New Testaments with all of the Scripture quotations in the Protestant confessions and catechisms.
Thankfully, the Lord has many servants on Earth that never trusted the humanistic scholars who “handle the Word of God deceitfully.” In addition, a new generation of Reformed ministers is now turning to the old paths regarding the Received Text of the New Testament.
Jeffrey Riddle and Christian McShaffrey have compiled a wonderful anthology of testimonies by Reformed ministers entitled, Why I Preach From The Received Text. Ministers from various Reformed denominations (including Rev. Philip Gardiner and Rev. Pooyan Mehrshahi, both graduates of Whitefield College of the Bible in N. Ireland) explain why they agree with Edward Hills’ conclusion that God has preserved the “Ecclesiastical Text” in His church for 2000 years. Some of the testimonies reveal a younger generation’s discovery of the great works of the Protestant forefathers—discovering the sound textual scholarship of John Calvin, Theodore Beza, Francis Turretin, John Owen, and John Lightfoot of the Westminster Assembly. What refreshing good news of the turning away from the proponents of modern textual criticism who seek to ascertain the words of the New Testament using methods akin to the theory of evolution.
The question at the beginning of this review can be satisfactorily answered by answering another question: Can you consistently believe that God supernaturally inspired His Word and at the same time believe that He failed to supernaturally preserve His Word?
Why I Preach from the Received Text is available from several online providers.