Protestant theology
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...
, verbal plenary preservation (VPP) is a doctrine concerning the nature of the
Bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus ...
. While verbal plenary inspiration ("VPI") applies only to the original autographs of the Bible manuscript, VPP views that, "the whole of Scripture with all its words even to the jot and tittle is perfectly preserved by God in the apographs without any loss of the original words, prophecies, promises, commandments, doctrines, and truths, not only in the words of salvation, but also the words of history, geography and science; and every book, every chapter, every verse, every word, every syllable, every letter is infallibly preserved by the Lord Himself to the last iota so that the Bible is not only infallible and inerrant in the past (in the autographs), but also infallible and inerrant today (in the apographs)."
Basis
The doctrine of VPP is founded on God's promise in the Scripture to perfectly preserve his words and this is affirmed in the historical confessional statements of the Christian faith.
Scripture
God's inspired words once given will be forever preserved: "The words of the Lord are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever" (Psalm 12:6-7). Those who deny that the Bible teaches preservation say that verse 7 here refers to the preservation of God's people, not His words.
The late
Carl McIntire
Carl Curtis McIntire, Jr. (May 17, 1906 – March 19, 2002), known as Carl McIntire, was a founder and minister in the Bible Presbyterian Church, founder and long-time president of the International Council of Christian Churches and the Amer ...
, the founding pastor of the historic
Bible Presbyterian Church
The Bible Presbyterian Church is an American Protestant denomination in the Calvinist tradition.
History
Origin
The Bible Presbyterian Church was formed in 1937, predominantly through the efforts of such conservative Presbyterian clergymen as ...
, understood verse 7 to mean preservation of the divinely inspired words of God as he had preached in 1992 a sermon entitled "Help, Lord!", from Psalm 12, saying:
Other Bible verses quoted to support divine preservation being verbal (words) and plenary (all, full, entire or complete) include the following:
*Psalm 105:8: "He hath remembered his covenant for ever, the word which he commanded to a thousand generations."
*Ecclesiastes 3:14: "l know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it: and God doeth it, that men should fear before him."
*Matthew 4:4: "But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." (See also Luke 4:4 for similar verse.)
*Matthew 5:18: "For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
*Matthew 24:35: "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." (See also Mark 13:31 and Luke 21:33 for similar verses.)
*John 10:35: "If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken."
*1 Peter 1:25: "But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you."
Confessional statements
The confessional statements supporting VPP include the following:
Helvetic Consensus
The Helvetic Consensus ( la, Formula consensus ecclesiarum Helveticarum) is a Swiss Reformed profession of faith drawn up in 1675 to guard against doctrines taught at the French Academy of Saumur, especially Amyraldism.
Origin
The definition of ...
(1675)
Like the Helvetic Consensus Formula, the Westminster Confession of Faith cites Matthew 5:18 as proof text of the special providential preservation of the divinely inspired Holy Scripture. The late Rev Dr Carl McIntire also understood Chapter 1 of the Westminster Confession of Faith to be teaching the special providential preservation of God's words when continuing from what was quoted above in his 1992 sermon entitled "Help, Lord!", from Psalm 12, he said with regard to verses 6 and 7:
Views
Timothy Tow
Timothy Tow Siang Hui (28 December 1920 – 20 April 2009) was a Singaporean pastor who founded the Bible-Presbyterian Church. He was also founding principal of the Far Eastern Bible College.
Personal life
Tow was educated at the Anglo-Chinese ...
(Singapore)
On VPI and VPP the late Rev Dr Timothy Tow, founding pastor of the Bible-Presbyterian Church and founding principal of Far Eastern Bible College ("FEBC"), wrote: "We believe the preservation of Holy Scripture and its Divine inspiration stand in the same position as providence and creation. If Deism teaches a Creator who goes to sleep after creating the world is absurd, to hold to the doctrine of inspiration without preservation is equally illogical. ... Without preservation, all the inspiration, God-breathing into the Scriptures, would be lost. But we have a Bible so pure and powerful in every word and it is so because God has preserved it down through the ages."
Ian Paisley
Ian Richard Kyle Paisley, Baron Bannside, (6 April 1926 – 12 September 2014) was a Northern Irish loyalist politician and Protestant religious leader who served as leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) from 1971 to 2008 and First ...
(Northern Ireland)
On the same twin doctrines the late Rev Dr Ian Paisley, moderator of the Ulster Free Presbyterian Church for more than 57 years, said: "The verbal Inspiration of the Scriptures demands the verbal Preservation of the Scriptures. Those who would deny the need for verbal Preservation cannot be accepted as committed to verbal Inspiration. If there is no preserved Word of God today then the work of Divine Revelation and Divine Inspiration has perished."
Edward F. Hills
Edward Freer Hills (1912–1981) was an American Presbyterian scholar, perhaps the most prominent 20th-century advocate of the Byzantine text-type and ''Textus Receptus''.
Contribution
Hills integrates his theological perspective alongside New T ...
(U.S.)
The late Dr Edward F. Hills also penned: "If the doctrine of divine inspiration of the Old and New Testament Scriptures is a true doctrine, the doctrine of the providential preservation of these Scriptures must also be a true doctrine. It must be that down through the centuries God has exercised a special, providential control over the copying of the Scriptures and the preservation and use of the copies, so that trustworthy representatives of the original text have been available to God's people in every age. God must have done this, for if He gave the Scriptures to His Church by inspiration as the perfect and final revelation of His will, then it is obvious that He would not allow this revelation to disappear or undergo any alteration of its fundamental character."
William Aberhart
William Aberhart (December 30, 1878 – May 23, 1943), also known as "Bible Bill" for his outspoken Baptist views, was a Canadian politician and the seventh premier of Alberta from 1935 to his death in 1943. He was the founder and first leader ...
(Canada)
William Eberhart (1878-1943), pastor, high school principal, Bible school dean, radio Bible teacher and Premier of Alberta from 1935-43, wrote in 1925: "I can still believe the Lord Jesus Christ, when he said: ‘For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled’ (Matt. 5:18). ‘Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away’ (Matt. 24:35). If these words mean anything, they inform us that the Lord Jesus intended to see to it that the Bible, His Word, would be preserved for us in a perfect, infallible state."
Others
More views upholding the doctrine of perfect preservation or VPP can be found quoted in "The Historic Views of the Church Concerning Preservation" by Rev (Dr) P. S. Ferguson. These views include those of English puritan Thomas Cartwright (1535–1603), Professor William Whitaker (1548–1595), Bishop and Divine
John Jewel
John Jewel (''alias'' Jewell) (24 May 1522 – 23 September 1571) of Devon, England was Bishop of Salisbury from 1559 to 1571.
Life
He was the youngest son of John Jewel of Bowden in the parish of Berry Narbor in Devon, by his wife Alice Bel ...
(1522–1571), Cambridge-educated puritan preacher Nicholas Gibbens, German Lutheran dogmatician
Johannes Andreas Quenstedt
Johannes Andreas Quenstedt (13 August 1617 – 22 May 1688) was a German Lutheran dogmatician in the Lutheran scholastic tradition.
Quenstedt was born at Quedlinburg, a nephew of Johann Gerhard. He was educated at the University of Helmstedt, 16 ...
(1617–1688), English Presbyterian clergyman John Flavel (1627–1691), English puritan and theologian Edward Leigh (1602–1671), Puritan Thomas Watson (1620–1686), Puritan John Owen (1616–1683), first regent and first principal of the University of Edinburgh
Robert Rollock
Robert Rollock (c. 15558 or 9 February 1599) was Scottish academic and minister in the Church of Scotland, and the first regent and first principal of the University of Edinburgh. Born into a noble family, he distinguished himself during ...
Francis Turretin
Francis Turretin (17 October 1623 – 28 September 1687; also known as François Turrettini) was a Genevan-Italian Reformed scholastic theologian.Richard Capel (1586–1656), original member of the Westminster assembly
John Lightfoot
John Lightfoot (29 March 1602 – 6 December 1675) was an English churchman, rabbinical scholar, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge and Master of St Catharine's College, Cambridge.
Life
He was born in Stoke-on-Trent, the son of T ...
(1602–1675), Pastor Dr Jack Moorman, Professor Albert J. Hembd and the Rev N. Pffeifer.
Identification of the Preserved Text
Garnet Howard Milne (New Zealand)
Garnet Howard Milne, who has served as pastor of two Reformed churches in
Wainuiomata
Wainuiomata () is a large suburb of Lower Hutt, in the Wellington Region of New Zealand's North Island.
Origin of name
The word 'Wainui-o-mata' is a Māori name made up of the words Wai = water, Nui = big, O = of, and Mata – which could refer ...
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island coun ...
, in ''Has the Bible been kept pure? The Westminster Confession of Faith and the providential preservation of Scripture'' (2017) writes that Presbyterian
William Jenkyn
William Jenkyn (1613–1685) was an English clergyman, imprisoned during the Interregnum for his part in the 'Presbyterian plot' of Christopher Love, ejected minister in 1662, and imprisoned at the end of his life for nonconformity.
Life
Jenkyn w ...
(1613-1685), who succeeded the distinguished Westminster divine William Gouge (1575–1653) at West Friars London, believed with
Augustine
Augustine of Hippo ( , ; la, Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430), also known as Saint Augustine, was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Afr ...
and
Whitaker
Whitaker (also Whittaker) is a surname of English and Scottish origin, meaning the white acre, also spelled " Whittaker" and " Whitacre." Notable people with the surname include:
People with the name
* The Whitaker iron family - a family importan ...
that the “inspired words had been preserved and could be identified and that if they could not, they could have no assurance that they have the Word of God at all”.
Milne in the same book, after quoting Professor Whitaker (1548-1595) at p. 328 ''Disputation on Holy Scripture'' (Cambridge: The University Press, 1849), says “the canon of Scriptures was confirmed and received individually throughout the centuries ever since God had dictated those Scriptures for the church” and this means “the common or received Greek text of the New Testament and the Masoretic text of the Old” which Whitaker sees as “the authentic texts of Scripture” and such a view precludes the possibility of discovering any ancient codex in the future that would recalibrate the Word of God with a fundamentally different text than the one “endorsed by the Holy Spirit in the multitude of believers”. Quoting pp. 165 & 117 ''Disputation on Holy Scripture'', Milne says that Whitaker also believes in the very words of the text, and not merely the sense, to be important and “the church possessed the very words, and all the words of the Holy Spirit in the extant originals in his day”, i.e. the Hebrew and Greek texts or the apographa which “so closely reflected the autographs that ‘in one sense’ could be called ‘originals’”.
Milne goes on to say that the believing church has always taught God’s Word is locatable in the Masoretic text of the OT and the Greek common or majority text of the NT, which have not been hidden, and, where there are variants in the manuscripts, the church has not found it an onerous task to collate the texts and arrive at the authentic autographic text, the Holy Spirit confirming the divine authority of God’s Word in the hearts of His people down through the ages, while the lack of spiritual insight is possibly why those who are not or are less spiritually awakened have adopted without much thought or consideration translations based upon the critical texts and eclectic texts of Westcott and Hort and other modern textual critics.
Samuel Joseph (Singapore)
Samuel Joseph in ''The Preservation of God’s Inspired Words in the Holy Scriptures'' says that if God has promised to preserve His Word, and has in fact preserved it down to every jot and tittle according to His promise, the crucial question is whether He has told us where to find His Word today as there would be little point in saying that the preserved words of God are “somewhere out there,” if we did not know where and had no way to find out; he goes on to say that the application of the principles codified into seven “biblical axioms” by Dr Jeffrey Khoo (The Burning Bush, July 2011, pp. 74-95) leads unmistakeably to the Hebrew Masoretic text of the Old Testament and the Greek Textus Receptus of the New Testament being the Preserved Text.
Bible Presbyterian Church and School in Collingswood, NJ
The Bible Presbyterian Church of Collingswood, NJ, U.S. – pastored previously by McIntire and currently by Christian S. Spencer – state at ''4. Bible Translations'': “We believe that God literally and verbally inspired the text of the Bible in the original Hebrew and Greek manuscripts (including certain passages in Daniel and elsewhere, in Aramaic). We also believe that God has faithfully and accurately preserved this original text in the Masoretic Text (Old Testament) and the ‘''Textus Receptus''’ (New Testament), the ‘majority text’ manuscripts used to translate the King James Version of the Bible”.
The Faith Christian School, also in Collingswood NJ, U.S., leaves no room for doubt about the school’s belief in VPI and VPP and where the autographic text can be found today in the school’s Statement of Faith at ''Inspiration'': “We believe that ... the 66 canonical books of the Bible are alone the inspired, "God breathed", Word of God ... We believe that the inspiration of the Bible is plenary (inspiration extends to all parts of the Bible equally), verbal (inspiration extends to the words, letters, tenses and other parts of speech used in Scripture), ... inerrant (contains no factual error), infallible (never teaches error as truth although it records the sins and folly of man and reveals it as such), authoritative (is the final authority for the believer in all areas of faith and practice) and preserved today in the Hebrew and Greek Texts underlying the King James Version of the Bible, not merely in the original manuscripts.”
Thomas Ross and Kent Brandenburg / Bethel Baptist Church, CA
Thomas Ross and Kent Brandenburg, both o in CA in the U.S., subscribe to VPI and VPP and identify where all of the inspired words can be found; they believe that “the Bible’s very words, and all of its words, are inspired, and that those very words, and all of those words, are perfectly and providentially preserved (that is, verbal, plenary inspiration and verbal, plenary preservation) in the Hebrew Masoretic Text and the Greek Textus Receptus (Received Text) that underlies the Authorized or King James Version of the Bible”.
Other persons and churches in the U.S. and the U.K.
Among the many persons and organisations cited by Paul Ferguson as pro-KJV and VPP – i.e., they accept that the perfectly preserved words of God in the Holy Scripture are the Hebrew Masoretic Text and the Greek Textus Receptus underlying the KJV – are (a) Clarence Sexton, Founder and President o Crown College of the Bible and Pastor o Temple Baptist Church in Powell, TN (b) Lloyd Streeter, co-pastor (until his resignation) o Campus Church (click ''The Bible'') of
Pensacola Christian College
Pensacola Christian College (PCC) is a private Independent Baptist college in Pensacola, Florida. Founded in 1974 by Arlin and Beka Horton, it has been accredited by the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools since 2013.
H ...
; (c) th Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland and (d) Ian Paisley, Founder of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster. In respect of (d), Ferguson says it is clear, from Paisley’s quoted words in pp. 102-3 and 106 of ''My Plea for the Old Sword: the English Authorised Version (KJV)'' (Belfast: Ambassador, 1997), that the “‘true Scriptures’ were only preserved in a ‘full, complete, perfect’ manner in the ‘true copies of the originals... at hand’”: '' Tyndale’s translation of God's Holy Word into English'' and the KJV were translated from the ‘Preserved Word of God’, not the ‘Perverted Word of God’, in the Hebrew Masoretic Text and the Greek Textus Receptus.
Trinitarian Bible Society
The Trinitarian Bible Society was founded in 1831 "to promote the Glory of God and the salvation of men by circulating, both at home and abroad, in dependence on the Divine blessing, the Holy Scriptures, which are given by inspiration of God and ...
("TBS") England
The TBS in England “maintains that ''the providentially preserved true and authentic text'' is to be found in ''the Masoretic Hebrew and the Greek Received Texts''” (bold and italic added) and in so doing, the society “follows the historic, orthodox Protestant position of acknowledging as Holy Scripture the Hebrew and Greek texts ''consistently accessible to and preserved among the people of God in all ages''” (bold and italic added), these being the texts “in common use in different parts of the world for more than fifteen centuries” which “faithfully represent the texts used in New Testament times”. The society views that the doctrine of providential preservation teaches that the Church ''is'' - and always has been - in possession of the true text of Scripture; it rejects the Majority Text of Zane C. Hodges and Arthur L. Farstad (1982) which allows for the discovery of further manuscripts that could change minority readings to majority readings, or vice versa.
The ICCC – a worldwide fellowship of fundamental churches opposed to liberalism, ecumenism, charismatism and neo-evangelicalism – passed a resolution at Jerusalem in 2000, when McIntire was President, affirming the council's belief that the King James Version in English has been faithfully translated from the God-preserved Masoretic text for the O.T. and the Textus Receptus for the N.T., which texts combined gave the complete Word of God, the Holy Scripture, the originals fully inspired and without errors preserved in all ages for all eternity as the Westminster Confession of Faith standard says – “the O.T. in Hebrew and the N.T. in Greek... being immediately inspired by God and by His singular care and providence kept pure in all ages are therefore authentical ....”
Neutral Arbiter of VPP
Although VPP is embraced in many countries in the world, the VPP issue was litigated for the first time before a neutral secular arbiter in
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...
.
FEBC on VPP
FEBC embraces the VPP doctrine based on WCF 1:8 (see ''Westminster Confession of Faith (1643-1648)'' above) and teaches that God has supernaturally preserved each and every one of His inspired Hebrew/Aramaic OT words and Greek NT words to the last jot and tittle so that God's people will always have in their possession His infallible and inerrant Word kept intact without the loss of any word, and that the infallible and inerrant words of Scripture are found in the faithfully preserved Traditional/Byzantine/Majority manuscripts and fully represented in the Printed and Received Text (or Textus Receptus) that underlie the Reformation Bibles best represented by the KJV, and NOT in the corrupted and rejected texts of Westcott and Hort that underlie the many modern versions of the English Bible like the NIV, NASV,
ESV
The English Standard Version (ESV) is an English translation of the Bible. Published in 2001 by Crossway, the ESV was "created by a team of more than 100 leading evangelical scholars and pastors." The ESV relies on recently published crit ...
TEV
TEV may refer to:
* Transient Earth Voltage: a term for voltages appearing on the metal work of switchgear due to internal partial discharges
* TeV, or teraelectronvolt or trillion electron volt, a measure of energy
* Total Enterprise Value, a ...
The Board of Elders (“BOE”) of Life BPC disagreed with FEBC and called VPP a “theory”. FEBC responded by asserting that VPP is a biblical doctrine.
The BOE of Life BPC issued in January 2008 their paper headed ''Mark Them Which Cause Divisions'' to declare the church’s non-VPP position and to require the FEBC to give a written unconditional undertaking that the college would not promote the VPP doctrine in its night classes or it would not be allowed to use the premises from that month onwards as the BOE viewed VPP to be a heresy because it is ‘new’, ‘infectious’ and ‘dangerous’. FEBC rebutted with Jeffrey Khoo’s response headed ''Making the Word of God of None Effect'' which argued that without a presently infallible and inerrant Word of God to the jot and tittle (Matt 5:18), the elders of Life BPC had no basis to condemn VPP as a heresy and VPP proponents as heretics.
Paul Ferguson chimed in with his paper entitled also ''Mark Them Which Cause Divisions'' to criticise Life BPC for misusing the word “heresy”, maligning godly men as “heretics”, displaying inconsistency and muddled up thinking on the VPP issue, totally misrepresenting the VPP position as a "new" concept, and showing poor scholarship and research in plagiarising the views of anti-KJV and anti-Preservation writers.
Brutus Balan (now retired from pastoring Faith Baptist Church in Hobart, Tasmania) wrote a letter dated 30 January 2008 addressed to Charles Seet and the BOE of Life BPC with a plea to them to avoid carrying out their legal threat to evict the college from the Gilstead Road premises and remarking that Seet and the elders had the most inconsistent and contradictory position over the matter – saying the original writings (autographs) were ‘inerrant, infallible’ in the past and the ‘providentially preserved’ copies (apographs) today have errors and then claiming to hold to an ‘inerrant and infallible Bible and the full preservation of God’s holy Word’ with the use of ‘full’ being questionable for ‘not full’ preservation – but yet accused the FEBC of heresy. Balan’s plea and admonition failed to stop Life BPC from commencing Suit 648 in the High Court less than eight months later.
On 15 September 2008, the church sued the college's directors, including Timothy Tow (the church's founding pastor), over allegedly "deviant Bible teachings" to evict FEBC from the Gilstead Road premises shared by both parties. However, the church failed as the Court of Appeal, the apex court in Singapore's legal system (coram: Chao Hick Tin, Andrew Phang Boon Leong and V.K. Rajah JJ.A), ruled unanimously on 26 April 2011 – after examining WCF 1:8 – that:
#"the VPP doctrine is actually closely related to the VPI doctrine which both parties .e., the College and the Churchadhere to,” (rejecting the Church's contention in 9of the Court of Appeal Judgement that it is “an entirely different creature from the VPI doctrine)";”
#"the College, in adopting the VPP doctrine, has not deviated from the fundamental principles which guide and inform the work of the College right from its inception, and as expressed in the Westminster Confession;"
#" is not inconsistent for a Christian who believes fully in the principles contained within the Westminster Confession (and the VPI doctrine) to also subscribe to the VPP doctrine;" and
#" the absence of anything in the Westminster Confession that deals with the status of the apographs, we he Courthesitate to find that the VPP doctrine is a deviation from the principles contained within the Westminster Confession."
The Court of Appeal at 4of its judgment noted that adherents of the VPP doctrine believe that the KJV is the most accurate English translation of the Bible. Although Life BPC under Charles Seet as Pastor does not subscribe to the VPP doctrine, the Court of Appeal at 9of its judgment noted that Seet had admitted during cross-examination (in the High Court) that Life BPC has always subscribed to the view that the KJV is the best English translation of the Bible because of its textual superiority n the Hebrew Masoretic Text and the Greek Textus Receptus underlying the KJV (Life BPC’s use of the KJV has been entrenched as when Life BPC started as the English service of ''Say Mia Tng'' in 1950 with Timothy Tow as its founding pastor, he wanted the service that he founded and pastored to be a distinct Bible-believing church and to also stick to the KJV.)
See also
*
Bible code
The Bible code ( he, הצופן התנ"כי, ), also known as the Torah code, is a purported set of encoded words within a Hebrew text of the Torah that, according to proponents, has predicted significant historical events. The statistical lik ...
*
Biblical inerrancy
Biblical inerrancy is the belief that the Bible "is without error or fault in all its teaching"; or, at least, that "Scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact". Some equate inerrancy with biblical ...
*
Biblical literalism
Biblical literalism or biblicism is a term used differently by different authors concerning biblical interpretation. It can equate to the dictionary definition of literalism: "adherence to the exact letter or the literal sense", where literal mea ...
Khoo Jeffrey and others v Life Bible-Presbyterian Church and others
''Khoo Jeffrey and others v Life Bible-Presbyterian Church and others 011SGCA'' (" FEBC v Life Bible-Presbyterian Church") is a landmark case decided in 2011 by the Court of Appeal of Singapore. It is the first case in Singapore which the apex ...