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Part three of a series. Read part two.
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In thousands of pulpits and hundreds of Bible college and seminary classrooms, self-described evangelicals are denying that God is sovereign over His Word - and instructing an entire generation of Christians to think that way.
In the first two articles of this series we have seen two things. First, the written Word of God is the embodiment of God's eternal Sovereign Decree, forever settled, forever standing. God is sovereign over His Word just as He is sovereign over all else. Second, because this is true we will inevitably find that God has preserved His Word as He originally gave it by the Holy Spirit through human writers. Not one bit of it has been lost. God would not be God, God would not be sovereign, if He did not maintain the integrity of the text of His written decree, in all generations to the very end of time and into eternity, despite sinful man's continued efforts to adulterate it.
But growing numbers of evangelical preachers and scholars today are telling us the opposite. Open denials of God's sovereignty over His Word were once the sole domain of open apostates, the liberals of past generations. But today we find the same attitudes growing even among evangelicals. We find hundreds, indeed thousands of examples of this today. Let me cite just two.
Dr. Daniel B. Wallace of Dallas Theological Seminary is one of the leading New Testament Greek scholars of our time. He identifies himself as an evangelical. He is also the president of an organization called the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts. But Dr. Wallace wrote this in the foreword to a book titled Myths and Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism:
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... The new generation of evangelical scholars is far more comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty than previous generations. They know the difference between core beliefs and those that are more peripheral. They recognize that even if we embrace the concept of absolute truth, absolute certainty about it is a different matter. [1]
That is an astounding statement. But this kind of thinking is increasingly typical among self-identified evangelical scholars and pastors. This is in fact the open denial of an authentic, authoritative Word of God. It is a denial that God is sovereign over His Word.
This kind of thinking builds on the false foundation of worldly philosophy by making man the arbiter of the authenticity of Scripture. This kind of thinking embraces legalism by establishing a set of man-made text-criticism paradigms that effectively supersede Scripture. This kind of thinking institutes man-made doctrines by falsely asserting that there can be "absolute truth" without "absolute certainty" as to what is true. It is utter nonsense.
But the evangelical church is embracing this nonsense. Christian academia is embracing it. Let me give you just one further example.
Dr. John MacArthur over the course of his ministry has preached through the entire New Testament, chapter by chapter, verse by verse. His last message in that decades-long series was on the last chapter of the Gospel of Mark. It was titled The Fitting End to Mark's Gospel.[2] John MacArthur asserted that the last eleven verses of the book of Mark, verses 9 through 20, are not original. He asserted that they do not belong in the Bible. He asserted that it is completely appropriate that the Gospel of Mark should end with verse 8, which reads, "So they went out quickly and fled from the tomb, for they trembled and were amazed. And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid."
John MacArthur, and many others, assert that the Gospel of Mark ends on a note of fear and uncertainty. That is exactly what Daniel Wallace described. Let me repeat what Wallace said: "The new generation of evangelical scholars is far more comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty than previous generations."
I submit to you that this new generation of evangelical scholars and preachers - and some of them, like John MacArthur, are now quite well along in years - do not, believe that God is sovereign over His Word. They cannot. It is impossible. They may say that they do, but their own statements demonstrate that they do not. Such men - and we find such thinking in thousands of pulpits and hundreds of Bible college and seminary classrooms today - are leading the church away from the truth. As we have seen, God addressed these words to such men:
Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it; you shall not add to it nor take away from it. (Deuteronomy 12:32)
What is the answer to their proclamation of ambiguity and uncertainty? We shall address this and related questions as we continue.
References:
1. Daniel B. Wallace, writing in the Foreword to Myths and Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism edited by Elijah Hixson and Peter J. Gurry (InterVarsity Press, 2019). Italics in the original.
2. John MacArthur, The Fitting End to Mark's Gospel, https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/41-85/The-Fitting-End-to-M as viewed on 12/15/2023.
Next: Answering the Higher Critics
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