Richard Brash on Preservation (again)

Over at the TCI website, Richard Brash has a short argument about providence and textual preservation. Along with his careful distinctions between two methods and two modes of providence, I appreciated this part:

In the New Testament era, the picture is more complicated. The church is called to be “a pillar and buttress of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15) and part of this calling is surely to take care of the text of the Bible. God’s providential preservation of his people is still tied closely to the providential preservation of his written word. It is therefore reasonable to identify the process of canonization as an instance of special providence. But just as it can be spiritually dangerous to attempt to define the precise contours of special providence in our own lives, or even with respect to the preservation of the church, it is unwise to tether our doctrine of providential preservation to a particular “approved” manuscript or manuscript tradition. The Bible does not give the church today the authority to do this.

Read the entire article here.

Last Two Videos on NT Textual Criticism and Askeland on GJW

I’ve now uploaded the last two guest lectures from my Fall TC course. The first is from James Snapp on Mark 16 and the second is Richard Brash on whether Cornelius Van Til’s theology leads to KJV-onlyism or its kin.

By way of commentary, I should note that James and I had a good Q&A after his talk but Zoom was unfortunately a bit out of sync. Personally, I was surprised to hear James say that he does not think Mark 16.9–20 is Mark’s originally intended ending. In other words, both he and I agree that we do not have Mark’s intended ending. Where we differ is that he thinks that vv. 9–20 are still from Mark and were in the first published copy. By his definition, then, they are original. I’m guessing that if that was news to me, it may be news to some of James’s followers too. But James can chime in if he wants to clarify/correct me here.

Finally, apologies to Christian Askeland whose video on Coptic translations I forgot to download in time from Zoom and is now gone forever. As a consolation, you can go read Christian’s new article on lessons from the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife at the TCI website.

Thanks to all my guests this semester!

New Book on the Doctrine of Preservation by Richard Brash

Outside of certain TR or KJV-only circles, the doctrine of preservation doesn’t seem to get a lot of attention from Protestants anymore. Bill Combs and Dan Wallace have written on it, but those are the only sustained treatments I know of. Theologians seem to focus on issues of inspiration, inerrancy, clarity, and the like, but not on preservation. Maybe some of that is because of a desire to avoid being embroiled in debates with TR or KJV-only folks.

But Richard Brash has been doing some good, historical work on the doctrine of preservation in the Reformed tradition for the last few years. I’ve mentioned his ThM work before and he now has a summarized version of that in the latest issue of Westminster Theological Journal titled “Ad Fontes!—The Concept of the ‘Originals’ of Scripture in Seventeenth Century Reformed Orthodoxy.” Jeff Riddle has written a really nice summary for those without access.

Having done this historical work, Richard has now turned to the doctrine of preservation itself in a new book with Christian Focus. It’s intended for a lay audience and gives his own, positive view of divine preservation. Importantly, Richard’s account appears to be neither that of modern TR proponents nor of KJV-onlyists. As I have found Richard’s historical work on the question very helpful, I’m looking forward to this new book too. I hope I can give a report on it when I get my copy.

Here’s a video introducing it