Spiritual Deception in the Highest 4.1

How bad can it get? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

So yesterday, I started looking ahead at what was coming today in our look at this work. I had heard Johnson use the term blasphemy, but apparently, he was blind to the idea that he would commit it himself. I have tried to be as charitable as I can, but there is no other way I can describe it as that. At any rate, the source material can be found here and we’ll be looking at the first part of chapter 4.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God” (John 1:1).

Okay. Hard to argue with Scripture. This is a great introduction to creation anyway. Let’s see where he goes.

When the Word was written down, the Word was then called ‘Scripture’.

……………..

Oh my…..

I keep wanting to think he did not say this. I mean, I have seen other people say this, but for someone to say this and publish it on a website? Someone who is accusing others of blasphemy and heresy at every point? At this point, no one should take seriously anything Johnson says about interpreting Scripture.

Johnson has taken a passage of Scripture about Jesus Christ and made it about the King James Bible instead. I want to be charitable in my reading, but I can’t see any way around this. If someone can, I am open to it, but this just shows the idolatry of the movement.

Put in the Bible for the word “Word” in the prologue of John and it doesn’t make sense. This is more akin to a Muslim view of Scripture than a Christian view. This is treating Scripture as if it was involved in the creation account and is a person.

And Robert Breaker shares this as an excellent work? Says a lot about him too.

The original recordings of Scripture are called ‘autographs’. Animal skins and papyrus (paper) were used for these first autographs. Unfortunately, because of decay, these original autographs no longer exist. What does remain are copies, made by scribes, of these original autographs. These scribal copies are called ‘manuscripts’.

Okay. Nothing objectionable here at least.

The manuscripts of the Old Testament were written in Hebrew and the manuscripts of the New Testament were written in Greek. We do not have many Old Testament manuscripts. But, we have more than 5,000 New Testament manuscripts.

The number could be a bit outdated depending on when this was written. Unfortunately, I cannot find such a date.

From these manuscripts variant readings are analyzed and an agreed upon master ‘text’ is derived. From the agreed upon ‘master text’ a Bible can then be translated into the desired language.

The text is constantly updated based on new manuscripts being found, but we’ll accept this for now.

Thus our Bible was first the Word of God, then an original ‘autograph’, then a scribal copy ‘manuscript’, then an agreed upon ‘master text’, then an English Bible.

It seems a bit more complicated than that and geez, why favor the English language? The Bible is only the Bible if written in English? Something else I found myself pondering is there are dead languages now that we read, but no one really speaks. What happens if in the future English becomes one of those? Do we suddenly lose the Bible?

If any KJV-onlyists want to answer, I welcome it.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Deeper Waters Podcast 8/23/2014: How To Form Your Canon with Lee McDonald

What’s coming up on the Deeper Waters Podcast this Saturday? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Canon. It’s something a lot of Christians don’t think about. You open up your Bible and those books are there. They’re just there. Yet how did they get there? Why do you have the Gospel of Matthew and not The Gospel According To The Simpsons in your Bible? Why do you have the story of Genesis but you don’t have the Gilgamesh Epic?

Some of us have thought about this. We have to face the common objections that we see. We hear that the choosing of the books of the Bible was just arbitrary. We hear for the NT that many Gospels were excluded like the Gospel of Thomas. We see series on the History Channel like “Banned From The Bible.” We also hear today commonly on the internet that all the books of the Bible were chosen at the Council of Nicea in 325.

This indicates some have thought about this, but some haven’t thought as much as others. One person who has thought a lot about these issues is Lee McDonald.

Lee McDonald

According to his bio:

 

Dr. Lee Martin McDonald (Ph.D., University of Edinburgh, Scotland) has studied at many institutions including Cambridge University (England), Heidelberg University (Germany), and Harvard University. He is a professor of New Testament studies and president emeritus at Acadia Divinity College and former dean of the Faculty of Theology at Acadia Univeristy in Nova Scotia, Canada. He has taught New Testament Studies at Acadia, Sioux Falls Seminary, Fuller Theological Seminary, was a visiting scholar and professor at Princeton Theological Seminary in 2007 – 2008, and lectured in a variety of graduate institutions in Canada, the USA, Athens in Greece, Budapest, Prague, and elsewhere. He also served for six years as president of the international Institute for Biblical Research (a community of hundreds of Old and New Testament scholars), was a chaplain in the U.S. Army, a pastor for more than twenty years, and has served on boards of directors for three graduate schools of theology. Lee McDonald has written and/or edited more than 31 books and authored more than 100 articles and essays on biblical subjects, as well as on practical issues for the church.

 

Dr. McDonald is a member of the prestigious Studiorum Novi Testamentum Societas, the Society of Biblical Literature and the Institute for Biblical Resarch. He is an American Baptist ordianed minister and has served as a pastor and in leadership positions within the denomination. He regularly focuses on how the Bible came to be and also what biblical scholars are saying about Jesus in various churches as well as academic settings. He also addresses the question of the relevance of the Dead Sea Scrolls and other ancient non-biblical resources for understanding Jesus in his context and various pasages in the New Testment as well as their relevance for canon formation. He is a specialist in the context of early Christianity and the origin of the Bible.

 

 

Dr. McDonald is quite the authority on the canon and not just the New Testament canon! It would be a treat to discuss just that even, but no, you’re going to get two canons for the price of one! We’re going to be talking about the formation of the Old Testament canon as well. Why is it that in both canons we have the books that we have and not the other ones? Is there any controlling conspiracy going on? Are Christians just trying to hide ideas about Jesus that they just don’t like?

In the end, it could realize that the truth is something far greater. It could actually be that we have the very books that God intended us to have and we do have a reliable source of information on the history of the people of God and the life of Jesus the Christ.

So please be watching your ITunes feed soon for the latest episode of Deeper Waters discussing the formation of the canon of Scripture with Dr. Lee McDonald.

 

In Christ,

Nick Peters