What do Conservative Catholics, Bart Ehrman, and King James Onlyists Have in Common?
So while interacting with some King James Onlyists, it occurred to me that there are similarities between Catholic groups and King James Onlyists. How so?
In the majority of the evangelical world, people look at the texts of the Old and New Testament from various sources and make determinations of what best represents the original text. As new texts become known, sometimes this results in some changes, usually minor at this point.
For hundreds of years, most of the English speaking world relied on the King James Version. Modern versions, based on textual evidence, omit some of the verses present in the King James Version.
Well, needless to say, this creates a bit of an existential (or maybe better said an epistemological) freakout among some. The KJVO people will ask us if God has preserved His Word. How can we trust God's Word? We should trust the King James Version as God's preserved Word.
It's not the point of this post to present a rebuttal of this, but the reality is that God has preserved His Word among the various texts. It does take the work of textual criticism to work through this and get to a faithful representation of the original text.
. Now, the conservative Catholics (here on "Catholics" because I'm really referring to the Catholic apologists, like-minded folks who follow them, and those who tend to convert from the Protestant world) have a concern. When Protestants tell them to go to the Scriptures, they tend to have their existential crisis (again maybe it's an epistemological crisis) because there's a lot of interpretations out there. How can I know what the right one is?
The church of Rome comes riding in on a white horse rescuing them from the situation. Rome will tell them what to believe.
The parallels between the two groups should be apparent know: the basis of the faith is messier than one would like and it causes angst.
What is interesting to me is the assumption that the King James Version and Rome are the actual answers to the perceived problems. There are differences between earlier and later versions of the King James. The Geneva Bible preceded the King James. If we can't trust our own intellectual faculties with Scripture, why can we trust them in picking Rome as the one true church? How can we trust our faculties for figuring out what Rome is telling us? (as the Francis pontificate proceeds I wonder how much of this argument we'll keep seeing) Are we going to ignore the fact that people have been disagreeing over things for the vast majority of Christain history? Or that pre and post-Vatican II don't match?
So I think I see a similar type of logic in play with Bart Ehrman.
Bart Ehrman has a deconversion story where he gets to higher level education and learns about textual variants and loses his faith. Taking his comments at face value, it seems Ehrman held to similar presuppositions as King James Onlyists, encountered problems, and then lost his faith.
None of this is necessary. We have to realize the transmission of the text of Scripture and church history are messier than what we would like them to be. And we need to realize that there are no shortcuts to interpreting Scripture for yourself. There aren't shortcuts and you can't outsource the process to someone else. You can, but the responsibility for what Scripture demands of you still remains.
In the majority of the evangelical world, people look at the texts of the Old and New Testament from various sources and make determinations of what best represents the original text. As new texts become known, sometimes this results in some changes, usually minor at this point.
For hundreds of years, most of the English speaking world relied on the King James Version. Modern versions, based on textual evidence, omit some of the verses present in the King James Version.
Well, needless to say, this creates a bit of an existential (or maybe better said an epistemological) freakout among some. The KJVO people will ask us if God has preserved His Word. How can we trust God's Word? We should trust the King James Version as God's preserved Word.
It's not the point of this post to present a rebuttal of this, but the reality is that God has preserved His Word among the various texts. It does take the work of textual criticism to work through this and get to a faithful representation of the original text.
. Now, the conservative Catholics (here on "Catholics" because I'm really referring to the Catholic apologists, like-minded folks who follow them, and those who tend to convert from the Protestant world) have a concern. When Protestants tell them to go to the Scriptures, they tend to have their existential crisis (again maybe it's an epistemological crisis) because there's a lot of interpretations out there. How can I know what the right one is?
The church of Rome comes riding in on a white horse rescuing them from the situation. Rome will tell them what to believe.
The parallels between the two groups should be apparent know: the basis of the faith is messier than one would like and it causes angst.
What is interesting to me is the assumption that the King James Version and Rome are the actual answers to the perceived problems. There are differences between earlier and later versions of the King James. The Geneva Bible preceded the King James. If we can't trust our own intellectual faculties with Scripture, why can we trust them in picking Rome as the one true church? How can we trust our faculties for figuring out what Rome is telling us? (as the Francis pontificate proceeds I wonder how much of this argument we'll keep seeing) Are we going to ignore the fact that people have been disagreeing over things for the vast majority of Christain history? Or that pre and post-Vatican II don't match?
So I think I see a similar type of logic in play with Bart Ehrman.
Bart Ehrman has a deconversion story where he gets to higher level education and learns about textual variants and loses his faith. Taking his comments at face value, it seems Ehrman held to similar presuppositions as King James Onlyists, encountered problems, and then lost his faith.
None of this is necessary. We have to realize the transmission of the text of Scripture and church history are messier than what we would like them to be. And we need to realize that there are no shortcuts to interpreting Scripture for yourself. There aren't shortcuts and you can't outsource the process to someone else. You can, but the responsibility for what Scripture demands of you still remains.
posted by geoffrobinson at 12:44 PM
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