bad flashback

the last time i blogged on this topic, some guy i didn't  know got mad at me and posted a mean comment. :)

I listened to Dr. Silva from Westminster Seminary lecture on textual criticism while driving home today. He mentioned a scholar named Streeter, and immediately all I heard in my head was a deep, deliberately slow voice drawling, "Seven-ty fiiive rea-sonss whyyy Iiiiii Chooose the Kiinng Jaames Version.............Num-ber One...." An odd combination of mental cringing and giggles distracted me from the rest of the lecture as I flashed back to Dr. Streeter's painful chapel messages. But the textual criticism lectures and the flashback to Dr. Streeter really do make me wonder about the TR/KJV only position.

How in the world do you get away from the Greek Septuagint, which varied significantly from the Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament, and that Jesus and the writers of the New  Testament  all quoted from?  How can you expect something to be done for the New Testament when translated from Greek to English when that same thing was not done for the Old Testament when translated from Hebrew  to Greek? If it were a problem, wouldn't Jesus only quote from the Hebrew texts? Why do we have him quoting from the Septuagint? Why do the writers of the NT all quote from the Septuagint? How can  the  NT writers quote three different versions of Habakkuk 2:4, even in the Textus Receptus, if changing  one word of the Scriptures is the same thing as willful perversion and amounts to a leavening of the whole  lump?

I wish just once in all the lectures we were forced to listen to at PCC about the King James Version and the Byzantine Text and the very righteous Erasmus (Luther just rolled in his grave) and King James (William Brewster just rolled in  his grave) and the very wicked Wescott and Hort (and they just rolled in their graves), that just once someone had meaningfully engaged the Greek Septuagint and its implications for Scripture translation. Or even the textual criticism that Erasmus engaged in, and the extent to which he borrowed from the Latin Vulgate when the Byzantine manuscripts didn't supply enough information, and how in the world his  textual criticism was any different from Hort's textual criticism. I still have inner panic attacks when I remember the sloppy scholarship and awful writing demonstrated in the book we were forced to read, Touch Not the Unclean  Thing.Talk about an unconvincing argument!

Jesus and the inspiring Holy Ghost apparently didn't have the same standards  for translation that the Received Text scholars do. Even Erasmus didn't have those standards, and he's the one who put the whole TR together! It blows my mind.

My very favorite PCC KJV-only moment came when in Touch Not the Unclean Thing I read that Westcott  and Hort were involved in the occult and some other Very Bad Things, only to later learn that there was a man in London named Westcott who practiced  black magic. It was not the same Westcott, but hey, the similarities are striking. I mean, they both lived in the same city at the same time. It doesn't take much of a leap to figure out that since one Westcott was a bad egg, the other must be one too!

more on the video

My other quirk with the Roots to Fruit video is that we didn't adequately explain why it is a GOOD thing that God is so sovereign. It states that he is without a doubt sovereign, but as to why this is something desirable, I feel like we left to the imagination. A belligerent unbeliever could accuse us of masochism, or dependence, or ignorance. 

I tried resolving that issue a little bit in my blog post today at Women by Design with this paragraph:

We read on Sunday from Jeremiah 18 that God does not just reserve the right to intervene when he chooses, but that he is in total and complete control over all creation at all times. He is good and glorious, and the reverence that we owe him is not what an mere earthly tyrant demands. If we were not so blinded by sin and depraved in heart, mankind would find him irresistibly delightful. It is for our good that he reveals himself to us as Sovereign Lord.

 The only reason that we would find God's sovereignty distasteful is because we do not see him as he is. If I could add anything to the video, it would be something proclaiming the glorious beauty of God, not just his sovereignty, not just his power. If he were evil yet sovereign, it would be right to hate him. His sovereignty is one of the reasons we worship him, but not the only one. But his righteousness is unparalleled. If we hate him, it is because we love the darkness. If we resent him, it is because we would have ourselves be the grand and glorious center of the universe. Our vision is blinded.

I would add a disclaimer for people who do not love him--what we are saying may not make sense to you, but that does not change his goodness, mercy, righteousness, and compassion. We do not blindly lean on a crutch or give ourselves up to determinism. We love him only because he first loved us. His sovereignty makes his mercy all the greater, and his mercy makes his sovereignty good to the taste.

confused

Robin Lawrence & Jenny Lawrence - A Roots to Fruit Story from Trinity Fellowship Church on Vimeo.


This is, I hope, not false humility parading itself, but I'm having a hard time with the overly generous reaction to the video. I bordered on embarrassment when they first suggested the topic for us to speak about. Of all the people in the world, I think I'm one of the last qualified to speak about suffering. I've never gone to bed hungry. I've never been abused. I've never had to kill myself with labor to get byy. I haven't suffered.

My mom died of cancer when I was eleven. But she loved me. She never abused me or ignored me. She died--she didn't abandon me. That's diet suffering. Lite. Zero calories.

I know someone who was tormented by a terrible disease, watched his sister suffer from a disorder, and then watched his mom die of cancer.

I look at him and think---what right do I have to put myself on the pedestal of an experienced sufferer? I don't know anything! God took my mom, and by His grace I can still praise Him. But what if He took all of my health, my job, my possessions, and every friend? I pray, literally pray every day, that He will keep me faithful even then. But I am as yet not tested.

It's strange to hear from people who really have suffered, whether physically or emotionally or spiritually, and to find that they were touched and impressed. I can find no explanation for it, except that God is pleased to use the extremely foolish things of the world.

You are good, and what You do is good. Teach me decrees!

book review: Anne Bradstreet

 I had good  expectations for D.B. Kellogg's Anne Bradstreet--biography is one of my favorite genres, and religiously, I am very sympathetic to the Puritans. Unfortunately, I did not enjoy this biography at all.

The writing was limp, uninteresting at best and confusing at worst. There were several misstatements in the book that interrupted the flow of reading. The information level seemed appropriate for a sixth grade book report, which is fine. Sixth graders need books at their level. However, the writing style was so flavorless and at times incoherent that if I were a parent or teacher looking to recommend a biography, this one would not be it.

It is a small book, and I hope that the book's failings are due to a forced editing due to size restrictions. Perhaps with more words to spare, the author would have produced a more interesting, captivating biography.

I read this book as a member of Book Sneeze, a division of Thomas Nelson.