Scripture: Our Only Certain Standard, Pt 2

As Christians, our only reliable rule of faith, our standard, our ‘norm’ in matters of our Christian faith and practice is Scripture, the Old and New Testaments. If we find that standard in someone (other than Jesus) or something other than the Scriptures, then we will quickly run into trouble in our faith and practice. As has been said several times in this series already, Roman Catholic apologists try to undermine that standard in their attempt to prop up their concept of ‘tradition’, but when they do that, they are undermining the integrity of Scripture in the minds of, not just faithful Christians, but those that might be struggling in their faith or are new believers. This might ‘help’ Catholic evangelism in some small way, but it ultimately hurts the cause of Christ that we are all charged with upholding.

So, as I move on in our Sola Scriptura series to part 15, I start the second part of Scripture as our only certain standard with a defense of the integrity of Scripture and the importance of the work of textual criticism, something that until recently Catholic scholars have never sought to take part in, even when it could have benefited their cause with the Latin Vulgate. I then move onto a couple of examples of mistranslated texts within the Latin Vulgate that led to unbiblical doctrines. And lastly, since the Catholic Church places so much emphasis on the Latin Vulgate even to this day, an embarrassing example of Catholic ‘scholarship’ will be related surrounding the post-Trent requirement to update the Vulgate.

My goal in all of this is not to castigate Catholicism, but to point out how their lack of scholarship has done quite a lot to undermine their own case as the self proclaimed ‘voice’ of Christianity. For a 2000 year old church, one would think and expect their scholarship would be so good, so refined, so polished, and so professional, that none could possibly match it. Yet that is not what we see, nor have we seen it in the past 500 years. They have undermined their own cause as well as the beliefs of their adherents when it comes to their exposure to criticism over their handling of doctrines which have no biblical or historical basis for existence. Labeling these ‘traditions’ is not a ‘get out jail free card’ to avoid dealing with the unbiblical nature of some of their teachings. Nor have these ‘traditions’ been handed down from the Apostles through successive generations over the past 2000 years, as can clearly be demonstrated from history and Scripture. But more about that in a future blog.

Integrity of Scripture

So, why does the history presented in Part 1 of 'Our Only Certain Standard' blog matter? It matters because Catholic apologists have attempted to cast doubt on the textual integrity of Scripture. Now, you might be asking, what is meant by ‘textual integrity’? Textual integrity answers the question of whether we are certain that we possess the original, as written, New Testament books. Some Catholic apologists attempt to cast doubt on whether the Church is actually in possession of the authentic documents of the New Testament. That may be partly due to the fact that the Catholic Church has lost the original New Testament sources used to create the Latin Vulgate, but that’s a topic for another day as well. (It is also a dumb argument since we have over 5300 manuscripts of the New Testament) The integrity of Scripture can be an entire subject unto itself since I, as a non-scholar, have several books on the subject. And since I am going to be talking about a rather technical field, I should define the term, ‘textual criticism.’ Textual criticism is the science of collecting, evaluating and reconstructing the text of a document. And the field of biblical textual criticism is almost entirely populated by Protestants, so it’s really no surprise that virtually no Catholics desire to take part in a Protestant controlled area.

So let’s deal with the skepticism of one of these apologists. Roman Catholic apologist, Robert Sungenis, in an attempt to justify extrabiblical tradition, has argued,

An exhaustive investigation into a standard Protestant Greek text of the New Testament … reveals that of the 7948 total verses from Matthew to Revelation, 6176 verses contain textual variants. In other words, 78% of the New Testament verses are to some extent corrupt. The variations range from simple letters which change a word of its tense, to whole sentences which are either missing or significantly different. 

    As we noted previously, among all the Greek manuscripts a 78% corruption rate exists in the sum total verses in the New Testament. Without going into the details here, would the apologist conclude that ‘this very fact makes it impossible to trust’ Scripture transmission? We dare say not. He is willing to accept a significant degree of corruption in the written documents in order to retain the essential truth of Scripture. He should do the same with Tradition. After all, Tradition is the vehicle for Scripture transmission. [1]

First, concerning the last paragraph quoted above, there is really no parallel between the transmission of Scripture and his concept of tradition. ‘Tradition’ transmitted Scripture? Then was it tradition’s fault for the 6176 verses with textual variants? And what kind of tradition are we talking about: the unwritten ones that are being promoted by Sungenis and the Roman Catholic Church, or the ‘tradition’ of the early church copying manuscripts? These are two completely different types of ‘tradition.’ One is the historical understanding of the church’s focus on copying manuscripts to preserve and distribute the word of God to the known world, the other is unwritten doctrines handed down orally from the Apostles to the Church and preserved to this very day.

Second, Sungenis seems to be trying to draw a parallel between tradition and the transmission of Scripture, so let’s use the Jews as our example of why this doesn’t make any sense. The Jews were meticulous in their preservation of the Old Testament Hebrew books. But as we saw in a previous Sola Scriptura blog, the Jewish traditions developed to prevent themselves from violating God’s law, corrupted their understanding of His word so much so that all they did was violate the law they were trying to prevent themselves from violating (Mat 5:21-48; 15:1-9; Mark 7:1-13). Their traditions had blinded them so much that they completely missed the very Messiah they said they were waiting for, and that the Old Testament Scriptures had predicted and pointed them to. Just because the Jews were charged with preserving the ‘oracles of God’ (Rom 3:2), does not mean Christians were supposed to accept their corrupt oral and written traditions. And the same is true of the Catholic ‘traditions.’

Third, Sungenis fails to point out that it was Catholic monks throughout the ages that created those manuscripts he seems to want to insinuate as corrupted. We can rightly point out their inability at times to faithfully copy manuscripts, but we cannot call their efforts corrupt.

Fourth, ‘textual variants’ do not equal ‘corrupted manuscripts.’ I’ve read a number of books about this very subject and the way Sungenis presents this information about the number of verses with textual variants is purposely designed to make you think that the New Testament is unreliable. Does the verse have two words in it, or 20? How many words in the verse were corrupted, one or 10 or 20? Is this all manuscripts combined, or does this represent a single manuscript, or only the complete manuscripts? As you can see, this leaves us with more questions than answers, and the purposeful intention is to make you think the New Testament has truly been corrupted. It has not. Doing as he has done shows his complete lack of scholarship and his purposeful misrepresentation of those textual variants. But let’s go ahead and break some of this down so that you understand just what those variants actually are.

… the overwhelming majority of such variant readings involve inconsequential details, such as alternative spelling, order of words, and interchange of synonyms. In these cases, as well as in the relatively few instances involving the substance of the record, scholars apply the techniques of textual criticism in order to determine with more or less probability what the original wording was. In any event, no doctrine of Christian faith depends solely upon a passage that is textually uncertain. [2] [emphasis added]

Although this subject matter can be highly technical, here is some information that will help you understand this subject a little better. There are over 5300 manuscripts or parts of manuscripts of the New Testament, and there are around 200,000 variants but these variants only occur in 10,000 places. Now, I know that that sounds incredibly large, but think of it this way. If you got 10 people to copy the first 5 chapters of the Gospels of John, you would end up with 10 different copies of those 5 chapters because none of the 10 copies will be 100% accurate, and none of the 10 copies would completely match any other. We are humans, we make mistakes. There would be words misspelled, or missed or added. But if you compared the 10 copies to each other, you would be able to determine the original text because likely 95% (or higher) of the errors in one wouldn’t match any other copy. And for the 5% that do match another copy, you’d still be able to determine the correct wording since most of the copies would match for that word or phrase. [3] That is what textual criticism is and does. Christian apologist, James White, stated that the 19th century Greek scholars Westcott and Hort wrote the following concerning these variants. They, 

... indicated that only about one eighth of the variants had any weight, the rest being “trivialities.” This would leave the text, according to Westcott and Hort, 98.33 percent pure … [4]

Now, let’s answer a question you might have, who were Wescott and Hort, and why should I believe them?

Brooke Westcott and Fenton Hort were 19th-century theologians and Bible scholars. Together, they produced The New Testament in the Original Greek, one of the earliest examples of modern textual criticism. Since its publication in 1881, Westcott and Hort’s work has proved to be impressively accurate, though far from perfect. Their approach not only advanced the science of textual criticism, but it added considerable weight to the claim that the Bible had been preserved from tampering and corruption. [5]

Westcott and Hort were some of the first to do the work of textual criticism, but there were others; Sir Fredrick Kenyon, D.A. Carson and F.F. Bruce, just to name a few. Any of these names can be easily searched on the Internet to see their credentials and their work in this field. All of them agree – no fundamental doctrine of Christianity rests upon a disputed variant. As Sir Frederic Kenyon wrote,

It cannot be too strongly asserted that in substance the text of the Bible is certain. Especially is this the case with the New testament … The Christian can take the whole Bible in his hand and say without fear or hesitation that he holds in it the true Word of God, handed down without essential loss from generation to generation throughout the centuries. [6]

So, as you can see, scholars from different eras all agree on the state of the Bible’s integrity. Scholars state that only about 400 variants affect the sense of a passage, and only 50 variants are actually important. So, it is these 50 variants out of the 200,000 that are actually the subject of any investigations.

Since I’m not a textual critic, and likely, neither are you, let’s look at an example of trivial variants that were something other than misspellings.

• Changing “He” to “Jesus”
• Changing “the Lord” to “the Lord Jesus”
• Changing “Jesus” to “Christ Jesus”, “Jesus Christ”, “Lord Jesus”

Now I’m not trying to give the impression that all of the variants are like the example listed above, but I wanted to give you an example of what some of these actually are. And as you can see from the above, these are quite easy to resolve and do not change the meaning of the text at all. They are simply copyist errors, not corruptions, and an examination and comparison of the manuscripts easily resolve most of the errors.

Carl Henry summed up the evangelical position on the New Testament variants saying, “… textual critics have been successful in restoring the [copies] to within 99.9% accuracy …” [7]

What you might find interesting is, Roman Catholic scholars seem to disagree with Sungenis’ assessment. Raymond Brown and John Steinmueller have even commented,

In spite of the large number of variant readings, the Greek text has reached us substantially unchanged and uncorrupted … Since, however, the greater part of the text shows perfect uniformity, we can say with Westcott and Hort that seven-eighths of the New Testament is critically certain. [8] [emphasis added]

Monsignor J.D. Conway agreed with their assessment, as did Catholic apologist Karl Kearing when he said, “From textual criticism we are able to conclude that we have a text the accuracy of which is more certain than the accuracy of any other ancient work.” [9]

All of this combines to conclusively show the absurdity of the claim that the New Testament is corrupt. Sungenis’ goal is to plant the seed of uncertainty and doubt in the minds of people that read his book. The hope is that you will latch onto the Catholic Church’s concept of a co-equal, unwritten and unknowable orally transmitted tradition.

Dogmas and Textual Corruption

From the Protestant perspective, I want to emphatically state that there are no doctrines that depend upon a textual variant or a mistranslation of the Greek or Hebrew. None. And this is an easily provable fact based on the number of books written by textual critics over the last 250 years. Protestants have spent two centuries developing textual criticism for the single purpose of restoring the New Testament to the original Greek that was penned by the Apostles. Major Catholic apologists recognize that Protestants own this area of study, and they don’t even challenge that anymore. As a matter of fact, they use the Protestant resources.

Unfortunately, the Roman Catholic Church cannot say the same, as there are a number of doctrines that have developed based on outright translation mistakes. And it really shouldn’t have to be said, but Christian doctrines should never be developed based upon a translation, no matter what that translation is. It is essential to go back to the original Greek of the New Testament books to understand what a passage of Scripture says and means. In all of the expositions I’ve done in this series and in my Colossians study, I’ve been careful to go back to the Greek to define words and phrases used in my verse quotes from the New American Standard Bible, (NASB). And that is what we are going to do here. If I’m going to say it’s wrong, then I have to prove my case, not just ‘parrot’ what someone says.

And, I will be taking a different tack on this next section than do some Protestants, by purposely avoiding most of the slurs that some call the Latin Vulgate (383-404 AD). I choose to believe that Jerome, a brilliant man, did the very best job that he could as a translation team of one. My issue is not with him or his translation. Latin was the language of the early church in the West, and there is nothing wrong with having a translation of the Bible that you can read. That is what we have today, is it not? My problem is with the Catholic Church leadership at the Council of Trent that “knew” about the mistakes in the Vulgate because of Erasmus’ Greek New Testament, and pretended they did not exist, and declared the Vulgate the only reliable version of Scripture. So, with that understood, let’s get started.

Luke 1:28 – “Full of Grace”

We will start with Luke 1:28, from the Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition, which is supposed to be faithful representation of the Latin Vulgate although in King James language,

And the angel being come in, said unto her: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. (Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition) [10]

A more modern translation, the New Catholic Bible, renders the verse,

The angel came to her and said, “Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you.” (The New Catholic Bible Translation)

The phrase, “full of grace” in this passage is a reference to Mary, the mother of Jesus, and for the Catholic, the phrase has birthed a number of doctrines based solely on this phrase: [11]

• Mary was conceived without sin.
• Mary was redeemed at conception and was without sin throughout her lifetime.

These doctrines, however, were not supported by any verses in the New Testament, or in the Old Testament for that matter. They came from the incremental imaginations of some Church fathers through hundreds of years of speculation where some gave into the early forms of these concepts and others did not. Unfortunately, these speculations slowly built upon each other until they gained the status of ‘tradition’ even though there was absolutely no evidence of any kind that these teachings were handed down by the Apostles. And this is something that is easily shown by reading the early Church fathers. But the point here is about the meaning of the Greek word used in this verse which was mistranslated as “full of grace.”

To start with, the phrase “full of grace” is actually the Greek words, “plaras karitos,” and this phrase only occurs in two verses in the New Testament, John 1:14 and Acts 6:8, and neither are used in reference to Mary. The actual Greek word being used in Luke 1:28 is, ‘charitoo’, which means ‘to cause to be favored; to make acceptable.’

Which is why nearly all Protestant Bibles translate the word as “favored one”, as does the NASB,

And coming in, he said to her, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” (New American Standard Bible 1995)

Mary was ‘favored’, chosen by God to birth the Savior of the world, but she wasn’t any different than any other woman. The same could be said of the Old Testament prophets, as well as David. They were men whom God called to do specific tasks, as were the Apostles. Mary was born into this world like every other woman, other than Eve, and she was under the same curse of sin that we are all born into. Jesus was her Savior, just like He is ours. The Bible says all have sinned (Rom 3:23; 3:9; Gal 3:22), with the exception of Jesus, of course. Mary would never have said she had never sinned; she would have known better. In addition, there are no prophecies in the Old Testament about Mary being sinless or perpetually a virgin, or that she was born without sin, or that she was sinless her entire life. These are all developed out of speculation and imagination, and have no basis in Scripture whatsoever, nor do they have support from the early Church fathers.

In the case of Luke 1:28, this was a mistake by Jerome in the translation from Greek to Latin. The original language of the Gospel of Luke is Greek, not Latin, and the Roman Catholic doctrines about Mary come from the Latin translation, not the original Greek. This is a classic example of how a mistake in a translation leads to doctrinal impurity. It also demonstrates why you should always go back to the original language for the proper meaning of the words in a verse. It is why textual critics have worked so hard to restore the text of Scripture from all of the manuscripts.

Matt 4:17 – Repentance verses Do Penance

Another Greek to Latin mistranslation is the verse, Matt 4:17. All Protestant translations, that I know of, translate the verse as follows:

From that time Jesus began to preach and say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Mat 4:17 NASB)

But the Latin Vulgate was mistranslated as follows:

From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say: Do penance, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. (Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition)

Fortunately, this has been corrected in most recent Catholic translations, but this incorrect rendering in the Latin stayed unchanged for over 1000 years, and spawned teachings and a sacrament for “doing” penance. So, what is repentance, and what is penance?

The Greek word in question is ‘metanoeō’ and means ‘to change one's mind, to think differently, heartily to amend with abhorrence of one's past sins; used especially of those who, conscious of their sins and with manifest tokens of sorrow, are intent; on obtaining God's pardon.’ [12]

A Catholic definition of penance is,

For the Catholic, ‘penance’ or ‘doing penance’ means ‘The virtue or disposition of the heart by which one repents of one's own sins and is converted to God. Also the punishment by which one atones for sins committed, either by oneself or by others. And finally the sacrament of penance, where confessed sins committed after baptism are absolved by a priest in the name of God.’ [13]

And herein lies the problem. The first part of the definition starts out mostly correct but goes off the rails fairly quick. I admit that I don’t like the way this definition is presented because it focuses on ‘self’ and ‘me’ performing some action, and that can be seen very clearly in the second sentence. We cannot atone for our sin, and we certainly cannot atone for someone else's sins!

Repentance is properly understood to mean a change of mind – a change of the intention from wanting to sin to not wanting to sin – that results in a change in action. It involves the decision to make a change of behavior and/or attitude about something. [14]

It is the Gospel message that makes us see that our sin is an offense to God. It is that offense that causes the sorrow for our sin. And it is that sorrow of sin that changes our hearts from wanting to sin, to not wanting to sin. And finally, it is that change of heart that results in a change of action. It is not something that we can ‘will’ or make ourselves ‘do’. It can only come about by God showing us our sin in its true light as an offense to His very nature. We cannot pay the payment for sin, since it requires our death and eternal separation from God. Only a perfect God, Jesus, could pay that debt, that payment, and that is the entire point of the Gospel message.

Thus, the statement, “the punishment by which one atones for sins committed, either by oneself or by others,” is utterly absurd and completely unbiblical. It is in effect a complete denial of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. No human can pay the price that God demands for sin. And since Jesus has already paid the price in full for our sin, no priest is required to, or could ever, absolve us of the sin that Jesus has already paid for! The whole concept and sacrament of ‘penance’ is based upon a mistranslation of the Greek word, ‘metanoeō’.

And these are not the only mistranslations in the Vulgate that spawned doctrinal errors. There are other verses, like Ps 2:12 and the last half of Gen 3:15 (this one would absolutely shock you), that could be presented as further examples of how translation errors from Greek to Latin have spawned unbiblical doctrines. But these two examples are more than sufficient to demonstrate how Christian doctrines were corrupted by inaccuracies in the Latin Vulgate. It should not ‘need’ to be said, but it is the Latin Vulgate, a translation, that had inaccuracies which led to doctrinal corruption, not the original Hebrew of the Old Testament or the original Greek of the New Testament.

Rome and the Vulgate

This next section is some of the sorted history of the Latin Vulgate and the Council of Trent.

As has been discussed previously in this series, the Roman Catholic Church believes she has the sole right and the responsibility to declare what variants in the Scriptures are valid and which are not, even though she has rarely done so. If there had ever been a more opportune time to do just that, the Council of Trent (1546-1563) would have been the perfect time to have done so. With proof of the Vulgate’s errors already handed to them from Erasmus’s Greek New Testament and the Reformers, Rome proceeded to ignore both and approve the Vulgate, via the Insuper decree in April of 1546, as the only authentic version of Scripture. It was said to “... conform substantially with the originals, and therefore contains no errors in faith and morals.” [15]

Now, based on what was presented above, this seems to have been quite foolish to do. The two errors above (and there were more that could have been presented) should have been enough to cause the Council to revise the Vulgate as part of Trent. Instead, the insuper decree enshrined the Latin Vulgate,

Furthermore, this same decree ordered that ‘the Holy Scriptures, especially the old Vulgate edition, be printed in the most correct manner possible …’ Far from seeking to reconcile the textual variants of the Greek text to provide a foundation for translation, Trent repudiated the necessity for such correction and simply declared the ‘old Vulgate’ to be the ‘authentic’ version of Scripture, making its ‘long usage’ and antiquity the basis for its authenticity. [16]

It should be noted that at Trent, Cardinal Pacheco ‘demanded’ that any version other than the Vulgate be condemned, and Cardinal Pole requested that the original sources of the Hebrew and Greek be included as authentic texts. Both requests were rejected, even though the council knew before the decree that the Vulgate did not match either the Hebrew or the Greek source manuscripts. But the Council of Trent suggested that the papacy should update the Vulgate, even though for four decades after Trent, very little of that effort was done. So, the old Vulgate was affirmed by Trent, but so was a future revised version of the Vulgate with the words, ‘printed in the most correct manner possible.’

The decree of the Council of Trent canonized an edition which at the time had no existence and appeared forty-six years afterwards. The decree was made in 1546, but the update was not finished until 1590. The work was finished and published by Sixtus V, two years after that it was published by Clement VIII. [17]

And here we begin one of the most bizarre church history stories, and I, unfortunately, have to summarize most of it.

Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621) was one of the scholars commissioned to revise the Latin Vulgate, per the insuper decree at the Council of Trent. They started with a popular version called the Louvain Bible and began by writing their notes between the lines of the text and in the margins for the corrections they felt needed to be made. The revision seems to have started in 1586 and finished in 1588. Maybe it was the way that the commission presented their work, but when they had completed their work, Pope Sixtus V, was enraged at the commission. Bellarmine’s biographer, James Brodrick, wrote,

… they received a rude awakening when the Pope examined the ten thousand variant readings they had diligently and eruditely chosen. He became so angry at the sight of them that he drove Cardinal Carafa from his presence with harsh words and forthwith cashiered [dismissed in disgrace] the commission. He would revise it himself. [18]

Pope Sixtus V was not known for being very scholarly, even though he thought of himself as a very competent editor. Unfortunately, he wasn’t. His previous work, the complete works of St Ambrose, was considered one of the worst ever published. Sixtus spent 18 months on this ‘passion project’ preparing his revision of the “bible” for the printers. After looking at the first few copies, he noticed a number of misprints in the text. Brodrick explains what happened next.

With characteristic energy he (pope Sixtus V) immediately began to think of some way to remedy the evil and, not liking the table of errata [the list of errors], decided to do the corrections with his pen or by means of little square, oblong, or triangle pieces of paper, pasted over the blunders. It was heavy, tedious work, and it took him a full six months to complete, but even then he was not satisfied. The Spanish ambassador relates that no sooner had he been given a copy of the corrected Bible for presentation to his royal master than a monk arrived in hot haste, demanding it back for further retouches. It would seem to be plain enough that the august editor was in two minds about this work. Furthermore, in a few places phrases and whole verses had been accidentally omitted, and no little square, oblong, or triangular devices could restore them. Consequently, publication of the long-expected volume was deferred from day to day and month to month, though the bull which was to introduce it to the Christian world had been drafted, printed, and made ready for posting upon the doors of St. Peter’s and the Lateran Basilica, much earlier. [19]

And if that wasn't bad enough, Sixtus created a papal bull for his new “bible”, and according to Brodrick, it read in part:

By the fulness of Apostolical power, We decree and declare that this edition … approved by the authority delivered to Us by the Lord, is to be received, and held as true, lawful, authentic, and unquestioned in all public and private discussion, reading, preaching, and explanation. [20]

In April of 1590, Sixtus’s new version of the Latin Vulgate was finally announced and circulated to cardinals and ambassadors. Fortunately for most Catholics at the time, Sixtus died in August of 1590, thus preventing much of the embarrassment that would have occurred had his version gotten a wider circulation. Nine days after his death the College of Cardinals put a stop to all further sales of his Vulgate and purchased all of the outstanding copies they could find with the sole purpose of burning them.

It was Bellarmine, who felt his role was to ‘safeguard the honor of the Holy See.’ Brodrick wrote,

The edition of Sixtus was certain to fall into the hands of the heretics (Protestants), and it was greatly to be feared that one or other of them would use it to prove that the Scriptures had been corrupted by a Pope, an argument which could have render plausible by citing many passages that had been omitted, amplified, or changed without rhyme or reason, and against the witnesses of all codices [complete versions of the Bible], Latin, Greek and Hebrew. [21]

David King noted that, “... there are approximately three to five thousand differences between the Vulgate edition released by Sixtus V in 1590 and the revised edition of the same authorized by Clement VIII two years later in 1592.” [22]

My point is not to insinuate ‘corruption’ in the Latin Vulgate, the Catholic Church’s unwillingness to address ‘known’ mistakes in the Vulgate, which led to the development of unbiblical doctrines, had done that to the Vulgate’s reputation already. My purpose in this story was to point out the fact that the popes were human beings who in no way could ever pretend to be infallible. Sixtus V was a great example of a Pope that very nearly created a corrupted version of Scripture because his ego drove him, rather than the Holy Spirit. As the “pope” no one could have stopped him from declaring this version to be “the” standard, authentic and unquestionable “word of God.” The only thing that saved the Catholic Church from a gigantic embarrassment and destroying virtually all of its remaining credibility in a single moment, was the death of this egotistical pope, and the fast actions of Robert Bellarmine.

After the near disaster concerning the revised Latin Vulgate, and the Protestants focus on textual criticism centuries later, the Roman Catholic Church, at least in this one area, seems to recognize the expertise Protestants have over them. In speaking about the Greek version of the New Testament distributed by the United Bible Society, Kurt Aland wrote,

In any event, the new text is a reality, and as the text distributed by the United Bible Society and by the corresponding offices of the Roman Catholic Church (an inconceivable situation until quite recently), it has rapidly become the commonly accepted text for research and study in universities and churches. This also holds for translation projects in modern national languages. [23]

Conclusion

I started off part 1 of the topic of Scripture as our only certain standard with at least a partial admission that for some Catholic theologians, Scripture may just have a higher place than it has been ‘traditionally’ given. I also talked about the written versus verbal transmission and the superiority of the written over the verbal. I followed that up with the importance of the original languages Hebrew and Greek, and how they created an explosion of scholarship in the 16th century that had been missing for over 1000 years.

In the 2nd part of this topic, I started off with Robert Sungenis calling the Protestant and Catholic Scriptures corrupt because of the textual variants in the manuscripts. I defined what textual criticism was, its role and how it works to restore the original text of Scripture, thus refuting his claims. I discussed the Latin Vulgate and some of the mistranslations that made their way into verses, like Luke 1:28 and Mat 4:17, and how these mistranslations spawned doctrinal corruption. I then ended with the Catholic Church’s actions surrounding the Latin Vulgate at the Council of Trent and the post-Trent antics and subsequent embarrassment created by Pope Sixtus V.

All of this was to continue the process of showing from history and Scripture the superiority of Scripture as the believer’s rule of faith, their ‘standard.’ Far too many Catholic apologists will jump at just about anything to undermine the sufficiency of Scripture and prop up their concept of ‘tradition.’ The Catholic Church may have preserved the manuscripts of the New Testament throughout the last 2000 yrs, but it was the Protestants that restored the original text of the New Testament using those manuscripts  based on the brilliant work by Erasmus' Greek New Testament in 1516, all while being castigated for doing so by the very people that preserved them to begin with! And as we saw in the beginning of this conclusion, there are some in the Catholic Church that realize this importance.

But that doesn’t stop the apologists and their need to defend the indefensible, and say things that cannot be proven. It is not that I do not believe God can act in history, He does. But as I read history, I see that some of the beliefs that developed over hundreds of years simply do not agree with what is written in Scripture. I should not have to jettison reason to believe a supernaturally developed ‘tradition,’ when there is nothing in either Old or New Testament to support that concept. Nor can the Catholic Church provide evidence to support their position. All that can be seen when examining history and Scripture is the utter failure of ‘tradition,’ as has been documented in these two parts, reinforcing the truth that Scripture is our only certain standard for the faith and practice of the church. The unfortunate truth is that ‘tradition’ has spawned imagination as ‘biblical’ doctrine, and this is exactly what Gnosticism did. One cannot justify the teaching of Mary as a sinless, perpetual virgin. And the Catholic Church is a heartbeat away from declaring Mary as co-redemptrix, which will place them in the camp of denying the whole purpose of Jesus as the God-man Savior of the world, the only one prophesied to come in the flesh in the Old Testament, the one that would die for our sins, and to save us from our sin. Nor did tradition preserve the truth of repentance, but corrupted it into ‘doing penance’ where mankind pays for his own sins. These are not Christian doctrines, but they are Catholic doctrines.

As David King wrote,

So, even if we were to accept Roman Catholic Tradition as the ‘vehicle’ by which holy Scripture has been transmitted to us, we would have to conclude, base on the facts, that this tradition (whatever is meant by the term) has failed to preserve the translation of the Scriptures without [a] ‘significant degree of corruption.’ We can only conclude that this ‘tradition’ is fallible and cannot be relied upon for the accurate preservation of either holy Scripture or pure doctrine. [24]

 

When, however, they are confuted from the Scriptures, they turn round and accuse these same Scriptures, as if they were not correct, not of authority and [assert] that they are ambiguous, and that the truth cannot be extracted from them by those who are ignorant of tradition. For [they allege] that the truth was not delivered by means of written documents, but via voce …

Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 130-200 AD)

Church history has repeatedly and clearly proven one thing: once the highest view of Scripture is abandoned by any theologian, group, denomination, or church, the downhill slide in both theology and practice is inevitable.

James White

Footnotes

[1] Robert Sungenis, Not by Scripture Alone (Santa Barbara: Queenship, 1997, pp. 250 (footnote #58), 255, as quoted in David T. King, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith Vol I, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), pp. 150-151.
[2] Bruce M. Metzger, The New Testament: Its Background, Growth, and Content 2nd ed., (Nashville: Adingdon, 1990, p. 281, as quoted in David T. King, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith Vol I, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), p. 154.
[3] James R. White, The King James Only Controversy, (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1995) pp. 38-39. The numbers and the example were adapted from those given by White.
[4] James R. White, The King James Only Controversy, (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1995) p. 39.
[5] Who were Westcott and Hort, and what did they have to do with the text of the Bible?, Got Questions website.
[6] Sir Frederic Kenyon, Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts, 4th Ed. (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1939), p. 23, as quoted in David T. King, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith Vol I, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), p. 157.
[7] Carl F. H. Henry, God, Revelation and Authority (Wheaton: Crossway, 1999), Vol iV, pp. 235-36, as quoted in David T. King, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith Vol I, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), p. 155.
[8] John E. Steinmueller, A Companion to Scripture Studies: Volume I: General Introduction to the Bible (New York: Wagner, 1941), p. 156, as quoted in David T. King, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith Vol I, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), p. 156.
[9] Monsignor J.D. Conway, What the Church Teaches (New York: Harper, 1962), p. 67, as quoted in David T. King, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith Vol I, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), p. 156.
[10] See Biblia Sacra Vulgata for the full Latin Vulgate text.
[11] This point and the doctrines mentioned are from Matthew Slick, Mary, Full of Grace, and Luke 1:28, Christian Apologetics and Resource Ministry, © 2008.
[12] Thayer’s Greek Lexicon, Strongs G3340, Blue Letter Bible.
[13] Penance, Catholic Dictionary, CatholicCulture.org. I reviewed multiple sites and chose this because it was not a Protestant definition and wasn’t a secular definition, and the essence of the definition matched a number of other Catholic sites.
[14] Matthew Slick, What is repentance?, Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry, © 2011.
[15] John E Steinmueller, A Companion to Scripture Studies (New York: Wanger, 1941), Vol I, General Introduction to the Bible, p. 186, n.13, as quoted in David T. King, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith Vol I, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), p. 175, fn.401.
[16] David T. King, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith Vol I, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), p. 162.
[17] Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 3 Vols. (Phillipsburg: reprinted by Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co, 1992), Vol1, XV.ix, p. 134, as quoted in David T. King, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith Vol I, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), p. 162.
[18] James Brodrick, Robert Bellarmine: Saint and Scholar (Westminster: Newman, 1961), p. 113, as quoted in David T. King, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith Vol I, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), p. 162.
[19] James Brodrick, Robert Bellarmine: Saint and Scholar (Westminster: Newman, 1961), p. 113, as quoted in David T. King, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith Vol I, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), p. 163.
[20] James Brodrick, Robert Bellarmine: Saint and Scholar (Westminster: Newman, 1961), p. 115, as quoted in David T. King, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith Vol I, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), p. 163.
[21] James Brodrick, Robert Bellarmine: Saint and Scholar (Westminster: Newman, 1961), p. 117, as quoted in David T. King, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith Vol I, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), p. 165.
[22] Frederic Kenyon, Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts, 4th Ed. (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1939), p. 192, as quoted in David T. King, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith Vol I, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), p. 165.
[23] Kurt Aland and Barbara Aland, The Text of the New Testament, revised, translated by Erroll F. Rodes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), p. 35, as quoted in David T. King, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith Vol I, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), pp. 166-167.
[24] David T. King, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith Vol I, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), p. 169.

All Scriptures quotes are from the New American Standard Bible, 1995 Revision, unless otherwise noted. Verse links from Blue Letter Bible, https://www.blueletterbible.org/

For the best treatment of Sola Scriptura in book form, please consider investing in the 3 volume set of: David T. King, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith, Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3 (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001). It's the guide I'm using to integrate some of my own study on this important subject. This book set is inexpensive and worth every penny.