The Princeton Doctrine of Scripture

[Chris Temple]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>J. Gresham Machen was the famous New Testament professor at Princeton in the early twentieth century who fought the attacks of Modernism against the Bible. He carried on the Princeton doctrine of Scripture and encouraged its careful study by all Christians. His New Testament Greek primer is still in print,49 and has been the effective introduction to the language for hundreds
of theological students for many decades.

Machen dedicated his life to defending and promoting the trustworthiness of the New Testament. In addition to many other writings, two full-length scholarly works met the most advanced destructive critics on their own ground, and thoroughly vindicated the truth of the Scripture in all their
statements discussed.

Concerning the text of the New Testament, Machen appreciated the work of modern textual criticism, not as an attack against the Bible, but as a necessary branch of biblical study. For those without the means to carry out this study personally, he had these words of encouragement about the state of the text
of the New Testament:

************************
The study of the manuscripts of the Bible is a wonderfully reassuring thing. The Greek text of the New Testament, for example, from which the Authorized Version is taken is based not upon the best manuscripts but upon inferior manuscripts. Yet how infinitesimal is the difference between those inferior manuscripts and the best manuscripts-how infinitesimal in comparison with what they have in common! I do not mean that we ought not to take care in the use of the Bible: I do not mean that we ought not to try by every means within our power to determine what the exact wording of the autographs was. I do
think that careful Christian scholarship is a very important thing. Yet God has provided very wonderfully for the plain man who is not a scholar. You do not have to depend for the assurance of your salvation and the ordering of your Christian lives upon passages where either the original wording or the meaning
is doubtful. God has provided very wonderfully for the transmission of the text
and for the translation into English…. Read it, my friends. It is God's Book, not man's book. It is a message from the King. Read it, study it, trust it, live by it. Other books will deceive you, but not this book. This book is the Word of God.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

See The Princeton Doctrine of Scripture

 

[TomVols]

Great post, great link. If my theology allowed me to believe that the saints of old could "turn over in their graves," I think Warfield, Hodge, Edwards, Spurgeon, et.al., would be doing aerobics in theirs if they could see the mockery these institutions made of orthodoxy and Biblical fidelity.

 

[Chris Temple]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by TomVols:
Great post, great link. If my theology allowed me to believe that the saints of old could "turn over in their graves," I think Warfield, Hodge, Edwards, Spurgeon, et.al., would be doing aerobics in theirs if they could see the mockery these institutions made of orthodoxy and Biblical fidelity.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yes Tom. And apparently KJVOs have no argument against Machen's wise words!

 

[DocCas]

J. Gresham Machen was a good man, and one of the first to recognize the apostacy of the Presbyterian church. Unfortunately, all too many did not recognize the drift into apostacy, and the Warfield/Brokenshire/Custer line has allowed that drift to invade otherwise good churches.

His statement "The Greek text of the New Testament, for example, from which the Authorized Version is taken is based not upon the best manuscripts but upon inferior manuscripts." is entirely subjective and without historical or manuscript support. The words "best" and "inferior" are subjective at best and pejorative at worst. I fear, although he was a good man, he failed to understand the lack of either logic or application which caused Westcott and Hort to manufactufe the term "best" as applied to the demonstrably two most corrupt MSS in existance.

[ December 10, 2001: Message edited by: Thomas Cassidy ]