God Given Words and Text Criticism

There is an interesting post and further discussion on the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog concerning verbal inspiration and the consequences of that position in light of text criticism. P.J. Williams has posed, "In particular it would be worthwhile discussing the problems posed by textual criticism for the idea that God inspired particular words and their sequence within scripture."

I would refer you to the blog for the entire discussion, but I would make a couple of points. First, one must come to the text of the Bible by faith. "Without faith it is impossible to please Him" [Hebrews 11:6]. Apart from faith, text criticism will leave one to throw verbal inspiration to the wind [just read Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus]. Second, while it is true that there are problems with all manuscripts, the text of NT is very well presevered. I would agree that in all the the variant readings one can find the original reading. That is both the crux and challenge of text criticsm. We may not find the solution to every textual problem, but that should not allow us to doubt. Third, I do believe part of one's concept of inspiration must be the fact of preservation. If God inspired it, God preserved it. I believe both statements. Both statements lead me to come to the task of text criticism with faith and not fear.

You can access the discussion to which I've referred at:

http://evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com