A#10 for Frank

Mr. Turk’s question, I believe, represents two separate arguments against the historic and scriptural position (mine) on preservation: (1) The "church" (RCC) accepted a corrupt version, the Latin Vulgate (LV), as its Bible, proving that a corrupt Bible can legitimately be the Bible. Therefore, we can call almost any version "the Bible" equally. This is the LXX argument redux. (2) If the "church" (RCC) accepted LV, a translation, as its Bible, then a canonicity argument would guide us to that translation as God’s perfect Word instead of the KJV. If that’s the case, and LV mainly relies on something closer to the CT, then the CT and the new versions are actually the Bibles God approves.

This fails on several points:
1. The RCC is not the true church but an apostate one. The beginning of the RCC came out of doctrinal corruption—of at least soteriology and then ecclesiology. God didn’t canonize a text through a perverted institution.
2. LV wasn’t accepted by separatists who rejected the error of the RCC. The approval of LV by the RCC doesn’t assume that the true church did not reject LV.
3. If LV derived from a preserved text, it would continue to be received by God’s church today, and it isn’t. It has been rejected by God’s churches for centuries as corrupt. The addition of many, entire, non-canonical books makes this clear.
4. The RCC and LV proponents opposed an original language text and didn’t hold to a scriptural view of preservation.

If someone reads or hears an inferior translation or text, he still receives the Word of God in those places that the translation or text is in fact the Word of God (which it isn’t when it isn’t the same words). So he will benefit, I believe, from those places that he possesses the very Words of God. That applies to LV. Someone could have used LV and had enough Words to receive Christ and practice Scripture. I have never said that an inferior text could not result in salvation or sanctification. If I had only half of the books of the NT, I could still obey what I knew. However, I don’t assume there wasn’t general accessibility of all the Words just because LV represented the RCC. God’s promises govern history and our view of it.

When Judah complained against God circa 8th century B.C., God sent Isaiah to comfort her with certain evidence. In several passages (especially in chapters 41-45), God instructs Judah that He could relate the present to the past ("former things") and then to the future through His predictions and their fulfillment. God could connect the situations they faced in the present with events from the past because He is non-contingent on the events of history. In doing so, God showed how that He works providentially in history. Our view of history should be based upon what God said that He would do. We should expect that what God said would come to pass. We should interpret historical events based upon what He said. We get the wisdom from above and not the earthly variety. This relates directly to this textual issue.

I agree that LV was the standard for the RCC and those willing to accept it as legitimate. Anyone who knows a little about Jerome and LV, know it was corrupted greatly. However, two separate streams of "Christianity" operated side-by-side during the age before the printing press. Jesus and the apostles in the NT predicted apostasy and this soon came to past. The RCC was corrupt and yet politically powerful. As a remnant of truth, those who remained separate from the RCC did not have luxury of writing much of their own history like the state church. What they did write was often destroyed. Yet, we know the separatist churches, that stream of truth, existed during the entire period that the RCC dominated the religious landscape.

LV was far from accepted by all "Christians." Frederick Nolan writes how that even at the institution of LV, many "still persevered in retaining the primitive version." Separated churches still used the old Latin versions. We know that German Christians still quoted from these versions at least in the 9th century, the English and Spaniards in the 10th; and in France in the province of Languedoc evidence shows that the Old Latin Psalter was still in use in the 12th century. Indeed, LV was not given its familiar label "Vulgate" until the 13th century (Frank, The Bible through the Ages, 138). "The old Latin versions were used longest by the Western Christians who would not bow to the authority of Rome e.g., the Donatists; the Irish: in Ireland, Britain, and the continent; the Albigenses, etc." (Jacobus, Roman Catholic and Protestant Bibles Compared, 1908, 200, note 15). "Commentators such as Aelfric and Dunstan in the tenth century employed [the old Latin translations] as the basis of their commentaries" (Robinson, The Bible in Its Ancient and English Versions, 116). There are copies of Old Latin manuscripts and fragments in existence which date to the 13th century, "thus proving that the Old-Latin was still copied long after it had gone out of general use" (Robinson, 104). Separated Christians also had their own translations in the vernacular languages.

The church is the pillar and ground of the truth. The church in 1 Timothy 3:15 isn’t the RCC. It is local with at least a pastor and then deacons. It is the NT believing and practicing church. Jesus promises its perpetuity in Matthew 16:18. He never promises the preservation of its written history. The apostate church hated NT Christians, executed them, and then described them as the most despicable human beings, whose violation was merely deviation from Rome and then other state churches. The separatist churches were terribly and falsely maligned by their opponents. On the run from persecution, they most often lacked opportunity to correct the slanderous writings against them.