[Note: I originally wrote this post over a year ago during UK lockdown but didn't post it at the time.]
I decided to follow my note up and search his sermons for references to manuscripts again, and after sorting away all the references to sermon manuscripts, I came across something I had not seen before.
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| C. H. Spurgeon (1834–1892), looking amused |
Spurgeon has a whole sermon point on “that Peculiar Preservation which God has extended to the Scriptures which he has inspired” (somewhat ironically, in light of the fact that he was preaching this from an instance in Scripture in which God’s Word appears to have been lost to his people for a time). I have shown elsewhere that Spurgeon spoke out at times in favor of textual criticism and even occasionally mentioned textual variants from the pulpit. Once, he even preached from a phrase that is in the Revised Version but not the King James Version because homoioteluton/visual similarity caused a phrase to be omitted in the majority of manuscripts (κληθῶμενκαὶ ἐσμέν, but κλη/και and θ/ε would be very similar in some hands as well). Spurgeon drank deeply from the wells of the Puritans and carried their intense respect of Scripture with him his whole life. He vehemently defended the reliability, truthfulness, and infallibility of the Scriptures, but he also understood that our access to God’s Word is not the same as what God’s Word is ontologically. Here, I stumbled upon a section in which Spurgeon defends the preservation of Scripture, but he also affirms that copies of Scripture have errors and can be corrected by comparing them to other copies. I quote a few sections below:
Now look you along through all the ages, and if you are a reverent believer in the Word, you will be filled with grateful wonder that the Sacred Roll has been preserved to us. Through what perils it has passed, and yet, as I believe, there is not a chapter of it lost; nay, nor a verse of any chapter. The misreadings of the copies are really so inconsiderable, and are so happily corrected by other manuscripts, that our Bible is a marvel in literature for the comparative ease with which the correct text is discoverable. It seems to me that God’s divine care has extended itself to the whole text, so that, with far less care than would be needed by any classic author, the very words of the Holy Spirit may be known. As the wings of cherubim overshadowed the mercy-seat, so do the wings of providence protect the Book of the Lord. As Michael guarded the body of Moses, so does a divine care secure the Books of Moses. I invite lovers of history and of famous books to look into the interesting story of the immortality of Scripture. Let us think of that special preservation with reverent gratitude.
Quickly, note here that Spurgeon does imply that the “correct text” does need to be discovered, but God’s preservation is evident in the “comparative ease with which” that is done: “with far less care than would be needed by any classical author.” In apologetics terms, Spurgeon is giving an early version of the comparison of the Bible/New Testament with classical literature, perhaps most famously made by F.F. Bruce and recently discussed by James B. Prothro.
But, oh, how should we love the Book, and how should we stand up for it, and guard it jealously, since God has guarded it so well! Let every man of God be like Solomon’s valiant men of Israel, who watched about the bed of the king, each man with his sword upon his thigh because of fear in the night; for there is much fear just now for the truth of God. I mean, of course, to us poor puny beings there is danger; there is no fear in the great heart of the Eternal. There is no fear as to the accomplishment of his purposes; for he is strong in power, and not one faileth. What our fathers preserved with their blood we will preserve with our lives. That which bore them to a martyr’s death, singing as they went, we will not consent to throw away. If any man has another gospel, let him keep it; I am satisfied with mine. If any man has found another Bible, let him read it; I am satisfied with my mother’s old Bible, and the Bible of my ancestors. If discoveries are to be made concerning a new way of the salvation of men, let them make them who care to do so; the old way has saved me, and the old way has saved multitudes of others; and therein shall I abide, God helping me, come what may; and so will you, my brethren, and together we will rejoice that God preserves his Book, and continues to give his Holy Spirit with it. God will uphold the truth that is in this Book; and the men that hold that truth shall be upheld. “For ever, O Lord, thy Word is settled in heaven;” and similar eternal settlements are made for all whose hope is fixed upon that Word.
There’s a lot to linger over here. For one, Spurgeon says we should zealously guard God’s Word, but at the same time, we should take comfort knowing that God guards his word. “...each man with his sword upon his thigh because of fear in the night; for there is much fear just now for the truth of God. I mean, of course, to us poor puny beings there is danger; there is no fear in the great heart of the Eternal.”
If I’m ever tempted to be worried by uncertainty (and I’ll be quick to point out that in many cases, textual uncertainty is an inability to determine which one of two readings is original when the choice would not even make a difference in translation—it is not a free-for-all in which we have no idea what the original authors wrote) I’ve always found it helpful to step back and look at what are functionally the widest possible differences between widely received textual traditions by comparing the KJV and the modern versions, and looking at how much they agree rather than how much they disagree. Baptist theologian John Dagg wrote in his Manual of Theology (1857), “Their utmost deviations do not change the direction of the line of truth; and if they seem in some points to widen that line a very little, the path that lies between their widest boundaries, is too narrow to permit us to stray” (Book 1, ch. 2). If uncertainty about where major translations of the Bible disagree is enough to shake my faith in all the places they agree, then am I trusting in God, or am I insisting that God give me something more than he already has? If I hang my faith on the idea that God preserved his word in a way that gives me as much access and/or understanding of it as to which I think I’m entitled, then it isn’t really God I’m trusting. It’s my own understanding of how God has preserved his Word. As Spurgeon points out, “to us poor puny beings there is danger; there is no fear in the great heart of the Eternal.”
Back to Spurgeon—What’s also noteworthy in particular is this statement: “If any man has found another Bible, let him read it; I am satisfied with my mother’s old Bible, and the Bible of my ancestors.” Obviously, Spurgeon cannot be limiting “Bible” to the particular translation or even the particular textual basis of a translation. The reason is that despite his criticism of the Revised Version, Spurgeon did occasionally refer to its readings and preach them as the text instead of the readings in the Authorised Version he customarily used. This remark about rejecting “another Bible” is mere moments after Spurgeon himself talks about establishing the original text by comparing manuscripts (“our Bible is a marvel in literature for the comparative ease with which the correct text is discoverable“). Spurgeon even elaborates about what he means when he talks about a “different Bible”—“If discoveries are to be made concerning a new way of the salvation of men, let them make them who care to do so; the old way has saved me....”
To Spurgeon, the thing that makes a new translation a different Bible is not that it is a different translation or even that it has a different textual basis, it’s that it teaches a different salvation. Textual criticism does not change the Bible, because what is ontologically God’s Word cannot be changed. To Spurgeon, textual criticism only gets us closer to every letter of God’s Word.
In 2020, we are unimaginably blessed to have such amazing access to God’s Word—to be able to go to a shop and buy a copy whenever we want (lockdown restrictions notwithstanding!) or to take out our phones and have immediate access to the whole of the Scriptures. But let’s not forget that this degree of access is relatively new. Historically, many Christians only had access to what they could hear read in church—assuming what they heard was a language they understood. It was as recent as 1800 that fifteen-year-old Mary Jones had to walk 26 miles after saving up for six years just to be able to get a Bible in Welsh—her own language. Let us not slip into the mindset that God’s promises to preserve his Word mean that we are entitled to a degree of access to God’s Word that God did not give to earlier Christians, many of whom probably could not have even imagined the access we have today.
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| Mary Jones’ Bible. Image credit/source. |
Just a few years later in 1889 (and this is remarkable because he said this after he withdrew from the Baptist Union because of the Downgrade Controversy and higher criticism), Spurgeon preached:
I always deprecate the spirit which tries to tamper with the Word of God. I admire them who have sufficient knowledge of the ancient manuscripts of the Scriptures to tell us, as nearly as they can ascertain them, what were the original Hebrew and Greek words, but I dearly deplore that kind of spirit which, after the style of a destructive parrot, seeks to tear the Scriptures to pieces, and to rob the children of God of their priceless possession. Why, even a solitary divine precept is so precious that, if all the saints in the world were burnt at one stake, for the defense of it, it would be well worth the holocaust. If the whole of us went to prison and to death for the preservation of a single sentence of Scripture, we should be fully justified in making such a sacrifice.Again, what we see is that Spurgeon appreciated the efforts of textual criticism and even admitted that some uncertainties remain (“to tell us, as nearly as they can ascertain them, what were the original Hebrew and Greek words”), but he hated the idea of someone tampering with the Word of God.
How is this not a contradiction? Because Spurgeon understood the difference between higher criticism and lower criticism. The stress of controversies over the reliability of Scripture likely sent him to an early death. If anyone understood the ramifications of higher criticism, it was the pastor of the world’s first megachurch and leader of a pastor’s college who lived through the problems that higher criticism caused in his own ministerial circles. Yet as much as he rejected higher criticism, Spurgeon appreciated textual criticism. Every letter of God’s Word is important, after all, and since God has not given us a particular manuscript like he gave Josiah in 2 Chron. 34, we can rely on his providence and trust that we aren’t powerful enough to mess up the Scriptures, and we can trust that our access to the Scriptures—whatever form that takes—is sufficient to give us what God wants us to have.
In conclusion, if you are reading the ESV or NIV and are tempted to despair when you read the Scriptures and see a “some manuscripts say” note because you think we are too uncertain or don’t have enough manuscripts to reconstruct the original text correctly, just ask yourself—Do I trust God or not? Has he let me down all these years when I read the ESV or preached from the NIV? Did God fail to give me his Word then? If God hasn’t failed me, I can continue to trust God and his providence that worked through the Reformation to give us the King James Version and continues to work now to give us the ESV, NIV, CSB, etc., and remember Spurgeon’s words: “to us poor puny beings there is danger; there is no fear in the great heart of the Eternal.”