I once had the pleasure of meeting Leander Keck in Cambridge where he used to attend the NT seminars when he was in town. Since then I have tried, from time to time, to read some of his work.Here is a bit from one of his very early books on his theological approach to the Bible called Taking the Bible Seriously. It is basically an attempt to maintain some authority for the Bible while giving full reign to historical criticism. Here is what he says in a brief aside on textual criticism:
It is amazing how fundamentalism* talks so confidently about the inerrant, perfect, infallible character of the original Autographs of the Bible when no one has seen one for more than eighteen centuries! Moreover, it is clear that originally no one thought the wording was perfect since copyists, translators, and authors had little fear of changing it. This is one reason the text critic’s task is so complex. He aims to unravel these changes in order to provide a text which is reasonably reliable. He has no perfect text to offer (pp. 56–57).I don’t have much to say on this since we’ve discussed inerrancy plenty on the blog and Keck isn’t saying anything that Warfield hadn’t addressed in his day (see here). I quote it here as just another example of the objection.
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*In a footnote, he explains: “In this essay, the term ‘fundamentalism’ is used loosely to characterize right-wing Protestantism in general. The term has a checkered history.” From there he goes on short description of the history of the Fundamentals and mentions “more sophisticated” fundamentalists who are fleeing the term. He mentions those involved with Christianity Today and Inter-Varsity Fellowship and concludes, “Recently, conversation has been resumed between sophisticated fundamentalists and the other wings of Protestantism; this is clearly a good omen.” (He doesn’t say who or what it is a good omen for.)