Ad Fontes!—The Concept Of The “Originals” Of Scripture In Seventeenth-Century Reformed Orthodoxy

By Richard F. Brash

[Richard F. Brash is a Mission Partner of St Ebbe’s Church, Oxford, and is currently a PhD candidate in Systematic Theology at New College in the University of Edinburgh.]

Abstract

Present-day evangelical discussions of the “originals” of Scripture typically focus on the autographa. But it is increasingly recognized that in seventeenth-century Reformed orthodox theology, reference to the “originals” of Scripture meant something more than just the autographa.

This article substantiates the claim that, while some of the Reformed orthodox made the conceptual distinction between the autographa and the apographa, they typically posited a practical univocity between these two. This univocity, and the doctrine of the providential preservation of Scripture that underlay it, came under increasing pressure during the seventeenth century, and so it underwent some refinement. But ultimately most Reformed orthodox of this period maintained the belief that Scripture had been preserved in the extant copies, which were as far as they were concerned “original.” This belief distinguished their position from Rome’s, and also made them much less willing than their successors to allow conjectural emendation of the biblical text.

Methodologically, this article follows the diachronic development of Reformed discussion of the “original” biblical texts through the century 1588–1687. Theologians considered include William Whitaker (1548–1595), William Ames (1576–1633), John Owen (1616–1683), and Francis Turretin (1623–1687). There is also discussion of the relevant sections of the Leiden Synopsis, the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) and the Helvetic Consensus Formula (1675).

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Present-day evangelical discussions of the “originals” of Scripture typically focus on the autographa, in other words, the texts as written by the first author(s) (or, in certain cases, redactors) of each biblical book.[1] The influence of Old Princeton in this regard, and particularly the doctrine of Scripture as articulated by B. B. Warfield and A. A. Hodge, is well-known.[2] But it is also now increasingly recognized that in seventeenth-century Reformed orthodox theology, the “originals” of Scripture had a different meaning.

As Richard Muller has argued, “the scholastics argue positively that the apographa [in other words, the manuscripts of Scripture presently available to them] preserve intact the true words of the prophets and the apostles and that the God-breathed character of Scripture is manifest in the apographa as well as in the autographa.”[3] In this article, I will support and illustrate Muller’s claim, adding some diachronic nuance in line with the development of the doctrine of Scripture through the seventeenth century. Following Muller, I will demonstrate that, while some of the Reformed orthodox did make the conceptual, heuristic distinction between the autographa and the apographa, they typically posited a practical univocity between these two. This univocity, and the doctrine of the providential preservation of Scripture that underlay it, came under increasing pressure during the seventeenth century, and so it underwent some refinement, the details of which I will describe. But ultimately most Reformed orthodox of this period maintained the belief that Scripture had been preserved in the extant copies, which were as far as they were concerned “original.” This distinguished their position from Rome’s, as we shall see. It also made them much less willing than many of their successors to countenance conjectural emendation of the biblical text.

Methodologically, I follow the development of Reformed discussion of the “originals” of Scripture through the century 1588–1687. These dates do not reflect distinct eras or significant divisions, but mark a hundred-year period bounded by the publication of William Whitaker’s Disputation on Holy Scripture in 1588, and the death of Francis Turretin in 1687. For convenience, I will refer to this period as “the seventeenth century.” It is of course beyond the scope of this article to engage with every seventeenth-century Reformed theologian. I will therefore focus primarily on certain individuals whose relevant works represent significant contributions to the discussion, principally William Whitaker (1548–1595), William Ames (1576–1633), John Owen (1616–1683), and Francis Turretin (1623–1687). Because of the influence of their works on certain confessional symbols of the seventeenth century, I will also discuss the relevant statements, particularly the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) and the Helvetic Consensus Formula (1675).

I.

The early Reformers had not been greatly troubled with the minutiae arising from the question of the identity and integrity of the Scripture to which they appealed. For example, they basically agreed that deciding between variant readings in the manuscript tradition was a matter of judging the evidence. They had been content to affirm that God had inspired and then providentially preserved the Scriptures, without specifying in detail what this preservation had involved.[4]

For example, Calvin argued that God’s work to “transmit this treasure [of Scripture] to posterity” by the providential preservation of the books of the Bible throughout the vicissitudes of Israelite history was a testimony to their divine origin.[5] In the next generation, both Musculus (1560) and Vermigli (1564, 1576) asserted that providence had preserved those books necessary to salvation.[6] Bullinger’s first Decade of sermons (1549) likewise asserted that the books of the OT came “sound and uncorrupted [integri & incorrupti]” to the time of Christ. Similarly, the books of the NT, Bullinger writes,

were throughout all persecutions kept in the church safe and uncorrupted, and are come sound and uncorrupted into our hands, upon whom the ends of the world are fallen. For by the vigilant care and unspeakable goodness of God, our Father, it is brought to pass, that no age at any time either hath or shall want so great a treasure.[7]

But questions in regards to the text grew in importance during the seventeenth century, in response not only to the need to respond to Roman Catholic apologists and challenges from within the Reformed fold (the details of which are largely beyond the scope of this article), but also to the humanist call for a return to the original texts of the Bible (ad fontes), coupled with the discovery of ancient biblical manuscripts. These pressures forced Reformed theologians to define and defend their position with respect to the “original” texts of Scripture.

The rise of polyglot Bibles in the seventeenth century is evidence of the growing awareness of different texts and translations of the Bible. This was a period in which a number of significant witnesses to the biblical text were “discovered,” or made available to the scholarly community at large, for the first time. As Marvin Vincent noted more than a century ago, this precipitated a paradigm shift: before the Reformation, “manuscripts were collated, and their various readings noted, but no comparison of them was attempted,” and this meant that “the evidence was scanty in amount and inferior in quality. The principal uncials were either unknown or inaccessible.”[8]

For Vincent, the most important new “discovery” in England was the gift of Codex Alexandrinus (A) to King Charles I by Cyril Lucar, the Patriarch of Constantinople, in 1628. Bishop Walton’s Polyglot Bible of 1657 made use of readings from A at the foot of its NT text. Vincent remarks that most of the authorities used in Walton’s critical apparatus had never been used before. Included among these were Codex Montfortianus, as well as a number of later manuscripts.[9] Two of these, according to Vincent (Evang. 59 and Act. 36) were “valuable” witnesses to the text.[10]

So, as the century went on, we may discern a pattern of ever-wider dissemination of different biblical manuscripts. On the other hand, even by the end of the seventeenth century there were many significant textual witnesses that had yet to be made widely available. Codex Vaticanus (B), for example, was not collated until about 1720, by Richard Bentley.

II.

William Whitaker (1548–1595) is perhaps not well known today, but in the words of Woodbridge and Balmer, he “crafted the most extensive Protestant book on biblical authority in Elizabeth’s England.”[11] Whitaker published his Disputation on Holy Scripture in 1588. The context for his writing was the controversy against Roman Catholicism which, for Whitaker, was “nothing less than antichristianism” and “a monster mis-shapen, vast, horrible, and manifold.”[12]

Whitaker is clear in his condemnation of those who claimed that “the sacred writers have, in some places, fallen into mistakes [lapsos].”[13] In his argument, he betrays little or no awareness of the existence of different manuscripts or textual variants. The Scripture contains no mistakes, and the question of “which” Scripture is not entertained: there is no distinction at all here between the autographa and apographa, such as we will find in later writers. Instead, there is an unstated assumption that the extant manuscripts are faithful copies of the inspired autographs.

Whitaker’s verdict on the Latin Vulgate is that it is “false and not authentic.” In contrast, “the Hebrew of the Old Testament, and the Greek of the new, is the sincere and authentic scripture of God” so that “all questions are to be determined by these originals [fontibus], and versions only so far approved as they agree with these originals.”[14]

Whitaker does recognize that there have long existed multiple copies of the Bible. But, while he argues that the Scriptures were “preserved safe in the [Babylonian] captivity,” his conclusion that, “we have now no other, but the very same books of the old Testament as those which were written by Moses and the rest of the prophets,” presumes some sort of providential preservation in the process of the copying of the text.[15] The one concession that Whitaker does make, namely, that “we have not, perhaps, precisely the same forms and shapes of the letters,” allows less than it may appear to, as Whitaker is merely recognizing the shift from the old, Phoenician, script to the Aramaic script of the extant copies of the OT.[16] He is not here admitting any changes to the actual wording, and the question of the originality of the vowel-points in the Masoretic text is simply not one of his concerns.

In his discussion of the Septuagint (LXX), Whitaker comes to the conclusion that the “true Septuagint,” which was “exactly conformable to the Hebrew originals” is now lost to us.[17] On the other hand, the Greek text as we now have it is “a mixed and miserably corrupted document.”[18] This distinction is significant, because it demonstrates that Whitaker does recognize a phenomenon of textual corruption over time (in the case of the LXX) but not with respect to the Hebrew and Greek “originals,” which clearly have the status of a special case.

When Whitaker comes to discuss the Greek NT, he admits the (in his view, unlikely) possibility that Matthew first wrote his gospel in Hebrew or Syriac.[19] This is also noteworthy, because it reinforces the point that Whitaker can conceive of a (theoretical) text of Scripture in our hands which is not the autograph, but is nevertheless without errors, authoritative, and providentially preserved.

In conclusion, Whitaker’s understanding concerning the “originals” of Scripture, while not laid out systematically, may be extrapolated from several places in his polemic. He believed in an inspired Bible without mistakes, and assumed that the extant manuscripts were faithful copies of the autographa. He recognized that there were multiple copies of the Bible, but he believed that for the most part they were the same. He therefore rejected any textual emendation of the extant texts of the Bible. His comparison with the LXX and the Vulgate in this regard reveals that he believed some kind of special, providential preservation was at work to maintain the perfection of these copies. So, for Whitaker, the “original” is not necessarily to be equated with the autographa alone, since the copies are effectively the same as the autographa.[20]

III.

William Ames (1576–1633) moved from Cambridge to Rotterdam in the 1620s, and in 1630 his Marrow of Sacred Divinity was published in London, in Latin.[21] It became a popular work, and in 1643, ten years after Ames’s death, it was published in an English translation, for (as the title-page engagingly revealed) “the benefit of such who are not acquainted with strange tongues.”[22] The year was, of course, that of the first sitting of the Westminster Assembly (on July 1), and there is no doubt that Assembly members would have been familiar with Ames’s work.

One feature of Ames’s writing that distinguishes it from Whitaker’s is its systematic form. The thirty-fourth chapter of Ames’s book is called “Of the Holy Scripture.”

31. Hence the providence of GOD in preserving the Fountaines [Providentia in conservandis fontibus] hath been always famous, and to be adored, not onely that they did not wholly perish, but also that they should not be maimed by the losse of any booke, or deformed by any grievous fault, when in the meane while there is no one of the anucient versions that remaines whole. 

32. Neverthelesse, from those humane versions there may be all those things perceived which are absolutly necessary, if so be they agree with the fountaines in the essentiall parts, as all those versions that are received in the Churches are wont to doe, although they differ, and are defective in the smaller things not a few.[23]

In this statement, we may identify a similar set of emphases to those of Whitaker in the 1580s. That is, Ames appeals to the Greek and Hebrew “fountaines” over the versions, without specifying any real distinction between the autographa and the apographa.[24] It is not clear from this quotation whether Ames’s view of the manuscript tradition has changed from that held by Whitaker: he refuses to admit any “grievous” fault, which suggests that he may have been more willing than Whitaker to acknowledge some less significant faults in the extant manuscripts, but this is only an argument from silence.

We find Ames’s more developed (but less systematic) doctrine in his polemical work against Cardinal Bellarmine, although this book has not yet been translated into English.[25] It is a measure of Bellarmine’s ongoing influence as a defender of Roman Catholicism that Ames still felt it necessary to refute him eight years after his death. Indeed, Ames notes at the beginning of his book that he is in a long line of Reformed writers responding to Bellarmine, including Whitaker and Junius (1545–1602).[26] Ames’s work consists of four volumes, and the first book of volume one (De verbo Dei) deals with the doctrine of Scripture.

In response to Bellarmine’s contention that the Hebrew of the OT contains some corruptions, Ames replies, “there is no corruption, but a variant reading, which in certain cases may be explained as an error of the scribes, as Bellarmine afterwards admits.”[27] Indeed, in those five places where Bellarmine alleges corruption of the text, Ames says that “nothing of the kind will be found, so that it must be acknowledged that the Hebrew originals remain pure, and free from corruption.”[28] He continues: “The errors which have crept into certain copies, do not make every edition of the copies corrupt, displayed when they themselves [i.e., Roman Catholic scholars] by their skills are able to distinguish errors.”[29]

In further sections, Ames follows a similar pattern of argumentation to that of Whitaker, rebutting Bellarmine’s complaints with respect to the Hebrew and Greek texts and taking him to task over the failings of the Vulgate, “which is able to err.”[30] It is true that the various versions are “sound in respect of more serious [weighty][31] matters,” but in any case, “the Church might always for any reason consult the originals.”[32] By “originals” Ames means those texts written in the “original” languages of Scripture, without specifying the relationship of those texts to the autographa.

Not surprisingly, given that Ames had spent some time in Rotterdam, his Reformed contemporaries on the continent held a similar position. The Synopsis Purioris Theologiae (1625) is described by its editor as “an exhaustive yet concise presentation of Reformed theology as it was conceived in the first decades of the seventeenth century.”[33] In this text, the author of the disputation on the canonical and apocryphal books asserts,

The edition of Scripture that should be considered authentic is the one that was issued autographōs, that is, “originally” and “directly from its source,” by the authority of God. This is the archetypos [archetype] itself, or its apographos, that is, “the copy of it.”… 

Another rendering of the authentic version is itself also Sacred Scripture, so long as it has been translated into other languages as devoutly as possible, and corresponds to it precisely and completely—as much, at least, as this can be done.[34] Such translation is not only permitted and useful (contrary to what certain papal teachers have determined), but also entirely necessary, so that it may be of use to all people, and so that it may be understood, read, and heard by all people and those of any kind—also lay-people. However, it would be foolish (along with those same papal teachers) to declare either the Septuagint, or the Latin translation of either Testament, or any other version, not only the received and commonly employed version, but even the authentic one.[35]

Whatever else may be said about this account, it is clear that the autographa and the apographa share the distinction of being “authentic.”

Like Whitaker, Ames and his Reformed contemporaries in Europe were convinced that the “original” Bible manuscripts in possession of the church had been providentially preserved. So, Ames invites Christians to praise God for his “famous” preservation of Scripture, which should be “adored.” If there is a hint of a different accent in Ames as opposed to Whitaker, it is perhaps in the admission that there may have been errors in certain copies, but Ames is adamant that there can have been no error that affected the entirety of manuscripts available to the church. As we turn now to the Westminster Confession of Faith, we will note the similarities between WCF and Ames’s view.

IV.

The Westminster Assembly’s doctrine of Scripture is attested in the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF, 1647).[36] Muller calls this “undoubtedly the greatest confessional document written during the age of Protestant scholasticism.”[37] The recently published Minutes and Papers are largely silent on the details of the debates concerning the doctrine of Scripture and offer us only the occasional tantalizing comment. We know, for example, that on July 4, 1645 (“Fryday [sic] morning”), the Assembly turned its attention to the Confession of Faith.[38] After an initial debate, it was resolved that “the subcommittee for the confession of faith shall make report to the Assembly on Munday [sic] morning of what is in their hands concerning God and concerning the scriptures.”[39] This was to become the first part of WCF (chs. 1 and 2).

Westminster’s confessional formulation of the doctrine of Scripture stands, in a sense, as a bridge between the earlier position of Whitaker and Ames on the one hand, and the later views of Owen and Turretin on the other. Certainly, the influence of Whitaker on Westminster has been recognized. Wayne Spear, for one, argues that Whitaker was the primary theologian who lies behind the doctrine of Scripture in the Westminster Confession.[40] Spear shows how the six topics that make up Whitaker’s Disputation are (albeit in a different order) exactly those topics which make up chapter 1 of WCF.[41] Spear’s is a convincing essay, but in his attempt to trace the roots of the Confession in Whitaker, he sometimes seems to assume too much continuity in their respective positions. For example, he asserts that by “their” [that is, Whitaker’s and WCF’s] doctrine of providential preservation, “it was not meant that there were no mistakes in copying; rather that by a comparison of existing copies the original reading could be determined in all important matters.”[42] As we have seen, more than half a century before WCF, Whitaker was less willing to admit of “mistakes” in the copying process than his successors were. The WCF seems to be closer to Ames at this point. Despite this difference of nuance, the strong relationship of continuity between William Whitaker and WCF has been clearly established.

WCF 1.8 reads:

The Old Testament in Hebrew[43] (which was the native language of the people of God of old), and the New Testament in Greek (which, at the time of the writing of it, was most generally known to the nations), being immediately inspired by God, and, by his singular care and providence, kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical; so as, in all controversies of religion, the church is finally to appeal unto them. But, because these original tongues are not known to all the people of God, who have right unto, and interest in the Scriptures, and are commanded, in the fear of God, to read and search them, therefore they are to be translated into the vulgar language of every nation unto which they come, that, the Word of God dwelling plentifully in all, they may worship him in an acceptable manner; and, through patience and comfort of the Scriptures, may have hope.[44]

The most notable feature of this article of WCF for our purposes is its claim that the “authentical” scriptures are the OT in Hebrew and the NT in Greek. This is of course the standard Protestant position, but which texts did the framers of the confession have in view? Robert Letham, in his analysis of the Westminster Assembly’s theology, says that WCF’s assertion that the Hebrew text of the OT and the Greek text of the NT were “immediately inspired by God” is “an appeal to the original autographa.”[45] If inspiration is understood to apply only to the act of the Spirit in the initial writing of the Bible, this would be self-evidently the case, but we should not therefore conclude that the Assembly declared the autographa alone to be the “authentical” scriptures. Rather, WCF declares that the Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible, which have been “kept pure in all ages” are “authentical.”[46]

How can we know exactly what was meant at this point? In a book published in the same year as WCF (1647), Edward Leigh (who was a member of the Westminster Assembly) wrote, “The Hebrew of the old Testament and the Greeke of the new is the authentique Edition, and the pure fountain of divine truth.”[47] But he clarified his position on the following page thus:

When we speake of the originall and authenticke Text of Holy Scripture, that is not to be so understood as if we meant it of the Autographs written by the hand of Moses, or the other Prophets or Apostles, but onely of the originall or the primogeniall Text in that tongue, out of which divers versions were derived according to the variety of tongues.[48]

In other words, the distinction is not textual, but linguistic. The appeal is made, not to a particular class of texts (the autographa) but to the textual tradition as a whole, in the original languages of Scripture. We have already seen this point exemplified in Whitaker’s polemics, and this is the confessional context in which we must understand John Owen’s appeal to the “originals” of Scripture too.

V.

Our best source for understanding John Owen’s doctrine of the providential preservation of Scripture is his work of 1659 entitled Of the divine originall, authority, self-evidencing light, and povver [sic] of the Scriptures.[49] In this work of polemic, Owen makes explicit the distinction between the autographa and the apographa. The former, he grants, are almost certainly lost.[50] The latter (to which he refers as “the present original copies of the Scripture”: note Owen’s use of “original” to refer to the apographa) are those which Owen seeks to defend. Again, in making this distinction Owen is not arguing that the apographa are any less “original” than the autographa. Owen does not claim infallibility for the scribes who copied the manuscripts of the Bible, nor does he argue for an ongoing act of inspiration in the copying process.[51] Indeed, he acknowledges, “we are ready to own all their failings that can be proved.”[52] But, given the special care taken by the Jews (before Christ) to preserve the Scriptures, he denies that the Bible has suffered the same process of corruption in its textual transmission history as other, profane, writings have.[53]

Owen argues that,

the whole Scripture, entire as given out from God, without any loss, is preserved in the copies of the originals yet remaining.... In them all, we say, is every letter and tittle of the word. These copies, we say, are the rule, standard, and touchstone of all translations, ancient or modern, by which they are in all things to be examined, tried, corrected, amended; and themselves only by themselves.[54]

Owen’s phrase, “the copies of the originals,” is most interesting, because it shows that by the late 1640s, there is in orthodoxy a distinction of some sort between the fontes and the extant copies. This is what Muller refers to when he says, “The Protestant scholastics distinguish between the absolute infallibility of the original copies [Muller means by this slightly confusing terminology, the autographa] of the biblical books and the textual imperfection of the apographa.”[55] Muller continues: “Their exegetical method intended, by means of mastery of languages and the comparative study of extant texts, to overcome errors caused by the transmission of the texts over centuries and to approach the text and meaning of the original autographa critically.”[56] Nevertheless, this was all carried out within the doctrinal conviction of the providential preservation of the text, and a high view of the apographa.

Something may be said at this point about the implications of Owen’s doctrine for his exegetical work. His massive commentary on Hebrews reveals that Owen practiced the work of a text critic. According to Knapp, “his textual work was thorough, exact, and meticulous” and in this Owen was in a league apart from many of his contemporaries.[57] What this means, Knapp argues, is that Owen did not reject text criticism as such, but the way in which it was being practiced by others so as to reconstruct the putative “original” text. This, Owen believed, was to place human “wisdom” over the wisdom of God. So, Owen followed his own principles in concluding that Paul, the author of Hebrews (according to Owen) turned to the Hebrew originals as the authoritative source for his OT quotations, using the LXX for “interpretative purposes” only. This conclusion squares with Owen’s theory concerning the value and use of the ancient versions: they have an ancillary role, both for the Apostle as the author of the letter, and for the later interpreter. For Knapp, Owen “was fighting scholars’ abuses of text criticism with text criticism itself.”[58]

Like Whitaker before him, Owen believed in God’s particular work to preserve the Bible from corruption, a work which distinguished Scripture from other, profane, literature. But Owen was readier than Whitaker to accept that there were errors in the extant copies: his view is that the entirety of the manuscript tradition preserves the original Word of God—a view that is similar to that of William Ames. What he would not countenance is that there might be anything that was once the written word which is now not written for the church in the extant texts; it is on this basis that he excluded textual emendations based on translations or editorial conjecture, and this is also probably the reason that he held to such a conservative position with respect to the Hebrew vowel points.[59]

VI.

The most mature expression of Francis Turretin’s theology is found in his Institutes of Elenctic Theology, a three-part work published between 1679 and 1685. In his sustained discussion of the doctrine of Scripture, Turretin argues for the “integrity” of the Bible, and as part of his defense of Scripture’s integrity, he deals with the issue of textual variants. First, he recognizes the existence of “irregular writing of words or the punctuation or the various readings (which all acknowledge do often occur).”[60] This, he says, is not the real issue. Nor, significantly, is the question about “whether the copies [apographa] which we have so agree with the originals [autographis] as to vary from them not even in a little point or letter.” So, Turretin clearly accepts that textual variants do exist. Rather, the true question is, “whether they so differ as to make the genuine corrupt and to hinder us from receiving the original text [textus originales] as a rule of faith and practice.”[61] This might seem on the surface as though Turretin is appealing to an original autograph, in contrast to corrupted copies, but as our discussion up to this point should have alerted us, such a reading would be anachronistic.

Turretin’s belief, worked out in his practice of treating of textual variants and other complex issues of hermeneutics, is that all apparent contradictions in the Bible “will be satisfactorily disposed of when we speak of the authentic edition.”[62] Under his tenth question (Have the original texts of the Old and New Testaments come down to us pure and uncorrupted?) Turretin turns to the specific question of preservation of texts. In section 2, Turretin makes a crucial distinction of definition that is vital if we are correctly to interpret his doctrine at this point:

By the original texts, we do not mean the autographs written by the hand of Moses, of the prophets and of the apostles, which certainly do not now exist. We mean their apographs which are so called because they set forth to us the word of God in the very words of those who wrote under the immediate inspiration of the Holy Spirit.[63]

In section 3, Turretin makes it plain that he is concerned to argue, not that there are no faults whatsoever in the extant manuscripts, but that the “original texts” (i.e., the apographa; Turretin sometimes refers to them as the “sources”) have not been so corrupted by copyists that they are no longer fit for purpose.[64]

It is important to understand what Turretin means by this purpose. He says that the Scriptures must be able to function as “the judge of controversies and the rule to which all the versions must be applied.” But we must not interpret this in a minimalist, functionalist sense, as if it were enough for the Bible to fulfil a function within the church independent of its necessary properties. For Turretin, the Bible can only be fit for purpose to the extent that it is inerrant and possessing “integrity.”

Turretin adduces seven arguments to prove that the “sources” have not been corrupted. Section 25 contains an important distinction: “A corruption differs from a variant reading. We acknowledge that many variant readings occur both in the Old and New Testaments arising from a comparison of different manuscripts, but we deny corruption (at least corruption that is universal).”[65] So, while it is quite possible (even likely) that heretics may have attempted to corrupt some manuscripts, Turretin will not countenance talk of “universal corruption,” both “on account of the providence of God, who would not permit them to carry out their intention, and on account of the diligence of the orthodox fathers, who having in their possession various manuscripts preserved them free from corruptions.”[66]

Under questions 11 to 15, Turretin deals with issues related to the different versions of Scripture. He establishes that the Hebrew version of the OT and the Greek of the NT are the only “authentic” versions. By an “authentic” writing, Turretin means “one in which all things are abundantly sufficient to inspire confidence; one to which the fullest credit is due in its own kind; one of which we can be entirely sure that it has proceeded from the author whose name it bears; one in which everything is written just as he himself wished.”[67] It follows from this definition that both the autographa (in a primary and original sense) and the apographa (in a secondary and derivative sense) may be said to be “authentic.” Turretin does not locate authenticity in the autographa so that the apographa need to be corrected by them, but rather locates it in both the autographa and the apographa, so that any translations or versions deriving from these should be corrected by them, considered as one. In sum, Turretin presumes for the purposes of his argument that apographa and autographa are materially the same.[68]

Van den Belt helpfully analyses the distinction Turretin makes, between primary and secondary authenticity.[69] Authentic writing is characterized by being αὐτόπιστος (self-authenticating), whereas the secondary authenticity of the copies derives from their accuracy. Van den Belt asks the question why Turretin reserves the category of autopistia for the autographa.[70] He argues convincingly that “the logically necessary autopistia of the autographa leads to the logically necessary authenticity of the apographa.”[71] His conclusion is that “the underlying assumption is that God in his providence must have superintended the accurate transmission of the text.”[72]

It is therefore important for Turretin to defend the Hebrew and Greek texts against Roman claims that they are corrupt. This he does, although sometimes on the basis of mistaken appeals to the witness of the majority of texts, as for example when he argues for the originality of John 8:1–11, 1 John 5:7, and the longer ending of Mark’s Gospel.[73] There is little or no idea here of the principles of textual criticism to be developed later, such as that the hardest reading is to be preferred (lectio difficilior) or that certain textual “families” are to be given more weight than others in determining between variant readings.

The Helvetic Consensus Formula of 1675, which was partly written by Turretin, reflected his nuanced position, distinguishing between “the vowel points themselves” and “the power of the points” (in reference to a tradition of vocalization that could be traced back to the intended reading of the autographa).[74] The Helvetic Consensus Formula is notable also for its rejection of both conjectural textual emendation of the MT, and textual criticism on the basis of the ancient versions.[75] Section 2 of the Consensus makes it clear that, in the understanding of its authors, the “Hebrew Original” of the OT means the apographa, for it is specified as that “which we have received and to this day do retain.” The section continues: “its words, inspired of God … together with the Original of the New Testament, [form] the sole and complete rule of our faith and life; and to its standard, as to a Lydian stone, all extant versions, oriental and occidental, ought to be applied, and wherever they differ, be conformed.”[76]

VII.

It is above all the question of authority that frames and dominates the whole discussion of Scripture and its preservation in the seventeenth century, because the imperative as far as the Protestant scholastics were concerned was to appeal to a Bible that was authoritative. If the Bible’s inspiration— and therefore its authority—were quoad verba, then it was necessary to answer the question: which verba?

For the Roman Catholics, this was a relatively easy question to answer; the text of the Latin Vulgate was more or less fixed. But the Protestants appealed to the “originals” of the Old and New Testaments, in Hebrew and Greek respectively, and located therein the locus of authority. So, they needed to demonstrate (in the face of the Roman critique) that they had access to these “originals” and that they could be sure therefore that they were in possession of the Word of God given to the church for all time. The Protestant scholastics did this by claiming that the “originals” (fontes) was a category that included not the autographa alone, but also the extant apographa. In other words, the texts in their hands were indeed the Word of God, and this Word was the final authority.

This fundamental understanding of what Scripture is helps explain the developing orthodox approach to the issue of textual variants, or apparent “errors” in the texts. As we have seen, in the late sixteenth century, when fewer textual variants were known and there was less awareness of diversity in the extant texts, it was easier for apologists like William Whitaker to argue that the manuscripts he held were more or less verbatim copies of the autographa. As the seventeenth century went on, this assertion had to be more nuanced. By the time of Turretin, there is an admission of significant variant readings which goes hand in hand with a denial of “corruption” in the manuscript tradition as a whole.

One thing that makes this question of particular interest is that the seventeenth-century formulation is demonstrably not the same as that which is commonly held by Reformed and evangelical theologians today, at least at the level of detail.[77] The key shift is that the locus of authority today is typically in the autographa alone, not the apographa and autographa together, as most seventeenth-century Reformed writers maintained. One consequence of this shift is that conservative scholars today are usually more willing to accept conjectural emendations to the text than their Reformed forebears would have been. Another effect of this shift is that text critics today consider the number of extant manuscripts that support a reading to be far less decisive a factor in determining what the “original” reading was.[78]

Our context today is of course different from the seventeenth century, and a present-day doctrine of Scripture must respond to present-day challenges. Those challenges suggest that an appeal to the autographa is wholly appropriate with respect to the pressing issues of inspiration, inerrancy, or authority. But more work needs to be done on the theological relationship between the autographa and the texts that have come down to us. Where is the activity of God in this textual history, and how do we account for what we have in our hands? In this respect, the Reformed orthodox reflections on the providential preservation of Scripture form a useful resource on which to draw, even if we cannot follow all of their conclusions.

Notes

1. The classic formulation is the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (1978), Article 10. The full text of the Statement may be found in Norman Geisler, ed., Inerrancy (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1980), 493–502.
2. Such a focus on the autographa was not an innovation of Old Princeton, but was in fact typical of conservative Protestantism in North America in the nineteenth century. See Ronald F. Satta, The Sacred Text: Biblical Authority in Nineteenth-Century America, Princeton Theological Monograph Series (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2007).
3. Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1985), 53, s.v. “autographa.”
4. F. F. Bruce, Tradition Old and New (Exeter: Paternoster, 1970), 154–55.
5. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (1960; repr., Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2011), 1.8.10. See also the comments on Calvin’s treatment of providence with respect to Scripture in Henk van den Belt, The Authority of Scripture in Reformed Theology: Truth and Trust (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 40, 66.
6. See Richard A. Muller, Holy Scripture, vol. 2 of Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725 (1992; repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 375.
7. Cited in Peter A. Lillback and Richard B. Gaffin, eds., Thy Word Is Still Truth: Essential Writings on the Doctrine of Scripture from the Reformation to Today (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2013), 63–64. For further discussion of Bullinger’s view, see also J. V. Fesko, “The Doctrine of Scripture in Reformed Orthodoxy,” in A Companion to Reformed Orthodoxy, ed. Herman Selderhuis, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 40 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 433.
8. Marvin R. Vincent, A History of the Textual Criticism of the New Testament (New York: Macmillan, 1899), 68.
9. Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 147. This early sixteenth-century manuscript was the first Greek manuscript to be discovered that contained the Johannine Comma.
10. Vincent, History of the Textual Criticism of the New Testament, 65. Vincent is probably referring to miniscule 36a, which contains the Acts of the Apostles, and dates from the twelfth century, and uncial 059, a manuscript of the Gospels dated to the fourth or fifth centuries. See the introduction to NA27.
11. John D. Woodbridge and Randall H. Balmer, “The Princetonians and Biblical Authority: An Assessment of the Ernest Sandeen Proposal,” in Scripture and Truth, ed. D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1983), 255.
12. William Whitaker, A Disputation on Holy Scripture: Against the Papists, Especially Bellarmine and Stapleton, ed. and trans. William Fitzgerald (1849; repr., London: Forgotten Books, 2012), 20–21.
13. Ibid., 36–37.
14. Ibid., 111.
15. Ibid., 117.
16. Ibid., 116–17. It is interesting to note that John Owen, writing some sixty years later, denied that this shift had taken place. Owen’s particular context, and his place in the controversy over the Hebrew vowel points, would have made this a “dangerous” admission.
17. Such a conclusion may seem curious today, but in the seventeenth century the legend of the seventy translators of the LXX was commonly believed.
18. Ibid., 121. Along similar lines, Edward Leigh later wrote with respect to the LXX that if it, “as well as the Hebrew had been authenticall, the Lord would have been carefull to have kept it pure and uncorrupt unto our dayes, as well as he hath done the Hebrew.” But instead the LXX is now “full of corruptions” (Edward Leigh, A Treatise of Divinity [London: Printed by E. Griffin for William Lee, 1647], 120–21), accessed March 3, 2016, Early English Books Online.
19. Whitaker, Disputation, 125–27.
20. Woodbridge and Balmer, “Princetonians and Biblical Authority,” 256. This distinction is not always made clear in secondary literature. For example, Woodbridge and Balmer say that Whitaker held “a position that could be fairly categorized as ‘complete biblical infallibility in the original documents.’” This is true, but Whitaker did not mean by “originals” the autographa alone, as Woodbridge and Balmer assume.
21. William Ames, Medulla S.S. Theologiae (London: Printed by Thomas Coates for Robert Adullam, 1630).
22. Ames, Marrow of Sacred Divinity (London, 1643).
23. Ibid., n.p.
24. Woodbridge and Balmer, “Princetonians and Biblical Authority,” 257. Once again, this point is missed by Woodbridge and Balmer, who claim that Ames held “a position that could be categorized without essential distortion as complete biblical infallibility in the original autographs.” The problem with the case made by Woodbridge and Balmer is that they wrongly assume Whitaker’s references to “originals” or “sources” refer to the autographa.
25. William Ames, Bellarminus Enervatus (Oxford: Printed by William Turner, 1629). Translations from the Latin are my own.
26. Ibid., n.p.
27. Ibid., 18–19.
28. Ibid., 19.
29. Ibid., 19–20.
30. Ibid., 26.
31. The Latin root of gravioribus (“more serious”) is the same as the word translated “grievous” in the passage cited above from the Marrow of Sacred Divinity.
32. Ibid., 25.
33. Synopsis Purioris Theologiae / Synopsis of a Purer Theology: Latin Text and English Translation: Vol. 1, Disputations 1–23, ed. Dolf te Velde, trans. Riemer A. Faber (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 1, accessed December 18, 2017, ProQuest Ebook Central.
34. It is interesting (although beyond the scope of this article) to consider what the author of the Synopsis might have meant by this terminology, and what he thought it looked like in practice.
35. Ibid., 81. Scripture references removed. I am indebted to Dr. Peter Gurry for drawing my attention to this source.
36. The relevant sections are reproduced in Lillback and Gaffin, eds., Thy Word Is Still Truth, 217–22.
37. Muller, Holy Scripture, 90.
38. The Minutes and Papers of the Westminster Assembly, 1643–1652, ed. Chad Van Dixhoorn and David F. Wright (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 3:627.
39. Ibid.
40. Wayne Spear, “The Westminster Confession of Faith and Holy Scripture,” in To Glorify and Enjoy God: A Commemoration of the 350th Anniversary of the Westminster Assembly, ed. John L. Carson and David W. Hall (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1994), 85–100.
41. Ibid., 88.
42. Ibid., 94.
43. WCF does not mention portions of the Bible written in Aramaic. This may be because 17th-century divines did not distinguish clearly between the two languages, although I have been unable to substantiate this point.
44. Cited in Lillback and Gaffin, eds., Thy Word Is Still Truth, 222. I have deleted the Scripture references cited in this printed edition.
45. Robert Letham, The Westminster Assembly: Reading Its Theology in Historical Context (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2009), 144.
46. Italics mine. J. F. Peter, “The Reformed View of the Scriptures,” SJT 1 (1948): 39, is thus also wrong when he declares that according to WCF, “The authoritative Scriptures are the autographs.” See also Richard Muller’s support for my argument in Holy Scripture, 413.
47. Leigh, Treatise, 101.
48. Ibid., 102. Italics mine.
49. John Owen, Of the Divine Originall, Authority, Self-evidencing Light, and Povver of the Scriptures (Oxford: Henry Hall, Printer to the University, 1659), accessed May 1, 2017, Early English Books Online. An edited version is also found in The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold (Edinburgh: Johnstone & Hunter, 1853; repr., Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1968), 16:281–481. Page citations below are from this printed edition.
50. Owen, Of the Divine Original, 353. It is interesting that Owen thinks that the autographs “could not without a miracle have been preserved.” This strongly suggests that his view of what did happen in the process of providential preservation was not miraculous in nature.
51. Ibid., 355. Owen does, however, speak of the way in which “the infallible Spirit yet continued his guidance in an extraordinary manner” through the copying process. In its intention, this language carries the sense that preservation perfects (or at least mediates the fruit of) inspiration.
52. Ibid., 355.
53. Ibid., 356–57.
54. Ibid., 357.
55. Muller, Dictionary, 40, s.v. “apographa.” We may note that this “textual imperfection” is more than Whitaker had been willing to concede in 1588.
56. Ibid.
57. Henry M. Knapp, “Understanding the Mind of God: John Owen and Seventeenth-Century Exegetical Methodology” (PhD diss., Calvin Theological Seminary, 2002), 379.
58. Ibid.
59. On the vowel-points debate, see Richard A. Muller, “The Debate Over the Vowel Points and the Crisis in Orthodox Hermeneutics,” in After Calvin: Studies in the Development of a Theological Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 152.
60. Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, ed. James T. Dennison Jr., trans. George Musgrave Giger, 3 vols. (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1992), 1:71.
61. Ibid.
62. Ibid., 1:85.
63. Ibid., 1:106. Italics mine.
64. Ibid.
65. Ibid., 1:111.
66. Ibid., 1:112.
67. Ibid., 1:113.
68. For Turretin, the versions and translations of the Bible are also “authentic” (and this is what makes them useful and indeed necessary), but this is only in a material sense, in the things expressed. Only the Hebrew OT and the Greek NT are authentic “formally and as to the mode of enunciation” (ibid., 1:125). On this principle, both the Septuagint (1:127–30) and the Vulgate (1:131–34) may be said to be unauthentic, possessing neither divinity nor (ultimate) authority.
69. Van den Belt, Authority of Scripture in Reformed Theology, 158.
70. Ibid., 159.
71. Ibid.
72. Ibid. Italics mine.
73. Turretin, Institutes, 1:115. With respect to the last of these only, Turretin’s argument is actually borne out by the manuscript tradition.
74. Bruce, Tradition Old and New, 161. Incidentally, it is of note that the contention, made by Bruce, that “the Helvetic Consensus Formula provided that no man should be licensed to preach the gospel without first professing his belief in the divine inspiration of the Hebrew vowel points” appears to have been lifted from a very similarly worded claim in John Bowman, “A Forgotten Controversy,” EvQ 20 (1948): 46. I cannot find independent evidence of this, however, and the wording of both the Formula and Turretin’s own discussion of the question seem alike to suggest that by 1675 it was not necessarily the points as orthographic details (on the level of jots and tittles) that were confessed as inspired, but the vowel tradition that they represented. However, I have been unable to pursue this point further, and would gladly be corrected.
75. Cited in Lillback and Gaffin, eds., Thy Word Is Still Truth, 460. See Article 3: “Therefore, we can by no means approve the opinion of those who declare that the text which the Hebrew Original exhibits was determined by man’s will alone, and do not scruple at all to remodel a Hebrew reading which they consider unsuitable, and amend it from the Greek Versions of the LXX and others, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Chaldee Targums, or even from other sources, yea, sometimes from their own reason alone; and furthermore, they do not acknowledge any other reading to be genuine except that which can be educed by the critical power of the human judgment from the collation of editions with each other and with the various readings of the Hebrew Original itself—which, they maintain, has been corrupted in various ways; and finally, they affirm that besides the Hebrew edition of the present time, there are in the Versions of the ancient interpreters which differ from our Hebrew context other Hebrew Originals, since these Versions are also indicative of ancient Hebrew Originals differing from each other. Thus they bring the foundation of our faith and its inviolable authority into perilous hazard.”
76. Ibid. It is notable, however, that the word rendered “Original” in the English translation of the Consensus is, in Latin, “Codex.” The word normally carries only the sense of “manuscript.” Doubtless the Reformed orthodox would have us return ad fontes in reading the Consensus too!
77. The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy is still a key text in this regard, setting as it does the terms for much of the discussion of the doctrine of Scripture in evangelicalism.
78. See, e.g., the relevant sections in Metzger and Ehrman, Text of the New Testament; Ellis R. Brotzman, Old Testament Textual Criticism: A Practical Introduction (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994).