Gairney Bridge

I received this email from another pastor this morning (from Robert Truelove, the pastor of Christ Reformed Church in Lawrenceville, GA — my wife and I attended there for a time while we were living in the Atlanta area; they are a very Biblical, covenantal, family-oriented, and of course Reformed church, and if you’re in the area, you might want to check them out!).

I came across the following statement in Calvin’s Commentary on 2 Thessalonians 2:4.

“Where I have rendered — everything that is called God, the reading more generally received among the Greeks is, every one that is called. It may, how ever, be conjectured, both from the old translation and from some Greek commentaries, that Paul’s words have been corrupted. The mistake, too, of a single letter was readily fallen into, especially when the shape of the letter was much similar; for, where there was written παν το, (everything,) some transcriber, or too daring reader, turned it into παντα, (every one.)”

This is very interesting…here Calvin argues for an alternate reading on the basis of a supposed scribal error or a ‘too daring reader’ (this deduced from an alternate reading from the Vulgate and some ‘Greek commentaries’–not a variant in another Greek manuscript!). His rejection of ‘παντα’ in favor of ‘παν το’ here demonstrates that Calvin did not handle the issue of variants according to any ‘Traditional Text’ paradigm. For the record, I think Calvin is wrong here (I would not argue for a reading not found in any extant Greek manuscript). I only intend to point out a place where a sampling of his approach to textual criticism is demonstrated. I find more and more of this sort of thing as I study the old commentaries. This proves wrong the argument used by Traditional Text advocates that says the ‘Traditional Text’ approach to handling textual variants was the only known position until the advent of modern textual criticism. Had Calvin had access to all of the manuscripts we have today, I think it highly likely he would have been an advocate for something like the Critical Greek Text.

The last statement sort of reminds me of something my Greek professor in seminary said: if the King James translators had known of other manuscripts existing when they were doing their very worthy translation, they would have been thrilled at the notion (”More manuscripts? There are more manuscripts out there? Excellent!”). Even a cursory reading of the translators preface to the KJV shorts how important they considered the rendering of a faithful translation of God’s word. Robert’s comments above show that a “critical” approach to the “Traditional text” was not a 19th century invention (and certainly the Reformers understood very clearly that the Vulgate was not without some major problems, and Erasmus’ Greek text, as valuable as it was to the church, was not “perfect” by any stretch of the imagination). And certainly I don’t believe Calvin was some occult practitioner or agent of Rome or that he had some hidden agenda to corrupt the text of Scripture (actually the opposite — he was seeking to guard against corruption, something that the Vulgate of his day was a glaring example of).

Of course, no major (or even minor, for that matter) doctrine is impacted by the difference between an alpha and an omicron in the text. If anything, though, this goes to show how careful we need to be with the text of God’s word.