ANSWERING PASTOR BRYAN ROSS YET AGAIN

Introduction

Bryan Ross has written a counter article to my recent articles called Providence, Special Revelation, and Verbal Equivalence in the PCE Debate as published through his Grace Life Bible Church blog. What he calls the “PCE Debate” means his rejection of the idea that God has jot and tittle exact perfection of His words in English.

We all believe that about the autographs, and it’s okay to say that they were perfect, but Bryan Ross has allowed the influence of deistic assumptions of the modernists to keep him from recognising that there is any perfection in present history.

At last he has had to give up openly accusing that I recognised the Pure Cambridge Edition (PCE) on some sort of mystical, special, private or charismatic-style revelation. Obviously, though, he still believes this falsehood, which is why he has written an article to carefully try to reason (i.e. baselessly assert) that this is really what I am still “guilty” of after all.

He has tried to make a kind of seeming analytical criticism of my position, but it is honestly objectively his position which is the weaker one, since he cannot point to the “certainty of the words of truth” (Prov. 22:21) where “Every word of God is pure” (Prov. 30:5).

My view recognises the specificity of words and their meaning, e.g. when our Bible has “fishes” compared to when it has “fish”, even to the very specific “sneezed” versus “neesings”. (This is not an “edition” issue.)

What Ross relegates to the mere orthographic rather than meaning, like, “astonied” and “astonished”, is in fact a very fine difference. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and other sources indicate that “astonied” has more the idea of being sort of dumbstruck and stuck (like a stone) than “astonished”. They are not the same word, the OED lists them as two separate entries.

In America there has indeed been some confusion over words, like their common misuse of “farther”, when there is in fact a proper (Biblical and OED-recorded) understanding for how “farther” and “further” should be used, with different meanings.

(There needs to be a lot of study in these areas, as someone could falsely say that “grins”, a once Anglo-Saxon word, has been allegedly “deleted” from the Bible, for a different word with a generally similar meaning from French, “gins”. We are downstream observers, and can suggest many things, including that the meaning of “gins” was intended all along.)

We are empirical observers of the orthographical and lexical details. Our attitude towards them matters. We should seek to understand why “astonied” is legitimately a different word with a different meaning (though obviously very similar) to “astonished”.

We are admonished to “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” (2 Tim. 2:15). That verse was not talking about the hermeneutical model of hyperdispensationalism but about proper interpretation. Part of proper interpretation is to have very definite and specific meaning for words.

Bryan Ross’ views are uncomfortably close to those of modern translation users who say that they all are really saying the same thing. We know they are not.

“Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.” (1 Corinthians 1:10).

Interpretation matters

Saying that something has theological and logical tensions doesn’t mean that there are. Saying something can be just framing, just propaganda, mere words. Expressing a view is not proof.

It’s like saying you know a view is wrong, wishing it’s wrong, but not proving it because it’s just your opinion. This is how Ross presents my views in his short essay.

What this is all really about is interpretation of scripture, and in a broad sense what I will call the schema. This is like a way of slotting all ideas into a model of looking at Scripture (and reality) according to an accepted Divine Œconomy.

Ross says he cannot find the “Pure Cambridge Edition” pointed to in the Bible. In this case here, we are discussing what the Scripture says about beliefs we hold.

For example, the Scripture doesn’t explicitly teach the Trinity, it teaches it as a model of reality. The Bible doesn’t use the word “Trinity”, and we have to bring together various passages, like Jesus’ water baptism, 1 John 5:7 and other passages, to construct the proper doctrine.

So likewise with the Rapture. The word doesn’t appear in the Bible, and you have to join together a bunch of verses to understand it. So it is going to be no different with other doctrines about the Bible itself.

There’s no mention of “Received Text” nor of “King James Bible” in the Scripture, yet according to Bryan Ross’ model, he holds to both those things. Is he holding to the King James Bible (KJB) because an angel appeared to him and told him to? I wouldn’t think so. I would think he would recognise the Scripture pointing to it in a broad way at least.

It turns out that if you believe in Historicism, the way of interpreting the Book of Revelation as pointing to events throughout Church history, you can find prophecies and indications about the King James Bible.

There are implications from verses in Revelation, as well as general teachings in Scriptures, which point at the idea of there being a Pure Cambridge Edition as well.

So Ross is wrong when he writes, “identifying a specific edition as divinely intended without explicit Scriptural warrant functions similarly to extra-biblical revelation.”

According to that way of thinking, his own views about the King James Bible would have to be suspect, especially if he does find things pointing consistently towards it in the Scripture. Now if he doesn’t argue from the basis of Scripture for the KJB, then we may as well ignore what he has to say because he would be hypocritical. But if he does use Scripture to point to the KJB, then actually he should be able to understand how we use it to point to the PCE.

Ross tries to say that word differences in editing are orthographic variations in editions of the KJB, and that they are sufficient or satisfactory, where no substantive doctrinal meaning is affected or changed.

He is asserting his position as if it is ipso facto correct without any basis. I know he will try to use some dictionary to either make the words appear to have similar definitions, or where some dictionary might even say that the words might have common origin or even be an obsolete form of the same, but a robotic adherence to fallible dictionaries is not expressive of the whole of the situation, besides, the OED still lists the different words as separate entries with distinct definitions, and Blayney didn’t eliminate the so called “variant” forms, meaning it is all quite deliberate.

So Ross’ position is not correct, because the tiniest degree of variation can amount to a meaning difference. In all kinds of places where different words which look similar appear, he is advocating that these words are really just the same. (How strange that editors like Dr Blayney just left all these variant spellings everywhere, and didn’t regularise these places.) Ross is allowing them to remain as what he thinks they are meaningless variations. And when American publishers in the past varied all these words, he doesn’t mind because he argues that big picture doctrines are not being affected.

In a way, in a broad brush approach, it is possible to argue in the big scheme of things that no major doctrine is affected. So maybe things like the virgin birth or the second coming are not affected. However, meaning and doctrine, even if some tiny sliver of a nuance, is affected. And if one hair’s breadth is affected, the whole law is rendered void.

“For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.” (James 2:10).

By one “point” we can see a kind of double meaning, it would mean even one dot.

“Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:19, which comes after which verse Ross misinterprets?)

Bryan Ross is therefore as if he is the least in the Kingdom, for he appears to be teaching his spiritual charges in his adult Sunday School that “astonied” and “astonished” are not two different things.

He doesn’t get that from Scripture, not even by a minute examination in an objective sense of Scripture passages, which use either of these words rightfully in their places. He is just reading in his opinion as based on some statement from wayward American editors, and throwing out his hypothesis as fact, that varying words are just orthographical variations, and apparently are not varying words at all. Hence his desire to run to various old table alphabeticals and so on to try to prove that the early modernising of American editors was right.

As a consequence, his thinking becomes fuzzy and he cannot detect the legal and semantic difference between things like “stablish” and “establish”, “ensample” and “example”, let alone other things, ranging from “fishes” and “fish” to “naught” and “nought”, etc.

Reality about sufficiency versus Ross’ universal hypothesis

Ross is trying to apply his principle of “verbal equivalence” in inspiration and to today, when at best it can only apply to the intervening period of the scattering and progressive gathering of the Scripture’s readings, and the progressive work in translations and in editing.

The problem is that Ross is not overtly appealing to any authoritative standard where a perfect set of words exist. (That is, to what standard or authority does he measure “equivalence”?) What he has mistakenly done is apply the sufficiency (his “equivalence”) in transmission to the fixedness and rigidity of primal and final forms. (He therefore accuses the inspiration of the New Testament of making sloppy quotes of the Old as well as saying there is only “equivalence” today, even though his own hero, Laurence Vance, points to a Cambridge standard.

There is no “verbal equivalence” in the mind of God, in Heaven or in inspired autographs, as if they are uncertain or varying. There are variations and sufficiency in transmission, but that’s not the
imprimatur of God, as though He wants things to be a tossing sea of “equivalence” without finality.

But unlike Ross, the Scripture and I are pointing to the fact that there is an end of the variants of transmission, a final form, answerable to its first and divine origins.

“So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:11).

Ross says, “Ultimately, the debate centers on whether doctrinal certainty demands absolute precision or whether substantive fidelity is sufficient”.

It’s weird that Ross would admit this, because true doctrine isn’t just about all the big ticket items, it’s about the legal framework and minor minutiae as well. The infallibility of the Scripture and truth in the details requires precision in minor Biblical statements as well as the major doctrines.

(Logically, we fix printing errors, so why is it natural to strive as humans for perfection in the very details if apparently this is not something of the nature of God?)

Ross and I both think that God has had a sufficiency in Church history. Ross sees this with the dangerous “near enough is good enough” flavour (consistent with his definition of “grace”) which approaches the matter with a kind of deistic leaven of the small “m” modernists like James White, Mark Ward, John Piper and a host of the off-white brethren in this Laodicean era who hold to their inability, unwillingness and rejection of there being exact knowledge of the very words of God.

However, I see from the outset, the seed and intention of God is perfection, so then His work in history is under His superintendence. Ross may try to argue that this sort of interventionism is somehow linked to an idea of a “special revelation” that we might receive, but it is the work of the perfect Spirit, Who is in His works doing perfectly (see John 16:13).

This is expressly taught at Deuteronomy 32:

2 My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass:

3 Because I will publish the name of the LORD: ascribe ye greatness unto our God.

4 He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.

As for Ross’ question about how to recognise Providence. Might I suggest this passage, and see if spiritual knowledge is required, from 1 Corinthians 2:

12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.

13 Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

Answers to Ross’ endless questions

Ross discusses the debate questions, for example, the one asking, “How does God guide the preservation of Scripture?”

My answer is we can learn much from both studying Scripture and also with believing empirical examination. A Historicist framework would help Ross immensely too.

Ross puts forth another debate question, “What counts as the Word of God when editions differ?”

Ross would be foolish to continue to question this one, for it is obvious that what believers in history had as the Word of God to them was the Word of God to them. (I mean that God genuinely sent His truth to them.)

I laid out for Ross the distinct difference between “Scripture” (written copies including the autographs, referred to by Paul to Timothy), version/Text/readings, translation and editions.

I am confident that a 20^th century Oxford edition is over 99.99% the same as a Cambridge one.

So the question cannot be as Ross phrases it, “What counts as the Word of God when editions differ?” It’s obvious that the Word of God has been printed in Oxford editions regardless if they had “whom he” at Jeremiah 34:16 like the old Cambridge editions had.

Is that “h” technically the actual, inspired Word of God? No, but thankfully it hasn’t been leading people into heresies because it has minimal doctrinal meaning. I doubt most Christians ever are reading the verse in the course of devotions or Bible teachings, even with the correct “whom ye”. Ironically, it’s the fact of the typographical error/old editorial mistake which makes people look at that verse!

But thank goodness such minor issues have been cleared up … unless you are running rudderless listening to Scrivener, Norris and Norton, then you will think there are numberless undetected errors still floating about. These are the kinds of people who are disparagers of Dr Blayney’s work.

Ross asks the big question, “is verbal equivalence sufficient, or must we have verbatim identicality down to letters and punctuation?”

This question is wrongly framed. Bryan Ross has to be explicit and say what standard his “verbal equivalence” is matching to. (It is odd he never shows us his standard — I suspect it’s a variation of the modernist view that it will be “the originals” — but he can’t actually pin down a correct copy of those either, and they aren’t in English, so what’s his lexical authority?)

Ross also has to be intellectually honest. He accuses me of the old slur (of naïve KJBOism) about so called “verbatim identicality”. But identical to what standard?

I am very clear: the perfect standard is 1. In the mind of God, 2. In Heaven. 3. In inspiration and the general witness of copying. The ultimate or anti-form perfection is the last end, which is the PCE. The PCE has the properties to which the 17^th century millenarians (Bacon, Mede, Hartlib, Cromwell, etc.) sought in their pansophical program.

Ross has hoped that truth (that there has been editing in the history of the KJB) would be an instauration of wrong thinking, only history, nature, logic, scripture and providence itself is showing Ross to be wrong about his view of there not being a final edition.

Again, we must divide between Ross’ terminology in relation to transmission as opposed to editions today in our current state. We are not accessing the Scripture in flux. This means that while there was historical sufficiency where there were tiny textual, translation and edition differences, we are not living in that state any more, for all things have worked towards the solution. The progress of history, the process of Bible transmission and the plan of God has all had an end goal, and it has been arrived at.

Well, Ross thinks he is accessing the Scripture in flux, because he can’t see that “stablish”, “throughly”, “ensample” and so on are legitimate specific words with specific meanings and not synonyms to other similar words. Apparently present day KJB editions that have the varying words (he rebrands them as just orthographical variations of single words) are all equal.

It is possible that there are kinds and species in Bible words, but Ross has erased any specificity of the species by only recognising kinds.

So, here’s the problem. Ross’ terminology should really be “there was justifiable flux in the transmission of Scripture through history, but it wasn’t anything substantively changing major doctrines, but I (Bryan Ross) also don’t believe there is a fixed state or that we can know what the resolution to it all is.”

If Ross just said that honest statement about his position, it would be clear. He simply doesn’t believe there is a fixed state, he simply doesn’t expect to find a fully corrected edition, and he certainly thinks that we cannot find out (the arm of the Lord apparently is shortened) what is an exactly right edition.

In fact, it sounds like the modernists saying, “there couldn’t be a perfect edition because it would have to be edited and printed by infallible men, and you would have to be claiming infallibility to recognise a perfect edition”. This is what I suspect Ross is really thinking. I suspect something is bucking within him about it, and that he and his friends have been searching the internet for “evidence” that I claimed special Pentecostal “revelations” on this topic.

Providence and plan has happened since eternity

God planned in eternity, and therefore all the actions of history, are towards the ends of the Gospel being made known to the nations and families of the Earth being blessed.

So, God has, as part of this big plan (called “the Gospel”) aimed to have a perfect representation for the entire Earth in the latter times.

Ross states, “Scripture does not specify which printed edition of the KJB is perfect.” Yet, there are indicators from the Scripture that point to it, in prophecies, promises, elements of the nature of God (as revealed in Scripture) and the Historicist structure of Daniel and Revelation. The KJB is pointed to and the PCE in ways as well.

For example, the Scripture speaks of a “pure language”, but we know that technically the purity of Biblical English required editing by Dr Blayney, for example, therefore as we go to the exactness of meaning, we must have an exact Bible with precise Biblical English (which is the PCE in specific rather than just the KJB translation in general).

Ross is faulty in his logic, he says, “If that certainty cannot be derived from Scripture alone, and if it is not based on new revelation, it must arise from interpreting historical signs as indicators of God’s will.”

Well, Scripture does point to it, but this is actually a controversy about a whole other issue, one of presupposition. Ross is hiding this fact in how he frames his incorrect logic.

We have multiple presuppositions in approaching the Bible. They include: the pre-existence of God Himself, the notion of language and the fact of human experience (including history) and so on. Of course, this is not the Roman Catholic idea of putting tradition equal to Scripture, but it does mean that we receive Scripture in a cultural-intellectual context, not a vacuum.

Thus, there comes an interrelation between what the Bible says and our experience (e.g. the application of Scripture), and therefore, not only can we find the Bible talking about purity of its wordings, etc., but also we can then observe it and study it in empirical and rational senses. Thus, it is not wrong for us to look in the dictionary to see that there is a difference between words. But it would be desperation to lurch the other way and say that similar words are really the same words with variant spellings.

Ross is blinded to precision

Ross argues that his hypothesis “is that variations in spelling, capitalization, punctuation, or minor wording across KJB editions do not corrupt the doctrinal content; the substantive meaning remains intact.”

Everyone in the King James Bible camp in practice believes that, it doesn’t require Ross to try to own it with his pet coined phraseology as though he suddenly has intellectual property ownership of the idea.

The problem for Ross is that he has got himself stuck because he cannot resolve the editorial differences. He is arguing essentially to keep a level of uncertainty, inexactness, looseness, imprecision and variation. He really doesn’t want to resolve the differences because it would end his big new idea that he wrote a book about.

This is the opposite of editorial good sense.

The fact is that while major doctrinal issues are not affected with the kinds of variations in printings of the KJB (notwithstanding, obvious typos like substituting Jesus with Judas are quickly corrected), it is always a theoretical danger that some problem could have arisen from some printing variation.

It’s not as if the KJB was actually corrupted by such matters. But there has been a real doctrinal issue, for example, in dealing with 1 John 5:8, which many old editions had “spirit”, but some modern editions now have “Spirit”.

Logic alone is that “spirit” can include meaning “Spirit”, whereas “Spirit” excludes meanings communicated by the representation “spirit”, so ultimately, it is wiser to have the PCE for just that point, let alone all the other reasons for it.

Ross also misrepresents my position, making it like it an absurd dichotomy: either you believe every letter is pregnant with meaning or else you don’t. His framing of the issue is incorrect.

Punctuation, case and letters of spelling are important because of meanings they convey. Realistically there might not be much meaning difference in the American, Scottish, London, Oxford or Cambridge spellings of “razor”/“rasor” or “basin”/“bason” or “ax”/“axe”. Yet, despite the extremely negligible doctrinal impact the “wrong” spelling will have, there still needs to be a standard.

Now the reality is that worlds are framed by the Word of God (see Heb. 11:3) so there can be the whole turning of some vital thing on a singular letter or comma. The Bible is a legal document (see Rom. 7:12), the Testaments are legal documents, so every jot and tittle counts for something. Nothing is just line filler or padding.

There is an “exact sense” being communicated through the entire Bible. Holiness becomes the house of God, and it was built exactly, and kept clean. So too must every letter have its place in the Bible (see Psalm 93:5). We don’t have a superstitious adoration of letters like some other well known false religion, but meaning matters, and meaning is communicated by the substructure of letters and dots.

Unlike Ross, I really do think that there is a discernible difference and nuance of meaning (that does affect doctrine because truth has meaning) between “alway” and “always”. (It is easy to show it from the OED too.) These are not merely differences in orthography which Ross tries to suggest.

Thus, the Bible is a full conceptual communication, not just in its broad doctrines. Every word actually matters, everything that is present in the Bible is there for a reason. God wants us to know the truth, the very truth of truth.

Ross omits important information

Ross is still trying to justify his wrong accusation about me, where he is trying to make out that I think only the Pure Cambridge Edition is pure and actual Scriptura Ultima and everything else isn’t.

But I want to categorically say that the Scripture in the mind of God, in Heaven and in the autographs was equally as pure and perfect as the PCE in a technical, letter exact sense. (Ross is one of those who quibbles about the meaning of “perfect”, which usually means trying to make the word just mean “mature”.)

And I also showed that all the copies that might have had typos are no less Scripture. Ross seems to be flogging a dead horse.

Doesn’t he realise that the only way that God can excuse the typos is by making sure He has a copy without typos existing and/or coming to pass?

Ross then made a “meme” (pretty boring looking) which says that I agree with him about so called “verbal equivalence” in Reformation Bible translations and other KJB editions.

I’ve been open about it. I’ve said that Ross is not entirely wrong, I’ve said that he has said some good things. I guess his big meme is probably a celebration for him, because he actually read what I wrote and suddenly realises I am not 100% against him.

I think he has over reacted in the past to some criticisms I have made, when I have been critical of say 15% of what he says.

Ross is the one trying to push as if I totally reject everything he says, and it sort of feels like that in the way he has tried to so hard to keep pushing to justify his saying of incorrect things about me.

He also has a problem with his analysis and judgment. Not only in how he views the PCE and my approach, but also in relation to other matters. He has asserted (was that a prophecy?) that Laurence Vance’s work on the textual history of the King James Bible would be a firestorm for King James Bible onlyism. I have Vance’s book sitting by me, and it’s quite fine with a lot of solid research, but hardly incendiary.

If Ross thinks he is coming to the Body of Christ with a message that “alway” and “always” are just the same and that the differences don’t matter and that the differences can be erased by just having “always” … then Ross is actually dangerously fighting against divine propriety. Is he so sure and confident that he isn’t wrong, that “astonied” really is just “astonished”? Wouldn’t it be better to let caution guide us rather than insist upon something which may be incorrect?

If we use the minds of generations of learned Bible users guide us, then to them the distinction of words might have felt like a distinction in meaning, even if they couldn’t articulate the technicalities. They would have had a sense of the meaning from another word that looked similar, but as it is to this hour these words’ existence has not been erased, nor even minished by Ross.

A proper conclusion

The assertion about the PCE’s reliable vocabulary prevails, regardless of Ross’ wishful thinking and claimed vague inconsistencies in what I have said about something or other. Most of it is about how Ross is trying to read me as meaning something else than what I am saying.

I do thank the Lord that we have doctrinal exactness of every letter, punctuation mark and orthographic detail in the PCE. It’s a blessing for unity for believers across the Earth to say the same thing and even get the same number in the word and letter counts of their KJBs!

I’m happy Latin speakers had the Word of God. I don’t know why Ross is trying to invent some tension between Latin speakers having their Bibles, and us having the PCE from the 20th century to today.

I have to laugh at the sheer effort Ross is putting in, saying that my “appeal to Providence compounds the problem.” How? It’s God that is self-evidently showing His works. I didn’t make providences happen, that’s what God has evidently done.

As for knowing and understanding the distinctions in King James Bible words, which are in the Pure Cambridge Edition, we have the advantage of being able to study the Bible and have access to tools to help us. Even current AI can help explain the difference between words.

It’s almost like Ross is being a Luddite when it comes to this. Considering (as I do as an outsider) to where he lives, one would have thought that the climate of publishing and Dutch theology in his area would have had some impact. I think about my own town, which was the centre of Dutch theology, and I grew up in a school dominated by this persuasion. So let me appropriate the words of Peter Van Kleeck, Jr., “Change the words and you change the Bible”.

By removing distinctions in words like “stablish”, “alway”, “ensample” and “throughly”, Bryan Ross is taking away from the meaning of the Bible. Removing words removes meanings.