Logan
Puritan Board Graduate
I did an inordinate amount of reading this week. As posted in another thread I was trying to find out more about Letis' position and was excited to find a lengthy interaction between him and Dr James White. Unfortunately it is not Letis at his best and he repeatedly demeaned Dr White, refrained from answering questions (instead he criticized him for not having read Muller and Preus) and overall seemed very pompous. I am told that this was not Letis' best moment and certainly there was no content there to understand his position. So I dug deeper and found some writings on this website (though many links are dead) as well as two essays that Steve posted.
I also found his dissertation (pdf), which Letis repeatedly referred to in his discussion with Dr White. Interestingly to me, Letis repeatedly attacked "inerrancy of the originals" and when Dr White asked if he believed in "the inerrancy of the originals" responded by saying it was not the appropriate question and did Dr White still beat his wife?
At first glance, it would seem that Letis is not taking an orthodox view at all, but to clear up any misconceptions people might have, here is Letis' explanation:
Unless I am mistaken, Letis seems to think that one cannot hold to both "inerrancy" and "infallibility". Surely he would agree that the originals were without error, but he dislikes the term because in his mind it makes a distinction between the autographa (original scripts by the original authors) and the apographa (copies of the originals). I don't deny that the word "inerrancy" is usually made to make a distinction between the autographa and the apographa, but I do deny that this is purely 19th century Warfieldianism. Letis says
Letis asserts over and over that this distinction between the autographs and the apographs is a post-enlightenment idea, and that to believe only the originals were "inerrant" is distinctly Warfieldian. I never saw him actually deal with Warfield's evidence (in Warfield's volume on the Westminster Assembly, especially pp 236 ff), but perhaps he does in other writings I don't have access to. However, to criticize someone of Warfield's scholarship repeatedly, seems worthy of defense. In Warfield's own words:
I agree with this statement, and Warfield follows it up with primary source quotation after quotation (some from the Westminster Divines) to back this up. Letis, apparently does not agree, repeatedly saying Warfield introduced this post-enlightenment idea (even using the strong phrase 'the Warfieldian heresy of "Inerrant autographs.'"). To defend his position, he seems to constantly refer to R. Muller and Preus which he says is necessary to an historical understanding of the period and for evaluating the writings of pre-19th century authors. Perhaps Letis is unknowingly guilty of "Mullerism" or "Preusism", instead of everyone else being seduced by "Warfieldianism". In any event I wish he would say where Warfield is misinterpreting these writers.
That the Westminster divines believed their present Scriptures to be an "infallible" rule, I agree, but that they believed it to be without error of transmission I disagree, or would say they at least allowed for it. That they believed no Scripture had been lost over time was also clear, but was in some manuscript or another.
Since Warfield's view has been so much maligned as being a 19th century innovation, I would like to devote my next post to some lengthy quotations from Turretin, to show at the very least it was nothing new. If Warfield inherited this view from Hodge who inherited it from Turretin (whose text was the standard Systematic Theology for many years at Princeton) then so be it.
I also found his dissertation (pdf), which Letis repeatedly referred to in his discussion with Dr White. Interestingly to me, Letis repeatedly attacked "inerrancy of the originals" and when Dr White asked if he believed in "the inerrancy of the originals" responded by saying it was not the appropriate question and did Dr White still beat his wife?
At first glance, it would seem that Letis is not taking an orthodox view at all, but to clear up any misconceptions people might have, here is Letis' explanation:
Letis said:Allow me to say that many have been confused by my advocacy of the word "Infallible," and my pronounced dislike of the modern term "inerrant," because the former word is the word always used by Luther, Calvin, and the Westminster Divines, in its Latin form, "infallibilitas." On this please consult Richard Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1985), s.v. "authoritas Scripturae." There you will see the meaning of "infallible"contains the sense that Scripture is "without admixture of error...historically true in its record of words, deed, events, and doctrines." As for the word "inerrant," it has no pedigree as a theological term until late in the 19th century and because when it arrived in a new context (its original context was as an astronomical term), it always and only had reference to the "autographic" form the text, a sweeping revisionism of the WCF which taught a preserved "infallibility," not a lost "autographic inerrancy." I trust this makes clear that the earlier accusation about me was intended to suggest not that I actually have a historically more grounded statement of Scripture (via the WCF), but that somehow I have a weaker view because I choose to hold to the WCF's language and content on this issue (because, with this standard my own Lutheran orthodox view is in complete agreement).
Unless I am mistaken, Letis seems to think that one cannot hold to both "inerrancy" and "infallibility". Surely he would agree that the originals were without error, but he dislikes the term because in his mind it makes a distinction between the autographa (original scripts by the original authors) and the apographa (copies of the originals). I don't deny that the word "inerrancy" is usually made to make a distinction between the autographa and the apographa, but I do deny that this is purely 19th century Warfieldianism. Letis says
Letis said:Hence, it was the use of the word "inerrancy" by B.B. Warfield in the 19th century (a non-theological innovative terminological alteration to the language of Biblical authority), that resulted in the "quest for the historical text" i.e., the endorsement of the Westcott and Hort edition of the Greek N.T., (which assumes the extant text is corrupt), which in turn evolved into the quest for the historical Jesus and the Jesus Seminar, the most blatantly arrogant project of unbelief presently active on this planet. Moreover, his use of the word at Princeton was a major contribution towards that Institution going liberal in 1929.
Letis asserts over and over that this distinction between the autographs and the apographs is a post-enlightenment idea, and that to believe only the originals were "inerrant" is distinctly Warfieldian. I never saw him actually deal with Warfield's evidence (in Warfield's volume on the Westminster Assembly, especially pp 236 ff), but perhaps he does in other writings I don't have access to. However, to criticize someone of Warfield's scholarship repeatedly, seems worthy of defense. In Warfield's own words:
Warfield said:No doubt the authors of the Confession were far from being critics of the nineteenth century: they did not foresee the course of criticism nor anticipate the amount of labor which would be required for the reconstruction of the text of, say, the New Testament. Men like Lightfoot are found defending the readings of the common text against men like Beza; as there were some of them, like Lightfoot, who were engaged in the most advanced work which up to that time had been done on the Biblical text, Walton's "Polyglott," so others of them may have stood with John Owen, a few years later, in his strictures on that great work; and had their lot been cast in our day it is possible that many of them might have been of the school of Scrivener and Burgon, rather than that of Westcott and Hort. But whether they were good critics or bad is not the point. It admits of no denial that they explicitly recognized the fact that the text of the Scriptures had suffered corruption in process of transmission and affirmed that the "pure" text lies therefore not in one copy, but in all, and is to be attained not by simply reading the text in whatever copy may chance to fall into our hands, but by a process of comparison, i.e. by criticism. The affirmation of the Confession includes the two facts, therefore, first that the Scriptures in the originals were immediately inspired by God; and secondly that this inspired text has not been lost to the Church, but through God's good providence has been kept pure, amidst all the crowding errors of scribes and printers, and that therefore the Church still has the inspired Word of God in the originals, and is to appeal to it, and to it alone, as the final authority in all controversies of religion.
I agree with this statement, and Warfield follows it up with primary source quotation after quotation (some from the Westminster Divines) to back this up. Letis, apparently does not agree, repeatedly saying Warfield introduced this post-enlightenment idea (even using the strong phrase 'the Warfieldian heresy of "Inerrant autographs.'"). To defend his position, he seems to constantly refer to R. Muller and Preus which he says is necessary to an historical understanding of the period and for evaluating the writings of pre-19th century authors. Perhaps Letis is unknowingly guilty of "Mullerism" or "Preusism", instead of everyone else being seduced by "Warfieldianism". In any event I wish he would say where Warfield is misinterpreting these writers.
Letis said:This doctrine, therefore, is a dramatic departure from the WCF which never stated Biblical authority in such absurd terms [(inerrancy)]. The above is also incomplete because it fails to point out that this is NOT classic Protestant orthodoxy as found perfectly expressed in the Westminster Confession of Faith, which says absolutely NOTHING about "autographs" or "inerrancy," but rather puts its stress on a PRESERVED text that it calls "infallible."
That the Westminster divines believed their present Scriptures to be an "infallible" rule, I agree, but that they believed it to be without error of transmission I disagree, or would say they at least allowed for it. That they believed no Scripture had been lost over time was also clear, but was in some manuscript or another.
Since Warfield's view has been so much maligned as being a 19th century innovation, I would like to devote my next post to some lengthy quotations from Turretin, to show at the very least it was nothing new. If Warfield inherited this view from Hodge who inherited it from Turretin (whose text was the standard Systematic Theology for many years at Princeton) then so be it.