We understand by now that Scripture is inspired, authoritative, and inerrant. Yet those doctrines are true in their fullest sense the moment the words were written. God directed the authors so they communicated exactly what He wanted, and the resulting text carries the full weight of His divine authority and perfectly encapsulates and conveys truth, without a stitch of error. But the question comes: that may have been true then, but who’s to say our Bibles still bear those same characteristics? Did the years of transmission, with copies upon copies, compromise the integrity of the text?
The doctrine of the preservation of Scripture aims to answer that question, and it answers with clear affirmation. Scripture today is every bit as authoritative as it was when God first gave it, and it is still trustworthy as the inerrant source of truth. “The Scriptures have been kept intact and free from essential error, so that we may be assured of the truth originally given by the inspired authors.”[1] As we’ve previously discussed, our manuscripts of Scripture are not free from scribal errors and “corrections” or from minor discrepancies between texts. Yet those do not compromise the truth of Scripture’s content. It is free from essential error—error in the reliability of its content, even nearly two thousand years after it was completed.
We’re privileged with a plethora of source manuscripts, and we can be confident that the Greek and Hebrew texts our translations use are faithful to the original texts. This proves that Scripture has been preserved, as evidenced by observable history. But a second question begs itself: has God promised that His Word will always stand? An observable phenomenon does not guarantee the existence of Scripture in the future. The question of whether or not we can count on Scripture being preserved to the end of the ages can only be answered by Scripture itself. We must know whether or not God has indeed promised to preserve His Word. As we’ll find, He has.
While the definition above speaks of preservation to our point in history, Feinberg argues that preservation includes God’s promise to keep His Word available as long as the earth remains. He says preservation means that “God has promised in Scripture to preserve His Word in essential purity so that the Scriptures will not perish.”[2] His emphasis, which is a good one, is that, while we see God’s preserving work in the facts of history, the ultimate reason to trust that Scripture will endure is that God has said He will keep it. His Word testifies, and that is more trustworthy, more concrete, than anything we can observe in history. Our confidence in the enduring Word must be anchored in the promises of God, promises found in the text of Scripture.
Logical Support
We will soon take a closer look at what the Bible says about preservation, but first we’ll examine several other supports for the doctrine, both logical and historical. As mentioned above, these aren’t final authorities, since only Scripture carries absolute authority. Yet they lead us in that direction, and they complement what the Bible teaches.
The logical basis for believing in the preservation of Scripture draws from our understanding of its inspiration, authority, and sufficiency. First, we believe it is inspired: God was divinely involved in the formulation of the Bible. It would seem strange to us if, after involving Himself so heavily in the composition of the Word, that He would abandon it to an uncertain future. Rather, it seems correct to believe that God is just as active preserving His Word as He was inspiring it.
We also believe that the Bible carries God’s authority, that when Scripture speaks, God speaks. Not only that, it is the supreme declaration of His will. Without the Bible, we could not hear from God. We would not know who He is or what He wants from us. God’s Word is the rule of faith and practice, the single authority above all others. Again, since this is true, we would be surprised if God simply left this supreme authority to be corrupted, dismantled, or disregarded. It makes much more sense to believe that He would ensure the continued availability of His Word as that same authority. “Scripture can’t have any authority if it isn’t preserved.”[3]
And third, we believe the Word is sufficient. It is everything we need; through it we are made “perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Tim. 3:17). Not only can we be made perfect through the Word, but it is the only means by which we can be perfected. It seems that we could not be everything God expects us to be without it. Without access to the sufficient Scriptures, we are rendered unable to do all good works. So, it seems that a sufficient Word can only be useful if it remains available, thus we are inclined to believe that God will keep His Word pure and available as long as He is at work on the earth.
Since the purposes of God’s Word are only accomplished if His Word continues, we believe that God will keep the Bible present and pure in our world, from now until the end. We believe God will preserve it, so that many may hear its truth and believe the gospel of Christ. He will preserve it so it may do its good sanctifying work in our hearts, so we may be led to believe the truth and live according to it. We trust that God, in His good providence, will continue to protect and preserve His Word for the good of His people.
Historical Support
Another reason to believe that God will continue to preserve His Word is that, when we study history, we see that He has already been active preserving it. We know He has preserved it until now, and we have no reason to believe He will stop any time soon.
If we compare the biblical manuscripts we have to other writings from the same era, we discover that we have nearly 50 times as many manuscripts of Scripture as we have of any of the others.[4] Not only that, but we have older and more complete copies. Both the number of copies and the age of the manuscripts evidence God’s preserving work.
And there’s remarkable agreement among the manuscripts, in large part due to the extreme care of the scribes and copyists who replicated them. The Jewish scribes were especially meticulous, since the Old Testament not only dictated their religious lives but also their social, political, and legal systems. Though we may be tempted to criticize the scribal errors in the manuscripts we possess, they have been kept remarkably pure through the millennia. A full 85% of the content is identical among three primary collations of the New Testament, and the majority of the remaining differences are grammatical discrepancies. No Christian doctrine is significantly affected. This is why we stress that God has preserved the text of Scripture from essential error. Our Scriptures, even after nearly 2000 years of copying and transmission, still can be trusted to only affirm truth. They remain fully reliable as the source of truth, as the inerrant Word of God.
Biblical Support
As previously discussed, logical and historical support for the preservation of Scripture are good, but they’re not sufficient on their own. “Preservation of Scripture’s original text can easily be confirmed by textual critics, and for many Christians that’s enough. But of course, Scripture’s existence through the centuries since it was finished doesn’t guarantee its continued existence into the distant future.”[5] We can only be fully confident that God will preserve His Word if the text of Scripture supports what we believe to be true. Let’s look at three of the strongest supporting texts: Psalm 119:151-152, Psalm 119:160, and Isaiah 40:6-8.
You are near, O LORD,
Psalm 119:151-152
And all Your commandments are truth.
Concerning Your testimonies,
I have known of old that You have founded them forever.
Psalm 119 is the longest psalm and is, quite aptly, about the Word of God. It’s a poem that develops in sections, and verses 151-152 are at the end of one of those. The verses just previous are desperate plea for God’s help, for salvation from the wicked and lawless. Amid the danger, the psalmist finds comfort in the true and eternal Word. He declares, “I know your commandments and your testimonies are founded forever.”
While the reference to God’s commandments and testimonies may seem indirect, they are most definitely references to the Law of God—the Torah. The Torah make up only a small portion of our Bibles, but it was the majority of Scripture when this psalm was penned. It seems correct to assume the psalmist had the whole scope of known Scriptures in view when he wrote this, thus it’s appropriate to believe that the same is true of those portions that hadn’t been given yet. We conclude that all of God’s revelation is founded forever, which indicates that God has promised to keep it—to preserve it—into eternity. That surely takes us beyond observable history and inspires confidence in the future availability of God’s Word.
One more truth is clear here. As Feinberg notes, “A further reason to think this verse is relevant to our doctrine is what it says about who will do the preserving. If it were left to mere humans, who knows how widely the Bible would be available or whether there would be a time when no one possessed God’s Word? But the psalmist is clear that it is God who has founded his testimonies forever.”[6] That promise should give us great confidence. Preservation does not depend on great human effort; God Himself has eternally established His Word.
The entirety of Your word is truth,
Psalm 119:160
And every one of Your righteous judgments endures forever.
This verse closely parallels those just discussed. God’s Word is true, and it is eternal. However, this verse seems to emphasize the enduring truth of the Bible even more. It is true from the beginning, and it will remain forever. We are also told that this is true of the entire Word and of every one of God’s righteous judgments. The whole Bible is true and eternal, and every individual piece of it is true and eternal.[7] If God has promised that it is eternal, He must also providentially preserve it.
Again we ask the question, does the writer have the entire Bible in view here, or just select portions? Is he speaking of all of Scripture? “We must answer affirmatively, because the psalmist’s comments in this part of the psalm, including those in verse 160, are about anything that qualifies as God’s Word, especially the words put in writing to form the basic biblical books. That is, if a written document proves to be ‘the product of God’s breath’ (theopneustos; 2 Tim. 3:16), it must also have the characteristics mentioned in Psalm 119:160. It is true, and it lasts forever.”[8]
The voice said, “Cry out!”
Isaiah 40:6-8
And he said, “What shall I cry?”
“All flesh is grass,
And all its loveliness is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
Because the breath of the LORD blows upon it;
Surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
But the word of our God stands forever.”
This section is especially interesting because it teaches both the frailty of man and the eternality of God’s Word. Man is here described as feeble grass and a fading flower. We are temporal. Regardless how healthy, how accomplished, how educated we are, we all die. We vanish like vapor, wither like yesterday’s mown grass, fade like the bouquet of flowers you bought last week. We are weak, but God’s Word is enduring. It stands forever. And, in contrast to our mortality, His Word is immortal. Even when every last plant and every last man on earth dies and decays, God’s Word will stand. And if it is to stand in the future, we can expect He is actively preserving it now and will continue to do so forever.
Conclusion
We know that Scripture, when it was written, was inspired, authoritative, and inerrant. The question is, are these attributes true of our copies today? The doctrine of preservation answers with a resounding “Yes!” Just as God superintended the original writing, He superintended the transmission of those writings throughout history so that, while they contain minor disparities and discrepancies, the centrals truths ring as true as they did the day they were penned. We can confidently trust that our Scriptures today are indeed inspired, authoritative, and inerrant.
[1] H. Orton Wiley, Christian Theology, vol. 1, (Kansas City, MO: Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 1940), 212.
[2] John S. Feinberg, Light in a Dark Place; The Doctrine of Scripture (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018), 717.
[3] Ibid., 755.
[4] Elmer Towns, Theology for Today (Lynchburg, VA), 51.
[5] Feinberg, 716.
[6] Ibid., 726.
[7] Ibid., 728.
[8] Ibid., 729.