The Gospel Coalition

When we donate Packing Hope resources to missions and churches for the work overseas, we routinely ask for a report back. We often receive great stories and images, which we share with you as time allows. Last week, I received this great report from Jeff Hensley who pastors Heritage Christian Fellowship in Medford, Oregon. I think it really exemplifies the ideal scenario for our collaboration: solid, biblical resources getting into the hands of pastors in Asia, Africa, and South America and being deployed in the context of long-term relationships and mentoring.

Thank you so much for the ESV Study Bibles to our Ugandan mission work in March of this year. We have had a partnership with a church body in Mbarara, Uganda for almost 5 years now. Each year we travel over and do pastoral conferences to train the local pastors in the Word of God, typically by selecting a book of the Bible and teaching through it verse-by-verse.

This year we decided to do something different. Instead of teaching them through a book of the Bible, we decided to equip them with resources, like your ESV Study Bibles, and to teach them how to use these resources to study God's Word for themselves. The results were astonishing. The Ugandan pastors and elders felt as if they had been given powerful weapons that none could defend against! In an area riddled with prosperity theology and Islam, these pastors are now infinitely better equipped to teach God's word to their people and to continue to send pastors out into the unreached people groups of Uganda, Rwanda, and the Congo.

Photos do not adequately reflect the amazement and wonder that was in the heart of each Ugandan as we told them of this gift. Hands trembled and tears fell as they received them. Together, we all used this biblical tool, teaching them how to use the maps, margins, notes, and cross-references, to study through the book of 1 Peter themselves. We believe this has equipped them to carry on with proper biblical exegesis long after the white American missionaries have left town! Thank you for supporting our church, their church, our mission, and God's Kingdom.

Rejoice with us over what God is doing around the world through our partners in mission, and please consider prayerfully these ways of co-laboring with us:

• Praise God with us that in April nearly 200 cases of resources went out to 22 countries.
• Plan for incorporating Packing Hope resources with your next missions engagement.
• Give to our current Relief Project, Piper's book, Finally Alive in English which will be very useful for many regions of the world.
• Read and subscribe to our monthly update.
• Become a monthly supporter of Theological Famine Relief for the Global Church.

Earlier this week scientists at the Oregon Health and Science University reported they had produced embryonic stem cells from a cloned human embryo. Here are 9 things you should know about human cloning:

1. Cloning is a form of reproduction in which offspring result not from the chance union of egg and sperm (sexual reproduction) but from the deliberate replication of the genetic makeup of another single individual (asexual reproduction). Human cloning, therefore, is the asexual production of a new human organism that is, at all stages of human development, genetically virtually identical to a currently existing or previously existing human being.

2. Human cloning is achieved by a technique referred to as somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). The process involves introducing material from the nucleus of a human somatic cell (any biological cell forming the body of an organism, though for the purposes of SCNT, usually a skin cell) into an oocyte (a female egg cell that has not yet gone through the process to become an ovum) whose own nucleus has been removed or inactivated. The oocyte becomes an ovum that now no longer needs to be fertilized, because it contains the correct amount of genetic material. This new entity begins dividing and growing, yielding a cloned human embryo.

3. Cloning does not produce an exact genetic replica of the donor (the person the genetic material was taken from to produce the cloned embryo). All human cells, including eggs and sperm, contain small, energy-producing organelles called mitochondria. Mitochondria contain a small piece of DNA that specifies the genetic instructions for making several essential mitochondrial proteins. SCNT transfers the nucleus into the oocyte which contains mitochondrial DNA of the egg donor. Just as in sexual reproduction, the embryo produced by cloning contains genetic material from two different individuals.

4. Due to missing, but crucial interactions between the sperm and egg, genetic reprogramming errors' are inherent to cloning. This leads to random, widespread genetic 'imprinting' and 'epigenetic' defects that are both known causes of cancer. In addition to the 'epigenetic' defects, cells derived from cloning that are injected back into the donor are rejected because of epigenetic mis-expression, genetic differences due to mitochondrial DNA, and the incompatibility of cells too immature in development to interact with adult tissue environments. This is the major stumbling block for using material from cloned embryos for the treatment of diseases.

5. The use of the terms therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning are misleading. All cloning produces a human embryo and is therefore reproductive in nature. The more accurate, neutral phrasing is cloning-to-produce-children and cloning-for-biomedical-research. These terms make a distinction between cloning that results in the creation of an embryo for subsequent destruction and one that is created in order to continue the normal process of human development.

6. The primary moral objection to cloning for research is that it creates human life solely for the purpose of destroying it; using a human embryo merely as a means to an end. In order to justify the killing of these human beings for their "spare parts", we have to ignore the scientific understanding what makes a member of the human species and argue on the metaphysical definition of what constitutes personhood.' While it is true that many people oppose the cloning of human embryos for valid religious and ethical reasons, the issue is not divided along the typical left/right political spectrum. Even pro-choice advocates and others who hold secular and/or progressive political views find sufficient ethical concerns for opposing the procedure. Daniel Sulmasy, a professor of medicine and a bioethicist at the University of Chicago, told National Public Radio (NPR), "This is a case in which one is deliberately setting out to create a human being for the sole purpose of destroying that human being. I'm of the school that thinks that that's morally wrong no matter how much good could come of it."

7. Currently, the primary justification for therapeutic cloning is as a means of harvesting embryonic stem cells—a process that ends a human life—for research purposes. Despite years of media hype and billions of dollars dedicated to the venture, embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) has never produced any clinically proven therapies—and likely never will. As the Washington Post wrote earlier this week, "few experts think that production of stem cells through cloning is likely to be medically useful soon, or possibly ever." ESCR has been one of the most expensive boondoggles in biomedical history.

8. Cloning not only compounds the ethical concerns of ESCR but adds a significant number of other moral problems. This Machiavellian approach would be difficult to justify even if ESCR were to lead to miraculous cures. But research using harvested embryonic stem cells appears to be an unnecessarily speculative undertaking and a waste of money, life, and medical research. The use of adult stem cells, however, has none of the ethical problems and far fewer of the biomedical complications of ESCR. In fact, more than 70 types of therapies have been developed using adult stem cells.

9. As the President's Council on Bioethics explained in 2005,

The prospect of cloning-to-produce-children, which would be a radically new form of procreation, raises deep concerns about identity and individuality, the meaning of having children, the difference between procreation and manufacture, and the relationship between the generations. Cloning-for-biomedical-research also raises new questions about the manipulation of some human beings for the benefit of others, the freedom and value of biomedical inquiry, our obligation to heal the sick (and its limits), and the respect and protection owed to nascent human life. Moreover, the legislative debates over human cloning raise questions about the relationship between science and society, especially about whether society can or should exercise ethical and prudential control over biomedical technology and the conduct of biomedical research. Rarely has such a seemingly small innovation raised such large questions.

(Although the studies on cloning and ESCR produced by the President's Council on Bioethics were once available at Bioethics.gov, the Obama administration has removed all the work produced by the previous council.)

Recent posts in this series:

9 Things You Should Know About Mothers and Mother's Day

9 Things You Should Know About Pornography and the Brain

9 Things You Should Know About Planned Parenthood

9 Things You Should Know About the Boston Marathon Bombing

9 Things You Should Know About Female Body Image Issues

9 Things You Should Know About the Gosnell Infanticide and Murder Trial

9 Things You Should Know About Edith Schaeffer

9 Things You Should Know About Duck Dynasty

For the inaugural article in our new series "Big Questions," The Gospel Coalition asked four Christian historians, "After AD 70, what day most changed the course of Christian history?"

Robert Louis Wilken is William R. Kenan professor emeritus of the history of Christianity at the University of Virginia. His most recent book is The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity.

A good case can be made for the Muslim invasion of the Middle East in mid-seventh century, let us say AD 650. No event during the first millennium was more unexpected, more calamitous, and more consequential for Christianity than the rise of Islam. Few irruptions in history have transformed societies so completely and irrevocably as did the conquest and expansion of the Arabs in the seventh century. And none came with greater swiftness. Within a decade three major cities in the Byzantine Christian Empire—Damascus in 635, Jerusalem in 638, and Alexandria in 641—fell to the invaders. Most of the territories that were Christian in the year 700 are now Muslim. Nothing similar has happened to Islam. Christianity seems like a rain shower that soaks the earth and then moves on, whereas Islam appears more like a great lake that constantly overflows its banks to inundate new territory.

George Marsden is professor emeritus in history at the University of Notre Dame and the author of Jonathan Edwards: A Life.

I think it has to be the day that Constantine was converted to Christianity. That had huge effects both for good and for ill ever after.

Philip Jenkins is the distinguished professor of history and co-director for the program on historical studies of religion for the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University. He is the author of of The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia—and How It Died.

I would choose May 29, 1453, known throughout the Eastern churches as "the day the world ended." Although the Byzantine Empire by that point was a pale shadow of its former self, it was still a ghostly shadow of the Roman Empire, and the seat of the Orthodox Church that once dwarfed the Catholics in power and prestige. On that day, though, the Roman capital of Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks, beginning a period of long centuries when most Eastern Christians would survive under the grudging tolerance of Islamic rule. The event may be symbolic, but it still marks a decisive turning point in Christian history.

Thomas S. Kidd is professor of history at Baylor University. He is writing a biography of George Whitefield and previously published The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America.

On October 19, 1740, the First Great Awakening's most compelling preacher, George Whitefield, spoke at the church of the Great Awakening's most compelling theologian, Jonathan Edwards. This moment signaled the beginning of evangelicalism, the most dynamic movement in modern Christian history. Although Edwards and Whitefield did not always see eye-to-eye, they represented two aspects of evangelicalism at its best.

Edwards was the brilliant pastor of Northampton, Massachusetts, whose writings on doctrine and revival are some of the most rigorous the church has ever seen. Whitefield took the gospel to the ends of the earth (which, for this English itinerant, meant America), generating unprecedented excitement through impassioned oratory and skillful use of media. While Edwards represented the evangelical mind, and Whitefield embodied evangelical action, both still appreciated the other's strength. Edwards itinerated, too, and oversaw two major revivals at his church, while Whitefield strongly promoted Calvinist doctrine and risked permanent schism with his Methodist ally John Wesley because of it.

Whitefield and Edwards seemed to sense the significance of the moment: the normally stoic Edwards wept through much of Whitefield's sermon. Edwards thought the Whitefield's revivals might herald "the dawning of a day of God's might, power, and glorious grace."

What question should we ask next? Send your suggestions to me at joe.carter@thegospelcoalition.org.

The Gospel Coalition invites you to join Leland Ryken in reading and discussing Leo Tolstoy's novella The Death of Ivan Illych. To learn more about our series on Commending the Classics, see earlier reader guides from Leland Ryken on Albert Calmus's The Stranger and "Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Phil Ryken on Marilynne Robinson's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Gilead, along with Kathleen Nielson on the short stories of Flannery O'Connor.

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I first read and studied this novella as a sophomore in college. It was my first intense adult encounter with literature. Being a work of Christian fiction, Tolstoy's story also gave me a vision for the integration of literature and Christianity that never left me. I am happy to report that this great Christian classic still appears in The Norton Anthology of World Literature, where I encountered it in college.

In my last posting on Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "Young Goodman Brown," I claimed that while Hawthorne's religious views are important, his short story is universal in its issues and does not require being contextualized in the broader landscape of Hawthorne's religious views. The same thing is true of The Death of Ivan Ilych. Tolstoy is an important figure in any history of modern Christian thought and practice, but knowing about his unorthodox Christian faith is not a prerequisite to understanding his masterpiece on suffering and death. I will therefore concentrate on the story itself, with minimal reference to Tolstoy's tortured religious life.

Leo Tolstoy was a Russian who lived from 1828 to 1910. His biography reads like an adventure story and a tragedy. At the approximate age of 50, Tolstoy reached a point of extreme despair about life. He resolved his despair in what can loosely be called a Christian conversion. The Death of Ivan Ilych was Tolstoy's first major fictional work published after his conversion and belongs to a group of works in which Tolstoy explained his religious views.

Brief Facts on The Death of Ivan Ilych

• Date of writing: 1884-1886 (Tolstoy worked on his masterpiece over a two-year span and made numerous references to the composition of it in his correspondence)
• Date of publication: 1886
• Language: Russian
• Best-known English translation: by Aylmer Maude; the translation used in this discussion guide
• Approximate number of pages: 60
• Format: 12 chapters (representing a symbolic completeness, corresponding to how Ivan's life ended in such a way that "what was necessary had been accomplished, and accomplished rightly")
• Genres: novella (short fiction, but longer than a short story); realism; satire; semi-autobiographical fiction (inasmuch as the spiritual progress of the protagonist is modeled on the spiritual conversion of the author); the literature of dying
• Setting of the action: multiple, inasmuch as the story encompasses the entire life of the protagonist, but mainly St. Petersburg, the capital of Russia in Tolstoy's day
• Chronology of the plot: the story begins with the death of the protagonist at the age of 45 and then (starting with chapter 2) moves back to the beginning of Ivan's life
• Style: simple and matter-of-fact prose (reminiscent of biblical narrative)
• Point of view: the story is told by a reliable narrator who knows everything (including what characters are thinking) and relentlessly forces us as readers to get beneath the surface level of life
• Inferred purpose of Tolstoy: to jolt readers out of living by the shallow norms of modern society and to lead them to face the serious and unavoidable issues of life and death
• Double plot: the story of external action (the level at which most characters in the story live) and the story of Ivan's internal life

Mirror of Modern Life

The Death of Ivan Ilych is a picture of the values by which many (and perhaps most) people live. It is a life without meaning. We need to note a great divide that runs through the story, however. With two exceptions, the characters who inhabit the world of the story are content with the trivial and materialistic life. This includes Ivan before he injured himself and embarked on the process of dying. But the story also pictures an alternative to life without meaning. As a result of his suffering, Ivan repudiates the values of materialism to embrace something more human, more moral, and more spiritual. The ultimate breakthrough comes when he is converted on his deathbed.

One of the great strengths of this story is its satiric portrayal and exposé of modern life. The features of modern society that we confront as we read include the following:

• the triviality of the things that occupy people's daily lives
• preoccupation with material things
• worship of success and prosperity
• social climbing
• careerism
• self-centeredness
• breakdown of families
• social conformity
• sexual permissiveness
• denial of death
• trust in medical technology, and a sense of betrayal when doctors cannot heal a patient

The mere portrayal of these familiar facets of modern life would itself be powerful and convicting, but Tolstoy's master stroke is his narrator. The narrator describes external and internal events in such a way as to heap scorn on the spectacle of living by the norms listed above. One of the best tips for reading is thus to regard the narrator's voice as a helpful tour guide that prompts us to respond correctly to the data that is presented.

Death Is Announced

This discussion guide will divide the story into three disproportionate units. This week's posting will limit itself to the opening chapter. There is no reason not to read more than the opening chapter in connection with this week's posting, since the opening chapter achieves its full meaning when we have the whole story in our awareness.

Tolstoy himself highlighted the opening chapter as a freestanding unit by devoting it to the death of Ivan Ilych and the responses this death elicits (and fails to elicit) in Ivan's family and colleagues. Only afterward does Tolstoy take us to the beginning Ivan's life. It is as though we cannot understand Ivan's life without first understanding his death. The Encyclopedia of Death and Dying correctly observes that structurally this story privileges Ivan's death over his life. By the time we end the story, this perspective will seem entirely logical to us.

Additionally, the opening chapter is the portal through which we enter story, so we should view it as our introduction to what will follow. One commentator claims that as a prelude to the story, the first chapter is designed in such a way as to implicate the reader in sharing the wrong responses made by the characters in the story.

Plot summary of chapter 1: During an interval in a trial in the law courts, someone announces to the assembled lawyers that their colleague Ivan Ilych has died. Immediately the colleagues begin thinking in terms of how the death will benefit their career climb, and then they take stock of the tiresome demands of visiting the widow to pay their condolences. We make the visit to the widow with a specific colleague named Peter Ivanovich. During his visit, Peter learns the details about Ivan's suffering and death. Yet he manages to distance himself from everything that might bring him to perception, including an awareness that death will come to him, too. All responses (including the widow's) remain on the surface level, and Peter leaves feeling lucky when he gets to his scheduled card game only a little late.

Narrative World of the Story

We need to begin by accepting that Tolstoy intended something definite by rearranging the chronology of his story in such a way as to begin with the last event in Ivan's life, namely, his death. One commentator believes this strategy puts us as readers into the story. As various characters respond to the death, we share their inner thoughts. Those thoughts are selfish, unfeeling, distanced, death-denying. We are right there to share Peter Ivanovich's irritation at the inconvenience of a colleague's death.

The opening pages of any fictional story are designed to initiate us into the narrative world that we enter when we commit ourselves to read the story. There can be no doubt that this is what Tolstoy accomplishes by beginning with the announcement of Ivan Ilych's death. Merely by recording what characters thought by way of response to Ivan's death, Tolstoy has plunged us into the world of the story by a kind of shorthand method. Our response to what we observe is double—shock at the attitudes displayed in various characters and at the same time awareness that these are the same thoughts to which we are at least tempted when confronted with the inconvenience and demands occasioned by someone's death. This story is like the Bible in its manner of convicting us.

For reflection or discussion: Since this is our initiation into the world of the story, we need to note the essential features of that world. What leaps out most obviously? How do the features of modern life listed above already establish themselves in our awareness? How do your own experiences and observations confirm the accuracy of the portrait that chapter 1 paints? Taken a step further, how does the narrator's voice get us to evaluate these features? At what points in the account are we particularly aware of the shallowness and deceitfulness of social conventions?

Foreshadowing Things to Come

Initiation is one of the two main items of narrative business that Tolstoy achieves in his opening chapter. The other is a skillfully managed strategy of foreshadowing. The opening chapter is a "teaser" that makes us curious about the rest of the story. Four things in particular are foreshadowed.

The first is embodied in a statement that describes the look on the face of the deceased Ivan: "The expression on the face said that what was necessary had been accomplished, and accomplished rightly." We will not learn what this means until the last chapter, where even the word rightly will explode with meaning. What is here a foreshadowing will be echoed in our memory when this key sentence is explained.

A second piece of foreshadowing is the information that the widow imparts to Peter Ivanovich regarding Ivan's suffering. We learn that Ivan's suffering was so terrible that he screamed for (a symbolic) three days before his death. Again we are teased into wanting more information.

Third, the ease with which Peter Ivanovich and Ivan's widow manage to sidestep the reality of death foreshadows a leading motif in the story as a whole. In the opening chapter, Peter is only momentarily struck by the possibility that what had happened to Ivan Ilych could happen to him. The widow's response to Ivan's suffering is the self-centered statement, "I cannot understand how I bore it."

Finally, in view of what we later come to know about Ivan's servant, Gerasim, we can view our introduction to him in the opening chapter as a foreshadowing. As Gerasim performs his servant's duties, we catch a glimpse of someone who understands what is happening in life. In contrast to Peter's and the widow's denial of death, Gerasim says forthrightly that death "is God's will. We shall all come to it some day."

For reflection or discussion: The skillful use of foreshadowing in chapter 1 is something that subsequent chapters will bring to fruition. Other techniques, though, can be relished in the opening chapter itself. For example, part of the triumph of this novella is its exploiting the literary technique of realism. Writers of realism love the apparently random and trivial detail that make a story lifelike. The pouffe [cushioned chair or couch] with its unwieldy springs takes on a life of its own in the scene set in Ivan's house. What other realistic touches strike you as cleverly managed by Tolstoy? More generally, knowing that Tolstoy worked on this 60-page novella for two years, what evidence do you see of careful craftsmanship?

Summary: The opening chapter is a detailed dramatization of how the death of Ivan Ilych fails to affect his family and acquaintances. By contrast, the story will eventually record how the death does affect Ivan. The story as a whole is arranged in such a way as to encourage us as readers to share Ivan's insight into suffering and death, and to rise above the imperceptiveness of his (and our) society.

Recently, we have begun to see an encouraging trend in Christian circles: a greater awareness of violence and oppression (such as human trafficking), as well as an increased concern for rescuing and caring for victims. We are seeing an explosion of attention to social justice issues in organizations like Passion, International Justice Mission, and the World Evangelical Alliance, and with the publication of books like God in a Brothel and The White Umbrella. Everywhere you look, churches, parachurch organizations, and individual Christians are waking up to the hidden world of injustice, violence, abuse, and slavery around us—and taking action.

The Bible does not hesitate to depict the harsh reality of violence and oppression, and in fact God's people are clearly called to fight for justice and mercy for all people. Throughout the entire Bible, God is portrayed as one who is just and merciful in his dealings with humanity. Psalm 68:4-5 says, for example, that God is "a father to the fatherless, a defender of widows." Theologians from a wide variety of backgrounds—from Gustavo Gutierrez to Nicholas Wolterstorff to Tim Keller—have concluded that God has a special place in his heart for the poor and vulnerable. Indeed, part of Israel's vocation was to enact social justice, not for its own sake, but because in so doing Israel would reveal the character of God to the surrounding nations, as a city set on a hill.

At the beginning of Jesus' ministry, he stood up in the synagogue at Nazareth and declared that these words of Isaiah were fulfilled in him:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. (Luke 4:17)

In this declaration and his ministry, Jesus showed that bringing freedom for captives and relief to the poor and oppressed is crucial to his divine mission. His ultimate act of liberation was his substitutionary death and victorious resurrection, which set his people free from slavery to sin and death. Yet his teachings and his example show us that proclaiming the good news of Christ's saving work should be accompanied by tangible acts of love, service, and mercy toward our neighbors if the gospel message is to be recognized in its full power.

Throughout his ministry, Jesus' example revealed God's heart for the despised, the weak, the abused, and the vulnerable. Jesus spent significant amounts of time with children, women, the poor, the diseased, Samaritans, and other outcast and disliked groups, valuing and loving those who were excluded by the society of his day. This paradoxical approach to the power structures of the world is echoed by Paul when he writes, "God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God" (1 Cor. 1:27-29).

Apologetic of Mercy

Historically, the Christian church has, at its best, been known for exemplary love and sacrificial service to the poor, oppressed, and marginalized. Such service has provided a powerful apologetic for the gospel. The fourth-century church provides just one example:

In his attempt to reestablish Hellenic religion in the empire, [the Emperor] Julian instructed the high priest of the Hellenic faith to imitate Christian concern for strangers. Referring to Christianity as "atheism," he asked, "Why do we not observe that it is their benevolence to strangers, their care for the graves of the dead and the pretended holiness of their lives that have done most to increase atheism?" He therefore instructed the priest to establish hostels for needy strangers in every city and also ordered a distribution of corn and wine to the poor, strangers, and beggars. "For it is disgraceful that, when no Jew ever has to beg, and the impious Galilaeans [Christians] support not only their own poor but ours as well, all men see that our people lack aid from us. Teach those of the Hellenic faith to contribute to public service of this sort."

Similarly, in more recent history, Christian churches of the 18th and 19th centuries led the charge for the abolition of slavery, again providing a strong apologetic for the Christian faith and visibly embodying Jesus' mission to proclaim liberty to captives.

Social action is an opportunity for Christian churches to take the gospel to those who are most in need, provide an alternative community centered on Jesus (the church) to the marginalized and oppressed, and show the transformative power of the gospel to the watching world. Moreover, responding to oppression and social injustice in our world and our communities is a way the church can practice the charge of Jeremiah 29 for God's people to seek the welfare of the cities where God has placed us, and to obey the call of James to practice "pure religion" (James 1:27) by caring for the most vulnerable.

In light of the theology of justice that permeates Scripture, we should give thanks that the renewed emphasis on care for victims and the oppressed has helped many Christians better realize a neglected aspect of our calling in the world. As Christopher J. H. Wright says,

Mission that claims the high spiritual ground of preaching only a gospel of personal forgiveness and salvation without the radical challenge of the full biblical demands of God's justice and compassion, without a hunger and thirst for justice, may well expose those who respond to its partial truths to the same dangerous verdict. The epistle of James seems to say as much to those in his own day who had managed to drive an unbiblical wedge between faith and works, the spiritual and the material. If faith without works is dead, mission without social compassion and justice is biblically deficient.

As we preaches the gospel of Christ's atoning work, leading to liberation from sin, we must also apply that liberating and atoning work to the evils of this world. Otherwise we are like the person to whom James refers in his epistle: "and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, be warmed and filled,' without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?" (James 2:16)

Put simply, without embracing both the physical and also spiritual aspects of redemption, Christians will have an incomplete concept of God's mission for the world.

Creeds and Deeds

As we celebrate the church's reawakening attention to oppression and emphasis on action, we must watch out for our historical tendency to swing between extremes. One side focuses exclusively or primarily on meeting material needs—this could be labeled the "deeds not creeds" extreme, with its focus on action at the expense of proclamation. This approach, frequently but incorrectly labeled "social gospel," reduces human beings to merely material beings and ignores the need for spiritual new birth and forgiveness of sin through the work of Christ, received through faith by hearing the word of God's grace.

Fearing this pitfall, we sometimes swing to another extreme, the "anti-social gospel," which could be dubbed "creeds not deeds." This extreme emphasizes sound doctrine and focuses on proclamation, but meets only "spiritual" needs while ignoring or minimizing tangible action. As Michael Horton argues, a "creeds not deeds" approach fails because it is actually incompatible with biblical doctrine:

While it is certainly possible to have a church that is formally committed to Christian doctrine—even in the form of creeds, confessions, and catechisms, without exhibiting any interest in missions or the welfare even of those within their own body, I would argue that it is impossible to have a church that is actually committed to sound doctrine that lacks these corollary interests. With respect to individual Christians in their common vocations, the mercies of God in Christ propel a profound sense of obligation and stewardship. God has given us everything in Christ, by grace alone, so our only "reasonable service" is to love and serve our neighbors out of gratitude for that inexhaustible gift.

To avoid the pendulum-swing between extremes, the church must emphasize both creeds and also deeds, recognizing that Good News results in good deeds. Without that theological center, the church will be tempted to spin off into either deeds only or creeds only. God's grace motivates repentance and change, and only by proclaiming God's gracious, merciful response to our sin and failure will we find the fuel for loving and serving our neighbors in action and in truth.

The rise in awareness of oppression and concern for victims from the church should encourage us. Because of God's lavish grace toward us through the work of Jesus, we are motivated to be agents of his grace to others, especially the vulnerable and oppressed. By responding to oppression and injustice, the church has the opportunity to be a light to the nations and to participate in God's mission by welcoming the weak and powerless to find grace, mercy, and rest in Jesus Christ.

What is the difference between common erotica and the Song of Solomon? Both describe human sexuality in vivid and breathless detail. Both provide detailed depictions of the human form, including at least allusions to the genitalia. Both paint striking portraits of sexuality and evoke strong passions. So what's the difference?

Is it merely that the Canticles are one particular work of erotica taken up by the Holy Spirit and added to the Bible? If this is the case, we will be forced to conclude that either the Holy Spirit has lifted one proverbial pig out of the pig sty and dressed her up with lipstick and a party dress (or negligee, as the case may be) and hoped we wouldn't notice the stink. Or perhaps erotica qua genre is not inherently wicked. Neither of these options, I think, is true. There must be some fundamental difference between what we witness in the Song of Solomon and what we encounter in worldly erotica.

There is one primary answer that exhibits itself in several ways. The single major difference between the Song of Solomon and erotica is the difference between means and ends. In his Song, Solomon's primary goal is to describe love and beauty. To do so, he employs the most fundamental consummation of those virtues, human sexuality. Love and beauty are the ends, sexuality is the means. Erotica reverses that order. The main goal of erotica is to describe human sexuality, and occasionally it does this by employing descriptions of physical beauty and/or love. In erotica, sexuality is the end, love and beauty are merely means—disposable ones.

Beauty in Song of Solomon and Beauty in Erotica

Notice the difference between the way beauty is treated in the Song of Solomon and the way it is used in erotica. For Solomon, physical beauty should be celebrated with all the enthusiasm of youthful vigor. It is to be described in nearly tangible detail:

Your lips are like a scarlet thread; your mouth is lovely.
Your temples are like a slice of pomegranate behind your veil. (SOS 4:3)

And,

His cheeks are like a bed of balsam, banks of sweet-scented herbs;
His lips are lilies dripping with liquid myrrh. (SOS 5:13)

It gets more explicit, of course: there are descriptions of her breasts (4:5; 7:3, 7-8; 8:10), her hips (7:1), her naked belly (7:2), the allure of her "garden" (4:12-5:1), and the blossoming of her "orchard" (6:11). At least some would interpret the metaphor of 5:14, "his abdomen is carved ivory," as thinly veiled phallic imagery. But when these unashamedly erotic descriptions are taken along with the rest of the imagery presented in the Song, the overall effect is not inordinate fixation on any one or two body parts. We delight in the human body as a whole, both male and female. To put it another way, Solomon is enraptured with beauty, not sexuality.

In erotica or pornography, there is no place for real beauty. There is an aping of certain beautiful aspects of the human form, to be sure, but even those are emphasized clumsily and with adolescent hurry in an effort to highlight what is most important: the sex.

Love in Song of Solomon and Love in Erotica

Consider the place of love in Solomon versus erotica. The depictions of physical beauty in the Canticles always leads to an encomium to love itself:

You have made my heart beat faster, my sister, my bride;
you have made my heart beat faster with a single glance of your eyes . . .
How beautiful is your love, my sister, my bride!
How much better is your love than wine. . . . (SOS 4:9-10)

And in one of the most evocative descriptions, Solomon asserts that tranquility itself can be found in the embrace of the beloved:

I was a wall, and my breasts were like towers;
Then I became in his eyes as one who finds peace. (SOS 8:10)

Kurt Vonnegut seems to have grasped the difference between love of beauty and mere lust when he penned "Miss Temptation," which includes what must rank as one of the best descriptions of the feminine form of all time. His description might have been lifted right out of Solomon: "Susanna's feathery hair and saucer eyes were as black as midnight. Her skin was the color of cream. Her hips were like a lyre, and her bosom made men dream of peace and plenty forever and ever."

What piece of erotica can hold a candle to that writing?

Erotica is not interested in love. It will, at times, spread a thin veneer of love over certain stories, but love is never the main point. It is only ever back story. Erotica is written to titillate, the Canticles to celebrate. The one is written to provoke lust, the other to evoke beauty. It is the monumental difference between pornography and nude art, between Ron Jeremy and Michelangelo's David.

The Song of Solomon is a monument to love and beauty and to the proper connection between them. The experience of human sexuality is the pedestal upon which the monument securely and audaciously rests. Solomon teaches us that the most ravishing beauty is a consequence of the most desperate love, that the beloved is so beautiful precisely because she is so loved.

In our pluralistic culture, churches have become so varied that they spread confusion about what it really means to be a follower of Christ. When it comes to hot-button issues like gun rights, abortion, and homosexuality, professing Christians line up on opposite ends. Can Christianity legitimately be so divided? Or, to put it another way, can anyone discern the "real deal"? Is it possible to know what functional, practical Christianity truly looks like? 

James, the brother of Jesus, says yes—and he gives us a simple litmus test:

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world (Jas. 1:27).

James provides a short, two-item checklist: (1) love—helping those in need, and (2) holiness—separating from worldly influence. These two traits summarize the practical outworking of a life changed by the gospel.

Much of the current division within the church comes from overemphasizing one trait over the other. Some churches tend to emphasize love, whereas others tend to prioritize holiness. But neither is negotiable. Both are essential for living the Christian life.

First Essential: Love

One way Christians can be tempted to forsake the requirement of love is to pursue our rights. Especially in America, where individualism is one of our sacred cows, we can get caught up in fighting for our rights, particularly as they pertain to religious freedom. There are certainly times and places to use proper legal means to secure those rights (as Paul did in Acts 22:22-30), but we should be known for something better than demanding equal treatment.

We can become so consumed with our liberties that we end up treating those in the world as our enemies, to the detriment of the gospel. God has called us to proclaim a message of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:18-20), something that is hard to do if we constantly approach unbelievers armed for a fight.

The Christian is called to consider the needs and preferences of others (Gal. 5:14). Yes, we must sometimes draw attention to a person's—or even a nation's—sins, but are we going to do so with our fists in their faces or with tears on our cheeks? During New Testament times, the government was far more corrupt and hostile to Christianity than ours is today, yet we don't see Scripture commanding us to fight for our rights. Instead, we are instructed to expect unfair treatment—even blatant persecution—and to return hostility with love (John 15:18-20; Rom. 12:18-21).

Second Essential: Holiness

The sacred cow of individualism has affected not only our love but also our holiness. Too often, we have turned our personal happiness into the greatest good. As long as it makes me happy (whatever "it" may be), and as long as no one else gets hurt, I can and should pursue it. If I don't pursue my own happiness, I am being untrue to myself. Or so the argument goes.

But the second fruit of genuine Christianity, James says, is "to keep oneself unstained from the world." The world may tell us to follow our hearts, but we are called to be true ultimately to God and his Word—not to our autonomy. And being true to God often comes in the form of denying ourselves what we think we want, because it is actually bad for us (Rom. 13:4; 1 Pet. 2:11).

At the same time, we don't want to be so far removed from the world that we don't understand it. We can't affect the culture if we aren't engaging with it. In many ways, though, we have sacrificed our holiness on the altar of relevance. With the apparent purpose of being more engaged with our culture, the church has tried so hard to fit in that the distinction between churched and unchurched peoples has often been obliterated. We must take James' warning to heart: aligning ourselves with worldly values is aligning ourselves against God (Jas. 4:4).

Christianity Is Countercultural

Christ-like love is a beautiful thing. To love unconditionally, regardless of another person's maturity or theological depth or moral purity, is to love like God loves. It reveals a heart transformed by the gospel. Likewise, true holiness is a beautiful thing. Avoiding conformity to this world is a sign of a heart satisfied with promises and pleasures found in the gospel that exceed anything the world can offer.

Pure and undefiled Christianity is counter-cultural. It stands out as radically different from anything we would naturally think or do. Wherever we stand politically or denominationally, the true path of Christianity challenges us to confront the animosity and worldliness found in our own hearts. True Christianity may look to the world like foolishness, but it reveals God's saving power.

The Story: The IRS recently admitted that it inappropriately targeted conservative non-profit groups for extra scrutiny. Franklin Graham, president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and son of the renowned evangelist, says the IRS targeted his group too.

The Background: According to the Wall Street Journal, the Internal Revenue Service's scrutiny of conservative groups went beyond those with "tea party" or "patriot" in their names to also include ones worried about government spending, debt or taxes, and even ones that lobbied to "make America a better place to live." The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has been conducting an internal audit of the IRS's handling of the applications process. The audit follows complaints last year by numerous tea-party and other conservative groups, says the WSJ, that they had been singled out and subjected to excessive and inappropriate questioning. Many groups say they were asked for lists of their donors and other sensitive information.

Franklin Graham recently sent a letter to President Obama saying that he believes his organization was also unfairly targeted for extra scrutiny because the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association urged voters to back "candidates who base their decisions on biblical principles and support the nation of Israel" during last year's presidential race.

The newspaper ads the group ran concluded with the words: "Vote for biblical values this November 6, and pray with me (Billy Graham) that America will remain one nation under God." Graham says the ads were purchased with designated funds given by friends of the ministry for that purpose.

Three months prior to the election, both Samaritan's Purse and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association received notification from the IRS that a review would be conducted for the tax year ending 2010. Graham says that in light of the subsequent revelations, "I do not believe that the IRS audit of our two organizations last year is a coincidence—or justifiable."

Graham adds that after the election they received notice that the organizations continued to qualify for exemption from Federal income tax and that their returns were accepted as filed.

Why It Matters: Last fall, claims like those by Graham that the IRS was targeting certain groups because of their political beliefs would have been dismissed as conspiratorial and paranoid. But the recent admission by IRS officials that such misconduct has occurred more than 500 times makes the allegations shockingly plausible.

But why would government employees target their fellow citizens for extra scrutiny? As New York Times columnist Ross Douthat says, "the bureaucrats in question probably thought they were just doing their patriotic duty, and giving dangerous extremists the treatment they deserved."

Where might an enterprising, public-spirited I.R.S. agent get the idea that a Tea Party group deserved more scrutiny from the government than the typical band of activists seeking tax-exempt status? Oh, I don't know: why, maybe from all the prominent voices who spent the first two years of the Obama era worrying that the Tea Party wasn't just a typically messy expression of citizen activism, but something much darker — an expression of crypto-fascist, crypto-racist rage, part Timothy McVeigh and part Bull Connor, potentially carrying a wave of terrorist violence in its wings.

And its not just the Tea Partiers. Christians who support traditional marriage are increasingly viewed as hateful bigots who are denying Americans their right to marry someone of the same sex. If Christians are committing such evil against their neighbors, the thinking goes, why shouldn't organizations run by hateful bigots, like Billy Graham, receive extra-scrutiny?

Within a few months this scandal will fade from memory, and all that will be left is the rules and regulations that are put in place to prevent further abuses. Closer scrutiny will likely prevent such direct harassment by the IRS from getting out of control in the future, but these incidents have revealed that Bible-believing Christians have fully entered an era when our values are considered not just wrong, but hostile and worthy of suppression. Are we prepared for the abuse that will come from being faithful to God's Word?

I learned about Carl F. H. Henry at the feet of my mentor Leroy Forlines, professor of theology at Free Will Baptist Bible College (now Welch College) and author of books with titles such as The Quest for Truth and Classical Arminianism. Over the course of his career, Forlines taught his students the Henrician epistemology of God, Revelation, and Authority and the cultural mandate similar to what Henry outlined in The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism.

It was from my Arminian professor that I learned to love Henry, and that should be no surprise. Henry longed for vibrant faith, practice, and spirituality shared by all classic evangelicals—be they Arminian, Calvinist, Lutheran, or Anabaptist. He hoped for a transdenominational evangelical university that would bring together scholars from the various strands of confessional Protestantism.

This is the sort of program Henry modeled in the pages of Christianity Today. It's what caused Free Will Baptists like Billy Melvin, Wesleyans like Dennis Kinlaw, Lutherans like Robert Preus, Anabaptists like Edmond Hiebert, and Arminian-leaning Dispensationalists like Norman Geisler to rally behind Henry in his defense Scripture's truth claims and to sign on to the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.

My mentor loved Henry because, though Henry was a Calvinist and he an Arminian, they could put their differences aside in championing evangelical orthodoxy against a growing secularism, Protestant liberalism, and then-fashionable neo-orthodoxy. They could agree the Christian world-and-life-view had enormous implications—not just for a personal relationship with God, but also for culture and the created order as a whole.

Rather Ironic

My own love for Henry deepened when I was a student at Yale Divinity School in the early 1990s. Now that I look back on this time, it seems rather ironic—given current evangelical stereotypes—that a Free Will Baptist boy from the Deep South would be in the hotbed of Yale postliberalism, studying with George Lindbeck by day (and loving every minute of it) and leading the Divinity School Evangelical Fellowship in discussions of God, Revelation, and Authority by night.

Yet this "Reformed Arminian" had grown to love Henry's brand of presuppositionalism and his compelling defense of the classic Protestant doctrine of biblical inspiration. I was drawn to his Reformed emphases on human depravity, penal substitionary atonement, and the imputation of Christ's righteousness in justification. I identified with his down-to-earth evangelical spirituality coupled with a broadly Reformed-Kuyperian approach to culture and the implications of the Christian world-and-life-view.

Simply put, Henry seemed to this young Arminian theological student to be a more biblically faithful model of epistemology, theology, and cultural engagement than the postliberalism and liberation theology I was encountering at Yale. Indeed, I always thought Lindbeck didn't quite understand Henry. It seemed, in casting evangelical theology as merely "cognitive propositional," Lindbeck missed the distinctiveness of Henry's Reformed, faith-seeking-understanding epistemology. He seemed to be pigeonholing Henry and the mainstream evangelical tradition in a way that didn't do them justice.

Now, 20 years later, postmodernity doesn't seem so cool (at least to me) as it once did. It seems as though the evangelical academy is one of the few places where postliberalism is still in style (though its evangelical fans like to call it "postconservatism"). That's why I recently enjoyed reading Greg Thornbury's excellent new book, Recovering Classic Evangelicalism: Applying the Wisdom and Vision of Carl F. H. Henry (Crossway, 2013). This work has the prospect of resurrecting Henry's reputation among younger evangelicals. I hope as a result that our younger colleagues will actually read Henry, rather than just skimming his work and caricaturing him like so many evangelicals of my generation have done.

Undergirding Truth

I think Henry would have liked what Thornbury is doing and would have felt well represented by his book. Thornbury highlights the fact that Henry represents a Reformational epistemology as well as a traditional understanding of the nature of truth as that which conforms to reality. This view of truth undergirds the historic Christian view that Holy Scripture is without error in all it affirms.

Thornbury rightly insists that Henry's view of scriptural truthfulness isn't the novel invention of 19th-century Cartesian foundationalists, Enlightenment modernists who had too strong a dose of rationalism and Scottish Common Sense philosophy. Instead, it's common to historic Christianity from the Fathers up through the Reformers.

This is why evangelical Thomists like R. C. Sproul and Norman Geisler could join hands with those leaning more Augustinian in their epistemology, such as Henry, Francis Schaeffer, Ronald Nash, or Cornelius Van Til. They all shared the same traditional Christian approach to the truthfulness of Scripture as rational, propositional revelation from God.

Like these other thinkers, Henry never believed that the propositional character of special revelation—as important and non-negotiable as it is—exhausts the multiform character of divine revelation, as he and they are often caricatured as believing. Thornbury wants to resurrect this noble, classic evangelical understanding of divine truth and revelation for a younger audience. It will be healthy for younger evangelicals to let the clean sea breeze of classic evangelicalism blow through their minds. I believe this will help sweep away the cobwebs of well-worn postconservative clichés and stereotypes.

I do believe Henry would have responded favorably to the nuancing of some of his constructions in the light of postmodernity. (I also suspect Henry would find fruitful—and faithful—the ways scholars like Michael Horton and Malcolm Yarnell, whom Thornbury needlessly chides, have nuanced the Reformational epistemologies they received from their evangelical forebears.) Moreover, I think Henry would respond favorably to the proposals of Calvinist Don Carson (The Gagging of God) and Arminian Grant Osborne (The Hermeneutical Spiral), both of whom attempt to assert a classic evangelical view of revelation, truth, and hermeneutics in dialogue with postmodern thought.

Was Henry a man of his time who understood and communicated to his modernist interlocutors? Yes. But was he a captive to modernism? No. My hunch is that when our evangelical descendants look back on us in 100 years, the fact Henry was using a little too much rationalistic language and categories (a 300-year-old fad) isn't going to look nearly as faddish as postmodernism, postliberalism, postconservatism, postfoundationalism, postpropositionalism, and all the other "post"-fads presently driving much of evangelical theological method.

Culture and Kingdom

But in addition to epistemic and theological considerations, Thornbury desires to resurrect Henry's approach to culture and the kingdom so eloquently stated in The Uneasy Conscience. This is much needed in today's evangelical environment, with people on the one hand calling for evangelicals to be silent for a time in the public square while those on the other hand redefining the mission of the church as much in terms of saving the whales as saving souls.

Henry's view of the in-breaking kingdom of God as "already but not yet" made him critical of social-gospel liberals, whose over-realized eschatology made them place too much salvific significance on social justice and too little on evangelism. But he also believed his fundamentalist brothers and sisters didn't sufficiently emphasize the "already" nature of the kingdom and so ignored the social and cultural implications of the gospel.

Henry's life and ministry called 20th-century evangelicals back to a full-orbed Christian world-and-life-view that emphasized the Great Commission: making disciples and teaching them to live out Christ's teachings. This is just the sort of balance we need in the current evangelical debates about the Christian's role in society and public life.

Describing Henry as the man who "invented evangelicalism," Timothy George says Henry wanted to foster a movement that was "transcontinental, interdenominational, theologically affirmative, socially aggressive, and irenic." These are still worthy goals for a compelling, vibrant, theologically orthodox evangelical movement, and I believe a fresh reading and appreciation of Henry is just what we need to help us work toward these goals he valued so highly and embodied in his life and work.

If you're looking for a way to critique the authority of Scripture, there are seemingly endless options. There are historical critiques (e.g., many of these books are forgeries). There are logical critiques (e.g., the Gospels contradict themselves). There are moral critiques (e.g., God is immoral to order the slaughter of entire cities). And there are hermeneutical critiques (e.g., no one can agree on what the Bible means).

In recent years, however, a more foundational challenge has arisen. All of the above critiques are essentially the same; they all argue the words of the Bible are not true. But this newer and more foundational challenge is not about whether the words of the Bible are true, but whether we have the words of the Bible at all.    

At the core of this challenge is the fact that we only have handwritten copies of these books we treasure. And, in reality, we only have copies of copies of copies. And given that scribes made mistakes, and that the transmission process was imperfect, how can we be sure that these texts have been preserved? How can we be sure we actually have the words of Scripture?

Bart Ehrman's best-selling book Misquoting Jesus focuses on this issue as it pertains to the New Testament text: 

What good is it to say that the autographs (i.e., the originals) were inspired? We don't have the originals! We have only error-ridden copies, and the vast majority of these are centuries removed from the originals and different from them . . . in thousands of ways. 

If Ehrman is correct, then he has uncovered the single thread that would unravel the entire garment of the Christian faith. There is no need to critique the content of the New Testament if we don't even have the New Testament.

But is this argument cogent? I think not. There are two places it can be challenged: (1) the role of the autographs and (2) the degree of corruption in the extant manuscripts.

Role of the Autographs

Ehrman's focus on the autographs (or the absence of them) is not unusual in modern critiques of biblical authority. However, this sort of argument often creates the impression (even if it is unintentional) that the autographs are the original text—almost as if the original text were a physical object that has been lost.   

But the original text is not a physical object. The autographs contain the original text, but the original text can exist without them. A text can be preserved in other ways. One such way is that the original text can be preserved in a multiplicity of manuscripts. In other words, even though a single surviving manuscript might not contain (all of) the original text, the original text could be accessible to us across a wide range of manuscripts.  

Preserving the original text across multiple manuscripts, however, could only happen if there were enough of these manuscripts to give us assurance that the original text was preserved (somewhere) in them. Providentially, when it comes to the quantity of manuscripts, the New Testament is in a class all its own. Although the exact count is always changing, currently we possess more than 5,500 manuscripts of the New Testament in Greek alone. No other document of antiquity even comes close.

Even though we do not possess the autographs, textual scholars have acknowledged that the multiplicity of manuscripts allows us to access the original text. Eldon Jay Epp notes, "The point is that we have so many manuscripts of the NT . . . that surely the original reading in every case is somewhere present in our vast store of material."

Gordon Fee concurs: "The immense amount of material available to NT textual critics . . . is their good fortune because with such an abundance of material one can be reasonably certain that the original text is to be found somewhere in it." 

Of course, one might wonder why God chose to preserve the text in this manner. Why not just preserve the autographs? Why didn't God just allow Christians to keep the autographs sealed away in a vault somewhere? For one, it is historically unlikely that the autographs could have survived until the present day, especially if they were being regularly used.

But it is also possible that God may have not wanted the autographs to survive. One can imagine how easily (and quickly) such documents would become objects of veneration, if not worship. They might have become the equivalent of Gideon's ephod (Judges 8:27)—a good gift the people begin to treat as an idol.

Of course, we cannot know for sure why God providentially did not preserve the autographs. But, in one sense, it is fitting. It reminds us that the Word of God, like God himself, is not bound to a physical location or to a physical object. It is a Word that is not contained. It is a Word that goes forth.

Corruption of the Manuscripts

If, as we have seen, there are good reasons to think that the original text is preserved across the entire manuscript tradition (as opposed to being contained in a single manuscript), then there is still the question of how we identify the original text. How do we distinguish the original text from textual changes or corruptions? Can this even be done?

Ehrman would suggest it cannot. The reason for his skepticism is that the copies we posses are "error-ridden" and contain "thousands" of differences. In other words, the manuscripts are in such poor shape, so full of corruptions, that no methodology could extract the original text from them. 

Again, this is a vast overstatement. While there are certainly many, many textual differences (hundreds of thousands, in fact), the key point is that the vast majority of these scribal changes are minor and insignificant—e.g., spelling mistakes, use of synonyms, and word-order changes. In the end, these do not substantively change the meaning of the text.

Of course, there are more substantive textual changes (much fewer in number) that do affect the meaning of the text. But these changes would only be a problem if we could not identify them as changes. Or to put differently, these kinds of variants would only be a problem if we could assume that every one of them was as equally viable as every other.

Thankfully, textual scholars can determine, with a relative degree of certainty, which of these readings were original and which were not. There are still some gray areas, some instances where a choice between variants is unclear. But, generally speaking, we can have confidence that the words we read are the words of the original authors.  

Historically, Christian affirmations of biblical authority are often expressly restricted to the "autographs." And there are obvious reasons for this view. Biblical authority does not apply to whatever a later scribe might happen to write down—it applies to what the biblical authors actually wrote.

But does the lack of autographs mean such affirmations of biblical authority are meaningless? No, because the authority does not reside in a physical object, but in the original text. And the original text has been preserved in another way, namely through the multiplicity of manuscripts.