The Kloha-Montgomery Debate - Final Thoughts

          John Warwick Montgomery, in his recent debate with Jeffrey Kloha, raised a concern that the thoroughgoing eclectic method tends to destabilize the text, risking the production of a “Designer New Testament.”  Montgomery criticized Kloha for stating, “We now have a text of the New Testament that makes no claim to being fixed and stable, for it is subject to continuous improvement and change.”  But anyone can read the introduction to the 27th edition of the Nestle-Aland compilation and read a similar statement from the compilers themselves:  “This text is a working text (in the sense of the century-long Nestle tradition); it is not to be considered as definitive, but as a stimulus to further efforts toward defining and verifying the text of the New Testament.” 

          Kloha cannot be faulted for mentioning that parts of Novum Testamentum Graece are unstable, unless one is willing to imply that the editors of the NA-text are also at fault.  Montgomery acknowledged that thoroughgoing eclecticism “doesn’t differ greatly from reasonable eclecticism,” by which he meant to refer to reasoned eclecticism, the term which is used to describe the method of New Testament textual criticism that has yielded the base-texts of the ESV, HCSB, NLT, NIV, etc.  Montgomery may not realize it, but most of his objections apply to the Nestle-Aland-28 compilation too.  In the 27th edition of the Nestle-Aland compilation, the text of First Corinthians differs from the 25th edition at 24 places (not including instances where brackets were either added or removed).  These are actual changes to the compilation.  So when Kloha recommends a few more changes, why is this a problem? 

          Similarly, compared to the text of NA-25, the compilers of NA-27 introduced ten changes into the text of the first five chapters of the Gospel of Luke.  Montgomery has raised no objection.  But when Kloha suggests one more change – “the main illustration” of why Montgomery considers thoroughgoing eclecticism problematic – Montgomery called it a threat to inerrancy.

          Montgomery and Kloha both want Christians to be able to read their New Testaments with confidence that they are reading the Word of God, not man-made corruptions.  The difference (or, the main difference) is that Montgomery recommends that when the external evidence overwhelming favors one variant against its rival variant(s), there is a simple way to settle the contest:  “Go to the best text, for goodness’ sake.”  But this is circular.  The best text is the correct text – the reading that is the same as the original text – and that is precisely the question:  at this particular point, which reading is the best?   It simply would not make sense to say, “To discover what is the best text of Luke 1:46, go to the best text of Luke 1:46.”  Yet that is the essence of the method that Montgomery seems to propose.

          The thoroughgoing method employed by Kloha may reveal points of instability in the text which reasoned eclecticism might not (because a reasoned eclecticism might not consider variants with very poor external support to be significant).  This raises a question:  how is a method that increases (however slightly) the number of uncertain or unstable points in the text consistent with the goal of increasing readers’ confidence that the text is the Word of God? 

          The answer is when thoroughgoing eclecticism favors readings which have very poor external support, or even no Greek manuscript-support at all (as in the case of Kloha’s suggested reading in Luke 1:46), the method invites uncertainty which future discoveries and future research might vindicate.  This is preferable to the alternative of feeling certain about specific readings that future research might show to be scribal corruptions.  Thoroughgoing eclecticism yields a loss of confidence at some specific points where other methods do not – but this is more than compensated for by the net gain in confidence for the rest of the text, where external and internal evidence interlock.

          The uncertainty that thoroughgoing eclecticism invites at specific points in the text has been occasionally vindicated, yielding a compilation that more accurately resembles the form of the original text.  For example, Erasmus suggested that the original text of James 4:15 was και ζήσομεν και ποιήσομεν even though the Greek manuscript evidence available to him supported και ζήσωμεν και ποιήσωμεν.  Subsequently, manuscripts became available that had the reading that Erasmus had suspected was correct, including Alexandrinus, Vaticanus, and Sinaiticus.  The Nestle-Aland compilation now reads και ζήσομεν και ποιήσομεν (although most Greek manuscripts read και ζήσωμεν και ποιήσωμεν).  Erasmus also suspected that the final phrase in John 10:26 in his manuscripts (“as I said to you”) was an interpolation.  The Nestle-Aland compilers agree, along with Papyrus 75, Sinaiticus, and Vaticanus.

          Erasmus and/or Theodore Beza expressed several other suspicions, including the following:

● In Matthew 3:4, the original text might have referred to wild pears, αχκράδες, instead of ακρίδες, locusts.

● In Matthew 28:17, the original text, written in uncial lettering with no spaces between the words, might have said that the apostles did not doubt (ουδε εδιδασταν) rather than that some doubted (οι δε εδιδασταν).

● In First Corinthians 6:5, the Vulgate might echo the original text better than the Greek manuscripts.

● In James 1:11, the original text might have read πορίαις instead of πορείαις, because “in his abundance” fits the context better than “in his pursuits.”

● In James 4:2, instead of “You commit murder” (φονεύετε) Erasmus proposed that James wrote φθονειτε in light of the mention of jealous desires in verse 5.

          Similarly, Hort mentioned 60 New Testament passages where he suspected a “primitive corruption” had resulted in a scenario in which no extant manuscripts display the original text.  My point is not that all of these suspicions are justified; rather, it is that what Montgomery condemns in Kloha’s work as dangerous and reckless has been an aspect of New Testament textual criticism for over 400 years.

So:  Is The Text Plastic?

From one of Dr. Kloha's slides.

          Kloha stated in the debate that he regrets using the word “plastic,” even though that term fits the Nestle-Aland compilation at hundreds of points.  A better term is “uncertain,” helping readers understand that thoroughgoing eclectics do not aspire to creatively shape the text; their goal is reconstruction. 

          There is something in the King James Version’s preface, The Translators to the Reader, that is highly applicable here (though it was initially written about margin-notes that supplied alternative meanings, rather than alternative readings).  Referring to cases where a term (especially rare terms referring to plants and animals) could mean more than one thing:  “Fearfulness would better beseem us than confidence, and if we will resolve, to resolve upon modesty with S. Augustine, (though not in this same case altogether, yet upon the same ground) Melius est dubitare de occultis, quam litigare de incertis, it is better to make doubt of those things which are secret, than to strive about those things that are uncertain.”  And:  “As it is a fault of incredulity, to doubt of those things that are evident: so to determine of such things as the Spirit of God hath left (even in the judgment of the judicious) questionable, can be no less than presumption.  They that are wise, had rather have their judgments at liberty in differences of readings, than to be captivated to one, when it may be the other.”

          A similar desire – that one’s judgment may be at liberty, where a contest between two rival variants is difficult to decide, and the textual critic is unsure if the original text is one or the other (or a conjecture) – means that when one affirms Biblical inerrancy, one will not be 100% certain about the form of the text that one is affirming to be inerrant.  But why should that be problematic, when we routinely grant that we are less than 100% certain about the meaning of the text, often even when its form is certain?  In addition, a compilation dogmatically affirmed to be 100% flawless (as some affirm about the Textus Receptus) is incapable of being refined by future discoveries and analysis, whereas a compilation compiled by the principles of thoroughgoing eclecticism, with resultant points of instability, is more readily refined so as to resemble more accurately the authoritative original text.
           Certainty about the original text is good.  Certainty that something that is not the original text is the original text is bad.  Injudicious use of thoroughgoing eclecticism (for example, inserting a reading with no Greek manuscript support into the text, as the compilers of NA28 have done in Second Peter 3:10) risks decreasing the former, but to prohibit thoroughgoing eclecticism would be to risk the latter.  I consider it better to allow textual critics to be free to support the readings of small minorities of witnesses (which is very frequently done by the compilers of NA28) and to suggest conjectures, rather than to treat “the best texts” as if they are always the best, even in specific cases where they may not be. 

The Kloha-Montgomery Debate - Some Thoughts

          On October 15, John Warwick Montgomery and Jeffrey Kloha engaged in a debate about the theological implications of the text-critical method known as thoroughgoing eclecticism.  However, while Dr. Kloha seems to have intended to describe thoroughgoing eclecticism and explain how it is consistent with conservative Lutheran theology (including the doctrine of inerrancy, which Dr. Kloha specifically affirmed), Dr, Montgomery seems to have approached the debate with the goal of questioning Dr. Kloha’s role as a Lutheran professor, asking, “How realistic is it that someone with his biblical orientation teach future pastors of that church body?”

Dr. Jeffrey Kloha
(Concordia Seminary, St. Louis)

            Inasmuch as Kloha affirms the doctrine of inerrancy, and is, as far as I can tell, doctrinally a Lutheran’s Lutheran, what is it that caused Montgomery to accuse Kloha of promoting a text-critical approach that is “deadly,” and which poses “great dangers” for the doctrine of scriptural inerrancy”?  My impression is that Montgomery’s accusations are completely based on Montgomery’s misunderstanding of Kloha’s positions, Montgomery's misunderstanding of thoroughgoing eclecticism, and Montgomery's inaccurate ideas about text-critical praxis in general.      

            Montgomery’s misunderstanding of text-critical praxis in general is evident in the first of four recommendations that he made:  “Refuse to tolerate textual philosophies that employ internal (stylistic) criteria as the preferred standard for the choice of readings.”  At the debate, Montgomery insisted that he does not object to the utilization of internal evidence – as long as the external evidence is primary.  But one might as well say that one does not object to data as long as one does not analyze it. 
            Let’s take a closer look at two of Kloha’s treatments of the New Testament text which Montgomery found objectionable.  It is not easy to find actual critiques of Kloha’s work in the first six pages of Montgomery’s paper; there are multiple warnings, but not until page 7 do we get a glimpse of a sample of what is being warned against:
            ● Kloha rejects the Alexandrian reading of First Corinthians 7:33-34, which, Montgomery states, is “based on the foundational MSS P15 B P.”  Bruce Metzger, in A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (1971), noted that the variant-unit at the beginning of I Cor. 7:34 had a “D” ranking – meaning that the United Bible Societies’ compilation-committee acknowledged “a very high degree of doubt concerning the reading selected for the text.”  When you observe that the compilers themselves harbor “a very high degree of doubt” about this passage, you might wonder why Montgomery has not accused them of falling into a methodological ditch, as he has accused Kloha.  Montgomery’s approach causes the copyist of Papyrus 46, and the copyists of over 95% of the Greek manuscripts of First Corinthians, to join Kloha in that ditch; they, too, do not have the same text of I Cor. 7:33-34 that is in the NA/UBS compilation.              

            Furthermore, when one consults these three “foundational MSS” in I Cor. 7:33-34 – as Kloha did in painstaking detail in his dissertation, reviewing not just one, or four, but eight Greek variant-units within these two verses – one observes that they disagree with each other in these two verses.  Codex B, for example, does not have the words τα του κοσμου (“of the world”).  So which one of these three disagreeing manuscripts does Montgomery consider “foundational” in this two-verse passage?  And how does he intend, I wonder, to make a case that its readings are “archetypal” without giving internal evidence a decisive role in his considerations? 

            ● Kloha advocates a view which, if accepted, would mean that “no pastor should preach I Corinthians 8:6 as if it were the Word of God,” or so Montgomery claimed.  In real life, however, Montgomery has misquoted and densely misunderstood Kloha’s statement (in his dissertation, Part Two, p. 717), “only after a highly-developed Trinitarian theology took hold could the addition at 8:6 have been made.”  Montgomery misquoted this sentence by replacing the word “at” with the word “of.”  Compounding his error, he then concluded (which he would never have done if he had carefully read Kloha’s comments about I Cor. 8:6 in the section in Part One that focuses upon the passage) that Kloha meant that I Cor. 8:6 is not an original part of the text.          

Dr. John Warwick Montgomery

          Montgomery then stated:  “It is clear that Kloha agrees here with Bart Ehrman:  “As Ehrman has argued, at least some passages of the NT manuscripts have been altered in light of the christological controversites with which the scribes presumably, would have been familiar.”  Montgomery also agrees with Ehrman, at least a little; he just did not realize it at the debate.  For the “addition at [not “of”] 8:6” refers to an interpolation, found in a handful of manuscripts, adding a reference to the Holy Spirit (και εν Πνευμα Αγιον εν ω τα παντα και ημεις εν αυτω).  Nobody, including Montgomery, regards this variant as part of the original text of First Corinthians 8:6.  Clearly, Montgomery is barking up the wrong tree.           

            But what about Kloha’s analysis of Luke 1:46?  Kloha has offered a text-critical case that the original text of Luke 1:46 had no proper name after “And said” (Και ειπεν), which would mean, (1) all the known Greek manuscripts of Luke contain a scribal corruption at this point, and (2) it was Elizabeth, rather than Mary, who spoke the Magnificat.  Somehow this single variant-unit became the focus of much of the Kloha-Montgomery debate.  I intend to take a closer look at that, and at thoroughgoing eclecticism, in my next post.