That’s great…and I don’t disagree at all. It’s actaully one of the same reasons I love astronomy so much. I marvel at the skies above us, the complexity and the unrelenting beauty of it all. I find God revealed through a starry sky in ways few other means can communicate.  I feel I’ve learned a lot about God through learning about our universe…it’s actually one of the large reasons I ended up coming back to my faith in High school.

So, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with including the workings of the Spirit when it comes to our texts. Heck, I could actually go on a long rant critiquing our base desire for “the originals” or the “right texts” or the “most pure” renditions…it all ends up being grasping at straws really. Our notion of what a text is and how it should be treated is quite obviously different from many of the notions that existed in antiquity. The gospel of Matthew taking a little different shape in Egypt verses the same gospel taking shape in Syria would be rather natural given the different concerns of the differing communities. The Bible itself provides lots of precedent for the changing of a tradition to fit a new social situation (The changes in Israelite history done by the Chronicler(s), the changes from Mark’s Gospel to Matthew or Luke, etc.), so the changing of texts shouldn’t surprise us. But it does, it offends our modernist sensibilities of what a text should be. It ultimately can be considered rather audacious for us to label something as a “corruption” in a text, but that’s been our program for a long time.

So, I don’t really see the diversity (and gaps) in our manuscript traditions as much of a problem. Even when we bring the Spirit into the discussion…why is it a problem for the Spirit to lead different communities in different directions with their texts? We could be making some serious(ly Western) judgments about the Spirit that might not be appropriate. So while there’s nothing inherently wrong about including notions of the working of the Spirit in the development of our texts…I’m certainly hesitant to do so. I can’t help be see some of the changes in the traditions as reflecting attitudes (lots of anti-Judaism, silencing of women, etc.) that I’m not comfortable putting under the banner of the Spirit. The problem comes when we’re faced with the combination of the diversity with the 2-300 gaps between the “autographs” and our available manuscripts. Do we rely on the spirit leading us to determine the “authoritative” texts and readings? Isn’t that quite problematic in and of itself?

Like I said before, I’m trying to be very cautious. While admiting the leading of the Spirit is important and can actually be very enriching for our study of Christian manuscript tradition…there’s a very fine line between doing so in an honest search and doing so as a rhetorical tool to silence and exclude others. I guess I’m trying to avoid the latter as much as possible.

Actually, I don’t see diversity/complexity as something opposed to “design” (not sure if I actually like that term…I think “divine agency” would be a better fit) at all. I think  the more diverse voices we can gather into most any conversation, the closer we get to the divine. I’ve been partly inspired to this place by our own canon, for it represents very diverse and divergent views on a great many theological issues…yet I’ve also become critical of our canon for it has served to silence a great many “Spiritually led” voices and experiences. The problem I see is that very often when we employ the Spirit in such a way, it seems we’re actually trying to de-complexify things…to weed out voices different than our own, to make our faith a more simple thing. I think we should do more to seek out complexity, to praise diversity…for our God is not a simple deity.

As a postscript…I firmly believe in the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit. I’ve seen, felt, and experienced far too many things that could ever allow me to deny such a thing. I just want to make sure I never use my interactions with God via the Spirit as a means of domination or exclusion…for that would run counter to how I’ve come to know God/Christ/Spirit.

A person can study microbiology or textual transmission and history very seriously and still say that the Spirit has guided the process of transmission and that God designed the complexities of the human body and the various other complexities around us. Design and complexity shouldn’t be put in opposition to each other.

Whether or not you are saying that they are in opposition I don’t know. I just don’t see any reason why they have to be so.

I think my comment on “intellectual laziness” may come off a bit harsh. I’m not directing it at anyone here (especially you Thom, I couldn’t imagine leveling such a critique against you), but it’s more of a general comment. It’s similar to many critiques of Intelligent Design. What’s the point in studying biology if we can just throw up our hands and say that the designer did it all? I’d say we all know pretty well that such a notion does not account for the complexity of biodiversity and the historical developements of such a phenomenon. So, just chocking it up to “guiding of the spirit” can be a dangerous notion IMO, especially when we consider the authority which we grant such texts. People have lived (and a great many have died) based on the words of the Bible…so we should take it’s textual transmission and history very seriously.

This is a more extreme example, but the variances and changes in our manuscripts can at times be significant (and potentially damning), and often don’t reflect anything close to what I would consider “guiding of the Spirit.” I don’t want to make the Spirit impotent by any means, but I’m also not happy using it as an abstract notion to justify intellectual laziness or harmful textual material. Appealing to the Spirit as giving one authority is also something I’ve become very hesitant to do…such a claim has done more harm than good throughout history.

Would you consider the pastoral epistles, with their negative views of women and their attempts to rule out socalled “heretics,” as completely led by the Spirit? In my opinion (and I think yours as well), some of their positions run contrary to how I understand the Spirit. Was the Spirit only guiding certain parts? Are the texts just “inspired” by interactions with the Spirit, rather than the spirit guiding the writer’s hand? By what criteria have we judged texts to be Spiritually inspired as opposed to others? The guidelines of Nicea don’t really hold much water if we’re really honest. Do we simply appeal to the Spirit guiding us as individuals/the church? What of other Christians throughout history who were genuinely appealing to the Spirit and produced/read very different books than the ones we have? What right do we have to silence them/deny the validity of their experience? Can we appeal to the Spirit without using it as a rod to beat those with whom we disagree?

I know I’m sort of ranting…but these are a lot of the theological problems that roll around in my head as of late. Sometimes simple appeals to Spiritual inspiration that seem very harmless actually reinscribe all sorts of domineering and patriarchal historical worldviews/power structures. It’s both a spiritual and an academic (though I’m not comfortable separating those two) issue I wrestle with…and I don’t know if I’ll ever quite figure it out.

As for Q…Melanie Johnson-Debaufre, a NT prof. at Drew, has an awesome quote. She says, more or less, that regardless of whether or not Q ever was an actual book…now it is a book. I can pick one up in the library right now, you can buy it at any Barnes and Noble, heck…it’s edition in the Hermenaea NT commentary series is the largest volume in the collection. It exists now, and it plays a very large roll in current historical and theological discourse. We can’t ignore it, and we (obviously IMO) can’t simply disprove/write it off. We need to critically engage it and what it has to say (and not say) and what it means in addition to critiquing current scholarship on it, a good deal of which has been very intellectually dishonest IMO (and in the opinion of most young NT scholars/students it turns out).

I think that’s all…I really need to get back to work.

April was saying that while we can be relatively confident about the general content of our manuscript tradition, we cannot be sure about the exact wording of the autographs.  When it comes to the specific wording, we don’t know what Matthew wrote because of the regional and temporal variations. We can know what he wrote in general, however. Given the fact that we see plenty of minor variations by manuscript date and geographic region, extrapolating a text 300 years to a set of specific geographic locations is tenuous at best.  Because most of synoptic scholarship is based on the specific wordings of texts, synoptic source criticism has some core problems it needs to address.  The text we have constructed is at best an abstraction that represents the spirit of the text as a whole, but no text in particular.  There, she has a point in regards to the nature of source criticism. 

In regards to the naturalism and NT textual criticism, I have mixed feelings.  On the one hand, my faith informs me that the Spirit has been active in the composition and general preservation of the text.  However, how do you incorporate that into one’s scholarship without ad hocing in a magic button?  In my view, I can only test and write about what I can see, what I have.    From a scholarship standpoint, I think the best course is to write about the manifestations of the text and the physical world and not delve too deep into unverifiable fields, which includes the activities of the Holy Spirit.  This bypasses certain problems, such as the similarity of transmission of canonical texts and non-canonical texts (if the texts go through the same phenomena, then were both texts, say the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of Peter, guided by the Holy Spirit - if so, what do we do with a gigantic talking, walking cross?)

This, along with other issues, leads me towards a naturalistic approach of the phenomena of textual composition and transmission.  The upside is it still allows me to later talk about the behind the scenes action, i.e. the HS, without missing what was happening on the ground because of a constant appeal to the magic protective and generative power of the Holy Spirit.  I get the best of both worlds, but first there must be a naturalistic approach that can then be followed up with a religious one.
 

Personally, I have no problems with Q. And I agree that there are some who have misused it - and have gotten way too much attention for their shotty scholarship. However, on the whole, I think there is much to be gained from this source. I won’t stake my life on it, but I think it’s probably a real source.

That said, there’s no reason to assume that even in the natural development and redaction of these texts that the Spirit couldn’t have been involved. We may have manuscript evidence going back only so far, but really - all our discoveries of earlier and earlier documents supports that we it 99% right.

I don’t appeal to the Holy Spirit in an effort to stifle discussion on the matters of redaction - but seriously, Christian scholars need to take the Spirit’s work in the ‘natural’ development and preservation of these texts more seriously.

To say, ‘it wasn’t what Matthew wrote’ is ridiculous. He can’t demonstrate that any more than I can demonstrate it was what Matt. wrote. But at least I have thousands of manuscripts supporting my proposition - and he has none. At least I have the confirmation of the Holy Spirit supporting my proposition - and he doesn’t. (Wow, I hope I didn’t sound too fundamentalist there :) )