Looking over My Shoulder (V)

I have no clue how this did not get posted Thursday. Sorry!

(Note: For reasons related to time constraints, I am going to wait to present the proof for the “integrity” [i.e., unity] of Philippians until my posts next Tuesday and Thursday. Thank you for your understanding!)

Practically speaking, why does it even matter if Philippians was originally one letter or two or three? Think about it. What if someone tinkered with your correspondence and turned two or three of your emails into one without your permission? How would you feel?

Maybe you are thinking, “Well, if they were all good emails and didn’t really distort my thinking, what’s the problem?” Perhaps you look at things that way. But, I am a writer and it bothers me a lot when someone edits my stuff that I have not given permission to do so. You see, when I write it, I have my purpose in mind for what I write. When someone else gets into the process editorially, they are inevitably going to shape it to their ends.

That gets us to the issue of “authorial intent.” Simply put, all Scripture has dual authorship: God, who inspired the content; and the human author, whose intelligence, personality and vocabulary He used to write it down.

If some other human being later messed with the Divine-Human product of Philippians, what we have in the New Testament is not what God inspired… and, thus, does not deserve to be called Scripture. Even if that person thought the product was vastly improved from Paul originally wrote, it was not his (or her) right to “play God” in editing Philippians. At least, that’s how I see it.

But, somebody might say, “What about Philippians 2:5-11? What if it was originally a hymn or a doctrinal statement–whether Paul wrote it or not? Would that not mess up your idea of inspiration just as much?”

Not as I see it. It is one thing to obviously quote an existing document–which Paul most certainly does, e.g., in 1 Cor. 14 (“Bad company corrupts good morals”) and Titus 1 (“Cretans are always liars and lazy gluttons”). It is quite another to present a document as important as a book of Scripture as if it had written in a certain way, only to find it was fused together from two or three original mini-letters.

In my view, this is a major ethical problem. Some people see it as no big deal that a book would use a big name author (in this case, Paul) to get it in the Bible, although somebody else was responsible for its final form. I see it as deception. Call me old-fashioned. I would be rather take that criticism than to be so “broad-minded” that I start playing fast and loose with the inspiration of Scripture.

For now, Selah and Amen.

Coming Saturday: “My Last Times-Guardian article… and Why”