Before addressing what preservation is; we may want to address, what is being "preserved"?
In other words, what is the "object" being preserved?
The remaining details can be dealt with one at a time; but we must first determine what exactly is being preserved.
Please feel free to comment.
Jack
I see some value in your suggestion.
To me it is evident that whenever God has spoken to man His word has the desired effect that He wanted it to have. For some it brought conviction, for some condemnation, for some salvation, depending on how it was received. However, our discussion here seems more limited.
We do not in fact have ALL The words God ever inspired man to say available to us today. The Scripture speaks of various prophets in the Old and New testament that we do not have all the words they prophesied. So it cannot mean that every word ever inspired is preserved in some way we have access to. We do not.
It seems in this discussion we are particularly talking about the (mostly) agreed upon canon of Scripture. The Scriptures themselves went through the process of being recognized as Canon. Now I think that the inspiration in them was recognizable enough that there was little doubt in most cases in the NT, though a couple books were debated. So in one sense the canon and the process that brought it about is tied to this topic.
If the discussion is on the preservation of the canonical writings of the Old and New Testaments, then we have to look at some additional related topics.
The nature of inspiration becomes important. Some see the inspiration of the scriptures as word for word, verbal inspiration, just as God picked the words. Some do not. Some see even within verbal inspiration that some prophets use different vocabulary, often based on their own background. Hence they posit that God selected the words, but did so from the prophet' own vocabulary. Again, others don't see it this way. So the doctrine of inspiration, and particularly verbal inspiration, certainly plays into the whole question.
Was inspiration about every precise word to begin with? And was preservation to be the same?
Then we have to see if God did indeed promise to preserve these inspired writings.
Having said that, I also see value in what Princetonguy said in response to you. What does preserved mean in this instance?
If preserved only means that we have all the various manuscripts, with all the various readings, and the right ones are in there somewhere, well that is not all that helpful if what we are going for is a precise word-for-word preservation. Having all the options is not the same as having the one real, exact thing.
If someone claims the KJV is the EXACT word for word way that God wanted His word, the exact way it was originally, only in English, then should we not see these exact word for word manuscripts throughout time, only in other languages? Yet, we do not see that.
So then does preservation only mean that the whole church was muddled on God's exact words until the 1600's? Does preservation only mean that the true correct word for word Scriptures existed somewhere, but were not widely known until the 1600's? That is not really what I would think of as preservation of any real sort. And certainly it would not be a PRACTICAL preservation that allows the church to have God's word all along.
So at this point I am forced to hold on to the notion that God has preserved His word enough, throughout the whole church era, for the church to know Him, minister for Him, etc. All the readings agree in 98 percent of the Scriptures. That is preservation, though not word for word. Yet it is all the preservation that the church really had access to, and therefore the only preservation that really mattered.
If someone wants to present that God preserved things perfectly word for word throughout the whole church era, they have a lot of evidence to present that shows He did that. And they have a lot of explaining to do as to why it was not known throughout each generation which was the actually correct version. It seems the reality has been a bit messier, but no less effective in God accomplishing what He has wanted to accomplish through His people.
