According to one of my favorite apologists, Ellis Potter, Adam was the first person who needed evangelism.  God evangelized him with questions.

Where are you?

This question was a gift.  Adam had to think about where he was.

Basically, Adam said that he was in nakedness, fear and hiding.

Then God asked:  Who told you?

In other words -  Where did you get this information?  Do you trust the sources?

Next, God asks Adam if he has eaten.

Adam’s answer was telling:

I am a victim of the woman, and I am a victim of You who gave her to me.

Adam wasn’t ready to take responsibility.  I wonder what Adam thought when he heard his words out loud.  God’s question gave Adam a reason to give an account.

A question is a gift.

What kinds of gifts can you give your neighbor, your friend, your sister?  How can you help them search their own souls?  Here are some possibilities:

What gets you up in the morning?

What are your roadblocks to peace?

What does “spirituality” mean to you?

What gives meaning to your life?

Sometimes we are too focused on sharing answers to questions that someone isn’t even asking, when the best gift we could give is to just ask a question.

 

~ Betsy McPeak

 

 

 

 

We are all trying to make sense of reality in one way or another.  Respectful, authentic apologetics interacts with people as they actually are:  human beings made in the image of God trying to make sense of reality.

As image-bearers, we are not chipmunks.  We are not satisfied to find our nuts and store them up for winter.  We have to know why we eat our food and why predators threaten our lives.  We ask hard questions about how we got here, why we are alive and what we are to do with these lives.

As we approach the existence of evil, we will have differences of opinion with other image-bearers.  These differences come from universal questions in the heart of man.  I am not making fun of or denigrating these alternate explanations.  These alternate explanations are actually bridges to other persons made in God’s image trying to answer the same questions that we are trying to answer.

I recently posted a blog addressing Love Wins,  Rob Bell’s bestseller about hell, and another blog suggesting that God’s judgments have a merciful side to them.  Even if hell is a merciful “tourniquet on evil,” as C.S. Lewis says, it is still a hard reality.

But do you know what is an even HARDER reality???   That evil exists.

In trying to understand our world and the meaning of our existence, some have denied that evil exists.  It is their way of making sense of our world.  The denial of evil can be found in much of Eastern thought.

1. Suffering (evil) is caused by desire.
2. There is neither a self to desire nor a permanent world to be grasped.
3. Therefore suffering (evil) is an illusion.

(John Piippo’s explanation of Siddhartha’s truth)

The denial of evil can be found in some forms of modern psychology:

“Modern ontologies of good and evil are based on a denial of death; on wish projection and displacement, phenomena psychologists analyze but do not cure, except in the sense of replacing, as it were, heroin with methadone. A cure, sometimes, worse than the disease.”   John Hobbins

The denial of evil can be found in the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy in the religion she founded called Christian Science.  Mary Baker Eddy authored the foundational text of Christian Science:  Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (S&H).  The results of a search of Eddy’s book for the word “unreal” is revealing:

S&H 339:7
XXXI.Since God is All, there is no room for His unlikeness. God, Spirit, alone created all, and called it good. Therefore evil, being contrary to good, is unreal, and cannot be the product of God. A sinner can receive no encouragement from the fact that Science demonstrates the unreality of evil, for the sinner would make a reality of sin,–would make that real which is unreal, and thus heap up “wrath against the day of wrath.” He is joining in a conspiracy against himself,–against his own awakening to the awful unreality by which he has been deceived. Only those, who repent of sin and forsake the unreal, can fully understand the unreality of evil.

S&H 470:11
Divine Science explains the abstract statement that there is one Mind by the following self-evident proposition: If God, or good, is real, then evil, the unlikeness of God, is unreal. And evil can only seem to be real by giving reality to the unreal.

S&H 474:24
Despite the hallowing influence of Truth in the destruction of error, must error still be immortal? Truth spares all that is true. If evil is real, Truth must make it so; but error, not Truth, is the author of the unreal, and the unreal vanishes, while all that is real is eternal. The apostle says that the mission of Christ is to “destroy the works of the devil.” Truth destroys falsity and error, for light and darkness cannot dwell together. Light extinguishes the darkness, and the Scripture declares that there is “no night there.” To Truth there is no error,–all is Truth. To infinite Spirit there is no matter,–all is Spirit, divine Principle and its idea.

S&H 76:18
Suffering, sinning, dying beliefs are unreal. When divine Science is universally understood, they will have no power over man, for man is immortal and lives by divine authority.

S&H 186:11
Evil is a negation, because it is the absence of truth. It is nothing, because it is the absence of something. It is unreal, because it presupposes the absence of God, the omnipotent and omnipresent. Every mortal must learn that there is neither power nor reality in evil.

What do we say to one who believes that evil is only illusion?  (For this post we will focus on the Christian Scientist.)  As we encounter evil daily on the news and in our own hearts, it might seem obvious to us that evil does exist.  But it seemed just as plain to Mary Baker Eddy after she experienced a miraculous healing that evil was not real because sickness could be overcome in her mind.  How do we move this discussion past a contradiction?

When we are conversing with someone who holds an opposite position on one point, and we are stuck there, we have to move to the meta-narrative ~ the grand story.  We can take the discussion in one of two directions:

1. Internal inconsistencies or 2.  Explaining power.

Internal inconsistencies

1.  We can show the internal inconsistencies of their grand story.  In this case, we could ask a Christian Scientist how they explain that Mary Baker Eddy died on December 3, 1910 of an illness, and how they explain that, contrary to her own teachings, she took intravenous medication.  I mention this because Eddy was the founder of their religion, and so I do think it is worth asking.  But since a person living inconsistently with the truth does not mean the truth is not true, we must speak of a more universal inconsistency.  After all, sadly, we do not want the teachings of Christ measured by the lives of His followers.  We can ask our Christian Scientist friend if it makes sense that every single Christian Scientist does die, if death is just an illusion.  Why are there not at least some examples of death being overcome?

Explaining power of a worldview

2. We can test the explaining power of their grand story.  We put the Christian grand story along side of their grand story, and see which one accounts best for reality.  If Christianity is true, it should best explain reality.  This is what C.S. Lewis meant when he said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen. Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”  So we have to ask our Christian Scientist friend to tell us their grand story, and compare its explaining power with the Christian grand story.  What can their story not explain?

The Christian grand story is that God created man in His own image.  He also created a real universe with planets and stars and plants and animals.  Man was originally good.  But man was created with free will.  Man sinned, and by this cataclysmic fall, brought sin and death into the world.  Yet even amidst the resultant curse of God upon the earth, upon the tempter, and upon the man and woman, God also promised hope that from the woman’s seed (heritage) would come One who would defeat the tempter.  This was the promise of a Savior from all of the results of the fall.  God further showed His mercy and revealed something about sacrifice when He shed the blood of an animal to clothe Adam and Eve with animal skins.  The process of redemption spans history, culminating in the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the promised Seed.  God is still in the process of redeeming His creation, and promises that in the end He will make all things right.

The Christian Science grand story is that God is Love, and exists as a Spirit.  Sickness, sin, and death are all distortions of the true reality that is God.  Jesus came to pave the way for us to walk in the truth.  We can heal the sick as Jesus did if we can overcome the error by realizing Truth in our minds.  Truth is all that  exists anyway.  All else is illusion.  The physical world is illusion.  Salvation is attained when we are transformed in our thinking.

Although there is a lot of truth mixed into the Christian Science grand story, it does not explain why all the energy is expended to overcome something that is not even real.  It does not explain the source of error/illusion.  It does not offer a payment for the wrong that we have done ~ and therefore leaves us with our guilt.  It does not explain why even very spiritual followers die.  It does not give meaning to the physical world, or anything which has weight and takes up space.  It does not explain why we exist in bodies.  It does not offer true forgiveness in relationships with others or with God, because it denies that forgiveness is even needed. It does not give a basis for morality.

You might think of other realities that the Christian Science grand story does not explain.  Be sure to ask your friend if there are realities that he does not find explained in the Christian grand story.

In the Christian grand story, evil is real.  This is a hard truth, but somehow satisfying.  For one thing, it makes sense of hell.  Viewing evil as illusion somehow falls short of explaining reality…and leaves us without a real cure.

 

~ Betsy McPeak

My dad had 12 in his family.  Once a year we have a family reunion in Roan Mountain, NC.  Each year I meet so many cousins and aunts and uncles that I do not know.  But it would be hasty to say that just because I don’t know Cousin Sheila or Uncle Virgil that I do not know that I am a  Whittington.

Rob Bell made quite a splash a year ago with his bestseller Love Wins: Heaven, Hell and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived.  To date, 669 people have written reviews of Love Wins on Amazon.  Please watch the under-3-minute  trailer for this book here to sample Bell’s amazing communication skills and pulse on the culture, which make it fitting that Time Magazine dubbed Bell “a singular rock star in the church world.”

But what is Bell saying? What should we say about what he says?

Of course I cannot address Bell’s entire position in a blog entry.  So I’ll limit myself this time to simply address the trailer for his book.  Why?  Because I believe it is representative of the type of thinking in the book.  So if we unpack the trailer a little, I hope that you will see how to unpack the book as well.

I read the book; so should you if you are going to enter the discussion.  Bell has a whimsical, yet earthy style that I personally like.  He speaks as though he lives in the same universe as we do.   Agreeing with his questions, however, does not mean that we agree with his answers.

THE TRAILER - Bell begins with an anecdote about a church art festival.  Someone posted a note on an art piece that contained a quote from Ghandi.  The note said:  “Reality check: he’s in hell. ” Bell’s response is “He is?  Someone knows this for sure?”  He says it in a way – and this is his communication genius – that we “get” how wrong it is to claim to know  the eternal destiny of another ~ including Ghandi.  Then Bell moves quickly from the truth that we do not really know the eternal destiny of Ghandi’s soul to call into question eternal destiny itself.   Logically we call this fallacy hasty generalization, or argument from the specific to the general. Just because we do not know if Ghandi is in hell (and we don’t!) does not mean that we do not know anything about hell.  It does not mean that Jesus did not tell us things about hell.

Matthew 10:28 –And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

Matthew 13:41-42 — The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Matthew 25:46 –And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.

Bell then asks how you become one of the few who are saved? His rhetoric is once again very powerful.   “Is it what you believe? or what you say? or what you do? or who you know? or something that happens in your heart?  Or do you need to be initiated? or  baptized? or take a class? or converted? or born again?”

Is it Aunt Sally or Uncle George or Cousin Edward?  Gee!  I must not even know my own mother!

Here Bell capitalizes on specific (and I will argue allowable) variance of the church’s understanding of how to respond to the gospel to paint a picture of confusion and presumption and then extrapolates it to make another hasty generalization – that Christians do not get the gospel right at all.  Bell masterfully makes our heads swirl with all these versions of how to be saved ~ and then pronounces a skeptic verdict on our understanding of salvation itself.

Bell is right – we do not know if Ghandi is in hell. Bell is right – Christians give people a lot of different ways to come to Jesus.  But then did Jesus not do the same?  Did Jesus tell the rich young ruler to sell everything he had and tell another to drink from living water and tell another to take up his bed and walk and tell another to be born again?  Once again, Bell wants to move us from what we do not know, or at least what we should not be dogmatic about, and then he subtly suggests that because Christians describe or even institutionalize coming to Jesus in different ways, that they don’t really know anything right about the good news.

Is our understanding of the good news twisted or confused  just because the method of coming to Jesus varies from church to church, from denomination to denomination, or from evangelist to evangelist?  Everyone in my house cleans the bathroom differently ~ but aren’t we all still cleaning the bathroom?  If someone preaches another gospel except Christ, they are accursed, but is what Bell is describing really another gospel?

The good news (gospel) is that Christ died to make atonement for our sins, and was raised to give us victory over sin and death.  If we trust in Christ’s atonement, we are made clean and we can truly know God.  And that is the basis of our eternal destiny ~ whether or not we know God, and more importantly whether or not He knows us!  Those are the details that do not vary.

Matthew 7: 21“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. 22“Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ 23“And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.’

Jesus obviously treated people as individuals rather than give them a canned invitation to the gospel or have them all “invite him into their hearts.”   We ought to take Bell’s comments seriously and make sure that we are not institutionalizing/standardizing what Jesus did not standardize.  But we should not generalize that we do not know the good news or whether or not judgement is eternal just because there is some variation in how to come to Jesus.

Bell next asks the question – “What is God like?” He rightly says that what we say about hell exposes what we believe about the character of God.  Bell is right about that.  In my next blog, I’ll address Bell’s claim that the church’s view of eternal judgment reveals a misconception about the nature of God.

But for now ~ I hope you will be aware of the swirling skepticism that argues from the particular to the universal without reason ~ not just because it is a logical fallacy, but because it distorts the truth.

 

~ Betsy McPeak

 

This is my last blog in a 3-part series on textual variants entitled: Does the Bible really misquote Jesus?

Notice the 12th century copy of  one of Paul’s epistles to the left.  You can see that the main body of the text begins with a beautiful illumination of the letter “P.”  The column of smaller letters in the right margin is called a “gloss.”

A gloss is a comment added by copyists, usually in the margin.

Glosses are occasionally inserted into the text.  Copyists’ comments might explain a particular spelling of a word, express a doubt they had about their choice of a word or phrase,  suggest the transposition of a phrase, or give a grammatical explanation.  Sometimes the gloss explains difficult to understand terms or concepts.  At times an extra passage or story is added that was not in the original.

Today, we would classify glosses as “commentary,”  not original.  My study Bible has definitions, notes, and cross-references in the margin that are clearly not part of the text.  This is similar to a gloss.  Your understanding of a gloss is going to be important as I explain some of the disputed passages in the New Testament.

Remember that my thesis in this blog series is that the textual variants that Ehrman reveals in his book are not significant to warrant the loss of confidence in the incredible reliability of Scripture.

In Part 1 we looked at how the amount of variants is insignificant when taken in context.  The 400,000 textual variants are spread over millions of pages that make up 24,000 New Testament manuscripts.

In Part 2 we looked the nature of the variants.  99% of the variations in the New Testament texts are spelling errors, non-sense errors, word order variations, transpositions, and synonyms.

In Part 3 we will examine the impact of the variants.  We will deal with the 1% of variants that are considered problematic by Bart Ehrman.  In his assessment of truly significant textual variants from pages 207, 208 in Misquoting Jesus he lists a slew of questions:

It would be wrong, however, to say – as people sometimes do – that the changes in our text have no real bearing on what the texts mean or on the theological conclusions that one draws from them. We have seen, in fact, that just the opposite is the case. In some instances, the very meaning is at stake depending on how one resolves a textual problem: Was Jesus an angry man? Was he completely distraught in the face of death? Did he tell his disciples that they could drink poison without being harmed? Did he let an adulteress off the hook with nothing but a mild warning? Is the doctrine of the Trinity explicitly taught in the New Testament? Is Jesus actually called the “unique God” there? Does the New Testament indicate that even the Son of God does not know when the end will come? The questions go on and on, and all of them are related to how one resolves difficulties in the manuscript tradition as it has come down to us.

Let’s look at each of these questions and their corresponding texts that Ehrman finds particularly problematic:

Was Jesus an angry man?

Mark 1:41 in the New American Standard Bible says: “Moved with compassion, Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I am willing; be cleansed.’ “  The New International Version begins the verse with this: “Jesus was indignant.  He reached out his hand…”

New Testament scholar Dan Wallace agrees with Ehrman that most likely, the text in Mark 1:41 originally has the Greek word for anger, translated by NIV scholars as indignant.  Not all NT scholars agree.  Is this significant?  If the original text says “angry,” it is not totally out of line with the rest of Scripture.  Jesus is angry when the temple is defiled with moneychangers.  In this case in Mark 1, his anger could have been directed at the leprosy ~ as this was not in the original creation where all was good.  There would be a different nuance to this story depending on whether Jesus was compassionate or angry, but it is not a show-stopper in either case. Ehrman uses this textual variant as his lead example in Chapter 5 of his book, “Originals That Matter.”  Yet in Mark 3:5 there is an undisputed record of the word anger used of Jesus as He healed the man with the paralytic hand.  Ehrman is greatly overstating his case that our view of Jesus might be altered by this variant.  What we know of Jesus from the rest of Mark’s gospel, and even from the rest of the New Testament, would easily allow for either anger or compassion in the 1:41 text.

Was Jesus completely distraught in the face of death?

The passage in question here is Hebrews 2:9 -  “But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.”   Ehrman’s contention is that the phrase “by the grace of God” should actually say “apart from God.”  Other scholars say that although “apart from God” is in some quotes by the early church fathers, and in three Greek manuscripts from the 10th century on, the more likely explanation after much investigation is that the “apart from God” variant appeared due to copyist error or gloss.  The United Bibles Societies has given the “by the grace of God” reading an A+ rating for probability in the original.  And of course, even if the least probable reading were original, Jesus did experience some sort of separation when He tasted death – “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me.”  So there is very little impact to either reading of this text.

Did he tell his disciples that they could drink poison without being harmed?

Mark 16:9-20 is not thought to be an authentic, original passage by most NT scholars.  Most of our Bibles still leave it in the Bible, but with a margin note or footnote that it is not found in the earliest or best manuscripts.  The NIV separates it with this note: [The earliest manuscripts and some other ancient witnesses do not have Mark 16:9–20.]  The English Standard Version says:  [Some of the earliest manuscripts do not include 16:9-20.]  I recommend that you read this passage for yourself and see if there is any major doctrine found here that is not elsewhere in Scripture.  Ehrman overstates the case that Mark’s gospel ends without the resurrection since the post-mortem appearances of Jesus are in this inauthentic passage.  But Mark 16:6, known to be original, clearly says that Jesus has risen.  Whether snake-handling and drinking poison are sanctioned rituals does not rest alone on whether or not Mark 16: 9- 20 is authentic.  A proper reading of the non-canonical text promises safety if the events should happen, as it did to Paul when building a fire, but there is no instruction of a church practice to prove God’s faithfulness here.  Also Jesus clearly told Satan that He would not jump off the pinnacle to test His safety in God’s hands.  So even if Mark 16:9-20 were authentic, it would not make snake-handling and poison-drinking a part of church practice.  There is no significance here.

Did he let an adulteress off the hook with nothing but a mild warning?

The John 7:53 – 8: 11 account of the adulteress caught in adultery another passage that is still included in our Bibles, though scholars have known for hundreds of years that it is not an authentic, original passage.  Check your Bibles.  You should find a note that the text is not authentic.  This story is a favorite, and therefore will probably remain in our versions with a note about its authenticity.  How could it happen that such a passage ends up in the Bible?  Look at the picture above again.  At some point the story of the woman caught in adultery was probably a gloss ~ a story someone heard or found that made it’s way into the margin.  A scribe then probably thought it was meant to be in the text, and inserted it.   You can imagine (without Gutenberg and his printing press)  that someone might write the “Footprints” poem in the margin of a Bible, and then someone else, thinking it is part of the text, might add it to the text when they wrote out a copy.  In any case, the teachings of Christ about  forgiveness, adultery, and hypocrisy are certainly found in other parts of the NT.  Think of the story of Hosea, where God has Hosea marry a prostitute.  We might not like the fact that one of our favorite stories is not authentic, but it does not compromise any significant teaching of the Bible if this passage is not authentic.

Is the doctrine of the Trinity explicitly taught in the New Testament?

The way Ehrman phrases that question, you would think that the teaching of  the Trinity rests solely on 1 John 5:8.  The variant reading of   “the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit, these three are one” appears after the 14th century, and has therefore never been critical to the church’s understanding of the Trinity.  The Council of Constantinople in 381 AD clearly affirmed the Trinity without this variant reading.  Almost no NT text includes this variation, except in a footnote.  Briefly, even though the term “trinity” does not appear in the Bible, the concept clearly does.  As recorded in John 14,  Jesus speaks to the Father about sending the Holy Spirit.  Jesus named each person of the godhead when he told his disciples to baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Again, this textual variant does not compromise any major teaching of the Bible.

Is Jesus actually called the “unique God” there?

In John 1:18 we read in the NIV -

No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.

Ehrman agrees with the interpretation in the NIV ~  and claims that it means that ONLY Christ is uniquely God, negating the teaching that God the Father is God.     Here is how other versions translate the phrase:

NASB	ESV	KJ V	ISV	RSV	NWT
the only begotten God	the Only God	the only begotten Son	the unique God	the only Son	the only-begotten god

This variant is, in my mind, the first one that actually seems significant to me.  From my study, however, it seems to me that either forms are grammatically possible translations.  I find Richard Longenecker’s conclusion compelling:

 Contemporary Greek usage allows for monogenēs to be understood more broadly as an adjective stressing quality, rather than derivation or descent. And John’s nuancing of “Son” in his Gospel and Letters lends support to such an understanding. We must conclude, therefore, that the translation “only begotten Son,” though venerable, fails to capture adequately John’s point in his use of monogenēs huios (or monogenēs theos in John 1:18), particularly because it leaves open the possibility of an etymological emphasis on genes (the idea of generation), because it neglects then current usage for the word, and because it fails to set the determination of meaning in the context of John’s avowedly heightened christological perspective. Rather, we must insist that in Johannine usage monogenēs is an adjective connoting quality, which should be translated in a manner signaling primarily uniqueness, and that huios as a christological appellative in John’s Gospel and Letters connotes primarily divine nature. So, to be true to John’s intent, monogenēs huios is best translated into current English as “one and only Son.”

The Apologist Bible Commentary makes use of Origen’s rendering in its conclusion:

Thus, the translator has a number of “legitimate” choices he or she can make that are true to the grammar.  How each ultimately chooses to render the passage depends an a host of factors.

A number of prominent scholars prefer apposition to an adjectival rendering.  Origen cites of John 1:18 in Contra Celsum 2.71:  “kai monogenês ge ôn theos …,” which I would translate “the one and only [Son], being God…”  McReynolds cites this as “a clear early witness as to how one should understand the reading monogenês theos.”

On the whole, I find the evidence presented by these scholars convincing.  I would render monogenês theos as “the only Son, God.”  However, an adjectival reading for monogenês is also possible, yielding a translation similar to the ESV or ISV, “the one and only God.”

Even though either way is grammatically possible, the dispute is not about which word is in the original text, but what that word means.  The problem is whether the word “monogenes” can be used adjectivally to modify God, or substantively containing the idea of an only offspring.  If it means Christ is the ONLY GOD and not the ONLY SON, we might wonder if the Father is also God IF this were the only text in the Bible to settle the matter.  But it isn’t!  So again, this text could be read either way without compromising the teaching of Scripture.

Does the New Testament indicate that even the Son of God does not know when the end will come?

The verse in question here is Matthew 24:36 -  “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.”  The disputed phrase is “nor the Son.”  It is not in all manuscripts. Ehrman makes quite a fuss about whether or not Jesus knew the day and hour.  But as Wallace points out, Erhman never mentions the parallel passage, Mark 13:32, which is undisputed by textual critics:   “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.“  Even without this clear parallel passage, the Matthew text itself says “the Father alone.”  So the meaning that only the Father knows is clear, even without help from Mark.

So which teachings does the Matthew 24:36 variant affect?  Absolutely none.

*    *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

I hope I have convinced you that the 1% of textual variation (where the original text is truly in doubt) does not have a significant impact on our understanding. The 1 % does not affect a single teaching of the New Testament Scriptures!

Professor of NT Studies Gordon Fee says that

…unfortunately, Ehrman too often turns mere possibility into probability, and probability into certainty, where other equally viable reasons for corruption exist.

According to New Testament scholar Darrell Bock:

No central doctrine is affected by this 1%.  … The teaching of Christianity is not touched by these variants.

Conclusion:

We can be sure of at least 99% of the New Testament original text ~ an amazing fact when you consider that the New Testament is almost 2000 years old!  The remaining 1%, where we are uncertain of the original text,  has no significant impact on any teaching of the New Testament.

 

~ Betsy McPeak