The debate is not whether the Westminster Confession affirms a form of preservation—it clearly does—but rather the nature and extent of that preservation. Opponents of VPP argue that the WCF's statement about being "kept pure in all ages" refers to a general providential preservation of the core message and doctrines of the Bible, not a perfect, "jot and tittle" preservation of every word in existing copies. They point to the thousands of minor textual variants in surviving biblical manuscripts as evidence that a perfect, uncorrupted text has not been passed down.
However, VPP advocates maintain that the WCF's language of "singular care and providence" is not a general or common providence but a special, supernatural one, which ensures that God's inspired words are perfectly preserved in specific manuscripts that underlie Reformation-era Bibles. They see VPP as the only logical conclusion for a church that claims to have an infallible and inerrant Bible as its final authority today.
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