What is wrong in this statement: We believe in the divine, Verbal Plenary Inspiration (Autographs) and Verbal Plenary Preservation of the Scriptures (Apographs) in the original languages, their consequent inerrancy and infallibility, and as the perfect Word of God, the Supreme and final authority in faith and life (2 Tim 3:16; 2 Pet 1:20-21; Ps 12:6-7; Matt 5:18, 24:35);
The Critical Error in the Statement: Conflating Inspiration with Preservation
The statement above contains a fundamental theological error that undermines its entire foundation. By claiming “Verbal Plenary Preservation of the Scriptures (Apographs),” it conflates two distinct doctrines that must remain separate: divine inspiration of the originals and providential preservation of copies.
The Core Problem
The underlying problem with the doctrine of VPP is its false presupposition that God’s inspiration of Scripture at a particular point in human history also requires His divine preservation of every jot and tittle ever written down by anyone who ever sought to do the work of a scribe.[1] This is the exact error the statement commits.
Inspiration applies exclusively to the autographs—the original writings penned by the biblical authors. Scripture was given by God to His chosen penmen in a state that was free from all error of every kind, and in stating that the autographs were completely errorless, we do not contend that God continued the miracle in the copying of the original manuscripts to the apographs.[2]
The statement’s claim that apographs (copies) possess “inerrancy and infallibility” contradicts the historical Christian position held by Augustine, Jerome, and Calvin—figures who distinguished between the errorless originals and copies that, while generally reliable, could contain scribal mistakes.
The Preservation Question
Preservation is not the same as inspiration. God providentially preserved His word in purity, guarding it by the methods of transcription employed among the Jews and by the sheer number of copies made of the New Testament manuscripts.[2] This providential care does not mean every copy is perfect; it means God ensured His Word was preserved sufficiently across the manuscript tradition so that the original meaning remains recoverable through textual criticism.
The statement’s appeal to Psalm 12:6-7 and Matthew 24:35 misapplies these verses. Psalm 12:6 speaks of God’s words being “flawless,” referring to their inherent character, not the perfection of every transcription. Matthew 24:35 affirms that Christ’s words will not pass away—a promise about the permanence of God’s truth, not a guarantee that every manuscript copy is inerrant.
The Practical Consequence
By claiming apographs possess the same inerrancy as autographs, the statement creates an impossible burden: it must identify which specific manuscript tradition, which edition, which translation embodies this perfect preservation. Verbal Plenary Preservation is promoted by some (usually “King James Version Only” advocates) in support of the view that the Textus Receptus is the only New Testament text that is both divinely inspired and divinely preserved, requiring generation after generation of handwritten copies to be produced without error of any kind, yet VPP proponents incorrectly link the doctrine of inerrancy with inspiration and “providential preservation,” concluding that the Textus Receptus and the Majority Text are not only faithful, inerrant, and identical replicas of the original autographs, but that all other New Testament manuscripts are not inspired of God and therefore unworthy of use.[1]
This position is historically and textually indefensible. The Dead Sea Scrolls, which are second-century copies predating the Majority Text by hundreds of years, substantiated the accuracy of earlier non-majority text, and the Majority Text are only a selection of Greek texts from a particular area of the world during a particular time period in only one of the many languages that the New Testament had been preserved in.[3]
The Correct Position
A biblically sound statement would affirm: We believe in the divine, Verbal Plenary Inspiration of the original autographs in the original languages, their consequent inerrancy and infallibility, and the providential preservation of Scripture through the manuscript tradition, which allows us to recover the original text through careful textual criticism. Copies and translations, while reliable and adequate for faith and practice, are not themselves inerrant—a distinction maintained by the greatest theologians in church history.
[1] Got Questions Ministries, Got Questions? Bible Questions Answered (Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2014–2021). [See here, here.]
[2] Alan Cairns, in Dictionary of Theological Terms (Belfast; Greenville, SC: Ambassador Emerald International, 2002), 232.
[3] Got Questions Ministries, Got Questions? Bible Questions Answered. [See here.]
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