The following is a presentation of the Reformation Bible Society. It is a recorded breakout session from the August 3, 2024 conference in Lynchburg, Virginia. First up this morning, Brett Mullen will be speaking us today on the Eastern Orthodox view of the Septuagint. Brett is a professor at Divine Hope Seminary, which is a prison Bible college in the Illinois and Indiana area, and so I'll turn it over to Brett now. Thank you. Well, greetings. I would like to begin with reading just two verses of the Bible, just two verses. We're going to read Matthew chapter 18. Excuse me, that is chapter 17, Matthew 17, one through two. This is the word of the Lord. And after six days, Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John, his brother, and bringeth them up into a high mountain apart. and was transfigured before them. And his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light. I trust that we know that passage very well. And so in that sense, we will stop right there. This is a very precious passage to the Greek Orthodox, and I think we ought to meet them where they are, at least initially. So I read that as a precious passage to us as well. It's a picture of the glory of the Lord Jesus, and we ought to meditate upon it. They often do. We'll come back to it, Lord willing, very, very soon. So, what I want to do is give briefly a summary of the Greek Orthodox, or the Eastern Orthodox understanding of the Old Testament, and then I want to talk about why it is important. And I wanna seek to give a Protestant response. Now we only have 20 minutes, so that is a lot to do. So we'll be very brief, and we'll seek to do justice, maybe even more so at another time or elsewhere, or also in the essay. Let me just briefly say, Eastern Orthodoxy is a bit of an enigma to the evangelical church. Oftentimes, they cannot tell, evangelicals cannot tell the difference between the Church of Rome or the Eastern Orthodox Church and churches. You see a lot of the same things or a lot of similar things, but you also see a lot of differences when there have been high-profile conversions to Eastern Orthodoxy, sometimes people say, ah, this is just Roman Catholicism. Well, it's not that. Now, we're not going to seek to vindicate the Eastern Orthodox Church, but understand that if you're new to it, it is a church, which we would say is not Rome, but it is a church where, if you were to go to their worship services, you would find robes, priests, so-called, incense icons a great emphasis upon the Trinity and a Closeness to the Nicene Creed and to the ancient church councils It seems it would claim to be this church would claim to be the church of the first century the church of 33 ad But of course, as a number of people have said, James White among them rightly saying, this is more of a church stuck in the 7th to 9th centuries rather than one that goes back all the way to the apostles. But that is their claim. So the tough thing for us as Westerners is that the Eastern Orthodox Church and churches are hard to pin down. You got a little bit of that in the previous discussion that we just had. There are some who would say these are the books, these are the books of the Old Testament. In Greek, we use the Septuagint and they would use that, they use it in church. but they're not committed to one text, one language, one version of it. And they would say that they have never declared, that is, in a council or some other way, that this is the version that we believe is the one we must always use. So we would say, with those who might even criticize us, that they are not textual absolutists. I wouldn't own that title either, as much as some want to throw that at us, but they would say we are, they are not textual absolutists. What we mean by that is this, they have no problem with the fact that there are different versions of the Greek, with different readings. They have no problem with the fact that there are different readings in different languages. Most of the churches use the Greek, but if it's translated, that's fine. The Russians are the only ones who seem to use or care that much about the Hebrew. And there are others, the Slavonic and all sorts of others that have differences. You go to one church and in one language they'll have a reading that says one thing. You go to another and it has another reading. And we as Westerners and as Protestants, we say, which one is the right one? We have to do text criticism to get back. And they think, they say, no, no, no. You're being too Western. You're trying to tie it down. And I say, the differences and the variety, that actually adds to the beauty and to the nuance of the text and of the worship. For them, the Bible is for the worshiping community. It's only recently that they ever published a study Bible. Why were they? 500 years or so late to the game. Because for them, the Bible outside of worship is a novel thing. It's just not something that they focus upon. We would also mention that for them, the Eastern Orthodox, they look at us as Protestants, and they see us quoting, say, 2 Timothy 3.16, and we say, all scripture is breathed out by God, et cetera. And they look at us as strange because they say, well, you all put the authority and the power in the text. And they would say, we would emphasize the authority of the spirit. And so the spirit has the ability to have one reading here and one there, different versions of the Greek Bible, that's fine. Different readings in different languages, no problem, that is fine. So for them, It's no problem that there was an old Greek. There was Aquila and Symmachus and Theodotion. In fact, they'll readily mention that Theodotion, who was somewhat of an anti-Christian Jew, they use his version of Daniel in one of their readings on one Sunday of the year, at least. Why is that? It's the best, it's the most beautiful. For them, whatever's best, whatever's beautiful, that's fine, no problem. They're not concerned with pinning down wording or that sort of thing, and they find us strange for doing it. So you understand that there are differences of Greek Old Testaments for them, no problem. There are times in the English language they have used the King James. They said, well, it just has a lyrical beauty to it, so that's fine. Other times they have used the RSV and the NRSV, no problem. And they have other versions as well. Now, of course, they've published an Eastern Orthodox study Bible. What is the text of that? Well, the text that they use for that is the Roth's Brenton, the one that's used by a lot of critical scholars. It comes from, as you recently heard, Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. No problem. They're fine with it. They have no problem with the Greek as a translation overtaking the Hebrew, insofar as you can get them to argue about it. They're not inclined to argue. They think of, yeah, you Westerners, you're trying to pin things down, and you want to argue truth, and they're just not like that. But insofar as they do, they would say, the Greek is better. They may say that. Well, Why does it matter? Briefly, let me just say, I don't think that we need to be alarmists. I don't believe we need to say, listen, there's gonna be a massive revival of Greek orthodoxy or Eastern orthodoxy. I'm not gonna bring some sort of scare tactics or anything like that. I don't think we need to be fearful of them or of it. However, there are times in which There are somewhat public conversions to it. Hank Hanegraaff being a big one. Just a couple of years ago, a scholar, Lutheran church historian, Jaroslav Pelkin, Lutheran for a long time, and then he went to the Eastern Orthodox Church. He called it a homecoming for himself. popular preacher, Francis Chan. You just wonder about him. Seems to be leaning in that direction. I don't know. Eastern orthodox curious, we could call him, to use the lingo of the day. Maybe closet orthodox. Who knows? We'll watch. Stay tuned and we will see what comes. Just because we're probably not gonna have a massive revival of Eastern Orthodoxy doesn't mean we ought to let our guard down because there are still dangers. I lose count of the amount of people I know who have gone to the Church of Rome and more so those who have gone to the Eastern Orthodox churches. Why would someone leave the Protestant Reformation or why would someone leave the evangelical church and churches? This is a question we ought to ask ourselves. What does evangelicalism present and what does Eastern Orthodoxy offer in response? Well, I don't want to beat anyone up, but I think we can just speak bluntly. It won't surprise you to hear that evangelical churches are often quite shallow, shallow in their views of worship, ahistorical, not concerned with church history, me and my Bible, or me and my experience, that sort of thing, the Eastern churches and their apologists, their advocates, will sniff those things out. If you are weak on justification, that great Pauline, Petrine doctrine of the apostles and of the Reformation, if you are weak on that, they can sniff it out because they deny sola scriptura, they deny justification by grace through faith apart from the works of the law. And so, when we let our guard down on any of the Reformation attainments, then we are susceptible to them And that is true, not just of justification by grace through faith, it's true, it's true of our doctrine of scripture as well. Let me just mention the ways to respond to them in the last few minutes that we have as the Eastern Orthodox advocates come to us and they say, We created the Bible, and you Westerners are too obsessed with words and vowels and that sort of thing, the exact readings. How shall we respond? Well, first of all, the first step that I would give to you is know the differences between the Septuagint that they are reading. Obviously, we understand that there are multiple Septuagint or multiple Greek versions, but this very handy book by Lanier and Ross and one of the authors is here with us today on page 111 through 117. they have laid out the differences between the Greek Old Testament and the Hebrew, and some of them are minor, and some of them are quite large. We don't have time to go into those details, but some texts are shortened, some are expanded, some are rearranged, all kinds of differences. We need to know those and we ought to point them out. Now, the next thing I will say is not going to convince too many Eastern Orthodox, but just stand back for a moment. Stand back and listen to a church that says, Translation is fine and differences in the translation from one to another Differences in language from one to another that is no problem. It doesn't stress us out They would say we're not losing sleep at night like you Protestants might be doing and are doing. We're not doing text criticism because we don't need to. The differences add to the beauty and the variety and the nuance. If you know anything about the history of the Christian church, What happened? In the 6th century, the Pope placed a little phrase, and the son, the Filioque, into the Nicene Creed, and there's a lot to go into there. We won't go into it now, but theologically, the West was right, I would argue. But as far as diplomacy and not being jerks, Rome was quite wrong, it seems to me. What happened? Eventually, in 1054, Eastern and Western churches split over what? Changing of the Nicene Creed. As Protestants, we ought to love the Nicene Creed. In fact, I will tell Romanists and Eastern Orthodox, that is our creed. Not yours, you're free to use it. Well, those are fighting words. But is it not interesting that they will be happy to split Christendom over a difference of jots and tittles of a creed which I love and believe and defend every sentence of? yet they're so casual about their Bibles being changed and having differences. Next thing, what we ought to do is double down on Westminster Confession 1.8, double down on Westminster Confession 1.8, and not just double down on what it means, that is to say that the original are the Hebrew Old Testament, not the Greek Old Testament for our purposes. And look at what was meant by the people who wrote that and their contemporaries, Owen and also Turretin. Now, the latter half of Owen's 16th volume covers a number of these things. And Jeff Riddle has written an easy reader, we'll say. It's much more user-friendly if you're not accustomed to reading the likes of Owen. But let me just say, ultimately, use that as a diving board, but dive into the originals. Also, John Owen has what's published as a biblical theology. It's a really incredible book. And in a certain section in there, he basically goes on a side road and spends about eight pages debunking the Greek Septuagint, so-called. I commend it to you for further, more than we can do in 20 minutes. Also, let me just propose something to you. It might be offensive to some. I don't mean to be offensive. What is the, one of the worst things that in some circles, some Baptist circles, you can be, you're a Ruckmanite. What does that mean? It's a man who's famous for saying, well, you can correct the Greek with the English. This is bizarre to us as reformed folk because the original ought not to be corrected by a translation. But that's exactly what is going on with the Eastern Orthodox Church. I would put forward to you this. What we have is right-wing Ruckmanism that we find in the fundamentalist churches, and we have friends and possibly family who are in those sorts of churches, or Ruckmanite churches. What do we have on the other side? On the left side, I would call it left-wing Ruckmanism. That is to say, bizarre, taking the King James and correcting the Greek, oh, that causes me pause, causes me reason to scratch my head. Now, on the other end, I see. I'm gonna go a couple more minutes. So, on the other side, what do we have? We have left-wing Ruckmanism, that is, correcting the Hebrew, with the Greek, and that is not something we disparage Ruckmanism, that's just academia. That is what's going on in our Bibles that many of our churches are purchasing, and this is astonishing. Let me just go quickly, quickly, and say this. It is time for us to revisit the topic of the Hebrew vowel points. It is time for us to revisit that. Here is why the Hebrew vowel points were defended by all of the Protestants, and this is crazy in our age. Why? Because we have abandoned the original meaning of the confessions, okay? Now, Let me say very briefly, Mr. Russell Fuller, who is here, has written an incredible summary that I commend to you as an introduction. It is called John Owen and the Traditional Protestant View of the Hebrew Old Testament. Our time is very short, but let me just encourage you to look into the Helvetic Confession, Article 2 and Article 3. I don't have time to read those because our time is almost gone, but let me just say, Article 2 and Article 3, written by a man named Heidegger and Turretin and one other, said explicitly what was implied in all of the confessions that came before. The Helvetic comes in 1675. They said explicitly what was implicit in all of the others, and that is that the Hebrew vowel points are original, not necessarily the Masoretic ones, but the fact is, when Ezra and Nehemiah spoke or read, there were vowels. Same with when Moses and Adam and Eve, etc. It is time for us to revisit that and double down if we should need to do so. I commend it to you strongly. Let me just say very briefly two other points, and then we will end. First of all, gentlemen, read your Hebrew Old Testament, but read your Greek Old Testament as well. It seems to me it's never been easier for us to pick it up and read it. There is a very helpful two-volume called Septuagint. We ought to read not just our New Testament in Greek, but if you have the facility, read it in Greek in the Old Testament as well, so we stay strong on our Greek reading, but also it is a translation, and it is still edifying. Lastly, let me just say this in response to our Greek Orthodox friends or family, the Apostle Peter's, his his commentary upon the transfiguration with which we began. What does Peter say? I was there. I was with the others. We were on the mountaintop, and it was glorious. We heard the Father speak, but what happened? That's passing. That's fading. What does he say? You have a more sure word of prophecy in the written word. And as we just heard in the previous session, so we reaffirm, that is not talking about the Septuagint. The more sure word of prophecy is your Hebrew Old Testament. Thank you for listening to this presentation from the Reformation Bible Society. To learn more about our society or to apply for membership, please visit our website, reformationbiblesociety.org.