All Evangelicals are persuaded
that God inspired the work of composition when the Bible was first
penned. But seldom are Evangelicals sure that God also works through human
agents to preserve His word. But He does. He employs the amazing detective
work of textual critics as a means to this end. The providence of God
usually uses textual criticism to preserve the text with discoveries of
new texts or fragments that may provide new “readings” to help us better
understand and appreciate what the original author said. God does not do
this all at once. It is an ongoing process. The preservation of the text,
like the inspiration of the text, is a “mutual project” of God working
providentially through the agency of men. Just as composition and investigation
are different processes, God’s efforts differ in how these outcomes are
realized. But this doesn’t mean that God is any less involved, providentially,
in making them both come to pass. This does not imply that inspiration and
preservation are precisely alike. Likewise, we can readily conclude how the
ongoing research of the Septuagint’s text helps us purify the Bible, to return
to us the original autographs. (S. Douglas Woodward, Rebooting the Bible,
Part 1: Exposing the Second Century Conspiracy to Corrupt the Scripture and
Alter Biblical Chronology [rev ed.; Oklahoma City: Faith Happens, 2020], 272,
italics in original)
