To add a little more context, in the early 70s Dr. Custer's praise was on the NASB cover. From my vantage point, it was like he was ignoring the scholarship of the old Historic Northern Baptists I listed below. Remember back then:
most Baptist pastors were English Bible only preachers.
the coals from intense fires of the battles over Modernism were just beginning to cool off. The praise given to the NASB sounded like the KJV was untrustworthy.
Didn't say they did. But they were TR men mostly in reaction to the WH types they studied under at the Northern Baptist Seminaries. The sense I got was Dr. Custer was seen as setting himself up as the voice of NT Greek scholarship in Fundamentalism.
And just a bit west of "West Point on the Rock River" we find R. V. Clearwaters with much the same attitude. He attended Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, then Northern Baptist Theological Seminary also in Chicago. He heard A.H. Strong, A.T. Robertson, Robert Mantey, James Moffat and H.A. Ironside and graduated with a Th.B and B.D. degrees in 1928. He attended the University of Chicago
Divinity School and earned an M.A. degree in 1933 under E.J. Goodspeed in New Testament Greek and was a few hours short of a Ph.D when time and money became prohibitive.
He would often quote the ASV of 1901 in his preaching but refused to give up his old KJV. When the New Scofield Reference Bible came out in 1967 he panned it from the Seminary Chapel Pulpit stating that in his opinion the word changes belonged in the margin, not in the text.
He did allow Dr. Roland McCune to teach Old Testament History from the NASB as the OT was more clear and there were only 8 differences between Bomberg's Hebrew text of the KJV and BHK/37 which the NASB was based on.
When I was a student there the Greek department was headed by Dr. Gordon Lovik, B.A., M.A., Bob Jones University; M.Div., Th.M., Central Baptist Theological Seminary; Th.D., Grace Theological Seminary. The Greek text at that time had been supplanted by UBS 2. Doc didn't seem to mind. I think he eventually realized the error of his earlier bias. :)
That very well maybe. I am only voicing my observations about the men of whom I have personal knowledge. My point is Dr. Custer seemingly set himself up as the authority as if the other men did not exist.
The fulsome paise of the NASB by Dr. Custer and other raised the hackles of English Bible only preachers. This played into the hands of demagogues. They used the KJVO to set themselves up as authorities or to keep themselves in positions of influence.
When Dr. George W. Dollar (Gordon College, BA, Gordon Divinity School, M.Div. Master of Theology in church history from Emory University, Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy from Boston University) came to Central as Academic Dean and Chairman of the Department of Church History (he had previously held the same position at Dallas Seminary). On his first occasion to preach in chapel he started by saying "Take your King James Bible and turn to (and gave the reference). If you have anything other than a King James Bible, SIT ON IT!"
Oddly enough he felt secure in saying "I would put that differently were I translating it" or "another way of saying that would be" and give his own translation. So although he certainly was not KJVO he seemed to be strongly KJV preferred. But the Greek Interlinear he brought to class to teach from was the George Ricker Berry Interlinear based on Robert Stephens TR of 1550.
I agree. In addition to the men listed in my post above I also knew Dr. James Hollowood (and his son, David) and Dr. Myron Cedarholm and counted both of them as friends. I also know Don Waite, but we had a rather too public falling out about 15 years ago so, unfortunately, although I still consider him a friend I doubt he feels the same about me. :)
And all were former Northern Baptists who became independent via the GARBC and the CBA.
In some ways, I look at this as BJU seeing itself as the only source of theological excellence. While it was on good terms with the other schools mentioned above, in this case, it suffered from tunnel vision.
Dr. Custer, et al seemingly ignored the academic qualifications of men like Hollowood, Cedarholm, and Weeks.
I agree. There was a time, especially when Dr. Bob, Jr. was still alive, when the attitude from the leadership could only be described as arrogant.
Remember when John MacArthur took over Los Angeles Baptist College and Seminary, a GARBC approved school, and the BJU people were concerned that he would compete for students with BJ. So they scoured everything MacArthur had written or said and came up with the "he denies the blood of Christ" accusation?
There was a time when they seemed to think they were the only God ordained school in the country. :)
The biggest difference I see between now and back then is men today have a better grasp of the original languages, in particular, Greek. Men are more likely today to have graduated with a BA with two years of Greek. That doesn't put them in the same level of knowledge as JoJ. But, it's far and away better than never having any exposure to Greek like the men who went into the pastorate with a Bible Institute education.
I bought the 1st ed. of the NASB NT in the BJU bookstore. They were all for it. They also used the USB Greek text in the classroom. I didn't mind all of that at the time. Still think that the NASB is a good literal translation, though wooden; they just chose the wrong source texts.
Very true. When I was there in '70-'72, that was the attitude. Loyalty to the school was taught very strongly. Before I transferred to Temple in '72, I was told by the family not to tell anyone and it would be handled quietly. BJU was known to give trouble to students asking for their transcript to be sent--disloyalty, don't you know. So the family approached Dr. Roberson and my transfer was handled secretly.
I never met Waite personally. Our falling out was strictly over the Internet. :Sick But there may be some regret there. Several months ago Daniel Waite added me to their email list, which I soon opted out of--they still have that nasty attack against me on their website.
That is one thing I will say about Doc Clearwaters. As difficult as he could be on occasion, he did say in chapel one day that any time anyone started telling us that we should be loyal to a man or an institution we should run, not walk, run, to the nearest exit. Our only loyalty was to be to Christ. That's pretty good advice.
When I was in Germany, (about 1980ish)
a music team from BJU visited military bases - My wife and I hosted one of the men from the team.
At the time, I was considering on attending a Bible college. That young man and I virtually got into an argument because BJU was not on my list of possible schools.
( I think I was looking at Bap Univ of American -now disbanded)
he told me that BJU had 50+ years of excellence. and BUA basically brand new.