A gush of comment today on red letter Bibles (words of Christ in red) and ‘red letter Christians’.

Carson has commented on the phenomenon of ‘red letter Christians’, who claim that,

they take the words of Jesus especially seriously… and end up being more concerned than are other Christians for the poor, the hungry, and those at war.

Carson’s response?

Oh, rubbish: this is merely one more futile exercise in trying to find a “canon within the canon” to bless my preferred brand of theology.

A hearty ‘Amen’ to that, Dr Carson.

Next. Headline: “Bloke at Evangelical Textual Criticism blog tries to defend red letter Bibles. Doesn’t.”

In fact, the best stuff over there comes from Larry, who says,

First, i don’t think that when Jesus refers to His words He is drawing a distinction between the Words of the Son and of the Father.

Second, we can’t consider those words outside of Christ’s to be the apostles words any more than we can consider Christ’s words to be theirs. True, the authors wrote the words…but they were also the words of God.

Thirdly, The use of red letters, or anything setting apart the words of Jesus from the other words of God, is an invention of man.

And finally, over at the Accordance blog, David Lang shows us how to hide red letter in our Accordance electronic Bibles.