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Welcome to Conversations with a Calvinist. This podcast is dedicated to helping believers better understand scripture, defend truth, and engage culture. Get your Bible ready and prepare to engage today's topic.
Here's your host, Pastor Keith Foskey.
Welcome to Conversations with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist. Today we're going to be talking about a very controversial subject and I'm going to try to approach this subject on the popular level in the sense that I want to deal with it sort of in a conversational sense as I would if I were sitting at dinner talking to somebody.
I'm going to try to avoid a lot of technical language even though there's going to be some things that I talk about that may be a little bit that way. The subject that we're going to talk about today is the controversy over whether or not a church should exclusively use the King James Version of the Bible.
This is a subject that has just a vast amount of information on it. There are entire books, entire teaching series that deal with this subject. I know that in a 30-minute podcast I'm not going to be able to satisfy every answer or every question that anybody has, but I want to talk about this really from the level of if you are a person who's looking for a church and maybe you go to a church that's a King James only church or maybe you are a person who believes that the King James is the only Bible that you should use and you're looking for a church, I want to sort of address it from that level because honestly that's really the way that it sort of plays out in my life most of the time.
I'll get a call, and this has happened more than once, I'll get a call from somebody and they'll say, you know, I'm looking for a church, I saw your church online, I liked your statement of faith, I like the different ways that you guys do ministry, but I have a question.
And there's a handful of questions that I get a lot, and one of the number one questions is what translation of the Bible do you use? And typically the only people who ask a question like that are those who are concerned as to whether or not we use the King James version of the Bible.
I have had people walk into our church, walk up to any member of the church and ask what version of the Bible do you use? And if they say anything other than the King James version, that person literally does an about face, goes out the door, and back to their car never to be seen again.
So it's not, this is not something that is just theoretical, this is something that happens on the practical level, and therefore I want to address it on the practical level. And I want to also mention that this is actually coming as a response to a question.
I did get a question from a listener, I want to thank Dan for sending in this question, and he said that Dan is a member of our church, and he said that I was helpful in him coming to a better understanding of this particular topic, and he thought it might be good for other people to hear it as well.
So Dan, if you're listening, thank you for listening, and thank you for the question. Also again, this is another conversation from the car, I don't think I've done a conversation with a Calvinist from the car yet, but I used to do coffee with a Calvinist, and there were several times that I did it from the car.
So if you're hearing a little bit of outside noise, that's what it is, I try to cut this down in post-production, but you may hear a little bit of road noise, but this is really helpful for me, it helps me.
I like to drive and talk, and I like to think, and it also helps me sort of reclaim the time. I now have a pretty long trip between the house and church that I didn't used to have now that I'm living in Callahan, so this is just a little helpful in redeeming my time.
So let's go back to the heart of the controversy. When we talk about the King James Version, and the controversy of the King James Version, typically what the argument is, is that the King James Bible is the only Bible that we should be using in the church, and there are different reasons for that argument.
The first one is that, what I call King James Preferred, that's where somebody says, this is the Bible I grew up with, this is the Bible that Mama taught me, this is the Bible that I have studied and memorized passages out of, and I really don't want to change to another Bible.
And I'm sympathetic towards that, because while I wasn't reared on the King James, a lot of the Bible verses that I have memorized tend to be in the King James Version. And one of the arguments from King James Only Advocates is that it is easier to memorize.
I'm not sure that that's technically true. Sometimes correlation isn't always the same as causation, and just because more people memorize King James doesn't mean that it's because the King James is easier to memorize.
But I think there could be some truth to the idea that it's written in a language that's unique and therefore your brain tends to pick up on things that are different. And so, when I quote the 23rd Psalm in a funeral, I tend to quote the 23rd Psalm from the King James Version.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. That's King James English, and I memorized it that way, and therefore when I'm at a funeral and I say the 23rd Psalm or several passages, I tend to quote the King James Version.
So I understand and I'm sympathetic to somebody who says, the King James is my preferred translation, and I think it's the best one for me. And if somebody says that to me, I say, well, more power to you, please feel free to bring the King James Bible and read it.
It won't be the translation that I'm preaching from, but you're more than welcome to use it, and you're more than welcome to ask me questions if there are times where the passages that I'm preaching from read differently in the King James.
In fact, a lot of times when I'm preaching, if I know there's a major difference in the way the King James says something, I'll often reference it in my lesson. I'll say, well, the King James says this.
So, you know, again, King James preferred is fine, and in fact, if you have a preferred Bible translation, in my heart, that means you probably at least are reading the Bible, and that's a good thing.
So King James preferred, that's a positive. The second argument is that the King James Bible is a product of better manuscripts, and this is more of a scholarly argument. This argument is that the manuscripts that were used for the King James Bible were better in the sense that they more accurately represent the original documents, which we know no longer have, we do not have any of the autographs, we do not possess an original copy of Romans, or rather an original autograph of Romans, original autograph of John, everything that we have are copies, and so the argument, the second argument, is that the manuscripts represent, or the manuscripts used by the King James translators were better, and typically what the argument goes along with that is that the, and the scholars were better, I've heard it basically like this, they've got better manuscripts, they've got better scholars, they had a better system for translating, and so typically in that sense, it's more of the argument that the newer translations are inferior to the King James Bible because it had better manuscripts, better translators, and a better method, and so that is, that's more of a scholarly argument, and that's some of what we're going to address when we get to answering the objections here in a little while.
But that's the second argument, I, again, when I say I'm sympathetic, I can appreciate that, even though I disagree with some of that, I can at least appreciate that argument, they're trying to come from a scholarly perspective and make the statement that, hey, it's just the better of the translations, and all of the other translations are inferior, and so, you know, if that's the argument you want to make, I know some very solid Reformed folks who make that argument, and if that's the argument you want to make, and that's where you want to stand, at least that's, at least that begins from a scholarly perspective and can be discussed and debated, and the merits of the different manuscript traditions, you know, the Byzantine, the Alexandrian, you know, those things can be discussed and debated.
But the third position is, and again, I'm not putting these in order of importance or anything, just sort of as they're coming to me as I'm thinking, the third position, and the one that I would say is somewhat of a dangerous position, is the position that the King James Bible is itself an inspired version of the original Bible.
We believe that the Bible is inspired by God, and the word inspired comes from 2 Timothy 3, 16, all scripture is inspired by God, and that word inspired, in the newer translations it says God-breathed, because that's what the word theopneustos means, it means theos, meaning God, pneumos meaning breath, theopneustos meaning that the text is God-breathed.
The scripture is the only thing that is ever said to be God-breathed, and the Bible says all scripture is God-breathed, and so, like in our church, we make a very clear distinction when we say all scripture is God-breathed, we are talking about the original documents are God-breathed, and what we have is we have a translation of a copy of the original documents.
No one has the original documents anymore, the original languages we do have, but what we have are copies in the original language, and those copies, there are copious amounts of copies, and as I said earlier, there are different families of manuscripts, because manuscripts went out to different areas, they were copied in different areas, and we can trace textual variation, and certain things to certain areas, and text families, and text types, and for instance, in the first several hundred years, the Greek language was written in all capital letters, no spaces, no punctuation, punctuation came in later, minuscule text comes in later, which is lowercase letters, and so all of that changed the way the text was copied, it didn't change what the text said, it didn't change anything about the text in the sense of what it was essentially, but it did change the way that it was copied, because now instead of all capital letters, no spaces, no punctuation, you move to capital letters and lowercase letters, you use basically a different form of the language, and that's an important change, right?
So we see that, and we have thousands and thousands of handwritten Greek manuscripts, and again, an argument could be made that there are better lines of those manuscripts, there's better families, but the King James translators basically, or I'm sorry, the ones who take the third position, the King James only advocates, and these are what I usually, these are usually the King James onlyists, and they'll say, the King James onlyists, they'll say, this is the inspired text for the English speaking world, that God intervened in the inspiration, in a sense, breathing out the King James Bible for the English speaking world, and that is a radical claim that does not have any evidence in history to support it, neither really does it have any grounding in what the King James translators themselves believed that they were doing, and so if somebody comes to me and says, I believe the King James Bible is the best translation, I would say, okay, what do you mean by that?
Well, I believe it's based on better manuscripts, it's got better translators, I believe it's got a better, you know, based on a better methodology. Okay, let's have that conversation, and let's talk about why I may agree or disagree with some of your points, but if a person comes to our church, or any, if I had a conversation with any person who says, well, I believe the King James Bible is itself a product of revelation, that God intervened in history to give us a completely perfect English translation called the King James Bible, I would immediately have an issue with that, and my immediate thought would be, upon what basis, by what standard are you making this argument?
Because there's a few things to consider. The King James Bible was not the first English translation. The first time the Bible was translated into English was by John Wycliffe in the 14th century, and when John Wycliffe translated his version, he translated it from Latin, because he did not have access to the original languages, and so he translated his Bible from Latin, and so it's a translation of a translation, which accounts for some of the issues with it, but after that, you have other English translations which were translated and used.
One of them, of course, was the Geneva Bible. The Geneva Bible was translated and used, and it was very popular among the reformers, you know, those who were reformed in their theology, and the thing about the Geneva Bible is it was an early version of what we would call today a study Bible.
It had study notes in the margins, which helped the reader to understand what was being written, and they were reformed in their theology as far as how they understood the scripture, so in that sense, the Geneva Bible could be considered the earliest of the English reformed study Bibles, and one of the reasons why it didn't necessarily appeal to everybody was because it had the notes, and there was a desire on the account of some to have a translation of the Bible that did not include any extra notes like that, so when we look at the Geneva Bible, it was very popular, and along comes the, there are others, the Bishop's Bible and others, but there's multiple English translations that are in the world.
Tyndale, William Tyndale, of course, had his Bible that he translated, and you're hopefully familiar with William Tyndale, very important, and he was killed for translating the Bible into English. He translated the Bible from the Greek and the Hebrew, and he was a master of languages, a master translator, and he had his Bible that went out.
He was called God's outlaw. He was used of God to bring the Bible to the English-speaking world in many ways, and yet at the same time, he was killed for it. He was burned at the stake for it. He prayed.
God opened the King of England's eyes when he was dying, when he was being burned, and it was less than 100 years later that the King of England, King James, authorized the King James Bible, so that's another thought of positive for the King James Bible.
It was the product of, or rather, it was the answer to a prayer by William Tyndale. You know, he prayed. God opened the King of England's eyes, and wouldn't you know it, God opened the King of England's eyes less than a century later, and we have the King James Bible.
So, right away, we have to say, okay, we have the King James Bible as opposed to these other English translations, and why would we think that it, as opposed to the others, is necessarily the one that God inspired as opposed to, say, the Geneva Bible?
And some would say, well, the King authorized it, and the King is God's minister on the earth. The Bible says the authorities are given by God to the people, and therefore the King was functioning as a minister in God's economy, and that's why we say the King is, the King authorized it, therefore it is, it's of God.
Well, let me just take an issue with that. Not everybody accepted the King James right away. The King James Bible was not universally accepted, especially, again, among some of the reformers, because it was considered to be a state Bible.
It was produced by the state, and I made this joke a few years ago when President Obama was the President of the United States. I said, you know, if there was an Obama standard version, most Christians would not want it.
They would not want a version that was authorized and translated by somebody appointed by President Barack Obama, or now President Joe Biden, or even the Trump. Could you imagine the Trump standard version?
You know, if we had the Donald Trump version of the Bible, I think a lot of people would have issue with that, because they would understand that, you know, when the state is involved, it's hard not to have some input into the product.
Now, again, I'm not questioning the integrity of the translators or anything like that. I'm saying this is why it was not as quickly accepted as some might expect it would have been. Having the King's authority was appealing to some, but not appealing to all.
So, that's just another historical nugget that we need to keep in our thought. So, the idea that the King James version is inspired by God is a position that I do not think holds water. For a couple of reasons.
One, it wasn't the only English translation at the time, and two, it has gone through several editions. The first King James Bible was translated and published in 1611. It was only two years later, I believe, in 1613, that the first edition of the King James Bible became available, and then it went through several other editions, and you end up with, I think, the one that most people have today is from 1769.
I could be wrong on that number. Again, I'm driving, I'm not looking at any notes, and this is all from memory. But the last one that most people today would say, I'm holding the King James Bible, they're actually holding a 1769 edition of the King James Bible.
So, that one. Now, were there any major edits and changes? I'm sure there were some. If it went through that many editions, certainly there were probably issues of spelling, issues of grammar, issues of the use of the English language changed, and so there are several editions.
But here comes the question. Would something that was inspired by God, in the sense that God breathed it out, would it need to go through several editions? Were there several editions of the letter of Paul to the Romans, his original letter?
The answer is no. Were there several editions of the letter to the Ephesians? No. There was the letter to the Ephesians, and it was inspired by God. And so we have to consider the reality of what that's saying when we say, well, the King James Bible went through several editions.
And I realize there's arguments on the other side that would say, well, those editions didn't matter. And some people say, I'm holding a 1611. I have very rarely ever had somebody tell me they're holding a 1611 and open up their Bible and find that they're actually holding a 1611 King James.
Now, I'm sure that it happens, and I'm sure there's some people out there that have it. But I have a 1611 copy on my shelf at the church. I like to show it to people to show them how difficult it is to read, and not just because it's King James English, but because it is, in fact, the letters are different.
They're used differently than how we use them now. As far as the shapes of the letters and things like that, there are some that are different. The F's and the S's and different things have a little different look.
And so most people, when they say, you know, I'm holding a 1611, not really. You're probably holding, again, I think it's a 1769 edition, which, again, we're just looking at the argument. If we're talking about an inspired text, when did the inspiration come?
Did it come in 1611 or did it come in 1769? You know, that's a big question. But now I want to jump ahead a few centuries and talk about the importance of distinguishing between newer translations, because here's where the argument really hits the fan, you know, when we begin to talk.
And that's when people begin to say, well, the King James Bible is God's translation in English, and all of the other versions are translated by heretics or dangerous false teachers or bad scholars. And there was a book that came out several years ago called New Age Bible Versions, which made the attempt to argue that all of the newer versions, at that time it was the NIV, was very popular, and arguing that the NIV was essentially the devil's translation.
And others, such as the New American Center Bible, you know, all of those were the devil's translation. And I think that book came out before the ESV. I'm almost certain that's the case. The ESV is relatively more recent, and the ESV is popular among Reformed folks, and I think probably because of guys like R .C. Sproul, who popularized it with his study Bible.
You know, the New American Center Bible used to be really, really, really popular among scholarly folks, and you saw it, but now it tends to be the ESV. But the argument is, from a lot of King James only advocates, well, the people who translated this are bad.
They're bad, they're ungodly, and we shouldn't trust them. And it tends to go back to the...it's hard not to get technical at this point. It goes back to the manuscript differences that these newer translations are based on.
The a set of manuscripts that were discovered that were older than most of the manuscripts that, up until the time of their discovery, had been found. And so, things like Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus, and Codex Alexandrinus, these are codices, these are copies of the New Testament specifically, copies of the Bible, but they have the New Testaments were the Greek, and this is really where the issue comes in, is textual variation.
And what these do is these call into question some of the readings that were in the later manuscripts. And by later manuscripts, I mean the...we talked earlier about the minuscules. A lot of those manuscripts contain things that the older manuscripts do not.
For instance, one of the probably most...well, there's three popular examples. There's the Kamiohonion, which is in 1 John. There's a sentence in 1 John that refers to the Trinity that is not found in any of the early manuscripts.
There is a section in John 7 and 8 where Jesus has the woman come and thrown at his feet, the woman caught in adultery. That entire section of the Gospel of John is not in the earlier manuscripts. And the end of Mark, what we call the longer ending of Mark, is not found in any of the manuscripts.
So that's three, that's the three main ones. There's certainly many others, but those are three very important, what we call textual variants. They're not found in the older manuscripts. And so those who advocate for the King James would say, well, those older manuscripts are corrupt.
They don't represent the original. They have issues and they shouldn't be trusted. And so then you have the question of, okay, by what standard? What standard are we going to use? Are we going to say the standard is, well, the older the better?
And so we can look at the older manuscripts and trust that, hey, these older manuscripts are closer to the original, therefore they should be trusted outright. Or are we going to say something a little more specific?
Say, well, what about the larger body of manuscripts? And that's where the question of the majority text comes in. The majority text is really the idea, what does the majority say? And the majority has those accounts.
It has the longer ending of Mark. The majority has the woman caught in adultery. The majority text, well, the Kamiohonium is sort of interesting because Kamiohonium doesn't show up in any manuscript, I think, until the 1100s.
Again, it could be wrong on some of the states. I've given an actual lecture on this and it's on our church website. You can go to our church website, sgfcjax .org, and I did several lectures on getting more into the technical side of textual variation.
I did this several years ago, and if you want to know more about this, send me an email and I will send you the link because this is an important topic. But again, you can see how it begins to get technical, right?
You start talking about, well, which manuscripts are actually better? Were the manuscripts of the King James Version Translated had better or not? Were the manuscripts that are used now, I will say this, we have many more manuscripts now than were available to the King James translators.
That is key. And in the opening, the preface to the King James Bible, the translators even said that that would happen, that it was possible that correctors would come along and correct some of what they had done, and that's what's interesting is they recognized the idea that correction could happen.
But if we're saying it's an inspired text, then correction cannot happen. So, let's start to draw to a close. I'm getting to the 30-minute mark. I like to keep these at 30 minutes, and let's just make a few conclusions.
One, if a person says the King James Bible is their favorite translation, it's their preferred translation, I would say, great, that's no problem. If they said, I think it's based on better manuscripts, better translators, better methodology, I would say, we can talk about that.
We could debate that and possibly come to a different conclusion, but at least that's a respectable position, and we could have that conversation. The ecclesiastical text is another term that's used. You know, the text that's majority, that has been used for the majority of church history, that should be the text that we go with, and that's the text that was, you know, they would argue the basis for the King James, which again, that's debatable, but that's the argument.
But the third argument, that the King James Bible is inspired, I don't think that holds any merit. I wouldn't want to debate that, because really, you're not basing it on anything that's really debatable.
It's really your opinion. You believe the King James Bible is translated, inspired by God, because you want it to have a certain amount of weight, and you know, you trust that it has that weight behind it.
So if that's your position, I would disagree with you. I don't think there's any evidence of that. I don't think there's any reason to believe that. And then when we come to the newer translations, the newer translations, we have something introduced with the NIV that was sort of a new concept, and that was the idea of dynamic equivalent translation, where the NIV seeks to translate not words, but thoughts, and rather than being a word-for-word translation, it becomes a thought-for-thought for translation.
So that ends up being a little problematic, because now you're not interpreting words and sentences and structure, you're interpreting the thoughts of the translators. And so I could see someone having an issue with the NIV.
But all translations do that. For instance, the King James uses a dynamic equivalent at one point when it says in Romans chapter 6, shall we continue to sin so that grace can abound? The King James Bible says God forbid, but the Greek there is meganoita.
It means may it never exist, may that never be, may that thought never enter your head. That's the idea. But the term God forbid, that's the idea. It's no, shall we continue in sin so that grace can abound?
No. But what's the actual translation? Meganoita. May it never be. That's how it's translated, I think, in ESV, in the New American Standard Bible. And so we get to the question of what translation is best.
I think it's a good idea, if you don't read Greek and Hebrew, I think it's a good idea for you to look at multiple translations when you're trying to understand what a text is saying. And if you come to a point where the King James and the NIV and the New American Standard Bible, the ESV, those four cannot agree, then at that point, you know, it would help you to have some understanding of the original language to be able to try to discern which one is getting it most accurate.
Because that's our goal, is accuracy. We want to know what God said in His Word, because only by knowing what He said can we possibly know what He meant. And what He meant is what He said. And so we need to understand it.
So my encouragement to you would be to find a translation that is readable to you. I do encourage the ESV, because that's what I preach out of. The New American Standard Bible is a little clunkier, still readable, just a little more clunky.
I do not recommend things like the Passion Translation or the Message. They're too far removed from the original text. You're trying to get to what Paul wrote when he wrote, you know, what John wrote when he wrote, what Moses wrote.
You want to know what they said. You don't want to know a version of what they said in the sense of somebody's translation. So be careful with that. Again, the literal translations are essentially literal translations of the ESV, New American Standard Bible.
The New English translation is good. That's one I use sometimes. And, you know, the King James Version, the New King James Version. And again, there's a lot more technical parts of this conversation, but I hope that this has been helpful in helping you understand why if you want to use the King James, great.
But if you want to use another translation, that's good, too. Just make sure that when you're seeking to understand a text that you're doing more than just simply just just reading the text. But but but dive into it.
Try to understand what it's saying and look at various translations to do that, because I think that would help you. Thank you for listening today to Conversations with a Calvinist. And I appreciate you listening every week to our program.
If you have any questions, please send them in to us. I'd love to be able to answer your question on a future program. And again, thank you for listening to Conversations with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey, and I.
Have been your Calvinist. May God bless you. Thank you for listening to Conversations with a Calvinist. If you enjoyed the program, please take a moment to subscribe. And if you have a question you would like us to discuss on a future program, please email us at Calvinistpodcast at gmail .com.
As you go about your day, remember this, Jesus Christ came to save sinners. All who come to Him in repentance and faith will find Him to be a perfect Savior. He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Him.
May God be with you.