KJV Onlyism: Question: I have a question: what are your thoughts on the many translations of the Bible? I have always used the KJV myself. But I was just wondering what your thoughts were on that?
Reply: I have used the KJV for many years, brother, and continue to believe that in it we have the Word of God faithfully preserved for us in English. I know there are many arguments surrounding manuscripts, translations, and textual differences, and I have written about some of those things in the past, so I wasn’t especially interested in revisiting all of that again. For myself, I am settled and very comfortable reading, studying, and quoting from the KJV, and I have never felt any need to move away from it. Honestly, when someone starts reading from another version in a sermon it throws me off – it almost feels like a different language. At the same time, there are a lot of red flags for me with some forms of KJV Onlyism.
That is more or less where I intended to leave the matter. But after going back through some older things I had written and looking again at arguments I once found more persuasive, I realized that some of my own thoughts have changed over the years. Not my confidence in the King James Bible, but certainly the way I would now frame some of the thoughts surrounding it. So perhaps it is worth revisiting the subject after all: not simply to defend a translation, but to think again about the larger doctrine of Scripture.
The real issue may not be King James Onlyism at all, but what we believe Scripture actually is. It has to do with how we value the Scriptures themselves, and what we believe God has actually given His people. Do we think of the Bible mainly as the surviving result of an ancient textual history, or as God speaking to His people in words He has preserved? Perhaps the deeper question beneath all of this is not simply: “Which English Bible is best?” but, “Has God preserved His word for His people?”
Our understanding of Scripture cannot finally leave us with only the assurance that God once gave an inspired Bible somewhere in the distant past. We need the Scriptures now – God’s testimony concerning His Son, His truth, His light, His word by which everything else is judged. And if Scripture belongs only to vanished original manuscripts, or if what God actually said can finally be known only after textual scholars reconstruct it for us, then the ordinary believer is left in a very strange position. Yet that is not the way Scripture itself speaks. Men possessed Scripture, read Scripture, searched Scripture, heard Scripture, and were commanded to believe it. That is much nearer the direction I want to explore.
I should probably add that I am not coming to this subject entirely unfamiliar with the usual arguments. Over the years I have read David Otis Fuller, Edward F. Hills, Dean Burgon, Ruckman, Riplinger, and others associated in one way or another with the defense of the King James Bible. I have certainly not read all of them exhaustively, but I have read substantial portions of many of their writings and have been familiar with these arguments for a long time.
So I am not especially interested here in conspiracy theories about modern translators, sweeping declarations that every Alexandrian manuscript is corrupt, the claim that an older manuscript must necessarily be worse because it differs from the Textus Receptus, or the opposite assumption that older necessarily means better. And I certainly do not want to suggest that everyone reading an ESV or NIV is therefore without the word of God. Those questions can perhaps be addressed at another time, but they are not the foundation upon which I want to build.
Instead, I want to begin with Scripture as something presently possessed by the people of God. What does the Bible itself mean when it speaks of “the scriptures”? How did Christ and the apostles regard the copies and translations they read and quoted? And what does preservation mean if it does not result in God’s people actually having His word in their hands? Those questions seem to me far more fundamental than settling every textual and translational question before we can speak confidently of possessing the word of God.
One place that seems especially important to begin is with Christ Himself. When He stood in the synagogue at Nazareth, “there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias.” He opened the book, read from it, and afterward declared, “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.” Luke 4:17,21. Whatever physical copy was placed in His hands, it was certainly not Isaiah’s original manuscript. Yet there is no hesitation in the language of the passage. Christ does not treat what He read as a distant witness to something that had once been Scripture. He calls it Scripture. That alone should make us cautious about speaking as though inspiration belongs so exclusively to vanished originals that the copies actually possessed by God’s people can no longer properly be called the word of God.
Paul speaks in much the same way when writing to Timothy: “And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” II Timothy 3:15. Then immediately afterward he says, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God.” Whatever copies Timothy had known from childhood, Paul does not distance them from the category of Scripture. He simply calls them “the holy scriptures,” and then speaks of Scripture as given by inspiration of God. That connection seems important. The inspired character of Scripture is not presented as belonging only to documents no believer could actually possess, but to the Scriptures Timothy had known, heard, and been taught.
We see the same practical view of Scripture in the Bereans, who “searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” Acts 17:11. Their confidence did not rest upon access to original manuscripts, nor upon their ability to reconstruct the textual history behind the copies before them. They had Scripture in their hands, and they were expected to use it as the final test of what they heard. That is worth noticing, because Scripture itself continually speaks as though God’s people genuinely possess His written word, not merely witnesses from which His word must first be recovered.
Taken together, these passages seem to establish something very simple but very important: Scripture is not spoken of merely as something that once existed in an original form and must now be reconstructed for us. It is something God’s people actually possessed, heard, read, searched, and believed. That does not mean every copyist was inspired, or that every copy was free from every possible scribal difference. But neither does Scripture itself force us into the conclusion that once the original manuscript disappeared, inspiration somehow disappeared with it. The words God gave remained His word as they were faithfully transmitted among His people. “But the word of the Lord endureth for ever.” I Peter 1:25.
That naturally raises the question of translation. If the words God gave remain His word when faithfully copied, do they cease to be His word when faithfully translated into another language? I do not see how they could. The translator is not inspired in the same sense as the prophet or apostle who first gave the words, and every translation necessarily involves human judgment. But the revelation itself does not become something less than divine revelation simply because it is expressed in English rather than Hebrew or Greek. If the meaning of God’s words is faithfully communicated, then what we are hearing is still the word of God.
The apostles themselves seem to confirm this in the way they quote the Old Testament. Writing in Greek, they repeatedly give Old Testament passages in Greek form, sometimes with wording that differs noticeably from the Hebrew text before us, yet they continue to introduce those quotations simply as Scripture, and even as the words of the Holy Ghost. Hebrews, for example, introduces its quotation of Psalm 95 with, “Wherefore, as the Holy Ghost saith,” Hebrews 3:7, while Paul can write, “For the scripture saith,” before quoting the words spoken to Pharaoh in Romans 9:17. That seems significant. Translation is not a new act of inspiration, but neither does translated Scripture become something less than Scripture simply because it has crossed from one language into another. Its authority and divine character do not disappear in translation. God’s word can be faithfully communicated in another language and still be received as His word.
Interestingly enough, the King James translators themselves seem to have understood the matter in much the same way. They certainly did not regard their particular English rendering as verbally perfect or incapable of revision. They openly acknowledged difficult readings, placed alternative renderings in the margins, consulted other translations, and recognized that different translations could sometimes help bring out the sense of Scripture. Yet in their preface, The Translators to the Reader, they still made the remarkable statement that even “the very meanest translation of the Bible in English” could properly be said to “containeth the word of God, nay, is the word of God.” In other words, they did not believe that a translation had to be absolutely perfect in every word before it could rightly be called Scripture. Nor did they imagine that translators themselves had to be inspired men. They were able to distinguish between the human limitations of translation and the divine character of the word being translated.
This distinction between inspiration and preservation is important. Inspiration belongs uniquely to the giving of Scripture: “holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” II Peter 1:21. Preservation is something different. It is God’s providential keeping of that word in the earth after it was given, through copies, transmission, and translation. The copyists and translators were not inspired men, and their work was not a second act of inspiration. Yet neither does that mean the inspired word ceased to exist once the original manuscripts disappeared. God inspired His word once, and He has preserved that same word for His people. “For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven.” Psalm 119:89.
This is where the familiar expression, “the Bible is inspired and infallible in the original manuscripts,” needs to be handled carefully. I understand what is usually intended by it: to distinguish the inspired text from errors that may arise through copying or translation. But if inspiration is spoken of in such a way that it belongs only to documents which no longer exist, then we are left with an awkward question: what exactly do we possess now? We should certainly acknowledge the human element in transmission and translation, but not in a way that pushes the inspired word of God entirely into the past. Preservation must mean more than that God once gave perfect words which His people no longer truly possess.
And this is where I think we have to be careful not to create, even unintentionally, a kind of textual priesthood. Greek and Hebrew scholarship has real value, textual criticism has a legitimate place, and there are questions that require careful study. But the ordinary believer should not be left with the impression that he cannot really know what God has said until a trained scholar examines the manuscripts, weighs the variants, and tells him which words probably belong there. God gave His word to His people, not merely to those trained in the original languages. Scholarship may help us understand difficult questions, but it should never become the necessary mediator between the Christian and the Scriptures in his hands.
For myself, none of this requires abandoning the King James Bible or becoming uncertain about what I have used and trusted for so many years. I continue to receive the KJV as the word of God, to read it, study it, quote it, and commend it without hesitation. Its language has become so familiar to me that in many ways it has simply become the language of Scripture in my mind. I love it, trust it, and have no desire to move away from it. But I do not need to claim that its translators were inspired, or that every other English translation is therefore corrupt, in order to say that. Nor do I need to deny that another translation may genuinely communicate the word of God, even where I believe the KJV is clearer, stronger, or more faithful.
So in the end, this is about more than defending a particular English translation, important as that may be. It is about recovering a proper valuation of Scripture itself. God has spoken. He caused His word to be written. He has preserved that word for His people, and we are not left merely with fragments of something that once existed. We have the Scriptures. They are truth, light, life, and the testimony God has given concerning His Son. And that may be the most important thing to remember in all of these discussions. We can become so occupied with manuscripts, versions, and textual arguments that we lose sight of the One of whom the Scriptures testify. The final purpose of possessing the word of God is not that we might win arguments about the Bible, but that through that word we might hear God speaking and behold Christ. MPJ