INTRODUCTION
There are such good arguments for the rightness of the King James Bible, and in this essay I shall also take the opportunity to draw upon ideas expressed by Peter Van Kleeck Jnr and Jeff Riddle who are leading lights from the Reformed and Confessional Bibliology side of the aisle.
Essentially, the primary authority for right theology, doctrine on the Scripture and why the King James Bible is right is the Scripture itself. Scripture of course has to be properly interpreted, but if we begin from Scripture as itself being the revealed will of God and by His intention present with us, then we are beginning from the assumption of Biblical presupposition rather than the assumption of mere evidentialist ideas about phenomena.
Thus, as we look to the question of whether we have Scripture and whether we have it properly, we all come with “biases”. Either we believe that God really has provided us with Scripture which is a feedback loop with what we see in Scripture, making the King James Bible self authenticating, or else, we doubt that, but believe instead that what we see and think must be exercised to work out what might best be Scripture, with no final authority of appeal other than things like the consensus of opinions of learned men.
We live in an age of conflict between the true faith with proper reason versus Infidelity with foolish reason. Much of what is called “theology” and scholarship and so on is sliding on the scale somewhere in between these two poles. No wonder Jesus rebukes this Laodicean age for being lukewarm!
In a practical sense, either you are with the King James Bible or you are with any/all/custom choice “Bibles”.
ACADEMIC MAFIA
The theological academic world is dominated by silos of thought, which push very particular agendas, whether they are Calvinist, Baptist, Fundamentalist, Pentecostal or (heaven forbid) Seventh Day Adventist.
As such, ideas which do not conform to the silos must be pumped out through smaller, independent bodies. We see this within the King James Bible only space, with Bryan Ross’ circle, with my own materials and with those of the Van Kleecks and Jeff Riddle. There are some good sources of information and general discussion from people like Christopher Yetzer, Nick Sayers, Will Kinney, Steven Avery and others.
I believe that it is good to have a kind of network which connects together some different ideas, and that while I have been pioneering in areas, there’s a lot to take from facilitating studies, and also a lot to draw upon from the Van Kleecks and Jeff Riddle.
There’s clearly a concerted effort out there to rubbish the King James Bible itself and to rubbish support for it. I see continually an unwillingness to engage properly about the King James Bible out there, and when engagement does happen, for example with someone like Rick Norris, it is not in a formal sense, and the two sides really talk past each other.
My view is that some of the ideas of the Van Kleecks and Jeff Riddle need to be taken up but shorn of any Calvinistic bias or undue ongoing deference to the original languages.
Further, we hear platitudes from people in their alleged acceptance or professed love of the King James Bible, but if they are really in their heart holding to something else or saying people can choose some other translation that is right for them, then we are dealing with the common problem of mere relativism.
If we view the area as a field of debate or discussion, the King James Bible supporting side does not get a fair representation out there in the theological academic world, and in part, this is because the funds behind the scenes are focused on the money making versions and translations of major publishing companies.
New versions and translations are being done as vanity projects or as funded by some commercial interest that in the end means that the “advertising power” and paid for scholarship is largely arrayed against the King James Bible. But, however, publishers who are selling the King James Bible will at least be keeping alive the viability of the King James Bible, even if it is frowned upon by paid propagandists.
PRESUPPOSITIONALISM VERSUS EVIDENTIALISM
In apologetics (defence of the faith) there are two main schools of thought. Either you start from one or other worldview. In the presuppositional view, that worldview contains pre-conditions, like logic, morality and the God given fact of language, as well as that there is no neutrality, and that God exists as a transcendental reality.
Or else, you start from phenomena (empiricism), reason (e.g. the cosmological/first cause, teleological, ontological, moral argument, degrees of perfection/aesthetic arguments, etc.) and historical records (e.g. the likelihood of the resurrection) then this builds a case for someone starting from an atheistic perspective.
Of course, the apologetic approach that takes both the presupposition and uses the evidential view as confirmation is ideal.
Now this is how to look at the reality of the existence of God, but we must take this to apply to Scripture. Indeed, we have to take the truth of the Scripture as part of the presupposition as well as using arguments to prove the correctness of Scripture, of which there are plenty of proofs for, including fulfilled prophecy, etc.
Just as we cannot approach the Scripture in an atheistic or non-supernaturalist approach (to try to find if it is true without starting from the premise that it is self evidentially true), so likewise we have to take this approach with the Scripture as we have it.
James R. White accuses us of having a circular argument, that we start with the premise that the King James Bible is true, but the reality is that this position is self-authenticating. Therefore, in everything we see in the King James Bible is true, and every investigation we do confirms this. This means of course that such a view is not naturally objective, but it also means that the view is based on an absolute, whereas rejecting the perfection of the King James Bible as a starting point of the other side invariably means that they have no final authority or absolute certainty to appeal to, except things like their own reasonings, which can be entirely subject to the deceptions of the devil.
We in fact have to start with God’s mind. We have to start with Theistic Conceptual Realism (see https://www.bibleprotector.com/blog/?p=1329).
I find it extraordinary that a Calvinist could consistently hold to a view that says that humans can certainly know God’s mind, in that it often seems that Calvinists are certain only of their inability to know God’s mind. However, laying that aside, as a Word and Spirit Christian, I believe that we can indeed know the mind of God. I do not mean absolute comprehension, but I do mean that we can attain information we need. My belief is based on many passages, but Proverbs 1:5, 6 is sufficient to mention, along with Paul’s statement in Acts 20:27, “For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God.” I remember the old time Pentecostals had the motto, “All the Gospel”.
Might I also interject that it was Calvinists who were pansophists in the 17th century. Pansophism is a view that grew under the reign of King James I, that not only said that the Gospel must go to the ends of the earth (George Abbott), but that knowledge is increasing (Francis Bacon), that we the English-speaking Christians are agents in this (cf. Mede, Hartlib and others), and that we must therefore take practical steps accordingly (cf. Cromwell).
It’s no coincidence that with the rise of the King James Bible, there was also an expectation of the cause of truth.
So, if we begin with the Scripture, specifically the King James Bible, as foundation, we therefore take it as objective, as reflective of God’s mind, as the written source of perfect understanding (not of everything but of what we need to know) and we can therefore with the consistent Calvinist agree that the mind of God is revealed in scripture (the KJB specifically).
As a Word and Spirit Christian, I expect that the Holy Ghost is also illuminating hearts in line with this, in that He is the Spirit of truth, so a personal revelation of God’s thought as concerning our own purpose (and that of the whole Church) is also the other half of this reality. These two sides must be in agreement, for the Holy Ghost will not contradict the Scripture. Also, no one has a monopoly on the Holy Ghost.
On the other side, those who are influenced by modernism, who are against the King James Bible, and who use modern textual criticism and modern translation methods, do not start from Scripture doctrine for their beliefs. How they decide what they think is or isn’t a reading of inspired Scripture is in their judgment about phenomena, about the Scripture copies/documentary evidence as artifacts, and as fitting into certain hypotheses (“theories”) of their own scholarly (human) making.
(Of course, they simply say that our view of the King James Bible is mere opinion too, whereas their opinion is elevated because it is like an idol of their own fashioning.)
THEISM VERSUS DEISM
If we are asking the question about how we can be certain we have God’s actual words, we can appeal to the fact of God’s imminance, His superintendence in history, his promises and prophecies in Scripture, and the outworking of providence, and the assurance God works in our hearts.
But that theistic approach is entirely different to the other side in this debate. Their approach is deistic. They believe that God gave the Scripture by inspiration but then He lifted His hand off it, and it has come down through the ages subject to the naturalistic whims of “reality”.
Because they essentially do not believe in the direct hand of God through the Church giving us the very Bible, they think that they must scrabble about, with human effort, deciding what manuscripts are old and what might be, through their earnest application, the best possible text of the Scripture.
So when a modern version (and modern translator) supporter debates a critic, or an agnostic, or an atheist, or a Muslim tahrif proponent, their views are much aligned. In fact, one could be an atheist and undertake the method of attempting to “reconstruct” and translate the Scripture as is done by the modern version supporters.
There’s nothing in the Bible that would ever hint or lead a person to use such an unbelieving method as pure naturalistic empiricism, reason and critical methods (including reasoned eclecticism, etc.).
We have a God on one side who has a special care about the Scripture, and on the other side, a God who is remote in relation to Bible and has no connection with the transmission of the Scripture, as if that is just all in man’s hands.
Accordingly, the conflict becomes one of belief versus human wisdom (i.e. foolishness). The faith side points to God and to a specific Bible. The other side points to science falsely so called. The other side cannot actually point to God or to anything from the Scripture leading them to their views, because their views are based on the intellectual movement of man rather than true religion.
This nonsense position of those who are subject to modernist ideas leads them to make broad statements like that various different texts and translations are all the Word of God, or that you can just pick the Bible that you favour.
This ridiculous approach is promoted both popularly but also in the highest echelons of theological academia, and no doubt it is driven by the funds that are generated by selling various modern versions/translations.
FAITH VERSUS INFIDELITY
Deism and all the methodology of modern, unbelieving science (as opposed to proper, traditional and believing science) comes out of a movement called the Enlightenment, which of course led to the violent and horrendous French Revolution.
The name for the belief system that encompasses all of that is called Infidelity. For a long time I could detect these problems, but one day I realised what it was called. I always knew that many bad things happened in society 1960s and 1970s, but now I understood that these were the English-speaking manifestations of the same thing that led to the French Revolution.
One of the major doctrines or components of this anti-Christian belief is anti-supernaturalism, as well as an idea of the separation between the secular (or scientific) versus the religious (or believing).
Since the 1960s, we have observed more and more the degradation of belief in the nature of God and also the apparent death of distinctive Christian beliefs. I don’t believe that this is fully actually the future, but it has been a problem for the past and current generations.
So when it comes to the question of the perfection of the King James Bible, one side is promoting all these modern ideas in the debate, with their many versions and translations, and their appeal to philosophical standards or respected ideas that come out of the Enlightenment. The other side is arguing from a believing approach, from the doctrine of Scripture itself.
Both sides therefore are starting from premises, built in assumptions, biases … presuppositions. We can identify what is the basis of the modernist-influenced/anti-KJB/anti-TR side.
They begin from Scripture, or else begin from the philosophical basis of the Enlightenment/Post-Enlightenment. Those on the other side in this debate start in post-Enlightenment philosophy, the begin with phenomena, with empiricism and with rationalism. Their belief system is deistic because they say God inspired but since inspiration the passage or transmission of the Scripture is really by naturalistic/non-supernaturalistic processes.
In their system, they must look to whatever appeals to Enlightenment thinking, for example, to the rule of entropy. And because entropy prevails, they think, they must go to source languages, to earliest copies and to reconstructions by conjectural emendations of some elusive past perfection.
They implicitly reject the practicality of providence, the superintendence of the Spirit of God in history or that God, by the very hands of His people (the true Church) through time, that God should be able to transmit and dispatch His holy Scripture so that we could receive it intact today.
In their system, they need data, the more the better, in order to come nearer to the unattainable truth, whereas we are warned against those who are ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Instead, we are those who are able to arise shine because the light is come. We are able to possess and know that the truth is present, that it may be made known, since it has been sent to the ends of the world (see Rom. 10:18 and Rom. 16:26).
CORRECTING THE CONFESSIONAL BIBLIOLOGY BIAS
There are those on the Confessional Bibliology bandwagon who are a lot of the way right, but are dragged down by their Calvinist biases and by their inability to see that the King James Bible is of equal importance to the original languages.
In addressing the modern textual critical approach, the Confessional Bibliology supporters (i.e. the Van Kleecks, Riddle, etc.) try to equate using the unbelieving modern scientific methods with a rejection of their pet doctrine of total depravity.
Total depravity says that fallen men have no power to do the truth, let alone make a decision to receive salvation, whereas the proper view is that fallen man still has some capability of understanding God, and that as best as a man may try, he will always have sin and cannot attain or earn salvation himself. Therefore, God gifts knowledge or insight so that a person may respond to the Gospel, which makes God more generous than the Calvinist view of a remote and unfathomable God.
The Confessional Bibliology approach therefore wrongly conflates the more Arminian perspective with the strivings of the makers of modern versions.
Further, in relation to Christians, the usual Calvinistic perspective is to degrade the believer and say he is but a sinner, barely one rung up from a complete wretch. Such a perspective, of course, is anti-Biblical, but they do boldly push this perspective on every occasion. One can see how holding such a low view of the believer can equate not accepting the perfection of the King James Bible since they would think that any translation, and any Christian work of saved believers is barely one degree above complete contempt. One wonders how they can harbour such admiration for Spurgeon, Sproul or others seeing as they have such a low view of the best Christians, thinking it holy and just to regard them as chiefs of sinners as though the Apostle himself were such a wretch. One wonders what Christ actually has done for them, seeing as they internalise being “sinners saved by grace”.
I argue that the Westminster Confession of Faith is not merely about the authenticity of the Scripture in the original languages as it came to the Reformation times, but that as God’s people don’t know those languages, and that the population of the world knows English the best, that God’s design and favour is with the King James Bible, as the WCF shows, the word of God by translation does represent His word to the people.
WHERE IS THE BIBLE EXACTLY?
So if we are saying the Word of God for the future is specifically for us the King James Bible, what this does not mean is that the Word of God has not existed in other languages.
The King James Bible only existed in 1611, so what was the Bible before that? We have to say that even today if you are a French-speaking Christian, you are accessing the Word of God in French.
But in our view, the King James Bible is for the French people, which means that the language of the French people, such as in New Caledonia, etc., must come to include English. It’s not about banning French, it’s about promoting and favouring and educating with English. The best Bible in the world, the perfect Bible, exists in English. So it is a gift for the French to get the perfect English Bible. But the reality is that historically the French, even to this day, all do not know English.
So the word of God must have always existed, as it exists in Heaven, but it was revealed progressively through the inspiration process, it has existed in multiple old and varying Greek manuscripts, and even in the Vulgate, and in the various Textus Receptus editions, and various Protestant English translations.
How dare anyone ever say that I have implied that if you have an Oxford edition of the KJB, you don’t have God’s word!
We should agree fully with the Confessional Bibliologists when they say, “The words of God that I have in my Bible have always existed. Has the Church always believed like I believe? No. … Have the words always been here? Yes. So [these are] two separate questions.”
So then, we should understand that because of the scattering and gathering that the words of God have been here since inspiration, but the finality of the textual gathering was in 1611.
We rightly accept the 66 Book Canon without there being one verse stating this. By the same token, we can accept that the King James Bible even though it is pointed to in Scripture rather than expressly named.
JOTS AND TITTLES MEAN WRITINGS
The modernists, modern version supporters and Bryan Ross argue that the jots and titles in Matthew 5:18 refer to the content of the prophecies not the actual writing of Scripture. Even though the word “scripture” literally means writings, these people seek to de-emphasise the exact words of God and focus more on a kind of matrix where the Bible is more a book of meanings/content than specificity of words.
The modernists happily cut out the end of Mark and other parts of the Bible, they change meanings all over the place using their lexicons, so they need to allow looseness in the idea of what actually is the text or a good translation. These people are ardently against the perfection of Scripture.
Bryan Ross tries to argue that we don’t need a letter perfect Bible because of the same slack standards the modernists use. Their view is near enough is good enough. They certainly don’t seem to want God to be a lawgiver and judge measuring people by the precision of His law. There is some ugly libertarian spirit there bucking against proper authority.
Another extreme is Thomas Ross, an ardent Textus Receptus supporter who elevates Greek and Hebrew high above the English, and thinks that the jots and tittles mean specifically Hebrew (even though jot and tittle are English words with English meanings pointing to English characters.
The promise is that not one part of a letter will pass away. That means that the written words of God must exist, and whatever it says must happen.
This means that we must have the actual writing in the King James Bible, and we can then come to rely on every letter.
INTERPRETATION NEEDED
I believe there are a number of Scripture passages and places which support the King James Bible, but the fight is over correct interpretation.
Most people will say that they cannot understand how the Scripture is pointing to the King James Bible, and every place we can show, they will doubt that interpretation because they have an unbelieving model.
Their model of hermeneutics comes straight out of the Enlightenment as is built on the false assumptions, with their empirical emphasis on original language words (led by Ernesti) and their rationalistic emphasis on trying to read the Scripture as if limited to the natural confines of the culture of the historical context (led by the German critic Semler).
Then Keil followed Ernesti, and sought to read the Bible like any other book, taking also the Higher Critical ideas of Semler. This led to the Historical-Grammatical School of Bible interpretation. Schleiermacher, a modern liberal theologian at the beginning of the 19th century, tried to accommodate the rationalist view while rejecting its excesses.
And so the unbelieving approach of how to interpret the Bible littered through to Fairbairn (1859), Doedes (1862), Immer (1877), after which came Farrar (1886), Terry (1890), Tenney (1957), Mickelsen (1963), Ramm (1967), Berkhof (1969), Kaiser (1981), Fee (1983), Carson (1984), Moo (1986), Osborne (1991), Tate (1991), Zuck (1991), Klein (1993), Silva (1994), etc.
This unbelief is worshipped by the anti-King James Bible shills and their allies, including James R. White, Todd Friel, John Piper, Mark Ward, Wes Huff, Tim Wildsmith, etc.
These people have a method of interpreting Scripture which has a central belief that we cannot properly understand the Scripture, and as such, they are already disadvantaged to interpret Scripture properly, let alone, accept that the Scripture could point to the King James Bible.
Their whole system has been laced with the leaven of unbelief, and as such, they tend to deny the Scripture’s pointing to things in our times. They deny the fundamental principle that the Scripture was written for and to us.
So instead of believing that God would lead and guide us into all truth, they are too far away in insisting upon imperfect interpretation, thereby missing out of the promises of Scripture.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
The defence of the King James Bible ultimately rests on the very doctrines and presuppositions of Scripture itself. The contrast between a believing, theistic view of God’s providential preservation and the deistic, Enlightenment-shaped assumptions of modern textual criticism could not be starker. While the academic world, driven by commercial interests and shaped by post-Christian philosophy, largely dismisses the perfection of the King James Bible, Scripture teaches that God provides His words with certainty for His people.
This fight between proper theology and false, worldly theology is one which has a long way to go, as the other side has currently made so much inroad into the Christian world.