Theological Term of the Week

KJV Onlyism
A movement that teaches (erroneously) that the King James Version of the Bible is itself inerrant and the only true Word of God in the English language; also called King James Onlyism.

• From The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy:

  Since God has nowhere promised an inerrant transmission of Scripture, it is necessary to affirm that only the autographic text of the original documents was inspired and to maintain the need of textual criticism as a means of detecting any slips that may have crept into the text in the course of its transmission. The verdict of this science, however, is that the Hebrew and Greek text appear to be amazingly well preserved, so that we are amply justified in affirming, with the Westminster Confession, a singular providence of God in this matter and in declaring that the authority of Scripture is in no way jeopardized by the fact that the copies we possess are not entirely error-free.

  Similarly, no translation is or can be perfect, and all translations are an additional step away from the autographa. Yet the verdict of linguistic science is that English-speaking Christians, at least, are exceedingly well served in these days with a host of excellent translations and have no cause for hesitating to conclude that the true Word of God is within their reach. Indeed, in view of the frequent repetition in Scripture of the main matters with which it deals and also of the Holy Spirit’s constant witness to and through the Word, no serious translation of Holy Scripture will so destroy its meaning as to render it unable to make its reader “wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:15).

  A. It is required of them that would worthily (that is, suitably) partake of the Lord’s Supper, that they examine themselves, of their knowledge to discern the Lord’s body; of their faith to feed upon Him; of their repentance, love, and new obedience: lest, coming unworthily, they eat and drink judgment to themselves.

• From 40 Questions About Interpreting the Bible  by Robert Plummer:

The best Bible translations are based on the most reliable ancient manuscripts of the Old and New Testaments…. The King James Version (KJV) is not highly recommended because it is not based on the best manuscripts and because the seventeenth-century English is hard for most modern people to understand. … While it was an excellent work for its day, the KJV has been surpassed by many modern translations in both readability and faithfulness to the original manuscripts. Some people wrongly and often passionately claim the KJV is a superior translation of the Bible. The historical and linguistic facts do not support this claim. 

Learn more:

1. GotQuestions.org: What is the KJV Only movement?
2. Dan Wallace: Why I Do Not Think the King James Version Is the Best Translation Available Today
3. Jeff Spry: The King James Only Controversy (pdf)
4. Fred Butler: Confessions of a KJV Only Advocate, plus a whole page of mp3s and articles.
5. James White: King James Only Controversy
6. Bill Combs: Beginning of the KJV Only Movement, Dean Burgon: Father of the KJV-Only Movement, Dean Burgon and the Revised Version, The KJV-Only Movement Comes to America, The Modern KJV-Only Movement, Is Only the King James Version the Word of God?, and Is the King James Version the Final Authority?
7. James White: What’s the Big Deal with King James Onlyism (series of YouTube videos), Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.

Related terms:

• autographs
• inerrancy of scripture
• infallibility of scripture
• inspiration of scripture
• manuscripts
• perspicuity of scripture
• textual criticism

Filed under Defective Theology.

Do you have a term you’d like to see featured here as a Theological Term of the Week? If you email it to me, I’ll seriously consider using it, giving you credit for the suggestion and linking back to your blog when I do.

Clicking on the Theological Term graphic at the top of this post will take you to a list of all the previous theological terms in alphabetical order.

Round the Sphere Again: Grounded in the Gospel

From Don Carson:

We must avoid the view that, while the Gospel provides a sort of escape ticket from judgment and hell, all the real life-transforming power comes from something else….

Here are three examples of Christian ethics based on the gospel from Don Carson’s daily devotional blog, For the Love of God.

• Giving: “Paul never lets Christians forget that all our giving is but a pale reflection of God’s “indescribable gift” (2 Cor. 9:15), which of course lies at the heart of the Gospel.”
• Suffering: “The Gospel of Jesus Christ is that in God’s good purposes Jesus suffered on our behalf, bearing our guilt and shame and atoning for our sin. Surely it should be no surprise, then, that conduct that is worthy of such a Gospel includes suffering for Jesus.”
• Humility and perseverance: “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus” (Phil. 2:5), who did not regard his rights as something to be exploited, but who humbled himself and died a death of odious ignominy so that we might be saved—and was ultimately vindicated (Phil. 2:6-11).” And there’s more: “Christ made himself a nobody and died a shameful death but was finally and gloriously vindicated, and therefore we too should take the long view and “work out” our salvation “with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12).”

An Anthology with Diverse Genres

…and the ultimate editor.

I’ve been wanting to use literary genres of scripture as one of the weekly theological terms. There’s some information online for me to link to, but not much. So I have a plan: I’m going to post quotes from some books I have and then link to them when I need them. 

From the introduction to The Literary Study Bible, on literary genres in the Bible:

The most customary way to define literature is by the external genres (types or kinds of writing) in which its content is expressed. The two main genres in the Bible are narrative and poetry. Numerous categories cluster under each of these. Narrative subtypes, for example, include hero story, Gospel, epic, tragedy, comedy (a U-shaped plot with a happy ending), and parable. Specific poetic genres keep multiplying as well: lyric, lament psalm, praise psalm, love poem, nature poem, epithalamion (wedding poem), and many others.

Still, these literary forms are only the tip of the iceberg. In addition to narrative and poetry, we find prophecy, visionary writing, apocalypse, pastoral, encomium, oratory, drama (the book of Job), satire, and epistle. Then if we start adding more specific forms like travel story, dramatic monologue, doom song, and Christ hymn, the number of literary genres in the Bible readily exceeds one hundred. …

The importance of genre to biblical interpretation is that genres have their own methods of procedure and rules of interpretation. An awareness of genre should program our encounter with a text, alerting us to what we can expect to find. For example, the most prevalent of all literary forms is narrative or story. To make adequate sense of a story, we need to know that it consists of plot or action, setting, and characters. These, in turn, constitute the basic grid through which we assimilate the story and talk about it.

In view of how many literary genres are present in the Bible, it is obvious that the overall literary form of the Bible is the anthology, as even the word Bible (Greek biblia, meaning “little books”) hints. As an anthology, the Bible possesses the same kinds of unity that other anthologies exhibit: multiple authorship (approximately three dozen authors); diverse genres; a rationale for the assembling of this particular collection of materials (a unifying religious viewpoint and story of salvation history, as well as the fact that all the books except Luke and Acts were written by Jews); comprehensiveness; and an identifiable strategy of organization (a combination of historical chronology and groupings by genre). With belief in the inspiration of the Bible as a foundational premise, we can say that the Holy Spirit is the ultimate editor of the anthology that we know as the Bible.