I’m working on moving some of the posts from my old blog over to this one, so I may occasionally repost a re-edited one. And that’s what this is—an edited old post.
What I’m hoping to show in this piece is that adherents of KJV-onlyism, while claiming to be faithful to the principle that the Bible should the final arbitrator of faith and practice, do indeed use things other than scripture as the final arbitrator of faith and practice when it come to the issue of acceptable texts and translations of the scripture. Let me explain, first of all, that in the argument of this post I’m not referring to people who prefer to use the King James Version of the Bible, or even those who prefer to use only the King James Version of the Bible, but with the strain of KJV-onlyism that teaches that the King James Version of the Bible is the only true word of God in the English language. (This last category is the only category that I would label KJV-onlyist. The first two categories I call KJV-preferred.)
You can find the doctrinal statement that I’ll be referring to while making my argument here. This particular statement was chosen because it is on the internet so everyone reading this post can easily access it; it’s laid out in organized and easy-to-read form; and the position presented in it is quite moderate and reasoned as far as KJV-only statements of faith go. I’ve gone straight to the doctrinal statement of this organization (BibleBelievers.Net), because a doctrinal statement is a dogmatic statement of faith which members of an organization are expected to affirm. (If you read this whole doctrinal statement, you’ll find that in this particular case, it is also, in part, a statement of practice).
This doctrinal statement does make the claim that BibleBelievers.Net affirms sola scriptura. You’ll not find the assertion of sola scriptura under point I, the statement on scripture; but rather, in the last item, No. XV, the statement on good works.
Let’s look at point I, the doctrinal statement pertaining to the scripture, then, to see if the statements made there are aligned with the principle of sola scriptura. Are they either asserted within scripture or deduced from the assertions of scripture? The first part of the statement is affirming the God-breathedness (or divine inspiration) of what the authors of scripture wrote. There is a clear statement in scripture establishing this, for Paul tells us “all scripture is God-breathed”. We can also conclude that if God himself exhaled the scripture, then the God-breathed writings were “inerrant” and “infallible” as the doctrinal statement asserts, for every word from God is true (Proverbs 30:5). So far, so good.
The statement goes on to assert that the same sort of miraculous intervention that “God-breathed” the original writings has also been at work throughout history, preserving a “pure text to this day.” Here’s where the problems with this statement start. I assume what is meant by this statement is that a word-for-word copy of what was originally put down by the original authors is still in existence, and we have it due to miraculous divine intervention. However, while the scripture tells us a little bit about how the writings of scripture came about—they were exhaled by God, and holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Spirit—it doesn’t tell us much about the method of preservation of the scripture. It might seem reasonable to think that miraculously preserving a perfect word-for-word copy of all the God-breathed writings would be the way God would work, but this it is never stated in scripture. And if we can’t find it in scripture or deduce it directly from scripture, then it isn’t something that should be stated in the dogmatic statements of those who believe that scripture must be the absolute standard of faith.
The next statement after this declaration of the divine preservation of a pure text is this:
There’s one more statement in the paragraph:
Do you see how this doctrinal statement, while affirming sola scripura, actually goes against sola scriptura by including dogmatic statements that are unsupported by scripture?
Just to make sure that I wasn’t being unfair to the KJV-Only position, I asked the following question of the KJV-onlyists that participate in the forums of the Baptist Board (and I am paraphrasing, since I don’t remember the exact wording): If you believe the Bible is the absolute rule of faith and practice, how do you support, from the Bible, your belief that only the KJV is the true word of God in English?
I got two answers, and neither was an answer grounded in scripture. The first answer was that 400 years of history can’t be wrong. This is, at it’s core, an appeal to the authority of tradition rather than scripture, and in a bit of a twist, the belief that tradition can be authoritative is a doctrine that the Reformer’s formulations of sola scriptura were meant to counter, as seen in this statement from the London Baptist Confession, 1689:
You can find the doctrinal statement that I’ll be referring to while making my argument here. This particular statement was chosen because it is on the internet so everyone reading this post can easily access it; it’s laid out in organized and easy-to-read form; and the position presented in it is quite moderate and reasoned as far as KJV-only statements of faith go. I’ve gone straight to the doctrinal statement of this organization (BibleBelievers.Net), because a doctrinal statement is a dogmatic statement of faith which members of an organization are expected to affirm. (If you read this whole doctrinal statement, you’ll find that in this particular case, it is also, in part, a statement of practice).
This doctrinal statement does make the claim that BibleBelievers.Net affirms sola scriptura. You’ll not find the assertion of sola scriptura under point I, the statement on scripture; but rather, in the last item, No. XV, the statement on good works.
The Bible is the believer’s absolute Standard of faith and practice, his perfect Counsel. The Word provides him with “all things that pertain unto life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:3-4).This statement means that whatever is set forth as doctrine that must be believed should be either directly stated in scripture or straightforwardly deduced from the statements of scripture. We would expect then, according to this affirmation of the absolute rule of scripture, that all of the doctrines outlined in this doctrinal statement would be drawn from scripture.
Let’s look at point I, the doctrinal statement pertaining to the scripture, then, to see if the statements made there are aligned with the principle of sola scriptura. Are they either asserted within scripture or deduced from the assertions of scripture? The first part of the statement is affirming the God-breathedness (or divine inspiration) of what the authors of scripture wrote. There is a clear statement in scripture establishing this, for Paul tells us “all scripture is God-breathed”. We can also conclude that if God himself exhaled the scripture, then the God-breathed writings were “inerrant” and “infallible” as the doctrinal statement asserts, for every word from God is true (Proverbs 30:5). So far, so good.
The statement goes on to assert that the same sort of miraculous intervention that “God-breathed” the original writings has also been at work throughout history, preserving a “pure text to this day.” Here’s where the problems with this statement start. I assume what is meant by this statement is that a word-for-word copy of what was originally put down by the original authors is still in existence, and we have it due to miraculous divine intervention. However, while the scripture tells us a little bit about how the writings of scripture came about—they were exhaled by God, and holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Spirit—it doesn’t tell us much about the method of preservation of the scripture. It might seem reasonable to think that miraculously preserving a perfect word-for-word copy of all the God-breathed writings would be the way God would work, but this it is never stated in scripture. And if we can’t find it in scripture or deduce it directly from scripture, then it isn’t something that should be stated in the dogmatic statements of those who believe that scripture must be the absolute standard of faith.
The next statement after this declaration of the divine preservation of a pure text is this:
We have, therefore, the very Word of God preserved through the Hebrew Masoretic Text and the Greek Textus Receptus.If you follow the argument being made, the word therefore refers back to the statement about a preserved pure text. This quoted statement is saying, then, that because we have a preserved pure text, the preserved pure text is the Hebrew Masoretic Text and the Greek Textus Receptus. The logic is faulty; there is no way the last statement follows necessarily from the first. Moreover, it goes beyond anything we are told in the text of scripture. There is no mention in the Bible of texts or text types, and certainly no mention of which compilation of manuscript readings into text form make up a perfectly preserved text. In fact, the evidence scripture does give us in the various quotes of Old Testament scripture in the New Testament gives evidence that more than one text (or more than one set of exact words for a single passage) can be called scripture. What we have in this next bit of the doctrinal statement, then, is one extrabiblical statement combined with another extrabiblical statement, put forward dogmatically as right belief.
There’s one more statement in the paragraph:
In the English language, the only Bible translated from the aforementioned texts is the King James Version.This statement, besides being an extrabiblical one (I’ve yet to find the word version in any version of scripture!), is false. There is at least one other translation from the same texts as the King James Version, one that is more faithful to these texts than the King James Version—the New King James Version.
Do you see how this doctrinal statement, while affirming sola scripura, actually goes against sola scriptura by including dogmatic statements that are unsupported by scripture?
Just to make sure that I wasn’t being unfair to the KJV-Only position, I asked the following question of the KJV-onlyists that participate in the forums of the Baptist Board (and I am paraphrasing, since I don’t remember the exact wording): If you believe the Bible is the absolute rule of faith and practice, how do you support, from the Bible, your belief that only the KJV is the true word of God in English?
I got two answers, and neither was an answer grounded in scripture. The first answer was that 400 years of history can’t be wrong. This is, at it’s core, an appeal to the authority of tradition rather than scripture, and in a bit of a twist, the belief that tradition can be authoritative is a doctrine that the Reformer’s formulations of sola scriptura were meant to counter, as seen in this statement from the London Baptist Confession, 1689:
The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down or necessarily contained in the Holy Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelation of the Spirit, or traditions of men.(London Baptist Confession, 1689, I:6)
The second answer given to my question about the scriptural support for KJVonlyism was that those who are faithfully in tune to the Holy Spirit are enlightened by him to this truth, and it is through this enlightenment that we know that the KJV is the only true word of God in English. This is an appeal to the authority of the individual’s perceived experience of the Holy Spirit, and if you read the above statement from the London Baptist Confession, you already know that the idea “new revelation by the Spirit” might be our authority is also specifically ruled out by the doctrine of sola scriptura. (Sola scriptura does not argue, of course, that any individual’s true experience of the enlightenment Holy Spirit is wrong, but rather that what any individual feels they have been taught by the Spirit is to be tested against scripture and can only be held as binding upon others or put forward dogmatically if it can be garnered from the scripture.)
KJV-Onlyists, then, accept extrabiblical standards as bindingly authoritative when it comes to the doctrine of the Bible, and because they do, they cannot rightly claim that the Bible is their absolute rule of faith and practice.
KJV-Onlyists, then, accept extrabiblical standards as bindingly authoritative when it comes to the doctrine of the Bible, and because they do, they cannot rightly claim that the Bible is their absolute rule of faith and practice.