A Poor Attempt at Representing the Argument

Every now and then, somebody discovers James White and feels the need to demonstrate their newfound intelligence. This week, a brave, anonymous person decided to completely dismantle the “KJV Only” position in a Textus Receptus forum. The poster presented his argument in the form of a question and answer. The question he posed was, “Where was the Bible prior to 1611?” He then proposes that there are only three possible answers, which are as follows:

1. The Bible did exist with these exact words and in this exact order prior to the KJV being produced. This is essentially a conspiracy theory since we have zero evidence to suggest this and Erasmus (who’s work makes up the majority of the KJV) did textual work between manuscripts to arrive at his work.
2. The Bible didn’t exist in a perfect state prior to 1611 and was restored by God in the KJV. This is a restorationist view and totally destroys the doctrine of preservation.
3. Finally, you can argue that God did preserve his Word via the text history, which does require textual criticism to weigh different manuscripts to better determine which words are most likely to be original to the text.

In this article, I will address this argument for the edification of my reader. In the first place, I suspected that this poster received his textual education from James White, which he later confirmed in a comment exchange with Dr. Peter Van Kleek. This is the kind of argumentation you’re going to see out there, folks.

Point 1

The first argument demonstrates the lack of organization in the poster’s train of thought. He uses the terminology “KJV-Only position” in his introduction, yet fails to define what he means by it. According to James White and Dr. Andrew Naselli, “KJV Onlyism” ranges from more extreme than Ruckman all the way down to somebody who prefers the KJV. At the outset of the argument, we have no idea what the poster means by “KJV Only,” which makes his argument difficult to engage with in any meaningful way. We will see his definition come through in his argumentation, so I’ll do my best to pull that out for my reader. This is not all that problematic, however, considering that his argument is incoherent regardless of his definition of “KJV Only.”

In the first point, he claims that one of the three possible viewpoints is that the Bible existed in the exact wording and word order of the KJV (the assumption being I suppose that the KJV is preserved because of that). This is, as far as I’m concerned, not a position anybody holds. In the first place, Greek and English are not grammatically the same as it pertains to word order, so the very act of translating the KJV would violate this view. Further, it is well known that the KJV translators were not attempting to create a “word-for-word” translation. That means that anybody holding to this view could not simultaneously believe that the KJV was inspired and that it was created. The very creation of the KJV invalidates this viewpoint.

He then calls this idea a “conspiracy theory” (one of James White’s personal favorite attacks on the so-called “KJV Onlyists”) and then makes the strange claim that the KJV is primarily Erasmus’s work (another one of James White’s favorite things to say.) We conclude then, that one of the only three valid positions is not only illogical, it is impossible, and does not represent any current or historical perspective on the KJV. In other words, this is not a “possible” answer to the question at all.

Point 2

Interestingly enough, the second position is very similar to those in the Critical Text camp. According to the anonymous poster, the second of three choices is that the Bible did not exist until 1611, when the act of creating the KJV restored the text of Scripture. This is a position held by some, as I understand it. What is more important is the similarity of this position to the Critical Text position. The CT position states that the Bible existed in the originals, but was lost in transmission and must be restored. This process cannot ever be completed with certainty, however, because we do not have the originals nor do we have evidence that any extant manuscripts are directly related to an original. As the poster rightly points out, a restorationist view “totally destroys the doctrine of preservation.” The person that believes Scripture was restored in 1611 has a Bible, whereas the Critical Text camp does not. Both camps believe that the Bible needs to be restored, this position posits that it was actually done. What is quite entertaining is that the OP actually dismantles his own position in point 2.

Point 3

The third and final point is that God preserved his Word in the text in history, and therefore textual criticism must be applied to determine what is “most likely” the original. This is just the Critical Text position, which “KJV-Onlyists” reject. Feel free to browse this blog if you want a thorough analysis as to why this isn’t actually a view of preservation at all, unless we’re fine with redefining what “preservation” means. The anonymous poster concludes by suggesting that this is a view of “preservation held by all non-KJV Onlyists” and is a “valid view God used for the majority of history.” As I pointed out in my analysis of point 2, this view “totally destroys the doctrine of preservation,” to use OP’s words.

While we never get a definition of what “KJV-Onlyism” is from OP, his conclusion assumes that anybody who rejects the Critical Text model is a “KJV-Onlyist,” which supports my idea that this guy has been educated at the James White Academy for Text Criticism. Further, the modern critical text position isn’t even close to the historical view of the text, as the OP suggests. This is well documented in Jan Krans work, Beyond What is Written. Later in the thread, the poster reveals that he is not familiar with Pickering, Burgeon, or Letis. This suggests that the poster’s only exposure to the discussion is through James White. It has to be exhausting for my Majority Text friends to constantly be lumped in with those pesky “KJV-Onlyists.”

In Summary

Yet again we find ourselves faced with James White’s half-baked argumentation in the wild. According to him, you have to believe in conspiracy theories or the Critical Text. Not only did our anonymous poster regurgitate Dividing Line talking points, he failed to represent almost every other position that results in reading the KJV or a non-Critical Text Bible. He presented his reader with a false choice, and then smiled and hit “enter” on his keyboard. This is why I heavily discourage anybody interested in Textual Studies to get their information from James White, because I’m sure the anonymous poster thought he was accurately representing the discussion and had come up a clever argument.

The problem is that this argumentation wasn’t accurate, and therefore can’t possibly be clever. The poster never defines what he means by “KJV-Onlyist,” so we can only make assumptions based on his argumentation (our assumption being that OP believes there are KJV-Onlyists and Critical Text Onlyists demonstrated in his conclusion). The OP begins his argument with a fake KJVO position that not only isn’t believed, it cannot be believed. He continues his argument by presenting a restorationist KJV view, which in effect is just the Critical Text position with an end product. He concludes by presenting the CT position and determining that “You either believe point 1 and 2, or you believe point 3.”

In short, we see the argumentation of James White in the wild, and as expected, it’s nonsensical.