Author: The Young, Textless, and Reformed

Dear Reader,

As you have noticed, I have posted significantly less in the last year. I have thought of starting the blog and YouTube channel up again, but I often think that most of the conversation has been discussed at length. If I were to re-launch, I would want to have an idea of what direction I want to take the content. That being said, I wanted to ask my audience what you all want to see. What questions or conversation topics would you like to see covered? If you have been following my blog since the beginning, you know that the main focus of my blog is the theological and philosophical approach rather than looking at individual variants, and I’d like to stay in that lane. That being said, feel free to comment on this post and let me know what you want to see, and if there’s enough demand, I may do a series on the blog and on YouTube.

Thank you all for your support over the years, I appreciate all of you. As always, may the Lord bless you, and keep you.

The Young, Textless, and Reformed

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.

Hello reader, it’s been a while. I thought I’d come off of hiatus to comment on the fact that many critical text proponents do not understand their own arguments. I follow a number of groups related to the textual discussion on various social media platforms. I imagine that most of my readers are involved in the same or similar groups. Over the years, I have seen the same arguments from the critical text side. One of the most common arguments that I see is that the age of the manuscripts that the critical text uses as a base text are the oldest we have, and are therefore authentic or at least better than manuscripts dated later. This is a poor argument for several reasons.

Appealing to the age of a manuscript probably seems to most people like a good idea. If the manuscript is older, it has to be better, right? Unfortunately, this is both scientifically and theologically wrong. First, we have to identify what exactly we’re after when we consider the age of a manuscript. The question of age has to support some sort of claim we’re making for it to be relevant, right? If we assume that a person is a Christian, then the purpose of our evidence is to support the authenticity or originality of a text. The oldest complete, extant manuscripts are usually dated to around the fourth century. One might say, “The age of this text dates back to the fourth century, therefore…”. In reading this argument, you may have noticed a glaring issue with the premise – it doesn’t serve in supporting authenticity, originality, or even quality.

We cannot say, “This text dates back to 325 AD, therefore it is authentic.” We cannot say, “This text dates back to 325 AD, therefore it was the best text available in 325 AD.” When we lay out the argument like this, we can clearly see that the appeal to age is not particularly strong in supporting authenticity, originality, or quality. This is why we read statements like, “earliest and best” rather than “earliest and authentic.” That is because there is nothing in the current scientific textual method which could state anything positively in the direction of authenticity or originality. The framer of the “earliest and best” statement is merely commenting that the referenced document is “the best that is currently in our possession from this period of time.” This kind of statement is misleading, unfortunately. The only thing age describes from an empirical standpoint, is well, age. “Best,” by definition, is a relative term. A thing is “best” compared to other things. Saying that the earliest manuscripts are “best” in this example is like a man who has one child saying, “You’re my favorite child.” So we can see that earliest does not support authenticity or originality, and best is a term describing relative quality. The problem is that Christians are not assuming the Bible is the “best we have.” Christian Theology posits that the Bible is the original, inspired Word of God (2 Tim. 3:16).

“Oldest” or “best” is not a Christian theological benchmark. The Christian is making the claim that Scripture is “original” or “authentic.” The theological error assumed in the appeal to age is the fact that the text-critical methods are not attempting to support authenticity or originality, and appeals to quality are relative. That is to say, that text critical methods are only supporting a text that is “earlier and better than the other ones.” In the beginning of this thought, I presented the idea that the goal is authenticity or originality. Textual studies has nothing to say on the matter because it cannot say anything on the matter. There is no method that can make manuscripts suddenly appear to fill in the 200-300 year gap. Since empirical methods cannot resolve this issue, all sides of the discussion fill in the gaps with theological arguments. A Critical Text advocate will usually not admit this, but a claim that “oldest equals original” is a theological claim, not an empirical claim. Their argument is effectively, “God preserved His Word in the oldest manuscript, even though I have no scientific reason to arrive at that conclusion.”

Another application of this argument is to say that because a text is older, it is better than texts that are dated later. For example, “The Vatican Codex is better than the Byzantine Text because it is older. Show me a complete manuscript from the fourth century and I will consider your argument.” My reader knows that this is not a serious argument, because we have already established that age does not equal authenticity or even quality for that matter. However, for the sake of argument, let’s consider with nuance why this is especially egregious. The above argument assumes that the age of a manuscript describes the origin of the words on that manuscript. If manuscript A is dated to 325 AD, and manuscript B is dated to 800 AD, than the words of manuscript A must be older, right? Not at all, actually. Interestingly enough, nearly every textual scholar agrees that the age of a manuscript does not necessarily indicate the age of a text. That is one of the foundational premises of genealogical methods of textual criticism. The question that scholars ask is “how old is this reading and where did it come from?” not, “how old is this manuscript?” It is not controversial at all to say that an ancient reading can exist in a later manuscript. The question the textual scholar concerns himself with is that of directionality. Did the reading come from here, there, or elsewhere? I am not aware of any serious textual scholar who claims that a reading is oldest based on the age of the paper it was printed on.

This is one of the biggest problems I have with the average critical text proponent, they aren’t familiar enough with their own methods to make a coherent argument. Not only is the age of a manuscript irrelevant to authenticity, it is not even the most important consideration in a comparison to other manuscripts, unless the person is legitimately saying that the readings of a manuscript dated to 800 AD came into existence in 800 AD. Both sides of the discussion accept the genealogical premise that the text was transmitted in space and time. The Critical Text advocate is assuming the two “earliest and best” manuscripts were born from non-extant “earlier and better” manuscripts. The average Critical Text proponent seems to believe that the text was not transmitted in time, only in the 20th and 21st centuries. They seem to assume that if a manuscript is lost to us today, it never existed at all. We know a great multitude of manuscripts have been lost and destroyed by the workings of time and war. It is chiefly a modern perspective to say that the Bible must be reconstructed now, when we are further away from the creation and circulation of manuscripts then at any time in history. It is a foolish claim to say that “we have more data now than ever before.” This is profoundly incorrect. We have less extant data than ever before, and that is quantifiable. If you don’t believe me, take a look at Dan Wallace’s record of how many manuscripts have gone missing in the last 100 years.

This is one of the reasons why, in my opinion, the Majority Text position has gained such popularity. The text group boasts near conformity across all of its representatives in manuscripts dated nearly 1,000 years after the pen was set down. This is a staggering evidential argument for authenticity. The Critical Text has no such uniformity nor quantity. In fact, the two major representatives of the Critical Text, Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, have close to zero children, have no discernable parents, and are so dissimilar that they are not properly called a “text type.” The only claim they have is age, which we have already discussed is essentially a non-argument. Are we really to believe that those were the only two manuscripts in circulation at that time? That would be absurd. If we can acknowledge that there were a multitude of complete texts in existence at the time, we can easily say that those manuscripts looked like the thousands of uniform texts we have today. Instead, the claim is that all of those lost manuscripts looked like two, idiosyncratic manuscripts that don’t even relate to each other enough to be considered a text type. I’ll say it again, absurd.

We can see that appealing to the age of our oldest available manuscripts is problematic from both a scientific and theological perspective. We cannot make any claims from authority if we do not have an authentic text. The best we can say is perhaps, “In all likelihood, this is what God said.” Further, I have demonstrated that those who make such arguments of “this manuscript is older than that one” are not familiar with the actual textual scholarship. That is why I appeal to Providential Preservation as an argument for the Received Text. The textual scholars are not making claims or authenticity or originality because their methods cannot make such claims. Even though the textual scholar’s methods acknowledge that the age of a manuscript is not the age of the readings in that manuscript, their strongest argument is still, “We have the oldest surviving text.” The method itself which states that, “Old does not equal original” contradicts any argument which says, “Old equals original.” It is a prime example of a violation of the law of non-contradiction. Hopefully this argument helps my reader navigate conversations with Critical Text advocates, because many of them don’t realize how weak their argument actually is in reality.

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*Some of these reasons are not included in our earliest manuscripts*

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In the textual discussion, much of the disagreement comes down to how each side thinks about the data presented. Much like any debate, the topic is almost never resolved on the establishment of evidence, but rather how that evidence is interpreted. We can look at the debate regarding the age of the Earth as a mainstream example. The ancient philosophers gave us the law of non-contradiction, which tells us that contradictory propositions cannot both be true in the same sense at the same time. This goes hand in hand with the law of the excluded middle, which tells us that a proposition or its negation is true. I can say with a high amount of confidence that the majority of claims made by the critical text violate these logical constructs if the premise assumes the Protestant understanding of Scripture.

This is one of the main reasons I do not spend a great deal of time examining evidence on this blog, because the substance of this discussion can be resolved with using our logical, rational, mental faculties. If it is the case that the Bible is the Word of God, and that the Bible is infallible, preserved, and available, then every argument presented by the critical text fails to hold up to logical consistency. This is due to the fact that the foundational principle of the critical text negates the Protestant claim of purity of the Scriptures. If an argument based on evidence is in violation of these logical principles, then they cannot be used as a valid support for one text or another. In other words, if an evidential proof negates the claim that Scripture is pure, then it is not suitable to support Christian doctrine. If in the process of “proving” a text to be “earliest” one actually proves the Bible to be corrupt, it actually works against the purpose of the argument in the first place.

We can go into the confessional argument for providential preservation, but this has been ineffective at convincing critical text advocates, despite the Scriptures being incredibly clear on the topic. Rather, I’d like to make an argument based on the availability of Scripture, which compliments or perhaps even precedes the argument of providential preservation. Many arguments for the Providential Preservation often exclude the fundamental building block which is the availability of Scripture. This is, in large part, how those in the Critical Text camp claim that their position is orthodox. They often make the claim that “The Bible is preserved,” they just argue for a different model of preservation. In the modern view, Scripture is preserved in the manuscript tradition, whereas the Received Text camp argues that it is preserved in textual traditions that the people of God have used in the ages. While the argument is quite different for preservation between the two groups, both are advocating for a version of it. The substantial difference here is actually availability. The Received Text camp argues that the Bible is preserved and available today, whereas the Critical Text camp argues that the Bible is preserved and not fully available today.

This premise of the Critical Text position gives us clarity on statements which say that “what we have is good enough” or that “we do not have exactly what the authors of the New Testament wrote.” In the Critical Text perspective, it is only important that the Scriptures are preserved, not that we actually have access to those preserved Scriptures. This is one of the fundamental flaws in the modern position on Scripture because it does not consider the purpose for the Scriptures. If you subscribe to the Protestant tradition, then you believe that the way God communicates to His people is through the Scriptures. Therefore, in order for God to communicate to His people, His people must have access to the Scriptures. The modern position on the Bible is that Christians only need enough access to God’s Word, all that is required to be saved. This is not the Protestant position. According to the Protestant tradition, the purpose of Scripture is for all matters of faith and practice, not just mere Christianity. This position acknowledges that there is more to the Christian religion than the moment you are saved.

One of the most important debates during the Reformation and Post-Reformation period was that of the purity of religion. It was not enough to simply believe in God, it was imperative that you believed correctly about the nature of God and thus the nature of salvation and religious practice. This debate is still relevant today, though I would argue that it has devolved far beyond what occurred during the Reformation. Nevertheless, Christians all acknowledge that the Scriptures teach us about God and how we are to orient ourselves towards God in our beliefs and practices. This is where the argument of availability must be applied. If it is the case that the Scriptures are preserved, but the full extent of those Scriptures are not available, there is a huge gap in our ability to stand on Christian doctrine. Even more concerning is that this gap cannot be defined in any meaningful way in the modern system.

If we acknowledge that the Bible is preserved but not fully available, then our argument contains a gap. This gap is defined by the number of passages or words that we are not confident are original. The number of passages and words which we are not confident in is indefinable. In other words, if we assume this premise, we not only struggle to define what is not Scripture, but also what is Scripture. Simply put, we have no ability to define what of our text is available. In this model, what we do know is that the totality of Scripture is not available, because that is our claim in the first place. What we say is that while we do not have the original, what we do have is enough. But if it is impossible to define to what degree of Scripture is available, it logically follows that we cannot, under any circumstance, define what “enough” means. In order to do this, we would have to know the percentage of the original we do have. We would need to know what was in the original to understand that what we have is “enough of the original.” And we know that the modern view does not make any claims to define this metric. In fact, the modern position claims that, “even if we did have it [the original], we wouldn’t know it.” So in the first place, it is illogical and impossible to make any claims regarding the “enoughness” of Scripture we have, and in the second place the Protestant claims regarding the nature of Scripture are invalidated outright in this model because the claims of Protestant theology assumes certainty in the text from which they are derived.

If it is the case that we cannot derive what exactly “enough” means, then it follows that all of our claims based on that text are equally as ambiguous. Any assumption of “enoughness” is purely speculative. We assume that what we have is enough without actually knowing what “enough” even means. This is why any speculations or assertions regarding this text or that is categorically unimportant from a critical text perspective. Even if we were able to determine with a high degree of certainty that a text was the earliest text we have in the manuscript tradition, we have no ability to conclude if that text is original, or complete. This is precisely the view of the top textual scholars today as they articulate it in their publications. That means that any Protestant appropriation of modern textual scholarship is purely fideistic. It blindly trusts that what the textual scholars have produced is “enough”, because “enough” has not and cannot be defined. There is no textual mechanism that gets us from “earliest” to “original” and there is no textual mechanism that can even prove “earliest.” Any claim attempting to fit modern textual scholarship into Protestant theology fails the logical constructs that would make it functional.

In summary, the reason the modern textual methods are not suited for consistent application to Christian faith and practice is because they cannot define the scope of Scripture, and therefore cannot define the scope of “Christian faith and practice.” If the claim is that Scripture is infallible, that it cannot fail to do what God intended it to do, then the text must be defined completely. We have to know what Scripture says in order to claim anything that Scripture says is true. If the text is not defined, then there are no parameters on what “enough” means, and therefore by necessity our definition of what Christian faith and practice is at best incomplete and at worst incorrect. This is how the modern view on Scripture impacts the every day Christian. Christianity is a religion built on exclusive truth claims. These truth claims require that Scripture be fully defined and available. So if we do not claim our text is available, then we have no right to claim that anything is authoritative from that text. We can say, “We have enough to claim authority,” but we haven’t defined what “enough” means. There is no way to consistently make such claims from a text that is not fully defined.

This is not a debate over which Bible version is best, it is a debate over whether or not we can make truth claims from an undefined text. The modern position does not assert that the text is fully defined, nor does it define which words in that text are original. This raises the question, “How can you argue for a text that you have not defined?” The answer is, you can’t. The text the modern position advocates for is not defined, and therefore it cannot be defended. In order to make the claim that we have “enough” of the text, you actually have to define what “enough” means. In short, there is not a Bible that is substantially being argued for, or defended in the modern textual position.

I will let my reader make their own conclusions from this reality. Until the modern textual advocates define what “enough” is, they do not appear to actually be arguing for anything that fits in the theological tradition of Protestant Christianity, because they have no ability to define what Protestant Christianity is without defining the Bible. They must first assume the conclusions of theologians who did assert they had the fullness of the text of Scripture in order to do so. As far as I’m concerned, that is what “enough” means. “We have enough of Scripture to come to the same conclusions as those who believed they had the full text of the Bible.”

It my last post, I discussed the idea that has been presented by many critics of the KJV which is the idea that the KJV is too difficult to read. I presented an argument which pushed back at this notion on the grounds that the highest estimated reading level of the KJV is set at the standards for high schoolers in the public school system. I concluded that, this being the case, it is not an absurd proposition to assume that the average English speaking Christian could read at a 12th grade level, and that it is actually more of a condemnation of Christian education than of the KJV to say that the average Christian should not be expected to read at this level.

That being said, I suspect that much of the confusion on this topic is due to many not having a clear understanding of what qualifies as Early Modern English. You and I have often heard the English of the KJV called “Old English.” In Authorized, Mark Ward writes, “What’s the point in using a translation in old English that people can’t understand anymore?” He continues by making the distinction between “old English” as in to say stale or aged English and “Old English” as in the proper noun, which I find to be needlessly confusing for the reader. Nevertheless, it is common for people engaging in this discussion to frequently make the mistake of conflating the categories of stale or aged English and Old English. In order to give my reader a clear picture of why this is problematic, I will give examples of Old, Middle, and Early Modern English.

Here is an excerpt of Old English for reference.

Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum,þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon. Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah,egsode eorlas.

Beowolf

Here is an example of middle English for reference.

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,And bathed every veyne in swich licóur Of which vertú engendred is the flour;

Geoffrey Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales. General Prologue.

Here is an example of Early Modern English for reference.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

John 1:1-3, KJV

After reviewing these three passages from Old, Middle, and Early Modern English, I hope my reader can see that it is a cheap rhetorical trick to portray Early Modern English as “old English”. What is problematic is that this distinction between “old English” and “Old English” is on its face and apparently deceptive in its use. It conflates the incomprehensible English of Beowulf with the English of Shakespeare and the King James Bible. When people use the term “old English” to describe the English of the KJV, it gives the impression that the KJV is utterly incomprehensible. At the very least, I hope I can dispel the notion that the KJV is “Old English.” If one wishes to argue that the language of the KJV is stale or aged, I suppose that is their prerogative, though even Mark Ward seems to agree that the KJV is a “beautiful translation” (Authorized, p. 27).

The reality is that Early Modern English covers a broad scope of literary evolution, and the most significant changes from this to contemporary English is standardized spelling conventions and vocabulary. The grammar is mostly unchanged, the most notable of these being the use of singular and plural “you” pronouns (thee, thy, thine, thou, ye, etc.), which were retained in the KJV for the purpose of clarity in translating the Greek and Hebrew. In any case, it is intellectually dishonest to make the claim that Early Modern English is fundamentally different than contemporary English, and Christians should be careful not to intentionally conflate the English of Shakespeare with Middle or Old English.

To drive home my point, the online resource called “No Sweat Shakespeare”, which was developed for students reading Shakespeare in classrooms, has this excerpt on the site:

The main thing about Early Modern English is that it was an early version of Modern English and is accessible to all of us. The differences between the two are mainly the loss or change in meaning in Modern English of some words that were common in Early Modern English.

https://nosweatshakespeare.com/blog/what-is-early-modern-english/

In this article, the author actually makes the point that what we speak today should be called “pre-contemporary” English, because it is not far enough away from Early Modern English to be called “contemporary.” What we can say with a great deal of certainty is that the English of the KJV is something that should be regarded as “accessible to all of us.” It is quite interesting that teachers in the public school system have a higher estimation of primary school students than Christians in the “KJV is too difficult” camp do of the church.

In any case, the myth is dispelled. The KJV is not “Old English” nor is it even Middle English. One could make the case that it is old in the sense of stale or aged, but that is quite subjective and doesn’t exactly provide grounds for not using it. The Apostle’s Creed is old, and many churches read this publicly every Sunday. That is to say that something which is categorically old does not qualify it for retirement on those grounds alone. If the argument is that Early Modern English is old and therefore should be forsaken, it is a weak argument. I imagine that is why people use the rhetorical strategy of conflating “old English” with “Old English,” to give the impression that “old” means incomprehensible.

So it seems that when we sift through all the rhetoric, the basic two arguments against the English of the KJV are that it is old, and that some of its vocabulary is old. The grammatical structure and spelling of the Early Modern English of the KJV is standard to what we speak and write today. I have always been perplexed that people who consider themselves “language nerds” would be so adamant against others reading the most beautiful and engaging form of Modern English. It’s almost as if they are saying, “I’m a language nerd but you shouldn’t be.” I, of course, am of the opinion that we should all be so called “language nerds” and should encourage each other towards that end. Reading is one of the most enriching and empowering practices you can commit yourself to today. In summary, go forth and love language, and don’t let people get away with calling Early Modern English “Old English”.

Christians, especially those in the Reformed circles, have been, historically, most inclined to pursue knowledge and truth over and above movements driven by spiritualism and emotionalism. Over the last several years, there has been a trend away from this path at every level of our society, and inevitably this has impacted the church. As our society becomes less Christian, it follows that people are less concerned with truth and the pursuit of knowledge. This is why many of us homeschool our kids or enroll them in trusted private institutions. Despite the precedent being set for higher educational aspirations, more and more frequently I have seen Christians advocate for Bibles that are easier to read on the grounds that “The Bible should be written in the easiest possible English”. This, I imagine, comes from the well-intentioned desire that people with all levels of education can have access to the Scriptures. This is a great desire, though I’m afraid the approach we have taken as a church is not actually beneficial.

Many Christians are quick to criticize public schools when they teach to the “lowest common denominator” and argue correctly that it inhibits children from exceeding expectations. I find it reasonable to apply this to the Christian church as it pertains to Bible comprehension. It follows that if we expect less of Christians, we will receive less. Many contributors in this space have said that the KJV is written at a 5th grade reading level, while others place it closer to 12th grade. For reference, most middle school and high school curriculum include in part or in whole, writings from Shakespeare. If we take the more conservative estimation and assign the KJV a 12th grade reading level, we should also assume that this is well within the reach of the vast majority of English speaking Christians, right? It doesn’t seem overestimating to assume that the average Christian can read at a 12th grade level.

Despite this assumption being relatively innocuous, it seems to be a controversial take in the last several years. Many advocates of modern translations have, I suppose indirectly, made the case that a 12th grade reading level is too high a bar to set for Christians in modernity. If the KJV is said to be too difficult to read, then what is inadvertently communicated is that Christians should not be expected to read at a high school level. This is the level, by the way, that is expected of a 17 year old graduating public high school. And that is assuming the highest level of difficulty for the KJV.

One solution that I have not seen entertained by the “KJV is too difficult” crowd is increasing the reading comprehension of the church. If it is the case that the average Christian does not read at the level of a nearly graduated high schooler, we do not have a KJV problem, we have an education problem. The assumption that the average Christian will find the KJV incomprehensible also comes with it the assumption that these people are comprehending language below the level of a high schooler. If this is truly the case, this is shocking, and something should be done about it, because the KJV is not going to be the only thing on the list of “works Christians cannot read.”

Perhaps the “KJV is too difficult” crowd is correct, and this is the canary in the coal mine for where the Christian church is at right now. If it is the case that Christians do not have the mental capacity to take on the English KJV, it is also the case that there are many, many works that they also do not have access to. Hidden in the assumption that the average Christian cannot read the KJV is also the assumption that the average Christian is effectively reading at a lower level than a publicly educated high schooler. This, to me, is deeply concerning if it is true.

I tend to be far more optimistic, and have far more faith in the Christian church. I have found the men and women in churches to be more studious and concerned with not only educating themselves, but educating their children than what has been presented by the “KJV is too difficult” crowd. Rather than assuming Christians simply do not have the mental capabilities to read the KJV, I believe they are able, especially in reformed circles. So rather than advocating for easier Bibles, perhaps it is more productive, and more beneficial to advocate for better readers.

Recently the Pacific Coast Presbytery (RPCNA) issued an “accusation of sin” to a minister based on an essay published in Why I Preach from the Received Text and an accompanying sermon, which were made public on the presbytery’s Facebook page. According to the clerk, “The main issue was the apparent connection of trusted English translations of the Bible to what the accused termed “Satan’s Bible”. He continues, “The presbytery gave a formal rebuke to the accused, laid out a path of repentance it wants to see, and assigned a three man committee to work with our brother.” I reached out to the minister in question for comment and the matter is still ongoing. I have decided to omit names and other information as the church deals with the matter internally. I’m sure my reader can easily track down the involved parties if they so desire, but I will not be commenting on the politics of the church. I will be commenting on this issue first from the substance of the argument and second from the implications that this has on the larger Received Text movement.

First, let’s take a look at what the author set forward in his essay. The work in question presents the reader with two Bibles, one which was produced by non-orthodox Christians which the author identifies as “Satan’s Bible”, and one which was “received and preserved”. The basic form of the argument is that there is one preserved text, and thus any divergent text must then be something else, in the case of the modern text, “Satanic.” I hope my reader can agree that the issue here is not the use of “Satanic,” but whether or not such language is appropriate in describing texts which are divergent to what the Protestant tradition has identified as “pure in all ages.” Let us consider the argument now.

If it is the case that modern texts diverge from the traditional text to such a degree that meaning is changed, it is reasonable to entertain the discussion of the progeny or origin of such divergent texts. If such corruptions were intentionally introduced to the Biblical text, we should inquire as to why. It is important to note that I am not discussing spelling mistakes or other accidental scribal errors here, but rather intentional omissions which are evident in modern texts (e.g. Mark 16:9-20; 1 John 5:7; John 7:53-8:11) typically represented by two codices (Aleph, B). The argument presented in the essay at hand is that false biblical texts were being circulated during Paul’s time, and that those texts came to be, in part or in whole, represented in the textual basis for modern texts. What might one call a text produced by false professors? The author argues that these texts are “Satanic” as they were produced by agents of Satan. “There has always been a synagogue of Satan and a synagogue of Christ, a Bible of Satan and a Bible of Christ. This can be traced throughout Scripture” (p. 162). If it is the case that enemies of the faith have meddled with the historical texts, then it follows that such texts, are at the very least in part, products of enemies of the faith. So what would my reader call a text that was produced by such parties?

If there are two competing texts or groups of texts wherein the differences between these texts are significant, are such texts ordained by God, accidents of history, or malicious interventions? In the first category we must assume that “no doctrines are affected” and that all bibles are equally the Bible. This is more or less the view of the modern critical text proponents. In the second category the assumption is that the Bible is just a natural phenomenon produced by humans which necessarily will contain errors because humans were exclusively responsible for transmitting it. This is also the view of some modern critical text proponents. The third category presents the idea that if God truly preserved His word down to every “jot and tittle,” any intentional omissions to the text may be reasonably viewed as a malicious device of enemies of the church and thus such texts would be viewed in a similar manner to other religious texts. The major difference between the modern text and other texts is that the text in question is almost the same as the historic Protestant text. This adds a layer of complexity to the conversation. If a text is not the original, inspired, text, is it the Bible? How many differences between the Divine Original and the text one has in their hand would it take to say, “This is not the Bible?” And if a text is not the Bible, what is it, exactly?

So how did the author get from, “This is not the Bible” to “This is a Satanic text?” If it is the case that these divergent texts were malicious devices of enemies of the faith, it can be argued that such texts are in fact, Satanic, regardless of how closely they resemble the traditionally accepted text. The author builds his argument on top of the theological premise that “every jot and tittle” is preserved, not that “all major doctrines are preserved.” If it were the case that these divergent texts were not mere mistakes of history, it is follows that such texts might be labeled as malicious devices. If these texts are not accidents of history, it follows that there must be some other explanation. The explanation provided in this case is malice rather than human error. I might conclude, along with my reader, that it is not beyond reason to imagine that Satan would meddle with God’s word. So we can at the very least see how the author came to such conclusions, whether my reader agrees with them or not.

The crux of this issue almost always comes down to one’s theology of Scripture. It is understandable that many have recoiled at having their bible called “satanic”. If it is the case that material differences to various texts do not change meaning, the term “satanic” is indeed shocking. Yet, if it is the case that such material changes do indeed change the meaning and form of the Bible, it should be within the Christian’s prerogative to ask, “What then are these divergent texts?” At the center of this controversy is the claim that such divergent texts are not accidents of history, but intentional corruptions introduced to deceive well intentioned, God fearing Christians. This seems to be a major contention on this topic. Are the multitude of differences between the modern text and historic text accidents of history and human error, or are they malicious devices intended to deceive the people of God? And if such changes are indeed the product of malicious meddling, what do we conclude about the product of such meddling?

There is something that seems to have been missed in this whole argument. The author is not motivated by the intention to smear fellow Christians, but rather to warn them away from deception. Just like any well meaning rebuke, the intent is to restore and build up. The problem is that most Christians who view this claim will perceive this as an attack on their faith, not as a warning to bring them away from malicious devices and towards the truth, which is the author’s intention. If the author is correct, he has an obligation to sound the alarm.

Proponents of multiple modern bibles make such arguments frequently as it pertains to so called “KJV Onlyists.” Prominent authors, pastors, and apologists in recent history have labeled “KJV Onlyists” and “TR Onlyists” as being a part of a cult. Is it too far a stretch to say that cults are satanic, or are their good, decent, well meaning Christian cults? I dare say that it would be somewhat naïve to assume that the implications of this discussion are not apparent to all. The modern bible advocates say that “no doctrines are affected” and that “we do not have the original”, and the Received Text advocates say, “we have the Bible, and it’s this one”. Let’s not pretend that there aren’t significant implications to both claims to the core of Evangelical and Protestant theology and praxis. Many people wish to say that this issue is secondary, or not important, while at the same time arguing that we do not have the original Bible in any of our texts or translations. The point is, if we put aside personalities and denominations and examine the actual claims made by each perspective, the necessary conclusion is that one is correct, and the other is not. It is my opinion that the church must graduate from the notion that this is a purely academic contention when it clearly is theological.

Regardless of where my reader lands on the controversy, I believe it reasonable to believe the best of the author, who as far as I can tell, made this claim without malice, with the intention to pull people away from danger. My goal with this article was to analyze the claim and walk my reader through the argument. Now that I have discussed the argument at some length, it is important to recognize that this controversy may have wider implications on the use of the Received Text in modern Reformed churches. We have already seen pastor(s) from the PCA pile on to the controversy, and it will be interesting to see if contributors to the anthology, some of which are members of the OPC, Confessional Baptist churches, and other denominations react to these events. Will representatives of these other organizations be subjected to similar criticism and discipline because of their participation in this work? Will the OPC or PCA bring charges to pastors for participating in the anthology? This may be a defining moment in the modern church’s development of the doctrine of Scripture.