Mark Ward Says in a Recent Youtube Video Concerning Thomas Ross: “I Regard Him as an Extremist of a Particularly Dangerous Kind, the Kind that Is Super Intelligent”
Thomas Ross debated James White last year with White arguing in the affirmative the proposition that a new translation, the Legacy Standard Bible (LSB), was superior to the King James Version (KJV). Ross took the opposition. Since White was in the affirmative, Ross refuted White’s arguments for that proposition. The above quote from Ward comes from an introduction to the first of three videos he is producing to answer ones Thomas Ross made after the White debate.
Answering Thomas Ross gets far more traffic for Ward at his site. I don’t want to make it easier for him, so I’m not linking to his series. You can find it on your own, if you want to see it. He also mentions me in the video.
An Extremist of a Particularly Dangerous Kind?
So why does Ward say Thomas is “an extremist of a particularly dangerous kind”? He gives no reasons. None. The definition of ad hominem is this: “(of an argument or reaction) directed against a person rather than the position they are maintaining.” Like James White himself, Ward attacks Thomas Ross as a person and not his position. He does not explain. I’m saying this is appalling slander of Ross by Ward.
What does Ward mean, “extremist”? The definition of “extremist” itself is derogatory. Collins Dictionary defines extremist:
1. a person who favours or resorts to immoderate, uncompromising, or fanatical methods or behaviour, esp in being politically radical. adjective. 2. of, relating to, or characterized by immoderate or excessive actions, opinions, etc.
And then Ward says Ross is “of a particularly dangerous kind.” So Thomas Ross is not just “dangerous,” but “particularly dangerous.” Those words themselves are extreme. Their very mention of another person, a truly saved person as Thomas Ross, requires explanation. Ward gives none. He just makes the claim.
What Ross Does
Thomas Ross is careful first to come from scripture. He exposes or exegetes scripture very carefully for his positions. Second, he backs his positions with historical doctrine. He shows how that others in the past take the position, so his doctrine is not new or innovative.
In his debate with White, Ross dismantled White’s position with evidence, point by point. White himself resorted to ad hominem style arguments by regularly pointing out how fast Ross talked and judged his motives. He never answered Ross’s primary argument against the underlying text of the LSB and other modern versions of the Bible. Ross showed plainly how that in hundreds of places, lines of underlying Greek text behind the LSB had zero manuscript evidence. Instead of answering, which he couldn’t, White insulted Thomas Ross as a person, just like Ward is doing. This shouldn’t help White or Ward. It should warn off their listeners.
Ward Poisons the Well
Ward is free to go ahead and make statements like he did about Thomas Ross. He can do that, but anyone reading should take note of what he is doing. His statement should discredit him. It is a classic, informal logical fallacy called, “poisoning the well,” which means the following:
Poisoning the well (or attempting to poison the well) is a type of informal fallacy where adverse information about a target is preemptively presented to an audience, with the intention of discrediting or ridiculing something that the target person is about to say. Poisoning the well can be a special case of argumentum ad hominem, and the term was first used with this sense by John Henry Newman in his work Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1864).
Ward and his audience very often attack the persons of their opposition. Ross offered a face-to-face discussion or debate with Ward and Ward refused. He says it is because Ross is an extremist and dangerous, and then he proceeds to treat Ross as though his arguments were legitimate, needing addressing. Do you see the obvious contradiction there? Ward contradicts his own fallacious reasoning.
Any Reasons for Ad Hominem Attack by Ward? None
The only possible reason one could ascertain for why Ward poisons the well and uses the ad hominem against Ross is because Thomas Ross is “super intelligent.” Why would intelligence and even super intelligence be a negative for someone on a subject matter? Ross doesn’t claim super intelligence for himself. Ward made that claim for Ross and gave it as the only reason for Ross’s extremism and danger.
Mark Ward explained that when Ross offered him an in person debate, his counsellors told him that it was not worthy of Ward’s own personal gifts and the purposes of his work. And yet Ward has plenty of time to produce three videos dealing with “super intelligent” Ross, where Ross cannot answer him in person. What evaluation could someone make of such a dodge of Ross by Ward?
Think of Wards accusations if it were a court of law, where the accused “extremist” and “particularly dangerous” individual cannot answer his accuser. Only the prosecution speaks. Ward sits alone and makes slanderous declarations against Ross with no cross examination. This is unjust treatment of unbiblical and sinful manner.
Injustice toward Ross
Psalm 89:14 says:
Justice and judgment are the habitation of thy throne: mercy and truth shall go before thy face.
Proverbs 21:3 says:
To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice.
It is not just to make a false, slanderous accusation against a godly Christian man like Thomas Ross, no explanation or reasons, and not give him a face to face opportunity to answer his accusation. This is not due process. It is not justice. Mark Ward treats Thomas Ross in a manner of contempt like Jesus warned against in Matthew 5:21-26, akin to murdering someone in his heart. A man claiming to be a Christian like Ward should not treat another man, whether Christian or not, with contempt. Ward treats a believer like Ross with contempt.
Doubling Down on Appalling Slander of Ross
Someone in the comment section dealt with Ward’s appalling slander of Ross, when he wrote:
It seems interesting that you would make the claim that Ross is a “extremist of a particularly dangerous kind” because he is “super intelligent”. When the same could, and probably should, be said about you. Btw. This comment meets your comment requirements because it is no more of an ad hominem attack than you yourself made.
To that, Ward answered: “I stand by what I said. Every word.” He had a great opportunity to retract, and he didn’t. Instead, he doubled down on his appalling slander of a Christian gentleman and scholar.
Ross wasn’t even dealing with Ward in the videos to which Ward refers. He was elaborating on the arguments of the White debate.
Ross Not Extreme or Dangerous
What makes anyone an extremist and dangerous and then on this issue of the intelligibility of the KJV? Ross takes the position that God preserved all of the words of God in their original language for every generation of believer. Is that really an extreme and dangerous position now? It is the biblical and historical position of the church.
Ross answers arguments against the intelligibility of the KJV made by White in the debate. Truly saved people all over the United States still use the KJV in their churches. It is still the most commonly used version of the Bible in conservative Bible believing churches in the United States. It’s not extreme to do so. And it is not extreme to defend the intelligibility of the KJV. There are good arguments for its continuation, which is why so many people still do use the King James.
Jordan Peterson and Douglas Murray Recently on the KJV
I was listening to Jordan Peterson in an interview with British conservative journalist Douglas Murray. Peterson asked Murray:
I have a friend who is extremely erudite and literate and charismatic and maybe Canada’s most remarkable journalist. . . . He has the knowledge a vast corpus of poetry and its evident in the manner in which he speaks, because he has that lilt and cadence and rhythm that’s part and parcel. And you’re very very well spoken.
And Peterson asks Murray to what he attributes that quality of his. Murray answers:
In my case it is the great good fortune of having been brought up with the King James Bible, . . . . which if you have [that] in your head and you recite [it] every Sunday, gives you a pretty good idea of how to cadence the English language.
Murray characterized this as ‘furnishing his mental furniture and having to furnish it well.’ Murray didn’t see the King James Bible as extreme and dangerous to his public usage of language and understanding how to speak to a modern culture. No, it was a great help, the greatest help to his speaking ability, communicating to a contemporary people.
It is not good at all to slander your Christian opponents as a strategy to discredit them with ad hominem attacks. This is what Ward and White do and very often from which I’ve seen and read. I call on Ward to cease, desist, and retract such appalling slander about Thomas Ross and others.
Dear Bro Brandenburg,
Thanks for the kind words. I am thankful that the reason Dr. Ward believes it is important to describe me as an “extremist of a particularly dangerous kind” is because I believe God preserved all of His Words and that we should keep using the Bible that has served the English speaking peoples for 400 years. The remark was quite humorous. It is a blessing that his comment is not because of some moral wickedness, but for the reasons described. I am thankful that I am not a dangerous person because I believe the Roman Catholic, Seventh Day Adventist, theologically modernist, and other damnable heresy that is published by Logos Bible software, for whom Dr. Ward works. Maybe he has called this content that his employer publishes “dangerous” somewhere–I am not aware of it if he has.
May his videos lead people to actually watch the video I made that he is attacking and realize the triviality of his argument against the KJV.
I think he sincerely believes that defending the KJV is dangerous because he actually has found a way to reach the conclusion that it is no longer comprehensible. Thus, we are actually the ones trying to take the Bible away from people, in his mind. So I am likely very dangerous because I am trying to keep people from understanding the Bible, he thinks.
I am waiting for his organization to bankroll a printing of the Defined King James Bible so that the small number of archaic words are defined at the bottom of the page. If they fund such a printing, and give away copies to KJVO churches, that will be great.
I’m not holding my breath.
I found his part one video and read the transcript (quicker than watching the video). He conceded that the KJV is modern English, not Old or Middle English. That’s good. I hope modern version people stop calling the KJV Old English. There wasn’t much there in part 1 other than that. Maybe in parts two and three there will be some substantive critique.
Thanks again for the kind words. I think he also said that you were “super intelligent,” if I go from memory. So congratulations–we are both “super intelligent” people according to Dr. Ward.
Brother Brandenburg,
Thank you so much for defending Thomas. Everybody is just supposed to know that those King James people are all the same. They deserve what they get. We don’t need to give them fair treatment. We can just treat them with intolerance while pretending to be the intolerant ones. As long as you say it oh so sweetly, like Mark Ward does, then you’re just a nice guy who is doing the world a favor. It is exactly the same tactic that the left uses daily in America. Exactly – the – same. I’ve seen it over and over again.
We know that Thomas is not a dangerous extremist. He is considered dangerous to those who want to subtly tear down the dependability of the Bible, because their arguments by-in-large depend upon their opposition being Ruckmanite and/or ignoramuses who can’t truly argue from scripture. Sadly, there are plenty of those straw men to prop up, but it’s ungodly to slander a person you can’t truly contend with. (BTW, stlll haven’t seen an answer from Ward on the departures from the TR in the NKJV.)
I took Ward’s silly test that was supposed to be a mic-drop that KJV pastors don’t really know what their Bibles mean. I have no doubt there are many that don’t. But this farm-boy with hardly any formal Bible education took his silly little test and only got only 1 wrong, and that was because I was rushing through it and misunderstood the question.
Ward has convinced many that his “false friends” idea proves that all TR advocates are actually Ruckmanites in disquise. No doubt some are. But all that proves is that there are some KJB people who don’t know what they are talking about. But, as far as I know, he never addresses the fact that there are those (like us) who understand the issue of archaic words, and have evaluated the options, and still believe that it is not best to move away from the KJB for various reasons.
I don’t know what Ward does with the rest of his time, but perhaps he would spend less time talking about how “concupscience” is an old word and more time doing what the “dangerous extremist” is doing–preaching a plain, powerful gospel message on the streets of San Francisco.
Again, thanks for writing this. I doubt Ward will repent of his ungodly slander, because he doesn’t think he has to even explain himself. Everybody on his side will just wink, nod, and agree.
*should have said “pretending to be the *tolerant ones”
Dear Bro Dvorachek,
Thanks for your comment as well. I had never heard of Ward’s “false friends” test until I found out that he put out his video response to my video showing that the KJV is in comprehensible modern English. I took the test as well and missed only one question, and looking at that question, I think the problem is the question, not the answer. It was the claim that “remove” the ancient landmark really does not mean “remove” in the modern sense of “remove” but just “move away.” (I have no problem with either “remove” or “move away.”) This question was poorly designed, and the author(s) of his survey appear to be oblivious to the fact that the Dictionary of Classical Hebrew–published between 1993-2011–lists “remove” as the first definition of this Hebrew word in the tense employed in the verse in question (the Hiphil). Before making this question a “gotcha” of KJV archaism and calling up lots and lots of churches to give them this survey perhaps it would have been good to spend 5-10 minutes looking at all the standard modern Hebrew lexica, where in the year 2000 this Hebrew word is listed as meaning “remove” in the modern sense of that English term.
There are other serious problems with this survey that Dr. Ward astonishingly claims is “definitive” as proof for his anti-KJV claims, such as that whatever percentage of people do not realize that thee/thou/thy is singular in the KJV and ye/you/your is plural, 100% of people with modern English versions where “you” is just listed all the time do not catch the difference, and so would misinterpret huge numbers of the passages in the first half of his survey–with NO solution, unlike with the KJV, where the solution is a handful of minutes of education on pronouns that start with “t” versus with “y.” But perhaps if he is just preaching to the anti-KJV choir nobody will notice.
Maybe these kinds of gaping holes in his argument are more accurate explanations for why he is not willing to debate his position with me or with some other KJVO advocate who would actually seek to be prepared for a debate.
Thomas,
Good info on the acceptance by Ward of actual dangerous publications at Logos, not pointing out anything from these, but hyper about combatting this understandable, intelligible position that we take. It doesn’t make it easier for me to comprehend what he means by “dangerous.”
Matt,
I agreed with everything you said.
Mark Ward’s study demonstrates some people failed a vocabulary test. To extrapolate those findings and conclude the same individuals do not understand the King James Bible is a bit of a stretch, in my opinion. Certainly, people should study and understand Scripture, no debate there. However, we don’t have much to compare Ward’s test with to better understand what his data means, which is why the entire projects seems to fall short of its goal, in my opinion.
For example, say conservatively there are 12,000 unique English words in the KJV, and say liberally, for the sake of argument, 500 are archaic. That would mean 4% of the words may require someone to use a dictionary (at least once) to learn their meaning. Mark Ward’s KJV Project website claims he has discovered 75 “False Friends,” words whose meanings have shifted overtime, or less than 1% of the whole. How does this compare with other modern Bibles? Do people need dictionaries to understand a percentage of them too? Do they contain words that modern readers may misunderstand as well?
I’ve never found Mark Ward’s Intelligibility Argument that strong. It is good to know about archaic words, what they mean, or maybe how they have changed over time, but they still retain their original meanings, they’re still modern English. As Bro. Ross points out, we have (and have had) a defined King James Bible for some time now. Mark Ward is not the first person crossing this bridge. In my opinion, the Intelligibility Argument is low hanging fruit to obfuscate from the real issue in the Bible version debate, namely, the underlying text, and the doctrines of Inspiration and Preservation presented in Scripture.
As Bro. Ross pointed out, it is a blessing, I think too, that Mark Ward made this video. He is now between a rock and a hard place. His video will likely generate a kind of “Streisand Effect” towards your material and Bro. Ross’ material on this subject. If Mark Ward releases this and decides to cancel his part 2 and 3 videos, he will only look worse than he already does by refusing to debate Bro. Ross, while comfortably criticizing him from his echo chamber.
So well written, Benjamin, and so true too. God bless.
So what Ward is saying is that he…doesn’t want people to be smart and know things?
Like, that’s dangerous to the KJV-anti position?
Mark Ward doesn’t say what is extreme or dangerous, but he ties it with being super intelligent. That could mean that someone really understands the issue well, or it could mean that he’s very tricky, using his giant brain to fool people into the doctrine of preservation and such, things that honor God.
Ward came out with his second video and in a shorter introduction than his first, he intimates that Thomas Ross is “evil.” Ward gives himself deniability because the terminology King James Version Only is so malleable. It can mean a lot. Since he lumps Ross in with KJVO, whatever that means, he calls Ross “evil.” It’s important to know why you are evil, if you are in fact “evil.” Ward stands in judgment of Ross as evil with Ward not evil.
In the second video, I know as I’m watching that Ward misrepresents Ross, something that can more easily occur when the accuser will not face the accused directly. Partly its because Ward misses the point of Thomas’s position against White, that is, he is arguing that the KJV is superior to the LSB. He’s not saying the LSB is trash. In most ways, Thomas is defending the KJV as suitability intelligible compared to the LSB. Secondly, Ross deals with the readability argument from the KJV preface, because that’s what White uses in the debate. Does Thomas get the sense of the preface? That’s important and Ward doesn’t even get that. Is that evil on Ward’s part? Is all of this evil?
I’m fine with using the word “evil,” but it is a pejorative in this sense. It isn’t evil what Thomas Ross is doing. If it is, it must be shown. I would contend that overall Ward is evil. Several reasons:
1. He rejects the biblical teaching of preservation and presents an unbiblical position.
2. He causes doubt in the Word of God by not giving biblical certainty and taking away, therefore, the authority of scripture.
3. He does not give due process to his accused, because it results in false accusations.
4. He propagates false Roman Catholic doctrine and SDA doctrine among other false doctrine by his involvement with Logos Bible Software — he never points that out as evil.
5. He regularly misrepresents his targets of criticism — many, many times.
6. He does not take correction when he is wrong, when dealt with directly and kindly.
7. He treats his opposition with contempt.
There are other points I could make, but this would be making the point versus just calling people evil without any evidence of what that evil might be. If I were to guess what the evil is, he would say we’re violating his interpretation of 1 Corinthians with his intelligibility argument. At least make a good argument as to that novel interpretation and application. People can judge it on their own.
If you contrast the way Ward speaks about heretic Eugene Petersen with how he speaks about Thomas, this will tell you much of what you need to know about Mark Ward. (Matthew 7:16)
Mat,
Exactly right. You put it very nicely too.
Kent, thanks for this post. I ran across the first video awhile back, and thought it might be interesting since Mark claimed he would be dealing with new arguments. I was really taken aback when he called Thomas Ross an extremist. This from a person who goes to the extreme in writing and recording material against King James Onlyism!