Honest Discussion?

It seems we have to get basic here, like when one would interview someone to make sure his testimony is accurate or sure.  Have you been in one of those situations before?  I’ve been in them.  You are working on a project with other people and someone is not fulfilling his part of the whole.  When you talk to him, you can’t seem to get a straight answer.  You know something is wrong.

Something is wrong in the discussion on the text issue, because the same flashing lights go off for me that do in any kind of dialogue.  I know that some of you reading don’t like this assessment.  I don’t want you to read between the lines.  Something is dishonest in this discussion or conversation.  I’ve seen and known this for awhile.

The two sides of the textual debate very often cannot get or come together because it’s not an honest conversation between two groups or two people.  If you are on the other side of this, you can say that you don’t like to hear this, or “how dare someone question your honesty?”  I’m not trying to take a cheap shot.  The interaction on the issue of the text of the Bible reads like a shady situation based on my experience.  The dishonesty bells go off.

We live in a day when people can represent something in a less than straightforward manner and yet call it straightforward.  This environment makes it easier to continue in the shadow realm.  I see it everywhere and it’s happening with this discussion on the biblical text  too.  Language and terminology has lost some of its meaning and in certain cases, all of its meaning.  Philosophers and theologians are calling this today “a crisis of meaning.”

Prayer for Apology

The youtuber Mark Ward wrote a post this last week on his blog, entitled, “I Pray for an Apology from Leaders or Institutions in KJV-Onlyism.”  I’ve never prayed for an apology like that before, so it’s foreign to me.  It doesn’t even sound like a prayer request, even if it is just a desire that is stated as a prayer.  It means, “I hope for an apology” or “I’d like an apology.”  I often have a desire for repentance from someone and it is about God and His Word, but not a personal apology.  “I pray for an apology” sounds more like a whine or complaint from someone whose feelings are hurt.

I’d be first in line to offer an apology to someone who wants it.  Always, however, I need to know what it is I’m apologizing for or it wouldn’t be sincere.  It could be one of those “I’m sorry you’ve been offended” apologies that really apologizes for nothing.

Ward started his post with this line:

One of my life’s long-term prayers is that someone of stature within KJV-Only circles will publicly apologize for promoting false doctrine.

KJVO False Doctrine

Depending on what “KJV-Only” means, a person could promote false doctrine.  I join Ward in not liking that either, although I don’t yearn or pray for an apology.  False doctrine would contradict or pervert what the Bible teaches and in this case what it teaches about itself.  Certain KJVO doctrine is false doctrine.

Double inspiration is false doctrine.  God stopped inspiring scripture in the first century.  He completed that task.  Even what I have called, “English preservationism,” is false doctrine.  God didn’t promise to preserve His Words using a translation.  He didn’t.  There was no English Bible until Wycliffe in the 14th century.  If someone wants to talk about doctrine, I’m thankful and happy to do that.  I would welcome a doctrinal conversation with Ward or others, but I predict he would want only a very narrow one with only his pet edification-requires-intelligibility issue.  Even that I would gladly talk about in an honest way with Ward.

Subject of Apology

Regarding doctrine, Ward mentions the following in his I-wanna-apology post:

Ultimately God only knows what moral culpability individuals bear for teaching things that aren’t true and thereby dividing the body of Christ. God only knows who is a victim and who is a perpetrator, or what proportions of perpetrator and victim a given person represents. But I just can’t imagine that all this untruth and division that’s been generated by KJV-Onlyism could occur without individual people sinning—sinning against the teaching of 1 Cor 14 that edification requires intelligibility, sinning against commands for unity and for sound doctrine, sinning against God’s providential opportunities for doing better study.

That’s it.  This represents the false doctrine for which Mark Ward wants an apology.

I don’t know what I’ve said or taught on the version issue that is not true.  For sure, I’m open to possibility, but I don’t know of anything of this nature.  Just the opposite, I teach the position I do, because I see it in the Bible.  Ward doesn’t take that same approach.  However, before I address that fully, I want to respond to the accusation that men like myself are not telling the truth.  I see that as the absolute opposite and have a difficult time not believing that Mark Ward already knows he’s not telling the truth about this.  He at least, I believe, sets the truth on a sliding scale in his own dealings with doctrine and practice.

Racking the Brain for an Apology

The kind of thing I hear from Ward in some of his videos, which count to him apparently as men not telling the truth, to me sound like actual straw men.  Here’s what I’ve heard.

• One, they don’t sufficiently acknowledge archaic English in the King James Version, semantic changes, the worst of which Ward calls “false friends.”
• Two, they say God preserved every Word in the original language text, but they won’t point out the preserved printed edition of the Textus Receptus that represents that.
• Three, they keep using the King James Version, so making the Bible opaque to the average reader, even though modern versions from the same underlying text are available.
• Four, they won’t admit that church men have long recognized textual variants and acknowledged their existence.
• Five, the underlying text behind the King James Version didn’t exist in a single edition until Scrivener in the late 19th century, who himself didn’t support the Textus Receptus.

If I’m missing something, it’s not on purpose, but this is what I get when I read through Ward herbal tea leaves.  I want to deal at least those five, but, first, to the ones in Mark’s above paragraph.  I’ll probably come back to the five in my last paragraph in another post.

Practice Apology

First though, Mark Ward says KJVO need to apologize because they divide the body of Christ.  Just as a thought experiment, I am going to practice a public apology, one that Ward would want from all the division causers, none of which has the name, Mark Ward.  He is the source of heavenly unity, as someone might say, this side of glory.  Here goes.

Everyone, listen up.  I’ve got to say something.  I want to make a public apology, a mea culpa of sorts.  What I’ve done wrong is cause division on the KJVO issue.  Whatsoever version anyone uses — whatever underlying text, translation philosophy, acceptance, or quality — should not result in separation, and yet I’ve said that someone should separate over that.

I’ve written it too.  People at least have gotten a strong impression from me that the version issue is a separating issue, and it is not!!  Use whatever version of the Bible you want with not a whit, a crumb, of judgement from me.  My judgment-o-meter dial will not move, not even a tremor.  I confess this under the category of the sin of causing division.

Could I or would I make that apology?  No.  I would not believe it.

Separation and Unity and Division

I’ve written about the subject of separation and unity for a long time and back before Mark Ward graduated from seminary.  Division comes from those with the new doctrine, not those who held to the original position.  In addition, separation in scripture is not heresy or causing division.  The Bible teaches separation over more than just “gospel issues.”

Probably no one in the world or in all of history has written more on this subject than me.  You have to understand biblical unity before you understand separation, but both harmonize.  The unity between the Father and the Son in John 17 was on everything in scripture.  They didn’t disagree on anything, and that’s the same unity God wants for His people.  You don’t get biblical unity without separation over false doctrine and practice.

When the Bible warns against heresy, factions, or unscriptural division, it is a diversion off the biblical and historical position.   When someone teaches something unbiblical and so men separate from that false teacher and his teaching, that is biblical separation, not heresy.  Some of the new books that attack the one Bible doctrine or perfect preservation of scripture react to the already established doctrine.  They are not presenting a historical belief and practice.

I would be happy to read the established historical, biblical doctrine that Mark Ward establishes on preservation.  What I hear from him conforms biblical doctrine to naturalistic presuppositions, based on modern science so-called.  His position is not the truth.

More to Come