Mark Ward has closed all the comments on his blog, having admitted a degree of defeat on the issue of zero deviations of the text behind the NKJV from the underlying text of the KJV.  I provided 20 possibilities, and I think that fifteen were still true.  Mark is admitting to six.  In the conversation, the bar kept getting moved to the advantage of Mark Ward.  It turned into proving that they relied on the critical text in certain places and then whether they intended to deviate.  Those two aspects were not part of the original charge.

Since he’s not taking anymore comments, I’m going to answer his final comment, which essentially finished off the issue at his blog.  I would have been glad not to have participated if someone else stepped up to answer him.  I don’t think I produced every example, because I wasn’t looking at that as the task.  I’m going to quote some of the sentences or paragraphs of Ward’s last comment here and answer them, so that it will be clear what I really think and not be misrepresented by him.  He never asked.

Ward writes:

If we got up to 25 or 30 examples, even, of places where they undeniably followed the CT, I’d have to change even that tune. But given the quality of the evidence provided so far, I doubt it will happen.

Mark conceded, but he’d really, really concede if I provided even more examples.  He takes a shot at the evidence I provided, that it isn’t high quality.  It’s a list, enough rightly to concede.  I don’t think they used a critical text as their text.  It’s only that they didn’t rely on an identical text as the KJV, the only point.  They also include footnotes to undermine the text they did use.

He continues later:

Through this epic discussion (and other reading I’ve been doing for an upcoming lecture at Reformed Baptist Seminary on Confessional Bibliology), I have come to see even a bit more clearly what KJV-Onlyism is. It is—wait for it—KJV-Onlyism. It is not, as so many KJV-Only leaders have insisted, a defense of the TR.

That’s sad, because it is a TR position.  I recently explained that in the comment section of my last post on this.  If it is a TR position, you translate from the TR for your new translations, not from the English.  If it is a TR position, you base the meaning of the words on the usage in the TR and then through lexicons.  If it is a TR position, you bring out tenses of verbs, noun, preposition, and pronominal uses from Greek syntax.

Then he wrote:

I plumbed recently to the depths of E.F. Hills’ work, and Theodore Letis’ work, and I re-read the bibliology statement by Thomas Ross that Kent once affirmed to me, and I find the same thing: the ultimate standard for the NT, the perfect-in-every-jot-and-tittle text, is Scrivener’s 1881 text.

The Bible settles on perfection for itself — verbal, plenary preservation, just like inspiration.  You can’t add or take away from something that isn’t settled.  Mark doesn’t settle in defiance of what scripture says about itself.  That’s not better than settling.

I get the reverse engineered criticism, but it doesn’t get what our position is.  Mark doesn’t get it, like he couldn’t find anyone who wrote a list or even look for it himself by looking at the Greek text.  Every word was available.  Before you complain that there are a missing handful of handwritten Greek words or less in Scriveners, those have evidence in non-English translations and I’m not conceding there was no textual evidence at the time of the KJV translation.  That argument can be made.  Let’s not go there though and just trust that translators were translating and those words were available.

God didn’t promise to preserve a Greek text, but letters (jots and tittles) and words.  That is one of our presuppositions in that bibliology statement by Thomas Ross and affirmed by Kent.  Those words were available.  That fits what God said He would do, which is what we believe.  Scrivener printed them into a text.  Was that text available?  The words were available, but even on the text, it’s very close with Beza 1598, which is why I often say, essentially Beza 1598.  I have no problem saying Scrivener either, because those words were there.

John Gill wrote his commentary in the 18th century.  What text did he rely on?  He was looking at a Greek text.  He was using the King James Version.  Was there no Greek text to look at?  There were other commentaries during the period before the critical text and Scrivener, who studied the original languages.  John Trapp wrote a commentary on the books of the New Testament in 1656.  William Jones wrote his commentary on the epistle of Paul in 1636.  There are more.

Ward continues further:

But Ross believes (and Kent at least once affirmed) that the KJV translators, who were not perfect, committed no translation errors of which Ross was aware. Likewise, Ross affirms that they committed no errors in textual critical judgment. When they chose to follow Beza and include εκ σου in Luke 1:35 rather than following Stephanus, they were providentially (not miraculously) guided into being free from error. When, in dozens of places, they made similar decisions, they were free from textual critical error. This is precisely what Hills taught, with great clarity and explicitness (see especially Believing Bible Study).

I would have translated the King James Version differently, but I don’t believe the translators made a mistake in their translation.  That’s not a miracle point.  That’s just a competence point.  I believe the KJV could be translated differently and be right, because preservation is in the language in which scripture was written.  That’s another presupposition that Thomas Ross also believes.  Variation in translation doesn’t make it in error.  That is the nature of translation.

Then Ward wrote:

And I reject it. The KJV translators were no more providentially preserved from error in their textual criticism than they were in their translation. In both, they were very, very good—but they were also what they said they were: fallible human beings who were only trying to make a good thing better.

One regular misrepresentation of the preface of the KJV is that they said they might be wrong on the underlying text.  No.  They said that it could be translated differently, which it was in 1769.  I’m not saying Ward is lying, but there are at least some reading comprehension issues with those who keep saying this.

No offense to Hills (especially Hills), Letis, Ross, or even me, but the position that Ward treats like revisionist history is actually the historical view, so Ward should also mention John Owen, Francis Turretin, William Whitaker, Richard Capel, and Samuel Rutherford, also as reported in Richard Muller’s Post Reformation Reformed Dogmatics.  They took the position we take.  Ward’s position or non-position arises from the seat of his pants, something that started with no history and no scriptural predisposition.  Then Ward and those like him invent a new history for us, which is not the truth (a lie?).  A one Bible position is the historical position.  When Ward goes to Reformed Baptist Seminary, he needs to be honest about the history behind the position he attacks, and as well represent what we actually believe, not his own straw man.

I’ve already answered Mark’s complaints about our continuing to use the King James Version in favor of a contemporary version.  I’m not saying that everything Mark says about dead words is without merit.  No.  However, people can learn what words mean.  They have to do that anyway, even if they use a modern version.  I’ve said that the Bible you understand is the one you read and study.  Mark has said in the past with great clarity that his purpose was to move people to the critical text and that won’t happen through discussing textual criticism, so he has chosen what he sees as a more pragmatic argument.  Why would anyone fall for that?  There are many other issues with using a modern version that a church like ours thinks is worse than the “false friends” about which Ward writes.

My conscience is not snared by an unscriptural scruple as Ward charges at the end of his comment (see the last comment here).  Our conscience is informed by biblical and historical teaching.  Ward’s is the novel, unbiblical view.  He’s the one veering into the side of a mountain without a reliable radar to give him a proper altitude.  He has one scriptural argument that leads him to call us sinners over readability, something new in the history of Christianity.  I’ve never read it from anyone but him.  That sounds more like an improperly informed conscience.  He went looking for it, so that he could have something “scriptural” to say — like a revivalist preacher who looks for a text to fit his sermon.  On the other hand, our position proceeds from exegesis from scripture and agrees with a historical position.  We arrived at our position from studying the Bible, which provided the template, paradigm, or model for what we expect. That is the view that pleases God.

Phil Johnson is on the board of directors for Wretched radio.  He does a program regularly with Todd Friel, called Too Wretched for Radio or what Friel calls “Philsosophy.”  At the beginning of this segment is a montage of audio of Phil Johnson from sermons and speeches, and one of the statements that surely is included to characterize Phil is “Act like men, not like girls.”  In a sense, Friel is saying, “that’s Phil for you.”  Especially among evangelicals, Phil is considered to be a tough guy.

Incidentally, the military tone of this verse is clearly deliberate. These are orders for an army going to combat. Paul was reminding them (and us) that the Christian’s existence in this earthly realm is a battle, not a banquet. We are soldiers engaged in warfare, not merry-makers enjoying a party. Do we get that? because frankly, most contemporary evangelicals don’t get it. The typical evangelical church seems to think Christ has called us to be clowns who entertain the world rather than soldiers whose duty is to wage war against false religion and spiritual lies. There are churches not far from here this morning where the pastors are doing exegesis of the latest movies or trying desperately to plug into whatever the latest cultural fad is. Look around and listen to what’s happening in the evangelical movement today and you might get the impression that friendship with the world is the number one goal of the church. It’s not. It is a grievous sin to be avoided. “Friendship with the world is enmity with God.” The church is supposed to be an army waging war against worldly values.

Call this is an update of the post I wrote on Thursday, Does the New King James Version Deviate from the Textus Receptus, the Text Behind the King James Version?  Mark Ward wrote Authorized: The Use and Misuse of the King James Bible, which he said was a different approach to the English translation issue.  King James Version (KJV) Only folks of whatever stripe weren’t going to change based on reason of the underlying text, because it’s too difficult for them.  He thinks they’ll move from the King James Version to a modern version based on readability, which is his stated motive, that is, getting them to move to a modern version.

I would probably want to be called a “One Bible” man (not KJVO), since there is only one Bible.  God gave it to us in one set of exact words in Hebrew and Aramaic in the Old Testament and Greek in the New Testament.  Scripture teaches a one Bible position.  That one Bible can be translated into any language and even be updated in a particular language, such as English.  The King James Version is an update.  It could be updated again.  There would still only be one Bible.  God wrote one.  One.  I’m more concerned about the one Bible than I am about the update.  Some either don’t care or don’t seem to care about that same concern of mine.  Mark Ward is one of those.  He says he doesn’t care.

Since there is one Bible, it can’t change.  Changing it would make it different, not the one Bible.  This seems simple, but it is still missed.  Enter this New King James Version (NKJV) issue.

Ward has been doing a series at his blog answering the objections to the thesis of his book.  I didn’t know he was doing it, but I check on the blog, SharperIron, every day, and they linked to one of his posts in which he made the following point.  King James Version advocates, who won’t follow Ward’s desires for them to move to a modern version, say that the NKJV deviates from the same underlying original language text as the KJV, when it doesn’t.  The NKJV translators said they didn’t deviate, he purported, and they not only have not deviated, but the KJV advocates don’t have any list of deviations as proof.

Mark Ward starts off his essay by saying that the above KJV advocates are sinning.  He charges us with sin.  Here are the two sentences:

I am going to charge my theological opponents with sin—though a sin of omission rather than of commission. But I can’t avoid it: the KJV-Only movement as a whole, and many individuals within it, are not telling the truth, and the leaders at least should know better.

Maybe I’m a leader.  I’m sinning, he says.  I want to confess the sin.  It’s interesting here, because I’ve thought the opposite as Ward.  I have seen some of the NKJV translators as sinning.  They know they did deviate from the underlying text of the NKJV and then said they didn’t.  When asked, they’ve said they didn’t.  It might be a Clintonian lie, it’s all a matter of what deviation is.

Years ago, I provided a short list of deviations, almost as a test case. 

I deleted the rest of this post, because Mark Ward posted my comment with the list of deviations in his comment section and he has also answered that post.  I am respecting the work that he and others have done there, and I will be writing an answer to it soon, maybe as I write this edit.

“Over half of psychology studies fail reproducibility test.”  “Scientists replicated 100 psychology studies, and fewer than half got the same results.”   “An ambitious effort to replicate 100 research findings in psychology ended last week — and the data look worrying. Results posted online on 24 April, which have not yet been peer-reviewed, suggest that key findings from only 39 of the published studies could be reproduced.”  “The Stanford Prison Experiment was massively influential. We just learned it was a fraud.”  The Independent, the British newspaper, characterized the above with the following headline:  “Study reveals that a lot of psychology research really is just ‘psycho-babble’.”

I’m telling you what the research on the research actually says, but I think in reality it’s worse than reported.  A lot of what is repeated, and called science, especially in the field of psychology, is the opposite of the truth.  It isn’t being said or quoted because it is the truth, but because of its personal usefulness either excusing past or justifying future sinful behavior.  There is no science behind a lot of what people say or do today.  There is no scientific proof for homosexuality, that a baby in the womb is not a person, and for the secular or naturalistic explanations for origins today.

If something is scientific, it should mean that it is true.  If it’s a lie, that shouldn’t be science.  Science should be about getting to the truth, but it has become about supporting a presupposed position, usually today something that is politically correct and more.

Notable evolutionist, Aldous Huxley, the grandson of Thomas Huxley, wrote Ends and Means and said (1937):

I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; and consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics. He is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do. For myself, as no doubt for most of my friends, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom. The supporters of this system claimed that it embodied the meaning – the Christian meaning, they insisted – of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and justifying ourselves in our erotic revolt: we would deny that the world had any meaning whatever.

Marxism is not an economic science.  The Patriarchy is not a social construct based upon tyranny.  Darwinism is not science, but “an instrument of liberation from a certain system of morality,” especially that interferes with sexual freedom.

Enter 1 Timothy 6:20-21 from the King James Version:

O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: Which some professing have erred concerning the faith. 

The last part of verse 20 reads literally, “the antithesis of the false so-called knowledge.”  “Science” translates gnosis, found 29 times in the New Testament, and it is translated knowledge almost all of those times, but here it is translated “science,” and it fits.  John MacArthur writes:

Over the course of human history, all kinds of speculative ideas have been falsely labeled “science” and mistakenly accepted as true and reliable knowledge by otherwise brilliant people. The now-discredited dogmas of older scientific theories are numerous—and in some cases laughable. They include alchemy (the medieval belief that other base metals could be transmuted into gold); phrenology (the Victorian belief that the shape of one’s skull reflects character traits and mental capacity); astrology (the pagan belief that human destiny is determined by the motions of celestial bodies); and abiogenesis (the long-standing belief that living organisms are spontaneously generated by decaying organic substances). All those false beliefs were deemed credible as “science” by the leading minds of their times.

The psychological writings are the place of the greatest abuse of science today.  Like Paul was writing, it is pseudo-intellectualism, just trying to sound smart, but a true antithesis to actual knowledge, so that Paul calls it just “so-called,” because it isn’t.  It is made up.

Some might say that advocates approach their psychological speculations like religion — since there is no proof, it is only matter of faith for them.  This actually is an even bigger problem.  Biblical faith does depend on evidence.  What has occurred over numbers of years is the bifurcation of the sacred and the secular, separating the Bible into a religious category inferior to science.  The Bible is science.  The Bible is true, but the psychological studies are false, which is why the Bible is science and the studies are only falsely so-called.  Now someone can immediately relegate something to speculation by calling it religious or faith.

Much of psychology has earned the derisive “psychobabble,” because it isn’t scientific or true.  Despite that, the psychological still brings an unmerited force to an argument, because of its unworthy elevation over the sacred, condoning whatever psychology promotes.  Like with Huxley above in his quote, the psychology is a useful tool for bad or sinful behavior.  It has also driven professing Christians from standing in the public square and led many to succumb to the prevailing cultural norms.

One of the evil lies of the so-called science of psychology is its ability to help or give aid and its superior compassion.  Someone doesn’t really care about another person unless he offers a psychological solution to a problem.  He’s not even credible, because he doesn’t have a popular treatment to promote. In certain cases, psychology does give someone a kind of short term relief from symptoms, which are then offered as evidence of a solution.  They don’t solve the actual problem, but along with the popularity of the psychological remedy, better feelings are a powerful defense.  Actual studies will show that it’s only a placebo and doesn’t really work.  It isn’t even science, but it’s acceptance by the culture is enough confirmation.  It really is a bias toward an antidote that matches a desire, interpreting information in a way that approves a preferred behavior.  I’m saying its driven by lust.

The person who relies on a lie of psychology enjoys the acceptance of the mass, often an entire association of people invested in its proliferation.  There are paid proponents with economic motivation even to perpetuate the myth, if not the problem.  Someone needs the existence of the problem to stay employed.  They depend on belief in the falsehoods.

For people who merely want to look like they care in order to receive that recognition, it doesn’t matter if someone really gets help.  It is cheap promotion.  You don’t need to study.  You don’t need to know.  You just use the acceptance lingo for the consequential plaudits.  Few need to notice if it makes you feel good about yourself.  You don’t have to help anyone.  You just have to look like you care, and while you do, you imagine that people are impressed, and then you feel good too.

Man’s biggest problem is his sin, because of the sin itself and its offense to God, but also because of the consequences.  Sin causes short term problems with the mind, emotions, and body, but it also separates someone from God in this lifetime and then forever in Hell.  The world will support your advocacy of social issues and psychobabble, because it’s most interested in how it feels in this temporal world, all that it has and can do.  It doesn’t mean that God doesn’t want to relieve and comfort you in this lifetime, but what’s most important is preparing for eternity.  A true believer will not focus on the best life now, but on the one forever with God.  This is science.

This post introduces a short series on certain psychological science, falsely so-called, or psychobabble.  The goal will be to disabuse the readers from the lies they embrace to continue according to their own lust and excuse or justify that false way.

Part One — “Artists”

Our church doesn’t use the following psalter, but it’s available at Psalters Online.   I chose, The Book of Psalms in an English Metrical Version, founded on the basis of the Authorized Bible Translation and Compared with the Original Hebrew, by Richard Mant.  Here is Psalm 106:11-22 from this psalter, a versification of the Hebrew Masoretic text, the same text from which comes the King James Version, just like the title says.

The word “artist” is like the word “culture” — in common usage, its meaning has disappeared. People don’t know what they mean, when they are saying it.  The knock-off entertainers sure aren’t artists, no matter how many times someone says they are.

God is the prototypical Artist.  Art proceeds from the Bible in definition like everything that can be right and good, except the word in the King James Version isn’t “art,” but “craft,” and the artist is a “craftsman.”  The Hebrew word could be translated “artificer,” which is someone skilled.  As late as 1828, Webster’s defines:

The disposition or modification of things by human skill, to answer the purpose intended.

If you go back to the etymology of the word, it is “artifice,” and the “artist” is an “ingenious workman.”  The assumption of artifice from which comes “artificial” is that it is a copy, not the original, so something imitating something else.  Someone is able to make something very close to the original, so that it looks like the real thing.  The artist is imitating something, originally something of God, not inventing something new.

God, of course, is the Creator, and though we can’t create ex nihilo like God, something out of nothing, we take the components of God’s creation and orchestrate them into portrayals of God’s handiwork, which is divinely defined reality.  Since beauty starts with God, it is objective, reflecting His nature.  The handiwork of God declares His glory (Psalm 19:1), that is, the perfections of His attributes.  Anything that clashes with the nature of God isn’t beautiful or lovely, but is ugly.  This takes us to the objective nature of beauty and, therefore, art.

1 Chronicles 16:29 says,

Give unto the LORD the glory due unto his name: bring an offering, and come before him: worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness.

Beauty relates to the glory due unto God’s name and His holiness.  Glory, God’s name, and holiness are essentially the same.  They all relate to His attributes, their perfection.  This is a baseline for beauty.

The skill of art is the ability through both nature and nurture to represent the divine reality.  It is objective, because it focuses on the object, which is a proper object, one that is right and true and of the highest value.  The object is what makes the effort worth it.  The term “depiction” is a good word to associate with objective, because Someone (God) and something (His creation) is being depicted according to God’s perspective.  This contrasts with the subjective or relativistic.

Modern art shifted from the objective to the subjective, like modernism, and even worse then, postmodernism.  Some today think that they are more “artistic,” even and sadly professing Christians, because they are modernistic and postmodernistic.  They’re imitating others, that is, being worldly.  They don’t know what they are talking about.  They’re just saying it and anything goes today.  Hardly anyone is going to judge, because hardly anyone judges anything, except whether someone’s feelings are hurt.

The subject became “art” according to the “eye of the beholder,” which is in reality to turn from God to man, man becoming the center of things.  This made autonomous imaginings of the “artist” the standard, which are his expressions.  He’s expressing himself.  This philosophy of art in general is expression or expressionism, with lots of sub categories.

A biblical understanding, a Christian worldview, says that man is depraved, so the shift to the subject brings distortion.  The subject isn’t neutral, even if he thinks he is.  He’s affected by his own evil imaginations.  Today someone might say, “he’s messed up.”  Modern art allows the “artist” to create his own reality out of his own imagination, so that he shapes his own subjective reality and in so doing, becomes a god-like figure.  It is a subjective reality that leads people astray in modern culture as much as anything.  Sadly, some of you reading this don’t even care, and you think it’s a joke.  You’ll find out before everything is over, but the earlier the better.

Professing Christianity has started buying into a false view of art, the modernist and postmodernist view, for awhile, even when judging children’s finger paintings like they are something great.  They are without skill.  The child may not need an art lesson, to teach him how to “depict” what he sees, because it doesn’t even matter.  Just keep “expressing yourself.”  It’s wrong.  Several very bad things also happen.

Objective reality, the depiction of God, is not separate from emotions.  Some of you reading might have been wondering about feelings, because you think or feel they’re the essence of art.  They are not, but even so, scripture teaches rightly ordered emotions, what Jonathan Edwards called affections versus passions in his Treatise on the Religious Affections.  This also represents God, who is impassible, not subject to mood swings.

C. S. Lewis wrote about feelings or emotions in his book, The Abolition of Man, and this was a concern of his.  The two greatest commands of God are “Love God” and “Love your neighbor,” and both of those are at risk without getting them right.  Someone can’t obey God when he disobeys those two commands.  “Inordinate affection” is a sin (Colossians 3:5).  Lewis exhorts (pp. 28-29) of  “the ordinate condition of the affections in which every object is accorded that kind and degree of love which is appropriate to it,” asserting that “the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought.”  He continues (pp. 31-32):

[B]ecause our approvals and disapprovals are thus recognitions of objective value or responses to an objective order, therefore, emotional states can be in harmony with reason (when we feel liking for what ought to be approved) or out of harmony with reason. . . . The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it.

Lewis wasn’t promoting the expressions of someone’s imagination, but the correct emotional response to the right or true thinking about what is of the greatest value.

People who still want to profess to be Christian are changing exegetical and historical Christianity by merging it with modernism or postmodernism under the guise of “freedom.”  I read the language of “personal and creative liberation” that had been pent up by conservative Christianity, which put the “artist” in a “box.”  The limitations held back the creative expression of the artist that now he can unleash.  This freedom is called “grace,” so that now they’re really experiencing grace like they haven’t before, and that feeling flows through the art.  This isn’t actual Christianity.  The attempt to conform Christianity to lust is just departing from Christianity.

Another term, that I often hear to describe a modern or postmodern emotional quality, is “authentic.”  The “artist” is really “authentic.”  Most often this term is associated with someone who isn’t authentic, according to the dictionary definition of the term, but using it instead in a subjective fashion different than its objective meaning is apropos.  From the wrong usage, a postmodern variety, “authentic” is a highly subjective expression of someone’s feelings, usually distorted and often corrupt.  That also makes it “true,” true simply because the subject “feels it.”  It is unlikely that the “artist” “truly” or “really” feels the way he is expressing, but that doesn’t matter, because it’s what he’s expressing at the moment in an ironically inauthentic way, which is what does matter.  Instead of being “authentic,” usually it’s contrived, because it is entertainment, intended to “relate” with the audience (fool it), giving approval to the same feelings it might have, which very often are lust.

What motivated me to write this post was a recent promotion by someone of “country artists” out of Nashville.  I wasn’t expecting art or artists, which it and they were not.  The expressions reduce art to the lost wanderings of fallen men, rebelling against God’s created order, which brings chaos.  It perverts truth, goodness, beauty, and validates inordinate emotions.  It denies God as the true basis for all reality and conflicts with the truth of scripture.  It is not denying self, but expressing self with all the lack of constraint.  God is not and cannot be glorified and others are likewise influenced.

Rather than expressing imagination, true art, what Christians should solely accept and enjoy, shapes the moral imagination.   This is the true meaning of the world that God created.  The thinking and the emotions reflect God.  God is known in an accurate and better way.  The hearer can turn to God or grow closer to God, which is what a Christian wants.  He shouldn’t be promoting either the world’s twisted  perversion of art or artists or the depraved expressions of the ungodly culture from which they come.

Before I get to this post, I want to give some updates.  A few of you wrote me about my hint at going to Israel.  I’m sorry, but I’ve postponed that at this time because of some personal reasons.  It might still happen in the future and I’ll keep you informed.  I’ve got a few series going on here, and I’m going to keep all of them going hopefully.  I will, Lord-willing come back with the second part of the review of Van Bruggen’s booklet.  I am continuing the adult children series, relationship series, the weekend Europe trip travelogue, the Frank Turk debate, and anything else.  I plan on putting everything onto the index that isn’t there yet, what has been written since I completed it.  I want to write a post on the Jordan Peterson speech I heard in San Francisco, as well as a bit of take on his book, which I’ve read.  Thanks for sticking with it.

Any one of us need to be open to the reality of personal pride.  Are we proud people?  How could a humble person say, “No”?  The meaning of humility has changed though.  Being humble no longer means what it once did.  Neither does love and other biblical words, but humility has now morphed into something that doesn’t mean humility.  The word “humility” is used as a weapon by unbelievers and by those who call themselves Christians, but it’s not actual humility, and I’m going to explain.

First though, humility itself is good.  Scripture teaches humility.  We should encourage it.  In the King James Version, “humble” is used 25 times, “humbled,” 28, “humility,” 7, and all the other forms of the word in English combined, 11.  The Greek word translated “humble” is also translated “lowly,” so there are all those instances as well.   The concept is described also in different other ways, like “poor in spirit” in Matthew 5:3 and then what Paul writes in Philippians 2:3, esteeming others better than ourselves.

Humility is required for salvation.  God gives grace to the humble, not the proud.  Someone must humble himself before God to be saved.  This is the idea of ‘humble yourself and you’ll be exalted and exalt yourself and you’ll be abased.’  You can’t come to God on your own terms.  You’ve got to subject yourself to Him in humility.  This is the thought behind Jesus saying that if you are to come to Him, you’ve got to deny yourself.  Self-denial is humility.

So how is humility being perverted?  A common idea today — it isn’t true — about humility is that it is some degree of doubt, uncertainty, capitulation, or tolerance.  This has become the new humility.  What is ironic about the perversion of humility is how certain the new humble are that you are proud if you are not their new kind of humble.  They were never more sure that you are proud.  Why?  Because you are so certain that someone is wrong.

Doubt becomes a necessity for someone who wants to live like he wants to live.  He can’t be judged as wrong anymore, so he’s at liberty to do what he wants to do.  He doesn’t want the one judging him to be sure.  If that person is sure, it’s because that person is unreasonable, not open, or he is proud.  He isn’t being humble or gracious, that is, to see it in more than one way.  Any one who doesn’t allow for more than one way is being proud, and this is how humility takes on a new definition.

In reality, humility is submitting to what God says, living by faith.  God says He is clear, so He is.  What He says is plain, because He says it is plain.  Doubt is actually a proud excuse.  This confidence isn’t focusing inward, but upward.  God says it, so I’m going to do it.  If someone else isn’t doing it, I’m going to say what God wants me to say.

What I’ve read about this apostatizing of humility has been called “espistemological humility.”  It is another form of calling good evil and evil good (Isaiah 5:20).  Epistemology is basically how one knows what he knows.  How do we know what we know?  Faith is attacked.  Certainty is opposed.  This is bad, but it is called good in a kind of counterfeit fashion.  The real humility is replaced by this faux humility, which is actually pride.

God resists the proud, gives grace to the humble.  He doesn’t give grace to the counterfeit humble or the faux humble.  That’s actually pride.  It’s somebody who doesn’t want to do what God wants him to do and he doesn’t want to hear about it.  That’s pride.

In Ephesians 5:11, God says through the Apostle Paul, “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.”  Reprove what?  How can anyone know with certainty what is an unfruitful work of darkness?  That sounds too ambiguous.  Who would be so proud to reprove someone?  Humility would leave it alone — too much doubt.  Don’t be fooled by this.  This is apostatizing humility.

Somebody wants to do what he wants to do.  The person who tells him to change — that is the proud person.  Why?  He can’t know it’s wrong.  He’s got to be more humble about not knowing what’s wrong.  He’s got to have doubt, because that would be humble.  The pride is someone not wanting to change, not humbling himself under the teaching of scripture, but that is absolutely switched around.

Earlier in Ephesians 5, Paul mentions stuff that he wants reproved:  fornication, uncleanness, covetousness, filthiness, foolish talking, and jesting.  What are those?  Can we be sure?  If Paul wants those to be reproved, of course we can be certain what they are.  I know that people behave like they don’t know and they want their critics not to know either.  It makes it easier for them.  And then they get angry if someone comes at them with certainty.  They call it pride.  It’s actually humility.  The pride is calling it pride.  It is humility to obey God when he says something.

Epistemological humility is not humility.  It is unbelief.  Without faith it is impossible to please God.  God is not being pleased by this faithlessness.  It should not be expected from either party — the one criticizing or the one being criticized.  God wants us living like we know and can apply what He said — because we can.

Part One, Part Two

Even those with a casual knowledge of scripture very often know Romans 1.  Beginning in verse 18 to the end of that chapter, the content follows that men sin as a lifestyle, not because they lack in knowledge, but because of rebellion against that knowledge of God.  They know God, but they choose their lust.  God judges them by turning them over to their own desires, and they are in the end worthy of His wrath.  They choose not to retain God in their knowledge and God turns them over to a reprobate mind (Romans 1:28).  Paul lists the characteristic things that they do, things which are not proper, not fitting with God’s expectations for the world and for the humanity that He created.

Get this.  The end of the description of the lifestyle of those who do not retain God in their knowledge, who are turned over to a reprobate mind, says (Romans 1:32):  “they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.”  Please pay attention.  “They which commit” is present tense, committing as a lifestyle or commit as a habit.  However, those who choose to keep committing these things “are worthy of death.”  It is not just those who do these things as a lifestyle, but those who have pleasure in those who do them.  Someone doesn’t even have to do them, just have pleasure in others who do them.

Since this series is about “adult children,” I will talk about just one of the characteristics, but this is one of them, and in verse 30, “disobedient to parents.”  This isn’t talking about children disobeying their parents.  These are people who choose not retain God in their knowledge.  That isn’t describing children.  These are people who have settled in this.

The Greek word “disobedient” in Romans 1:30 is apeithes, which means literally, “not be persuaded by.”  The portrayal here is an adult child, who has been taught scripture by his parents, and willfully rejects what they are teaching.  Some adult children act, and with the agreement of other adults, like this is part of what it means to be an adult, to depart from what your parents taught you as a child.

The same Greek word is used in John 3:36 and translated in the King James Version, “believeth not,” as in “believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.”  The Greek work conveys obstinate rejection of the will of God.  Disobedience is equated with unbelief.  Haldane in his Exposition on Romans on this particular characteristic writes:

Obedience to parents is here considered as a duty taught by the light of nature, the breach of which condemns the heathens, who had not the fifth commandment written in words. It is a part of the law originally inscribed on the heart, the traces of which are still to be found in the natural love of children to their parents. When the heathens, then, disregarded this duty, they departed from the original constitution of their nature, and disregarded the voice of God in their hearts. 

Barclay in His commentary on Romans writes:

Both Jews and Romans set obedience to parents very high in the scale of virtues. It was one of the Ten Commandments that parents should be honored. In the early days of the Roman Republic, the patria potestas, the father’s power, was so absolute that he had the power of life and death over his family. The reason for including this sin here is that, once the bonds of the family are loosened, wholesale degeneracy must necessarily follow.

Albert Barnes in his commentary on Romans writes:

This expresses the idea that they did not show to parents that honor, respect, and attention which was due. This has been a crime of paganism in every age; and though among the Romans the duty of honoring parents was enjoined by the laws, yet it is not improbable that the duty was often violated, and that parents were treated with great neglect and even contempt. “Disobedience to parents was punished by the Jewish Law with death, and with the Hindus it is attended with the loss of the child‘s inheritance. The ancient Greeks considered the neglect of it to be extremely impious, and attended with the most certain effects of divine vengeance. Solon ordered all persons who refused to make due provision for their parents to be punished with infamy, and the same penalty was incurred for personal violence toward them.” Kent‘s Commentaries on American Law, vol. ii. p. 207; compare Virg. AEniad, ix. 283. The feelings of pride and haughtiness would lead to disregard of parents. It might also be felt that to provide for them when aged and infirm was a burden; and hence, there would arise disregard for their wants, and probably open opposition to their wishes, as being the demands of petulance and age. It has been one characteristic of paganism every where, that it leaves children to treat their parents with neglect. Among the Sandwich islanders it was customary, when a parent was old, infirm, and sick beyond the hope of recovery, for his own children to bury him alive; and it has been the common custom in India for children to leave their aged parents to perish on the banks of the Ganges.

“Disobedience to parents” is no incidental thing.  Paul writes that the person who chooses this deserves death.  Later Paul writes in 2 Timothy 3:2 the exact same expression to describe apostates in last days, “disobedient to parents.”  It is the same Greek words.  Concerning these in 2 Timothy 3:4, Paul writes:

Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.

Whatever godliness they have is just a form of godliness, and the right thing to do with this person or these people is to turn away from them.

For a moment, take the teaching about “disobedience to parents” into consideration.  While an adult child disobeys his parents, that is, he rejects the scriptural teaching of His parents, turns away from their instruction from the Bible, he is accepting something else.  What is it?  What is so attractive in the world that would have him do this?  2 Timothy 3:6 says they are “led away with divers lusts.”  This is not worshiping the Creator, but worshiping the creature (Romans 1:25).

The God, the one and only true God, Who created the world, designed and created parents, and in the natural order of God is for a child to follow in his parents’ teachings.  In this, I’m not proposing that children disobey scripture, but to follow in the scriptural instruction of his parents.  It must be some clear, plain actual disobedience to scripture that would contradict the instruction of the parents.  When children have been taught the way they should go, when they are adult children, they should not depart from it, that is, they should not be “disobedient to parents.”

More to Come

While sitting in preaching conferences on many occasions over decades I have heard leadership ask that the preaching in the conference would have “free course.”  “Free course” is exact verbiage from the King James Version in 2 Thessalonians 3:1.  Does the leader mean the same thing for the conference as Paul did in 2 Thessalonians 3:1?  Paul writes in that verse:

Finally, brethren, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may have free course, and be glorified, even as it is with you:

Praying for “free course” is scriptural, obviously.  It’s in 2 Thessalonians 3:1.  But does it mean there in that very text how people are using it, when they talk about praying for free course?  Should people be encouraged to pray like they are being encouraged to pray?

Revivalist John Van Gelderen talks about “free course” in his book, The Revived Life.  In the midst of describing an evangelistic situation with a lady, he writes:

Recognizing the enemy built up in this dear lady’s mind, I suggested we all get down on our knees to pray.  Through exercising throne seat authority, the scale of blindness fell off this lady’s eyes.  Then she could see the glorious light of the gospel.  When again pointed to Jesus’ offer of salvation, she gladly responded to the invitation to trust in Jesus to save her, and she rejoiced with joy unspeakable. 

The same dynamic is needed for multitudes without Christ.  The prayer meeting of Acts 1 accessed the outpouring of the Spirit of Acts 2.  This is an example of greater works — the powers of darkness dispelled and the power of the Spirit displayed — so that many have the opportunity to hear “the word of the Lord” in a setting where it has “free course”  and “is glorified” or given its full weight (2 Thess 3:1).

Upon quoting John 14:12-14, Van Gelderen continues:

Whether individually or corporately, whether defensively or offensively, learn to claim the Name — the name of Jesus!  This is not a mere mantra of words.  When the Spirit convinces you of the truth of the enthroned Christ, you can claim the Name and experience throne seat authority!

Van Gelderen shows his revivalist understanding of a “free course” prayer.  This type of belief and teaching is rampant among Charismatics, evangelicals, fundamentalists, independent and even unaffiliated Baptists.  One reads this language from the revivalist Charles Finney, as in his autobiography (p. 469):

But although I am sure that large numbers of persons were converted, for I saw and conversed with a great number myself that were powerfully convicted, and to all appearance converted; yet the barriers did not break down so as to give the word of the Lord, and the Spirit of the Lord, free course among the people.

Revivalist A. T. Pierson wrote:

From the day of Pentecost, there has been not one great spiritual awakening in any land which has not begun in a union of prayer, though only among two or three. And no such outward, upward movement has continued after such prayer meetings have declined. It is in exact proportion to the maintenance of such joint and believing supplication and intercession that the Word of the Lord in any land or locality has had free course and been glorified.

Revivalist Jack Hyles wrote in his book, Meet the Holy Spirit:

The Holy Spirit must be invited to help. He must be invited every day. He must be invited for every task. He must have free course to do His work alone.

You can find other examples than these, since the onset of second blessing theology in the middle of the 19th century.  On the other hand, here’s what John Gill wrote:

The particular petitions he would have put up follow, that the word of the Lord may have free course. By “the word of the Lord”. . . is meant the Gospel; which is of God, and not of man, comes by the Lord Jesus Christ, and is concerning him, his person and offices, and concerning peace, pardon, righteousness, life, and salvation by him, as the subject matter of it: and the request is, that this might “have free course”: or “might run”: be propagated and spread far and near: the ministry of the word is a course or race, and ministers are runners in it, having their feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace; which is the message they are sent with, and the errand they run upon: which comes from heaven, and is to be carried into all the world, and spread: Satan and his emissaries do all they can to hinder the progress of it; God only can remove all obstructions and impediments; when he works none can let; all mountains become a plain before Zerubbabel.

I want to focus on “free course.”  These words come from the King James Version, and the translators provided an italicized “free” to indicate that this was supplied, not in the original.  A lot of the mileage of revivalists comes from a word the translators say isn’t in the Bible.  Maybe there is something to “free” course, but the translators said there wasn’t — thus, the italics.

Gill gets the gist of it.  The one Greek word is trecho, which BDAG, the foremost lexicon gives three nuances of meaning:

1. to make rapid linear movement, run, rush, advance. . . 2. to make an effort to advance spiritually or intellectually, exert oneself. . . 3. to proceed quickly and without restraint, progress.

I believe Gill is right about “word of the Lord” being “the Gospel,” for the reasons he says.  What does Paul want with the gospel?  He wants rapid linear movement, advancement, movement, progress.  He wants it to get to more places.  Trecho was used for racing and for battle movements.

The “free course” part of the prayer is about the gospel getting to more places and more people.  Albert Barnes wrote:

The margin is “run.” So also the Greek. The idea is, that it might meet with no obstruction, but that it might be carried abroad with the rapidity of a racer out of whose way every hindrance was removed.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown reports:

may have free course—literally, “may run”; spread rapidly without a drag on the wheels of its course. . . . the apostle referring here to the external course of the word, rather than its inward efficacy in the soul, as also Christ seems chiefly to do in those parables. There are many things that hinder the course of the gospel; sometimes wicked rulers make laws against it, sometimes great persecutions have been raised, sometimes false teachers oppose it, sometimes professors prove apostates and scandalize the world against it, sometimes reproaches are thrown in the way of it.

Paul could only stay in Thessalonica two weeks when he went there.  He had to leave because of threat of death and intense, physical persecution.  In a number of the means that God uses to allow for the furtherance of the gospel, praying would advance that.

Revivalists bring something else to “free course” in the way of some overcoming power toward transforming results.  In the doctrine of revivalism, this prayer will translate to numerous conversions.  God will then enact the cause for an abundance of new people to be coerced.  In my experience, free course for a preaching conference has meant a certain enthusiastic feeling in the meeting.  The attendees are fired up or moved emotionally.  This free course means stirring oration, powerful sentiment, and very often intense physical exertion.  The answer to the prayer is a crisis through which someone enters a higher life. Barriers inhibiting the emergence into this spiritual experience are weakened or diminished.  “Free course” is a form of second blessing or continuationism.

We should pray for the free course of the gospel as Paul said it in 2 Thessalonians 3:1.  Think about your church.  You want to gain ground.  You want to move to the next town and the next and then the next, like Philip in Acts 8.  When he was done, he preached the gospel up the coast.  Churches need to have this urgency to push outward.  Each church.  We should be praying this would happen.  A related prayer exhorted by the Lord Jesus was for laborers.  More laborers will increase the speed at which the gospel gets further than what it has already.

Once the gospel arrives, it will do what is necessary in a persons life.  Contrary to Van Gelderen, the spiritual weapon, scripture, is used to pull down the strongholds.  The sword of the Spirit is the Word of God.  This is not the free course.  The free course is the gospel getting to more people.  They may not even get saved when it gets there.  They won’t be overcome by some kind of domineering, invincible sway, name-it and claim-it.  Paul, like we should, had a concern for further spread, attempting to see as many people hear a true gospel as possible.

Let us heed Paul’s admonition.  The actual one.