Part One

The average non-church going person and even church goers see the glut of English Bibles and often say, “There are different Bibles.”  I’ve heard it dozens of times through the years.  Is that true?  Is there really more than one Bible?  The answer is “no.”  God inspired only one Bible, certain exact words, and then He also preserved one Bible with the same exact words in the same language in which they were written.  The so-called existence of “many Bibles” undermines authority for the one and only Bible.  Believing in one Bible doesn’t require an apology.  That belief is a true one.

An Apology

Mark Ward just wrote the following:

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

Then he explained the reason:

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.

In part one, I examined Ward’s charge of division for which he prays for an apology.  Above you can also see he charges men with not telling the truth.  That I know of, I haven’t taught anything on this subject that isn’t true.  No one has shown me one thing that I’ve said that is false, which is an important prerequisite for apologizing about saying something not true.  That’s all I can say on that part as an answer to Mark Ward’s prayer.  He’ll have to get more specific with me if he wants that particular apology.  I’m a phone call away for any apology if he’s been praying for one.

Logic and Ambiguity

In recent days, Ward declared that KJVO leaders sin for having the KJV as their church Bible.  For you reading, who don’t know much about Ward, this explains his use of 1 Corinthians 14.  There is a kind of syllogism that with Ward gets this to the sin category for me and others.  I’m trying to help you understand Ward’s thinking here.  I’ve made his logic into a syllogism.

Major Premise:  Knowing to do good and not doing good is sin.
Minor Premise:  Edification is good and because unintelligibility prohibits edification, allowing or causing unintelligibility is not doing good.
Conclusion:  Therefore, allowing or causing unintelligibility is sin.

I can agree with the soundness of the syllogism.  What’s wrong?  There’s an informal logical fallacy called, equivocation.

The equivocation fallacy refers to the use of an ambiguous word or phrase in more than one sense within the same argument. Because this change of meaning happens without warning, it renders the argument invalid or even misleading.

Intelligibility and unintelligibility of themselves are ambiguous.  Like many other words and even concepts in scripture, someone can make them mean what he wants them to mean.  A believer should define a word in scripture based on how the author uses it.  Mark Ward defines intelligibility in a particular way that does not fit 1 Corinthians 14.  Many people have explained that to him.  I haven’t seen him listen on this and almost anything else.  He has a bias toward his own thinking.

Language and 1 Corinthians 14

Paul portrayed a situation in 1 Corinthians 14 where someone spoke in an unknown language.  People couldn’t understand it without a translator.  Only with an accurate translation could someone understand a foreign language.  The conclusion:  stop speaking in an unknown or foreign language.  There it is.

1 Corinthians 14 is in a three chapter section (12-14) on spiritual gifts.  It especially deals with an abuse of the gift of tongues.  The actual gift of tongues, as seen in Acts 2, means known languages.  The point is understanding the language.  Those chapters are not about semantical changes in the same language, but about reining in the abuse of tongues.

Semantic changes occur in the Bible itself and the Bible doesn’t sin when it does that or allows it.  Words change in meaning as one reads through the Bible itself.  Sometimes the progression of the biblical narrative results in some changes in meaning.

I’m not writing to protect semantic changes in an English translation of God’s perfectly preserved words.  We want to know what those words mean and all the other ones too.  1 Corinthians 14 deals mainly with speaking in gibberish, that is, in a language that can’t be know at all.  It’s not even a language.  That doesn’t edify.

Real Concerns

Even if someone spoke an actual foreign language in a miraculous way, he wouldn’t edify the hearers if they didn’t know the language.  That or unintelligible gibberish is the context of verse 9, when Paul says, “utter by the tongue words easy to be understood.”  He is not talking about a word here and there of the same language as the hearers, which has endured a semantic change.  Edification would still occur with that.  I’m not saying it’s not a problem.  It is.  But it isn’t a sin.

Calling sin the continued endorsement of the King James Version as the English Bible for a church is such an exaggeration, so excessive, by Mark Ward, that it reminds me of the games Pharisees played with words, as recorded in the Gospels.  It is blowing a concern way out of proportion.

I’ve written a lot about this through the years, but my bigger concern is a distortion of the gospel and perverted preaching.  Many, many who use the King James Version for decades and longer have preached a false gospel and now for half a century at least have just used the King James.  It’s not because of archaic words that they do this.  They do it because of perverted theology and probably in many instances a lack of conversion.  I hear almost nothing about that from Mark Ward.  No.  Even when he is with someone who massacres the true gospel, he says nothing as long as that person gives an inch on his false friend teaching.

More to Come