King James Only-ism (ft. Dr. Mark Ward)

Welcome back, everybody. Today is Thursday, March the 30th. I'm Ryan Hill. I'm John Galantis. And you're listening to Clearview Today with Dr. Abbadon Shah, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. You can find us online at ClearviewTodayShow.com. If you have a question for Dr. Shah or a suggestion for a future episode, send us a text, 2525825028. You can also email us at contact at ClearviewTodayShow.com.

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We've said all this, what now? If God is for us, who can be against us? Right, and it's a given that God is for you. If you're his child, and if he's gone to such great lengths to purchase your pardon, to purchase your freedom with the blood of his son, then is he going to refuse you what's good and what's righteous and what's holy?

If you pray for something and his answer is no, then guess what? That's for your good. That's for your eternal well-being.

Yeah, that's the key there. God's not going to refuse us something that is for our good. Sometimes our good doesn't match up with what we think our good is. What we want, right. But God knows, in his perfect plan, what is for our good.

That's right. So, we want to get right into the content today. We've got a special guest planned for you today. I'm excited. I've been in the works for a while.

I know. It's going to be a great episode today. We're going to get Dr. Shah and bring in our special guest in just a minute. But if you have any questions or suggestions for new topics, send us a text at 252-582-5028, or visit us online at cleaviewtodayshow.com.

We'll be right back. Well, good morning, afternoon, evening, Clearview Today listeners. My name is Jon.

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I'm just playing. Keep listening. Dr. Shah is actually the lead pastor of Clearview Church in North Carolina. Every single weekend, he preaches expository messages that challenge and inspire us to live God-honoring lives. Well, one of the four core values of Clearview Church is that we're a Bible-believing church. So every sermon is coming directly from Scripture, which is great because that guarantees that there are timeless truths that are constantly applicable to our lives. This is a great resource because whether you're driving, whether you're cleaning the house, whether you're working out, you can always benefit from hearing the Word of God spoken into your life. And God's Word is always going to do something new for you every time you hear it.

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Those are available on Dr. Shah's website, AbbadonShah.com. And we're going to leave you guys a little link in the description so you can follow it. But for right now, David, let's hop back in. All right. And we're so glad to have you here, Dr. Ward. Thank you for being here with us. Thank you so much. It's really an honor to be with you.

I've been looking forward to this for a long time. Well, my introduction to Dr. Ward came about when we had Dr. Peter Gurri and Dr. Meade here for our apologetics conference back in 2019. And he sent me a word of compliment. He just said, you know, so great that you interviewed Dr. Gurri and talked about, you know, all the things that pass for textual criticism when they're really not.

And sometimes even, you know, even our own guys, the apologists, are using data or principles that really have been outdated and people on the other side, sometimes even the Muslim apologists, right, are calling us down and they have better information and more accurate stuff than we do. And so that book is definitely a corrective that we all need to read. We connected a little bit and then Dr. Robinson and I talked about it and he has a lot of nice things to say about you.

So, Dr. Ward. Oh, that's fantastic. Glad to hear it. I know we have a mutual friend in Elijah Hickson too. Elijah and I have done a lot together with the Textual Confidence Collective. That's right.

That's right. Yeah, Elijah is a great guy. Very cool. Well, you know, we want to get into this topic of discussion around the text. Specifically, people who hold the King James only view. And, you know, Dr. Ward, we watched your documentary in kind of preparation for this episode, kind of learning more about you and what it is that you do. And you point out in that documentary that a lot of people, a lot of the issues surrounding this King James only debate, this is something that's been going on for a long time. It's something that, you know, people hold those positions very strongly. And it's something that we want to, you know, dive into today, discuss.

Dr. I know your background is, you know, Byzantine priority and you favor the new King James. So we want to discuss that a little bit more today. Well, I think even with translations, like translations, they're still the Word of God, but where's all this fear of not having the right translation come from? Right, right. And, you know, translations are still the Word of God. They're also inspired in there and to the extent that they represent the original text. So that's where textual criticism comes in to the extent.

And that is a working field. So, yeah, yeah, I like the Byzantine priority, but I'm not ever going to say, hey, do you have the NIV? That's the translation from hell. Get it out of here. Things like that have happened to me. One time I was doing a funeral at a church and I was ready. I was focused. I was a young pastor, so I didn't know what I was doing as much. So I'm ready to walk up the steps.

And the pastor stops me and says, not with that Bible. Really? Yeah. Oh, man. Like right before. Oh, yeah. Yeah. As long as you use the King James, that's all right.

But if not, that's not going to work. I had someone tell me one time the NIV was the never intended version. I thought it was like a joke. I was like 16. I was like, oh, ha ha ha.

Then I failed. They were serious. Oh, yeah. They were very serious. Yeah.

I mean, a lot of it is funny. One of my favorite funny stories is also sad. My best friend has a PhD, same institution as I do, and his parents were saved as adults. So we're on a theological journey toward conservative understanding of Scripture.

They left the United Methodist Church. And when my friend was in seventh grade, they finally sent him to a Christian school, good conservative place. And the very first day of school, he put his stuff down on the ground as he's putting other stuff in his locker. And he turns around, and there's a kid jumping up and down on his Bible that he'd left on the floor. Oh, no.

And he said, what are you doing? That's my Bible. And the boy said, that ain't a Bible.

That's an NIV. Oh, man. And that was his introduction to the King James only debate. And let me say that the YouTube comments are not always better than the rhetorical persuasiveness and intellectual level of that seventh grader. Sometimes they are, though. I do have some defenders of the King James in TR who are a lot more intelligent than that.

Wouldn't be too hard. And I have had some good discussion with them. But yes, there's a lot of silliness out there, a lot of ignorance. This whole idea of preservation of the text is extending God's, the Holy Spirit's inspiration on the biblical authors or the New Testament authors onto the scribes. And that's never promised. That was never promised that the scribes would have the same level. I mean, the scribe could have been a lost person in Rome or in Alexandria, just copying the text. He may not have even been a Christian, but he was probably commissioned by somebody to copy. I'm just coming up with a conjecture here. But we're expecting the scribe to have the same inspiration that, say, Matthew or Mark or Luke or John or Paul or Peter did. And that's ludicrous. Why would we expect that?

I fully agree. You know, the more sophisticated King James only is, I think they have, and this is the mainstream here, the people who say that the Greek text especially, that's the real issue we're debating here. They will make a parallel between the argument that I assume all of us would make for inerrancy.

And that is basically the slippery slope argument, which I think goes way back. You know, if you admit one error, then how do you know any of it is true? There could be errors all over the place. They take that argument that I think most of us tend to use for biblical inerrancy, and they apply it to textual criticism. The history, you know, I don't need to tell you, but your viewers out there who aren't familiar, the history of the transmission of manuscripts of the Greek New Testament and of the Hebrew Bible. And, you know, what do we do when those manuscripts differ in little places as they do?

And I found that one to be a little bit more difficult to answer because I am an industrial strength biblical inerrantist. I believe that every word of God proves true. But I've had to go where you just went, Dr. Shaw, that everything God does is right. Actually, Peter Gurry said this to me at a textual criticism conference in Dallas not too long ago, but that doesn't mean that what humans do is perfect, like copying and like translating. And the King James translators themselves say in their preface, I've got the King James right here put out by the Trinitarian Bible Society, which is a major King James only organization, and the preface, they say that you can only have a perfect translation if you have divine inspiration. And I would say the same as you, you can only have a perfect text if God inspires those scribes, and the Bible never says that God's going to do that. But I think a combination of the strong tradition of the use of the King James in English speaking churches, along with the sense I described earlier that in order for us to have a Bible at all, it has to be perfect in every respect, not just perfect in inspiration as all Orthodox Christian believers believe, you know, lowercase o, but also perfect in transmission down through the ages and perfect in translation.

And then actually, one of my professors at Bob Jones and my PhD program, Bob Bell, just a fantastically humorous guy, brilliant. He pointed out when I gave a lecture on this a while back and honored me with his attendance, my own teacher, he said, the next step is looking for, you know, a perfect interpretation. What good is having a Bible if we don't have a perfect interpretation? I don't think King James only is on its way to Rome. But that impulse that I've described, I think is what causes people to hold so tightly to the King James version. Yeah, I mean, and you know, the opposite side, we're talking about the Bart Ehrmans or the David Parker or whoever, you know, and I don't want to mention more names, get in trouble for that. But they are quick to point out the textual variants and Bart Ehrman's famous statement, you know, there are more variants in the text than there are even words in the New Testament Greek text.

When our people or our students go off to a college or university, and they sit there and they hear that, I mean, inevitably, they're thinking, does my pastor not know this? Or are they lying? Are they covering up? Am I right on that? I mean, doesn't that cause more problems down the road than to pretend that everything is good? I agree, right? And the flesh, you know, wants for nothing to commit sin.

So we've got ditches on either side. One would be what you described, that you've got pastors who don't mention textual criticism, and therefore, those students who go off to college and are exposed to the truth of it, and you can see it with your own two eyes. If you study any Greek, you can see the differences in manuscripts with your own two eyes.

And they might go back and wonder, you know, was my pastor hiding something from me? That can lead people to, you know, have doubts, to struggle with their faith in Scripture. On the other hand, there are people who take, Christian people that I believe are true Christians, who take the existence of these minor manuscript variants, you know, did the wise men come and find baby Jesus, or did they come and see baby Jesus? That's an actual, you know, variant pair in the New Testament manuscript history. And they call, you know, Defcon 9, or I don't know my military terminology, and they're raising the alarm that one of these has to be corrupted and the other pure. It's got to be perfect, or even in textual transmission, or it's not God's word.

But yeah, I agree with you. And I was asking you actually before this interview, and I'd love to hear more of your thoughts, especially as a pastor, which I have been for years and years to, you know, very involved in church. And I've taught textual criticism in my church. I'm about to do it in another area church in October. It's something I'd like to continue to do because I see this problem.

I feel like people need to be inoculated. But about one of the strongest points, I think that the King James and TR defenders, Texas Receptus defenders, that's the Greek New Testament underlying the King James. Very broadly speaking, it's more technical than that.

But anyway, one of the best points I think they make is the pragmatic one, the practical one. That the existence of multiple translations, which is in part due to the existence of multiple manuscripts, that's not the only reason, and the existence of multiple different editions of the Greek New Testament. I've got two of them right here. Here's the Texas Receptus underlying the King James. It's a nice new edition of it.

It's pretty well done. And then here's the classic critical text, the N.A. I guess this one I've got is the 27, but I have the N.A.

28 in Logos, of course. The very existence of these things is upsetting to people. So let's all, you know, sure, let the scholars talk about that. But laypeople should not be told about these things.

They should have one common standard in their own language. And of course, that should be the King James. I'd like to hear more from you, Dr. Shaw.

Can I interview for a second? How do you as a textual critic and as a pastor respond to that? For one, it does more damage to our people or our students or our young generation to hear from somebody else that there are textual variants. And they are not just, you know, sometimes we even say, you know, oh, no doctrine is affected.

That's not true. No major doctrine is affected. We need to clarify that no major doctrine that's going to impact your salvation is affected by these variants. Bart Ehrman's book, whether it's Miss Coding Jesus or The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, we have answers for them.

We're not clueless sitting here. So at least in my preaching and teaching time and again, I will bring up a textual variant. You can see some people just look at me, you know, from their pews as if, what are you talking about? Is my Bible not the word of God? But I'd rather tell them from my mouth than they hear it on television or National Geographic or during Christmas and Easter from Times Magazine about all the problems that are in the New Testament text. I'd rather tell them and say, there are some very diligent people who truly love Jesus Christ. I may not 100 percent agree with them regarding the variants, but they're not here heretics. They're not out to demolish Christianity.

They are working on this thing and have been for hundreds of years now. Sometimes the other side, you know, talks about the Westcott and Hord and how they were just lost. It's terrible. That's not right. You know, and so I try to explain to people best I can some of these textual variants. Also explain to them about the whole formal equivalent versus functional equivalent and how this idea that this is the only word for word is the King James.

Everybody else is, you know, messing with the evidence. Dynamic equivalent, right. Interpreting, right. And I'm like, that's false.

You can't keep teaching that. The only word for word is here. Everybody else, NASB, NIV, CSB, ESV, they're all just tampering with the text. If you really want to talk about it, let's talk about the manuscripts behind it. Let's talk about the eclectic text versus the Byzantine text if you want to get detail. But don't just make it look like fudge the lines between, you know, manuscripts and functional and formal equivalent and just, here you go.

King James is better. And it's like, what just happened here? Yeah, it's a mess out there in the argument, in the public argument. And one of the things that's really stuck with me, I have a friend. Actually, he was my Greek teacher in undergrad and now he's a missionary to Australia. And he had me come over and do a series of lectures, sermons, whatever, at a camp on biblical worldview. That's another topic that I spent a lot of time on. I used to be a textbook author for BJU Press. Oh, wow.

It was a really wonderful job. Yeah, so King James onlyism is the only thing I know. That's what my kids think. They think, my son told me, you couldn't be a teacher, dad, because all you know about is the King James. No, I think you're brave enough to take on the King James only problem.

I think that's why, it's not that that's just your niche. I think it's your courage that you're doing that because sometimes it is, I've been frustrated with that, because I had a guy who would write me long letters and just tear down my sermons about this, this, and this. And I'm going, this is all you got from my messages, the version of the Bible? And I'm using New King James. I mean, so for goodness sakes, I was like, I'm not answering you again.

So for you to actually take the time to deal with this, I'm glad somebody is. Well, I just have to say it's not courage because they can't do anything to me. All they can do is insult me. It's love, brothers.

It's love. I love these brothers and sisters. They raised me. My parents were not King James only, but we were in a King James only church. My parents were saved as adults.

They didn't really understand the issues. They do now because they watch my channel and my dad has gone on and done a lot more reading in New Testament history. After he got his own PhD when he was an empty nester, which I think is pretty cool. Yeah, he's a, he's a professor now, but, um, yeah, those, those folks, they treated me well. They loved me. They loved Christ. They love the Bible.

And I just can't be bitter against them. A lot of these brothers and sisters really do read their Bibles, their King James Bibles. And over time, over a lifetime, they become familiar with it. It stops seeming foreign to them because they read it every day and like more power to them. That's awesome. I, I think that that familiarity is a big reason why they, they stick with, they don't see it.

Another is that most people don't understand language change. Moises Silva is one of my favorite, you know, evangelical writers. He's actually a graduate of Bob Jones as I am.

I'm really proud of him. And he has this great book, biblical words in their meeting and somewhere in there or some other book, he says the vast majority of people have next to no knowledge of the history of their own language. And I have definitely found that to be the case. They don't understand language change in English, let alone in other languages, which, and it actually happens in Greek and Hebrew. And you can actually see evidence of that in the old and new testaments and my ministry, such as, as it is on YouTube and in, you know, other things that I've done.

I'm trying to help lay people and pastors typically understand the effects of language change on our ability today to understand the archaic English of the King James. I'm trying to show them places where not just, there are words, you know, you don't know, like be some, yeah, we don't know what a BSM is. Well, it's a broom.

You can look that up, but there are words that you don't know. You don't know. That's my false friends.

And that's my major contribution actually to this device. You know, what you said is so true. It's sort of ironic, but people who do espouse to the KJV only view are usually very evangelistic.

Yes. They are, from what my experience has been. I mean, they want to see souls saved. I mean, they want people to love the word of God.

So it's kind of very interesting that, that they're not just preserving an ancient text or translation. No, they actually want to see people get saved. They want that. So I think it's what you're doing, your videos, your talk, this conversation would hopefully help them maybe take baby steps and go, I don't think these people are going to take me down a dark alley and abandon me.

And then, then I find out I get mugged. Give me all your manuscripts right now. Put them in the bag by all the, the, the, you know, the, the liberals out there, you know, and it feels safe and go, wait, I think it's okay.

Absolutely. And let me say right here, in case any brothers in the King James only world world are listening. I, I know you enough, Dr. Shaw to know, and all of our friends would, you know, in the evangelical conservative textual criticism world, we believe that there's a slippery slope toward liberalism too. There is such a thing as theological liberalism and we do not want to go there. But we're saying it's not theological liberalism to tell the truth, to point out what, what the Lord has actually preserved for us. You know, the King James only movement is so concerned to talk about the text that God has preserved. Well, what did he preserve? It's what we call in the biz, the extant manuscripts. And he's the one who chose to leave us with manuscripts that differ in these minor particulars.

I give a lot of examples on kjvparallelbible.org and I effectively in a way give all the examples, you know, between the two major Greek texts on that website. I'm trying to help people see actually that the similarities far outweigh the differences and the differences themselves are typically so incredibly minor. I just cannot believe that it's wrong to tell people the truth about that. And there's one thing I want to add to this, and I call it the Genesis fallacy, but it has nothing to do with the book of Genesis. Genesis fallacy is that if the person who went after researching the manuscripts or the variants or put those text types together, if they don't line up line by line in their confession of faith with us, then we cannot use their works. And I have to, I have to remind people, yes, they may not line up with me when it comes to my beliefs, but if their work is good and it's objective, I can use their research, but I'm not condoning or somehow promoting their views or their ideas about theology. Am I right on that?

I mean, just like medical people, we can buy equipment from certain pharmaceuticals or companies, but it doesn't mean I have to espouse the same worldview, correct? People treat the Bible as if, like you described, the fact that a sinner touched it, you know, corrupts it and it's no longer sacred. Well, newsflash, every single Bible translation there is has been touched by sinners. And guess what? The one you're holding is currently being touched by a sinner because that's what you are.

One of my professors said the problems caused for my Bible interpretation by the variants in the Greek New Testament or Hebrew Bible are far less than the problems for my Bible interpretation caused by my own sin. And I absolutely believe that. That's right. That's right.

That's a good point. Beautiful. That's amazing. And one of the things that I appreciate so much about you, Dr. Shah, and you, Dr. Ward, is that you communicated through this entire interview, through this entire show, two things.

Number one, a genuine love for the text, a genuine love for God's word, and a genuine love for people, a genuine concern and compassion for people wanting to see them understand God's word and apply it to their lives. If you guys enjoyed today's episode or you have any questions or suggestions for future episodes, make sure you send us a text at 252-582-5028. Or you can visit us online at ClearviewTodayShow.com and you can partner with us financially on that same website. Every gift that you give goes not only to building up this radio show but countless other ministries for the kingdom of God. Dr. Ward, thank you so much for being on today's episode. We normally end the episode with a question.

I have one for Dr. Shah for you and then for you, Dr. Ward, if you guys don't mind. I was just thinking about this as we were going about the episode, so this is my user-submitted question for today. If you have a loved one in your life—maybe it's a family member, maybe it's a friend— who is of the King James-only standpoint, viewpoint, how do you, in love, begin this or engage in this conversation with them? What are some practical steps?

What are some strategies for engaging them and pointing them toward truth but doing so in love? Oh, well, I have dedicated much of my life for the last five years and more, really, to hopefully being the answer to that question. I would love for my resources to be out there. And lest anyone be concerned that I'm only doing this for the money, I've put hours and hours and hours and hours over years into my YouTube channel putting all of my materials out freely for everybody. That's very, very important to me. And then my book, Authorized and Documentary, which is now also available freely on YouTube. It was done by Faithlife Films.

Faithlife is the maker of Logos Bible software. Those are resources that I hope will be gentle, a little bit humorous, enjoyable, a little nerdy, and yet accessible to people. I don't talk about textual criticism, and that's my last piece of advice. Do not talk about textual criticism. Sorry, Dr. Shaw. I love textual criticism.

Save that for later. Talk about readability. 1 Corinthians 14 says edification requires intelligibility. We need Bibles that we can actually read in our own language. And I offer talking points to people who need to reach out to their King James only brother-in-law. Yeah, I would 100% agree with Dr. Ward. You know, educating yourself is so important.

Watching Clearview today, the books are coming out. All that we're doing is not just to say, hey, you're wrong. We're right. You know, that intellectual elitism, you know, thinking we're better than you. We know more than you.

It doesn't win people over. It's just coming down and saying, hey, Liz, here's what's going on here. And it's safe. It is safe. And you have to trust the Holy Spirit to guide you, because I think we haven't mentioned much about the Holy Spirit. He's also guiding us in this process. And we've seen people here at Clearview soften a little bit and go, okay, it's safe. This guy is not going to make a liberal out of me.

He's not going to make me go worship in a mosque or a temple somewhere. We're all good here. And slowly they relax.

The shoulders relax and they go, oh, wow. And we're seeing people get saved. You see, life's changed. Okay. I think it's okay.

And he's using a different kind of version, but it's okay. So, I mean, it has to come from a place of grace and love. And so I agree wholeheartedly with you on that. And Ryan, I know you weren't expecting this, but I actually have a bit of advice, too.

Oh, yeah. Go for it. Well, I am an expert in this field, as you know. But I'm going to save my advice. My advice is this.

You have to attend an apologetics conference on Bible translations. But here's the rub. You can't just attend any old conference. So because of that, because it's very important, the one that you attend, we're going to have one here at Clearview this fall. That's right. And if schedule works out with Dr. Ward, he will be a guest here. We'll make sure everything's provided for him to be able to attend if it works out. So we're working on that.

That's right. Stay tuned, viewers. We're looking forward to that. Make sure you mark that on your calendars coming up this fall. Apologetics conference right here at Clearview. Dr. Ward, thank you so much again for being on the episode today. We love you guys. We'll see you next time on Clearview Today.