James White is a hero to many modern Calvinists, including
Reformed Baptists. White takes frequent hits at those, even among the Reformed crowd,
who hold to the “King James Only” position on the Bible. I admit that the
groups that hold to KJV Only are diverse and some of the positions held on the
KJV go much too far. However, there are legitimate arguments for the
exclusive use of the King James Version of the Bible. In this article I want to
address White’s arguments against the exclusive use of the King James Bible and offer a few answers.
His argument, as I understand it, against using the King James Version of the
Bible exclusively:
A key
passage, Psalms 12[1]
is, according to him, misused.
This argument appeals to the academic but denies the spirit of
God's Word. The Bible, and especially the Psalms, is filled with passages where
the context appears to be one thing but there are obvious secondary lessons
found in them. How would we have ever seen the allegory of Sarah and Hagar
using strictly academic context? Yet we know the allegory is authoritative. So
many of the Psalms jump from a Davidic context to prophesy clearly of the
Saviour. There are too many passages that promise the first infallible
preservation of God's Word to deny that this passage must also be included
among them.
Interestingly, I have not heard White or anyone else for that
matter, cite a passage suggesting that God would, as they claim He has done,
preserve His infallible Word through a variety of corrupted but reliable enough
manuscripts.
KJV
onlyists must isolate the one KJV text that is the infallible one.
By insisting upon this, White demands of us what he claims is
not necessary for himself: one perfect text. He claims to believe that we have
the word of a God and that no Word of God has been lost. He just claims that it
exists among thousands of manuscripts that don't agree. The scholar gets then
the job of choosing for the masses what is the Word of God and what is not. He
sets himself up in a place of perpetual awe before his inferiors who must wait
upon him to declare for them what God has said.
My claim is that the KJV is the infallible word of God in fact.
There may be editions with errors, but there is no error in the KJV as God
illuminated the translators to record it.
KJV
onlyists ignore historical fact to hold their traditional view of the Bible.
My claim is that White ignores the nature of God to hold his
presumptive view that the Bible must contain errors that scholars may be
employed to ferret out. I would rather side with God that He has preserved His
Word perfectly than with historians who are inherently fallible and admittedly
biased.
White
dismisses the KJV only position as indefensible in the real world.
This of course is a matter of opinion. He claims he has taken
his position into the world through debates with Muslims, atheists, Mormons and
others. My observation, having listened now to numerous of his debates, has
been that White claims himself to be the winner of these debates but that they
are structured in such a way that both sides can make that claim if they
choose.
White is the sort of man who, I doubt, ever sees himself as
loosing.
Conclusion
White's position appears to me to be loosely based upon his
understanding of the key texts and much more dependent upon his understanding
of the history of the transmission of the Bible. He has a compelling motivation
to forever keep the Bible in a state of incomplete perfection. It preserves his
importance as a textual authority.
[1] White, who claims to
dislike listening to people he believes yells too much, is himself very loud spoken
and in very loud tones mockingly corrects those who would call the address
Psalms 12 instead of Psalm 12. The fact is that many scholars past and present
refer to a single address in the Psalms using the title of the book as a whole
in the address. It is not an error to do so, it is rather one of White’s ways
of belittling and marginalizing the person with whom he disagrees.
