Multiversions
Onlyism
By Dr. Jeffrey Khoo
Academic Dean, Far Eastern Bible
College & Seminary
March 10, 2007
King James Onlyism[1]—a
new book by James D Price of Temple Baptist Seminary—joins the ranks of
fundamentalist books like From the Mind of God to the Mind of Man
(1999), One Bible Only? (2001), and God’s Word in Our Hands
(2003), in attacking the Biblical doctrine of the verbal and plenary
preservation (VPP) of the Holy Scriptures, and the faithful, logical
identification of the divinely preserved texts to be the Hebrew Masoretic Text
and the Greek Textus Receptus on which the King James Version (KJV) is based.[2]
Price’s Multiversions Onlyism book
was printed with the help of Rev Yap Beng Shin, a Bible-Presbyterian (BP)
minister, who earned his MDiv from Temple Baptist Seminary under Price’s
tutelage. Rev Yap was one of the 11 signers of a statement against the VPP of
the Holy Scriptures.[3]
Besides Rev Yap, the other signers were Rev Philip Heng, Rev Ong Hock Khee, Rev
Tan Eng Boo, Rev Charles Seet, Rev Colin Wong, Rev Anthony Tan, Rev Tan Choon
Seng, Rev Eric Kwan, Rev Eddy Lim, and Rev Yap Kim Sin. I would assume that
Price’s book is not only recommended by Rev Yap but also these other BP
ministers who stand with him. For those looking for reasons why the KJV ought to
be replaced with modern versions, Price’s book is better than most.
Price’s involvement in the VPP/TR/KJV
debate in Singapore went as far back as 2002 when he wrote a critique of my
paper, “A Plea for a Perfect Bible.”[4]
His critique was circulated among BP churches and members, and grossly
misrepresented my position on the VPP of Scriptures by making it purely a
translational (English and KJV) issue when it was primarily a textual and
doctrinal one (100% inspired and 100% preserved Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek words
underlying the faithful and accurate KJV on the basis of the twin doctrines of
the VPI and VPP of the Holy Scriptures, Ps 12:6-7, Matt 5:18, 24:35 etc).
Price’s critique heightened the confusion among BP members and churches
concerning VPP. I wrote a response to Price’s review of my paper and clarified
what I meant by VPP.[5]
But Price does not seem to care
about accurate and truthful reporting for he continues to misrepresent and
caricature pro-KJV or KJV-superiority advocates as Ruckmanites and Seventh-Day
Adventists (SDA).[6]
He insinuates that Presbyterian and Harvard scholar Edward F Hills, and David
Otis Fuller, a founding leader of the International Council of Christian
Churches (ICCC), and D A Waite, President of the Dean Burgon Society believe in
the inspiration of the English words of the KJV when they are actually talking
about the inspiration and preservation of the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek words on
which the KJV is based.[7]
Such slanders did not begin with Price, but with Doug Kutilek who is quoted and
praised by Price in his book.[8]
If Hills, Fuller and Waite are Ruckmanites and SDAs for promoting the KJV as the
best and only faithful English Bible today, then the Trinitarian Bible Society
and the Bible League, which promote and defend the KJV and consider not only the
modern versions but also the NKJV to be unreliable, should be implicated too.
Price unjustly paints with a broad
brush, and by so doing creates confusion and scepticism among the believers.
Anyone reading Price’s anti-KJV book
would likely lose confidence in the KJV and be filled with doubts over the
faithfulness and accuracy of the KJV, and its underlying Hebrew and Greek texts.
If a Multiversions Only advocate wishes to discourage a KJV user from using the
KJV, Price’s book might just do the trick. Price spared no effort to show that
the KJV is full of mistakes. A young or undiscerning reader might be stumbled
and deceived, especially if he does not start with Scripture itself and believe
in God’s promise of special providence in preserving His inspired Hebrew,
Aramaic and Greek words on which the KJV is based, and how the KJV is a faithful
and accurate translation of those providentially preserved Hebrew, Aramaic and
Greek words.
According to Price, the KJV is only
one version among many good and even better versions. To him, the use of the KJV
should be a matter of preference and not principle. Price would deem all who
affirm the KJV as “the best, most faithful, most accurate, most beautiful
translation of the Bible in the English language, and employ it alone as [their]
primary scriptural text in the public reading, preaching, and teaching of the
English Bible” to be divisive or schismatic (some even say heretical!).[9]
Price ought to be reminded that Truth does divide (eg, John 10:19). For
instance, the Biblical doctrine that a man can only be saved by grace alone,
through faith alone, in Christ alone, based on Scripture alone, is surely
schismatic and divisive. There are no two ways about it. Jesus said, “Think not
that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword”
(Matt 10:34). This “sword” is a sword of division or separation. Does Price
believe this? Does Price who hails from a fundamentalist seminary not teach
separation from modernism, ecumenism, charismatism, and neo-evangelicalism? Why
is he singing an inclusive, pluralistic, and syncretistic tune by commending and
recommending the use of ecumenical, liberal, neo-evangelical, and feminist
versions of the Bible which will only compromise and confuse the clear testimony
of the Word of God and the Lord Jesus Christ? It must be said that the KJV,
being a Reformation Bible, is a separatist Bible. No wonder it is so disliked,
even hated, by non- or anti-separatists!
Now, we do not discount the fact
that the modern, neo-evangelical and ecumenical versions which are based on the
corrupt texts and/or use the dynamic equivalence method may contain enough
gospel to convict and convert the sinner (according to God’s election), but this
does not make them the “Word of God.” They may contain the Word of God like
tracts and commentaries do, but they can hardly be regarded as the very Word of
God for they stem from the corrupt text of theological liberals, Westcott and
Hort, who denied the historicity of the first three chapters of Genesis, the
total inerrancy of the Holy Scriptures, and other fundamental doctrines of the
Christian Faith.
Price wants Christians to be
uncertain or agnostic about the precise location of God’s Word. He says, “The
Bible, like all other things in life, has a measure of uncertainty associated
with the identity, the exposition, the interpretation, and the meaning of its
text. Sound reason has shown that this uncertainty provides no practical basis
for doubting the authenticity or authority of Scripture; instead, reason
provides the stepping stone for faith to move beyond uncertainty to full
confidence in God’s Word.”[10]
In other words, faith must depend on reason (“the stepping stone for faith”) to
give it confidence in God’s Word. Such a thinking is unbiblical to say the
least. Faith does not rest on human reason at all, but on the Word of God alone
(Sola Scriptura). Price has placed
corrupt and imperfect human reason above the incorruptible and perfect Word of
God. He is calling Christians to have faith in human reason and human methods
(eg, textual criticism) for their faith to be sure, for he reasons that reason
can give certainty to faith if only we have confidence in it. Price who adopts
human reason as a superior, or an equal/additional authority to Scriptures
proves the point that reason will only lead to uncertainty, even unbelief. It
goes without saying that Price’s epistemology is utterly wrongheaded.
Biblical fideism, on the other hand,
gives rise to certainty not to be repented of. The Apostle Peter tells us that
our faith and knowledge must be based on the words of our Lord Jesus Christ,
“Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe
and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God” (John
6:68-69). The Apostle Paul likewise said, “So then faith cometh by hearing, and
hearing by the word of God” (Rom 10:16).The Bible is not “like other things in
life” as Price would have us believe. The Bible is unique and incomparable;
there is nothing like it on earth and God forbid that we should belittle it by
making it subservient to human reason and methods, and “other things in life.”
The Bible is perspicuous and not as “uncertain” as Price thinks. It is unbelief
that makes the perspicuous Bible uncertain to man, and may we not be unbelieving
(John 8:43-47, Mark 16:14, Luke 24:25, 27).
Price’s book rings an uncertain and
ungodly sound. It is a mixed bag of truth and error, facts and falsehoods. For
example, he states truthfully when he says that Hills, Fuller, Waite and Cloud
insist on the Textus Receptus (TR) underlying the KJV as the “providentially
preserved authoritative text of Scripture,” or what he calls “the autographic
text.”[11] But the
next moment he states a falsehood by saying that those men believe “it is the
English words that determine the words of the Hebrew and Greek texts, not the
Hebrew and Greek words that determine the English.”[12]
By so twisting the doctrine of VPP, he makes the above men look like they
believe in an “inspired KJV,” that the English is superior to the Hebrew and the
Greek, a position none of them advocate. Having painted TR-only preservationists
unfairly with such ugly colours, he then puts his finishing touches to his
distorted picture by making them look like Ruckman.[13]
Such a below-the-belt tactic Price had well learned from Kutilek.[14]
Price charges the KJV for giving an
“uncertain sound” quoting 1 Corinthians 14:8-9, but does not realise that he is
guilty of it himself when he insists that there can be no certainty whatsoever
as regards the identification of the Perfect Word of God today. Where are God’s
infallible and inerrant words today? Well it is somewhere out there, but nobody
can tell for sure precisely where.[15]
Without knowing where God’s infallible and inerrant words are, how can we live
by His every word (Matt 4:4)?
Price is annoyed that preachers
should have “to waste time explaining archaic words, phrases, and idioms.”[16]
Singapore’s first chief minister, David Marshall, who had for his English
textbook the KJV, would have scorned at Price’s puerile criticisms of the KJV.
There are only about 200 archaic words in the KJV. These old words comprise only
0.1% of the KJV. The Oxford, Webster, Chambers dictionaries contain entries for
most of these archaic words. The Defined King James Bible
has the meanings of all the archaic words footnoted. They are not that difficult
to look up and learn. Moreover, to be educated with the King’s English is hardly
a waste of time.
Price spurns a One Bible or KJV Only
position and advocates a Modern Versions or Multiple Versions Only position. To
Price, every version has its positive and negative points, and so “it is wrong
to suppose that only one translation is adequate for all purposes.”[17]
I suppose he would spurn an NIV Only, or NASB Only, or NKJV Only position as
well, but he does not say so explicitly, but one thing is obvious, he attacks
the KJV more than any other version. According to Price’s doctrine of imperfect
preservation, every Bible (including the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures) contains
mistakes. If there is such a thing as a Perfect Bible, it is only the autographs
which no longer exist, or it is in the sea of multiple manuscripts and versions,
every one of them different and not the same.[18]
As far as Price is concerned, no one should presume to know with absolute
certainty where the 100% infallible and inerrant Scripture today is. It may be
somewhere out there, but precisely where, no believer can tell; the only one who
can even come close to telling would be the textual critic, and even then, he
cannot be dogmatic or absolutely sure. There is just no perfect standard to
judge anything today. This logic of Price is the same kind of logic that turned
once-upon-a-time fundamentalist—Bart Ehrman—into an agnostic.[19]
Where is the Bible? The Bible is nowhere, and so is God!
This Anti-KJV book of Price would be
excellent for those seeking to (1) oppose the Reformed Faith, the Reformation
Text, and the VPP of Scripture; (2) discourage the use of the faithful and
accurate, time-tested and time-honoured KJV; and (3) push for modern versions to
replace the KJV in the church. Any anti-VPP church which embraces the anti-KJV
views of Price, and sees the use of the KJV as only a matter of preference and
not principle, will ultimately give up the KJV to embrace the modern versions
which are based on corrupted texts. May true and faithful Protestant,
Reformation, and Fundamental believers and churches beware!
[1]
James D Price, King James Onlyism: A New Sect (No place: No publisher, 2006),
i-xii, 1-658.
[2]
For reviews/critiques, see my papers, “Bob Jones University and the KJV: A
Critique of From the Mind of God to the Mind of Man,” The Burning Bush 7 (2001):
1-34; “The Emergence of Neo-Fundamentalism: One Bible Only? or ‘Yea Hath God
Said?’,” The Burning Bush 10 (2004): 2-47; and “A Critique of God’s Word in Our
Hands: The Bible Preserved for Us,” The Burning Bush 11 (2005): 20-34.
[3]
See “A Statement on the Theory of Verbal Plenary Preservation (VPP)” Life
Bible-Presbyterian Weekly, September 25, 2005.
[4]
Jeffrey Khoo, “A Plea for a Perfect Bible,” The Burning Bush 9 (2003): 1-15.
[5]
“My Reply to James D Price’s Review of ‘A Plea for a Perfect Bible’” can be read
from the Dean Burgon Society website at
http://www.deanburgonsociety.org/Preservation/price.htm.
[6]
Price, King James Onlyism, 4, 209, 420.
[7]
Ibid, 17-18, 131-132.
[8]
Ibid, 7.
[9]
Ibid, 421
[10]
Ibid, 415.
[11]
Ibid, 16.
[12]
Ibid, 17.
[13]
Ibid, 17, 420.
[14] “Doug
Kutilek, “The Background and Origin of the Version Debate,” in One Bible Only?
ed Roy E Beacham and Kevin T Bauder (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2001), 27-56.
[15]
Price, King James Onlyism, 395-416.
[16]
Ibid , 421.
[17]
Ibid, 312.
[18] Ibid,
128.
[19]
Bart D Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why
(New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 11-12.
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