Should We Only Be Using the King James Version?

Question 01001.

KJV Onlyism is the conviction, held in various strengths by various people, that the King James Version of 1611 is the only Bible English-speaking Christians ought to use, and in its harder forms that it alone is the preserved, error-free word of God in the English tongue. I want to handle this whole question with real respect from the outset, because the people who hold it usually do so out of a genuinely high view of Scripture that I warmly share with them.

I love the King James Version, and I want to say so plainly before I weigh anything. I was raised on its stately cadences, I quote it from memory to this day, and I think it one of the noblest achievements of the whole English language. So this is not the complaint of a man who dislikes the old Bible and wants it gone. It is the careful and reluctant judgement of one who honours it deeply and yet cannot finally follow the argument of KJV Onlyism that it stands entirely alone, and I want to show you honestly why.

Naming the Different Positions

The first real kindness in this whole debate is to recognise clearly that KJV Onlyism is not one single position at all but several quite different ones gathered loosely under one name. At the mild end stand believers who simply prefer the King James for its beauty and its long familiarity to them, which is no error whatever and a preference I largely share myself. A little further along the line are those who think it the best available English translation, which is a debatable but entirely respectable opinion to hold.

It is only at the firm and hard end of the spectrum that real difficulty begins to appear. There some go so far as to claim that the King James is itself freshly inspired, inerrant in a way that no other version on earth can ever be, and that to read any other translation at all is to read a corrupted and dangerous Bible. That last claim is the one I must respectfully but firmly oppose, and it is worth saying clearly at the start that disagreeing with the hardest form of KJV Onlyism is not in the least the same as despising the beloved version itself.

The Translation Is Not the Original

The very heart of the whole matter is actually quite simple once it is seen. The Bible was breathed out by God in Hebrew, in Aramaic, and in Greek, and inspiration in the strict sense belongs to those original words as God first gave them. A translation, however excellent and faithful, is a careful carrying over of that inspired text into another language; it is not a fresh and separate act of inspiration laid on top. The translators of 1611 themselves would have been frankly astonished to hear their honest labour called inerrant in a way the underlying Greek and Hebrew supposedly were not.

In their own lengthy preface to the reader, those translators spoke very modestly of their work and warmly commended the reading of other translations besides their own. To make the King James the fixed standard by which the Greek and Hebrew are now to be judged is to turn the whole matter completely on its head. The original languages must judge every translation ever made, including the beloved one of 1611. This is not in the least a low view of the King James; it is rather a high view of the inspired text that lies behind every faithful version, and KJV Onlyism at its strongest quietly reverses that proper God-given order.

The Question of the Underlying Text

Much of this debate really concerns not the English at all but the Greek text that lies behind it, and it helps to say so plainly. The King James New Testament rests upon a body of relatively late medieval manuscripts gathered together in the sixteenth century, a text often called the Received Text. The modern versions draw instead on a wider and older pool of manuscripts discovered since that time, some of them centuries closer to the apostles themselves. The argument of KJV Onlyism very often insists that the older readings are the corruptions and the later ones alone are pure.

The actual evidence simply does not support so tidy and convenient a story. The differences among the various manuscripts are real but genuinely small, and not one single article of the Christian faith rests upon a disputed reading anywhere. I have written more fully on why textual variations exist in the first place and how very little they finally affect us, under that very question. The God who graciously gave the word has also preserved it, not by sealing up a single line of late copies in a vault, but across the great and scattered wealth of manuscripts He has providentially spread through every century of history.

Where KJV Onlyism Breaks Down

Push the very hardest form of KJV Onlyism and it runs almost at once into plain and serious problems it cannot answer. If the King James is the one perfect and inerrant word of God in English, then what exactly were English speakers reading for all the long centuries before 1611, and what of the godly translations that came before it and on which it heavily drew, the Tyndale and the Geneva Bibles among them? And what, more pressingly still, of believers in every other language on earth, who have no King James at all and never will? Were they simply without a true Bible until an English committee finished its work?

The hard claim cannot answer these honest questions without sliding into plain absurdity. The English of 1611 is also now itself four full centuries old, and a great many words within it have quietly shifted their meaning over that time, so that the very clarity the version once offered the simple plough-boy now needs a dictionary at his elbow in places. A translation forever frozen in the Jacobean English of King James cannot possibly be the one and only valid word of God for a watching world that no longer actually speaks that tongue. The argument of KJV Onlyism, pressed to its end, ends up serving the language of the past rather than the souls of the present.

Honouring the Version Rightly

Having said all of that plainly, I will not for a moment have the King James spoken of with contempt in my hearing. It is a magnificent and deeply faithful translation, and a Christian who reads it faithfully all the days of his life will lack absolutely nothing needful for his salvation or his growth in godliness. Its influence upon the English language and upon the whole English-speaking church across four centuries is simply beyond all reckoning, and its dignity and music often far outshine the flatter and more pedestrian modern renderings that have followed it.

So my quarrel here is never with the using of the King James at all, but only and precisely with the further claim that we may use nothing else besides it. A believer may love it and read it freely and joyfully for the whole of his life. What he may not rightly do is unchurch and suspect those brothers and sisters who read the ESV or the NASB or another faithful version, or treat any single translation as though it had floated down ready-made from heaven. To honour the King James warmly is one good thing; to make an idol of it is quite another, and KJV Onlyism too often slides quietly from the first into the second.

The Gift of Many Faithful Translations

I count it a real mercy from God that we have several reliable English translations today, and not a scandal to be lamented. Comparing a careful word-for-word version with a clearer modern rendering will often open up a difficult verse in a way that one alone simply could not. The whole aim of translation, as Paul’s words about all Scripture being theopneustos remind us, is finally that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work, and that great aim is served, not threatened, by faithful labour in every generation of the church.

What actually makes any translation trustworthy is never its age or its fame or its royal pedigree but its plain fidelity to the original languages and its honesty in rendering them into ours. By that proper standard the church in our day is richly and wonderfully served. I use the ESV myself as my standard text, I genuinely treasure the King James alongside it, and I thank God daily that the simple plough-boy of every nation under heaven can now at last read the living word in his own mother tongue. That is a triumph, and the hard form of KJV Onlyism would, against its own best intentions, take it away from him.

A Pastoral Closing Word

If you yourself hold to the King James out of love and long habit, then keep reading it with all joy, and let no one on earth despise you for it or make you feel a lesser Christian. And if a dear brother presses KJV Onlyism upon you hard as a very test of true faith and fellowship, you may stand firm in gentleness, honouring his real zeal for Scripture while quietly declining his particular conclusion. The bond between true believers must never be made to hang upon a single translation that God Himself never once commanded us to single out above all others.

The real and abiding treasure in all of this is the living word itself, given by God, preserved by His tender care across the centuries, and able even now to make you wise unto salvation through faith in Jesus. Hold that treasure close in whatever faithful version God has been pleased to give you, and hold it very close indeed, for it is nothing less than your life. The version is only the cup; the living water it carries to your lips is the thing your thirsty soul truly cannot do without, and on that, at least, every honest reader of KJV Onlyism and I can surely agree.

Reading the Bible We Have Been Given

Let me bring this home very simply. The word of God is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path, as Psalm 119:105 reminds us, and that lamp shines just as brightly through a faithful modern version as through the version of 1611. The hardest form of KJV Onlyism would have us doubt the light unless it comes to us through one particular lantern, but the light itself is the word of God, not the lantern that happens to carry it.

I want every reader, of whatever version, to be sure of what he holds in his hands. The same settled confidence I set out under the question of biblical infallibility belongs to you whether your Bible says thee and thou or you and yours. What makes Scripture trustworthy is that God breathed it out and has faithfully kept it, and a sound translation hands that kept word to you intact, ready to be believed and obeyed today.

So read the Bible you have been given, and read it as the very word of God. If that Bible is the King James, then read it and rejoice in it; if it is the ESV or another faithful version, read it and rejoice just the same. The argument of KJV Onlyism need not trouble a soul who grasps that inspiration belongs to the words God spoke, and that those words have reached us, faithfully carried, in every tongue the gospel has gone out to bless.

If I have one fear in writing all this, it is that a younger believer will come away thinking the matter is mostly about scoring points. It is not. The whole reason I bother to answer KJV Onlyism at all is that I do not want a single soul kept from the living word by a needless quarrel about its cover. Pick up a faithful Bible, in whatever English you can actually understand, and read it until it reads you. That is worth a thousand arguments about which translation sits on the shelf of the truly spiritual.

Let me end where I began, with affection rather than argument. I owe a great deal to the King James Version, and I suspect I always shall; its sentences shaped my ear for Scripture before I could have told you what KJV Onlyism even meant. But the gift it gave me was never the gift of one perfect translation. It was the gift of the living word of God, and that same gift waits for every reader in every faithful version, ready to do its ancient and gentle work upon the heart of anyone at all who will simply sit down and read it with a humble and trusting mind. So lay down the quarrel for good and pick up the Book, and let it speak to you; the God who breathed it out is more than able to make Himself known through it, whichever sound version you happen to hold, and that, in the end, is the only thing that finally matters for your soul.

So, now what?

If the King James is the Bible you have always loved, then love it freely and read it gladly, and let its great beauty drive you deeper into the heart of the God it so faithfully reveals. There is no shame whatever in reading the old version with real delight, and there is much lasting profit in it.

But if someone ever tries to bind your conscience tightly to one single translation, answer them kindly and yet stand your ground without wavering. Inspiration belongs to the very words God breathed out long ago, and not to any one later rendering of them, and the unity of believers must rest upon the gospel itself, never upon the spine of one English Bible. Keep the living word central, in whatever faithful version you happen to hold in your hands, and you will not go far wrong.

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.

2 Timothy 3:16 (ESV)

For Further Study

On the history and the real merits of the various English versions, the reader will be very well served by D. A. Carson’s measured and careful study of the whole translation debate, and by the plain and sober treatments found in Charles Ryrie’s work on bibliology. J. Dwight Pentecost and Lewis Sperry Chafer both wrote soundly on inspiration and on the preservation of the text, helping the reader to distinguish clearly the inspired original from any later translation of it. Reading these alongside the translators’ own honest 1611 preface to the reader will give anyone a balanced and generous view of a debate too often conducted with far more heat than light.