Translations Are Recipients, Not Sources

The KJV-Only Error About Inspiration and Preservation

Calling the Authorized Version the Word of God is not the problem. Calling it a new source of the Word of God is.

An accurate translation truly communicates what God has said. It carries divine authority because the words and meaning it conveys came from God. A serious error enters, however, when qualities belonging immediately to the authentic Hebrew and Greek Scriptures are transferred without qualification to an English translation. Some advocates of KJV-Onlyism do this when they call the Authorized Version itself the specially preserved text, attribute a new act of inspiration to its translators, or make its English wording the judge of the Hebrew and Greek.

Those claims are not a stronger form of Confessional Bibliology. They change the object of the doctrine.

Here, KJV-Onlyism does not mean simply using the Authorized Version alone, judging it to be the best English translation, or affirming that it is derivatively inspired. It refers to the distinct claim that one English translation possesses immediate inspiration, enjoys the special promise of preservation, or stands as the final authority over the authentic texts from which it was translated.

What the Confession Actually Says

The Westminster Confession identifies both the object of inspiration and the object of preservation:

The Old Testament in Hebrew (which was the Native Language of the People of God of old), and the New Testament in Greek (which at the time of the writing of it was most generally known to the Nations), being immediately inspired by God, and by his singular care and Providence kept pure in all Ages, are therefore Authentical; so as in all Controversies of Religion, the Church is finally to appeal unto them.¹

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1. The Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), 1.8. The wording quoted is the original confessional text rather than a modern revision. ↩

The grammar is decisive. The Old Testament in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek are immediately inspired, kept pure in all ages, and authentical. They are also the texts to which the Church must finally appeal. The Confession then requires translation because the original tongues are not known to every believer. Translation gives the nations access to the authentic Scriptures; it does not create another authentic source alongside them.

In the Confessional Bibliology position defended here, those preserved authentic texts are identified with the Bomberg Hebrew Bible and the Greek Textus Receptus.

William Whitaker stated the same Protestant order before the Westminster Assembly. The Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament are the authentic Scripture, while versions are approved only as they agree with those originals.² A translation is ministerial. It serves the text and is judged by the text.

This is why immediate is the most precise opposite of derivative in this discussion. Original and intrinsic may also express the contrast, but immediate is the confessional word. The authentic text is not inspired through an earlier translation. A translation receives the inspired Word through its faithful representation of that text.

Derivative Inspiration and Infallibility

To call a faithful translation derivatively inspired does not mean that God performed a second act of inspiration upon its translators. The prophets and apostles wrote as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. Translators work from the words already given. Translation is transmission, not another breathing out of Scripture.

The same qualification governs infallibility. When an English translation faithfully renders an infallible Hebrew or Greek statement, the English statement is true and cannot mislead its reader. It speaks with God's authority because it accurately communicates God's Word. Its infallibility is nevertheless derivative rather than independent. It is received from the source and measured by conformity to the source.

This does not make the translated Word uncertain or powerless. When the Authorized Version declares, “Christ is risen,” the believer hears the infallible Word of God in English. Yet those English words possess that authority because they faithfully communicate the inspired text. If any translation departs from the authentic text at a particular place, the departure has no divine authority. The source corrects the translation; the translation does not correct the source.

That order of authority does not imply that any present committee is qualified to revise the Authorized Version. It identifies the court of appeal; it does not confer competence upon modern revisers.

Whitaker therefore denied that a version could be authentic in the absolute sense. Translations must be brought back to the Hebrew and Greek, received where they agree, and corrected where they do not.³ He was defending the Reformation principle against Rome's elevation of the Latin Vulgate. Repeating the same structural error with an English version does not make it Protestant.

Preservation Does Not Migrate into English

The doctrine of preservation concerns God's singular care in keeping pure the words He immediately inspired in Hebrew and Greek. It assures the Church that the authentic text has not disappeared and need not be reconstructed from a lost original.

Of course, God may preserve a particular Bible, edition, or translation in the ordinary course of providence. A copy may survive fire, a publisher may maintain a stable text, and a translation may remain in faithful use for centuries. That ordinary statement is not the doctrinal claim made in Westminster Confession 1.8. Longevity and stability do not turn a translation into the object of the confessional promise.

The phrase the providentially preserved Word of God in English is therefore dangerously ambiguous. If it means that the Authorized Version is a durable and faithful English witness to the preserved Word, the statement can be understood properly. If it means that God promised to keep one English translation pure in the same special sense in which He kept the Hebrew and Greek text pure, the claim lacks scriptural and confessional warrant.

The mistake becomes plain when the principle is applied beyond English. A faithful Spanish, Dutch, French, or German translation may also convey the inspired and infallible Word derivatively. None thereby becomes a new locus of preservation or a final court of appeal. English has no special theological status that changes the nature of translation.

The Fault in the Common Argument

The argument often runs this way: the source texts are without error; the Authorized Version accurately translates those texts; therefore the Authorized Version is itself infallible.

There is a sound conclusion hidden within it. In every place where a translation accurately represents an errorless source, what it says is errorless. But this does not establish that the translation is infallible in itself, that its translators were immediately inspired, or that God specially preserved its English wording. Those are additional claims requiring additional proof.

Nor does saying that a translation has “withstood the test of time” supply that proof. Long use may confirm excellence, stability, and the Church's well-grounded confidence. It cannot create a divine promise after the fact. The decisive question remains whether the translation faithfully represents the authentic text, and that question must be answered from the Hebrew and Greek.

If accurate translation is defined as complete agreement with the source, then saying that an accurate translation contains no error is true by definition. It still leaves the order of authority untouched. The source establishes the translation's accuracy. The translation does not establish the source's accuracy.

The Proper Place of the Authorized Version

The Authorized Version may be confessed without embarrassment as the Word of God in English, a faithful translation of the authentic Hebrew and Greek texts, and the best English translation. Its statements carry inspiration and infallibility derivatively insofar as they faithfully represent those texts. Every faithful translation shares that same kind of derivative authority; the distinction lies in the degree of fidelity, not in a new act of inspiration.

What must be denied is equally clear:

• There was no second act of immediate inspiration in 1604–1611.
• The promise of the text being kept pure in all ages was not transferred to English.
• The Authorized Version does not stand above the authentic Hebrew and Greek texts.
• No quality belongs to the Authorized Version merely because it is English or because it has been widely used.

The authentic Hebrew and Greek Scriptures are the source. The Authorized Version is their faithful English translation. It receives; it does not originate. It bears divine truth and authority because it agrees with the fountain from which it flows.

That distinction does not diminish the Authorized Version. It gives the translation its proper and honorable place while reserving immediate inspiration, special preservation, and final authenticity for the text to which those doctrines actually belong.

Notes

Bibliography

The Westminster Assembly. The Westminster Confession of Faith. 1647.

Whitaker, William. A Disputation on Holy Scripture: Against the Papists, Especially Bellarmine and Stapleton. Translated and edited by William Fitzgerald. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1849.