In this paper, I examine whether Augustine’s belief in the LXX was rational (i.e., not merely a feeling, intuition, or a belief lacking in evidence) and warranted (i.e., justified according to certain accepted belief-forming criteria). I’d like to thank the Reformation Bible Society for allowing me to present this paper.

Blessings.

My pastor was away with his wife visiting grandkids and asked me to over the evening service for him, a privilege I happily accepted. Ours is a small country church filled with saints that love the Lord. Sunday evening, the numbers were down but the singing of favorite hymns was sweet and robust. I used as my text 2 Peter 1:16-21 describing the character of immediate inspiration. We had a wonderful time together around God’s word and in the Lord. These folks are not just saints but they have grown to be my friends.

About a third of the way through the lesson, an elderly gentlemen slipped in the back row, someone I had not yet met. After giving the benediction, and greeting the saints, I walked to the back of the auditorium to introduce myself to the gentlemen. He was curious about my training and I shared with him I was graduate of Westminster East in Philadelphia, which caused him to bristle a little. During my lesson I did not mention the King James Bible once. Indeed, the passages we examined have to do with the character of the immediately inspired Original documents of Scripture. I said after seminary training at Westmenter and Calvin Theologicaly Seminary I was never more convinced the King James Bible was the word of God in English. This statement sent the older gentleman into a fury.

I want everyone to remember that this church of faithful saints with a faithful pastor is in mountains of SW Virginia in one of the most sparsely populated counties in Virginia. And on this given evening, an older man, (who I later found out from the saints had been a Presbyterian pastor) began to unload in the back of this little country church with the same vile, critical arguments I have heard about the King James Bible throughout my academic career. “It’s not God’s word, it’s only a version. It only came into existence in 1611. If you want to read the Scripture you have to know the Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic he barked.” Of course, almost everyone that ever told me that could not read any of the original languages and neither could he. I said, none of these dear people read Greek and Hebrew. Are you telling them that when they read their King James Bible, they are not hearing the voice of God in its pages, to which he said no. I turned to the saints and said that this is what I have been speaking about and warned you of but tonight its standing in the back of the church building. Scholars and scholar wannabees want to be the arbitrators of God’s Word, with their critical texts and versions, and rob the saint of hearing the voice of God on their own, and tonight, you’re hearing this firsthand. Asked him what version he was carrying – the ESV. He told me it was God’s word, a typical MVO response. I said it contains God’s words. I said there many missing verses in your bible something clearly, he was unaware of. Turn to Acts 8:37 I said. Finding the page he read 36…38. Where’s 37, I asked? Of course, there is no Acts 8:37 in the ESV.  He closed his ESV, and I said turn to 1 John 5:7 but He was done publicly embarrassing himself for having a bible that was missing many passages.

He resorted to cheap shots, criticizing my message, and my lack of education for holding such a backward position. I said the King James Bible is based on the Greek and Hebrew apographa to which he retorted, the apocrypha? I said it seems obvious that you do not know what the apographa is.

This story is very familiar to my son and I. What bothered me the most about this exchange was not his meandering argument, rather this ecclesiastical bully came into the evening service of the church hoping for a soapbox to sway the saints from their commitment to God’s word. This was especially egregious because the under shepherd of this flock was away. He said we would have to agree to disagree and said that was not possible. I can’t agree with anything he said. That the disruption he had brought into the sweet fellowship of the saints was despicable and shameful and that his only recourse was to stop what he was doing. When he had exhausted his pathetic but disruptive diatribe (because I would not stop telling him how appalling his disruption of our service was), I corralled him to the door and out of the church building.

I don’t know the state of his soul, but what happened Sunday night was the work of an ecclesiastic wolf who was going to bully his way into the minds of the saints with lies and falsehoods foisted upon us all by proponents of the critical text and modern corrupt versions.

If you missed the inaugural meeting of the Reformation Bible Society, here is the first plenary lecture by Dr. Russell Fuller. He does an excellent job laying out the history and state of the LXX. If the LXX has been something of a mystery to you, Dr. Fuller certainly puts you on the right track to understanding it and its impact here. Blessings.

This post argues that the inspired word of God of the apographa or the derivatively inspired word of God in a faithful translation such as the King James Bible has always existed in part in a non-written form alongside the preserved written word. The Scripture’s itself describes at least three ways in which inspired Scripture exists apart from the written text: 1. in the mind of the listener, 2. in the memory; 3. by God’s implantation.

1. In the hearing by those who cannot read.

Turretin addresses the issue of the value of Scripture for those who cannot read, or in other words, to whom the written word is meaningless. The illiterate either because of life circumstances or by age, not yet able to read, can nevertheless know the written word of God simply by hearing it. Reading is not necessary to know the content of holy Scripture. He writes,

“Although the Scriptures formally are of no personal use to those who cannot read (analphobetous), yet materially they serve for the instruction and edification such as the doctrines preached in the church are drawn from this source.” Turretin, Institutes, 59.

And this is true because,

“The Holy Spirit (the supplier [epichorega] by whom the believer should be God-taught [theodidaktoi], Jer. 31:34; Jn. 6:45; 1 Jn. 2:27) does not render the Scripture less necessary. He is not given to us in order to introduce new revelations, but to impress the written word on our hearts, so that here that the word must never be separated from the Spirit (Is. 59:21). Turretin, Institutes, 59.

Whether by reading or hearing, it is the Holy Spirit that “impress[es] the written word on our hearts.”

2. In the memory

Scripture tells us to hide God words in our hearts or, in other words, to memorize the Scripture, to make the Scripture a part of our intellectual construct. When a written text is not available, the saint is able to draw upon the Scripture they have memorized for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness, enabling his memorized word to be as profitable as would have been the written word.

Dt. 6:6, “And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:”

De. 11:18, “Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes.”

Psalm 119:11, “Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.”

Romans 10:8, “But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach;

Col. 3:16, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.”

As a sidebar note, it’s interesting that memorizing large sections of Scripture is also taken up in popular secular works. Ray Bradbury’s dystopian classic Fahrenheit 451 where books are illegal, closes with displaced scholars preserving entire volumes by putting them to memory. Speaking of men called by the books they memorized, Mr. Simmons says,

I want you to meet Jonathan Swift, the author of that evil pollical book, Gulliver Travels! And this other fellow is Charles Darwin, and this one is Schopenhauer, and this one is Einstein, and this one here at my elbow is Dr. Albert Schweitzer, a very kind philosopher indeed. Here we are, Montag, Aristophanes and Mahatma Gandhi and Gautama Buddha and Confucious and Thomas Love Peacock and Thomas Jefferson, and Mr. Lincoln, if you please. We also have Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, 144-145.

3. In the heart implanted by God

Hebrews 8:8-12 is a repetition of the New Covenant from Jer. 31:31ff. The Hebrew word rendered “covenant” is בּרית beriyt.. The word which Paul employs is – διαθήκη, diathēkē. It never means a compact or agreement between equals and remotely and secondarily means a “will, or testament” or “a bond in blood.”

The first of the “better promises” of Hebrews 8:10 is located in the unconditional, covenantal language, “I will put.” What is better is putting God’s laws into the mind and writing them on the heart? In the former clause the Hebrew has, “I will put my law in their inward parts;” the law shall be within them, no longer an external code. In the latter, the “fleshy tablets of the heart” are contrasted with “the tables of the Law.” This is the first of the “better promises.”

The second of the better promises is in Hebrews 8:11: The second promise is the universality of the knowledge of God. The inward acceptance of God’s will involve the knowledge of God. In the new covenant all were to be “taught of God” (Isaiah 54:13, John 6:45) and independent of the instruction of a privileged class. Priesthood of the believer. But God promises a time when there will no longer be reliance upon scholars and the theologically elite – scribes and Pharisees to teach people about God. Communion with God through his word will be embedded in the heart and mind relieving the need for the scholarly elite to tell you what God says.

Of special note is the unilateral, unconditional impartation of the word of God in the heart. Further probing of the ramifications of this impartation as this juncture serves as experimental theology, not designed to shape doctrine but to generate thinking and further inquiry into the eschatological nature of Scripture.

We therefore conclude that Holy Scripture exists apart from the written text impressed on the heart of the illiterate by the Holy Spirit, by inculcation in the mind by memorization also in complete unity with the Spirit, and in a preliminary manner through the eschatological implementation of God Himself in the heart as the consummate work in the believer of the New Covenant through the bloody sacrificial death of Christ. Practically, it is hoped that such an experimental rendering of Hebrews 8:10-11 and the dialogue such a text engenders will contribute to a burgeoning contemporary apologetic for historic, orthodox, bibliology.

Allow me to add a word to what Dr. Van Kleeck, Jr. posted regarding my shared appreciation for the First Reformation Bible Society in Lynchburg, VA. The more public exposure for the superiority of the Reformation era Greek and Hebrew texts and King James Bible, in my humble estimation, the better. Because our subject is the written word of God, our message is accompanied by the Holy Spirit which will perform not only a teaching work in the heart and the mind of the listener but a sanctifying work as well. Refreshment of the mind and spirit is one reason the RBS conference was so enjoyable. And yes, it was an academic conference that is just as necessary as less academically focused, popular apologetic. Everyone that holds to the precious truths regarding the inspiration and preservation of God’s word has a place in the public defense of the faith and specifically of our Bible. Our theological differences are from the interpretation of Holy Scripture not a question of if we have Holy Scripture. More of these kind of meetings are necessary and I thank the organizers of this conference for planning and holding the RBC conference.

It is our hope that this becomes an annual event, something to keep the momentum of the gathering moving forward and that others organize similar events. My hope is that our focus would remain on the preserved, inspired text of Scripture and the King James Bible and that soteriological and eschatological differences might for a day or two take a secondary role to the primary reason we have gathered together, that being the defense and propagation of the pre-critical original language texts and Authorized Version.

Blessings!

Peter Van Kleeck, Sr.

Yesterday afternoon in the summer sun my grandson and I went out into the front yard to throw the baseball. After one particularly bad, uncatchable throw, we laughed together and said, “it was the baseball’s fault.” It couldn’t be thrower error; it was because of the baseball. This baseball is a standard weight and size baseball. A “run-of -the-mill,” baseball. A baseball that every warm-blooded American would immediately identify as a baseball. A baseball that has served in the baseball kingdom for decades and can be thrown with the utmost precision, over 100 mph and serves as the baseball for Major League Baseball. A baseball. But with one bad throw, the standard baseball of the baseball universe was in jest made the scapegoat for a bad throw.

I told my grandson that we just developed a homespun metaphor for the Bible version debate. It’s not the reader that the problem, his or her inability to intellectually and spiritually throw and catch the truth of the King James Bible, it’s the Bible’s problem. It’s not personal spiritual weakness or emotional instability or intellectual bias. The problem is with the Bible. It’s not the academic sun in our eyes, or the slothfulness of refusing to practice – it the Bible. After all these years enjoying baseball, I finally realized the whole idea of an error is not really the fault of the players – it was then ball’s fault. If only the ball would have accommodated the thrower, the error would have never occurred. It was a pure moment of baseball illumination!

So, the players, the saints, appealed to the baseball industry to make a better baseball. A baseball that will always go precisely where it was meant to be thrown. It kind of looks like a baseball, but every season it changes. A little smaller, a little lighter and compared to the baseballs of other seasons it really doesn’t look much like the standard baseball anymore. Some seasons the baseball looks indented like a golf ball, sometimes it looks fuzzy like a tennis ball, and sometimes it looks like it’s full of holes like a whiffle ball, but no matter the changes the baseball industry tells the prayers, “It’s a baseball, new and imrpoved.”

But after all the industry assurances, after the season is over, believe it or not, the new baseball is still causing errors on the field. Because the errors on the field are not because of the players – it’s the baseball’s fault. Everything about the game has changed for the better, as advertised, except the baseball that still causes errors..

In other words, the declining spiritual condition of the Church cannot be problem – it’s the Bible. The self-righteous saint who in his self-righteous imagination always throws a perfect spiritual strike cannot be the problem. And of course, the seasoned veteran ball player from the heights of baseball knowledge never made an error in the first place. The money-grubbing publishers are not the problem. No beloved, it can’t be fallen, sinful people or “den of thieves” publishers in the courtyard that are the problem; the problem is the ball, the Bible and we’re going to make everything better for baseball and Church by changing the most important thing – the baseball, the Bible. That way, we don’t have to change ourselves. After all, there is really nothing about the people that needs changing.

Still, errors are made because the root cause of the error is not being addressed. It’s not the ball; it’s not the Bible, it’s the player, the Church that is the problem. But because of pride, sloth, envy, and greed, the solution, a return to a standard Major League baseball, the King James Bible, is made the problem. The solution is demonized for the sake of the self-righteous preservation of those who believe they are able to impose their inability to throw straight to understand and believe, on the written word of God in English, the King James Bible.