This episode analyzes the claim by KJV only advocates that God providentially chose to preserve His word through the Textus Receptus. The Textus Receptus is based on the majority approach: God providentially preserved His Word by ensuring that the majority of manuscripts conveyed the divine autographa. An easy way to test this claim is evaluating all the manuscripts from each century to determine the majority text of each century. If God is providentially preserving His Word, the majority of manuscripts of every century would always convey the same text. Yet the majority text upon which the Textus Receptus is based only became the majority text around the 9th century. Additionally, manuscripts prior to the 4th century never cite from the Byzantine text type, the type commonly appearing in the majority text of the Textus Receptus. They instead cite from Alexandrian or Western text types. Finally, Gordon Fee has noted that citations of the Bible from church Fathers favor the modern critical text over the Textus Receptus. The preservation of the divine autographa THROUGH the majority approach is consequently invalid.
The Origin of “KJV Onlyism”
This episode reiterates the significance of Westcott and Hort's revised Greek Text in 1881, the text upon which most modern translations rest. They wanted to incorporate newly discovered Greek manuscripts into the manuscript tradition, tweaking the Textus Receptus as needed. Importantly, the vast majority of the Greek text remained unchanged. Defenders of the Textus Receptus rejected any "tweaking," insisting that God had perfectly preserved His Word in the Textus Receptus, the underlying Greek text upon which the translators of the KJV relied. The English divine John Burgon linked the doctrine of inspiration with preservation, arguing from some prooftexts that God's providential preservation of the Scriptures followed from divine inspiration, and this miracle is evident in the KJV.
Obey the Law through the Power of Christ
This episode takes many of themes of psalm 119 and applies them to Christian living. "The law is given as a tutor to lead us to Christ." (Gal. 3:24) While Christians should always rely on Christ and His merit as the basis for justification, they should nevertheless seek to honor God by fulfilling the Law, which is summed up in the Great Commandments. And, just as faith in Christ is the basis of our justification, faith in Christ is also the basis for all subsequent sanctification. Christ aids us in fulfilling the Law, while He delivers us from the power of sin. In essence, Christians are to keep the moral law THROUGH the power and grace of Christ. Many of the themes of dependence on God's grace are sprinkled throughout Psalm 119, the psalmist noting that he need God's grace to keep the Law. The episode is a needful reminder to the Christian Church to reject the Marcionite false dichotomy of our day which bogusly asserts that the Old Testament was all law and the New Testament all grace.