I am breaking the "A Random Verse That Destroys Calvinism (And 'Is the ESV a Calvinist Bible'?)" post up into shorter segments so that each verse (or two) gets it own post.
Now in the ESV: "For we know, brothers loved by God, that He has chosen you."
In the KJV, they know of their "election," but the ESV changes the wording to make it sound much more Calvinistic, as if God deliberately and specifically chose them, which Calvinists would interpret as choosing them to be believers, to be saved.
According to the concordance,
"election" is about God choosing to bless certain people, but there is no mention of Him choosing to save certain people. And if you look up some other verses where this word is used, you'll see that Paul was chosen for the job of being an apostle to the Gentiles (not to be saved, but to be an apostle,
Acts 9:15), that Jacob was chosen to be the bloodline that brought Jesus into the world (
Romans 9:11), that God chose a remnant of Jews by grace (
Romans 11:5, but see in
11:4 the example of how He chooses, by letting the people choose first whom they will worship and then He chooses those who did not worship other gods, so it's not an arbitrary "choosing" but that God chooses to bless those who choose Him, who don't reject Him... and, to be accurate, if you go back to
1 Kings 19:14-18, you see that it's about God choosing Israelites not to be believers but to be spared from death so they can be prophets alongside Elijah), that it's specifically about the favored role God gave Israel (
Romans 11:28), etc.
It's not about "God has chosen you [for salvation]", as Calvinists would interpret it. It's about being given certain roles/jobs by God. It's not about God choosing who will be a believer, but about God choosing to give believers certain roles or blessings.
And according to the Greek, "election" is a noun (as in the job/role God gave them), but the ESV has strategically changed it to a verb (as if God did something to them, chose them to be saved). And so once again, the KJV is right and the ESV is wrong. (Also
see #82 for more on this 1 Thess. verse.)
#37: Another small (but not so small) change is in
1 Thessalonians 2:13. The KJV ends it like this:
"... the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe." But the ESV says
"... in you believers."
This may seem like mincing words, but ... in "you that believe," the person is doing the action of believing (verb), putting the responsibility to believe, the choice to believe, in the people's hands, which opens up the option of believing to all. But the ESV changes it to "you believers" (noun), making it more about being a kind of person. And in Calvinism, you are either an unbelieving non-elect person (predestined for hell) or a believing elect person (predestined for heaven), and no one gets a choice about it because God has already predetermined our "choice" for us. So it's no wonder the ESV would remove the idea that the people do the action of believing (have the responsibility to believe) and make it more about being (or not being) a "believer," as if we have no control over it and it's already predetermined.
And so who's right here? The ESV or the KJV? As the Greek shows, the word
"believe" is a verb, not a noun. So once again, the ESV is wrong and the KJV is right. It's that the people do the believing (the door to believe is open to all), not that we either are or are not believers based on what we were predestined for.
[The ESV also makes the same change - verb to noun - in (at least) 1 Thessalonians 2:10, Acts 5:14 (unfortunately even the KJV changes it to a noun here), 1 Peter 1:21 and Acts 19:18. Changing it from a verb to a noun ultimately changes it from what you choose to do to who you are, which in Calvinism is "who God made/predestined you to be".]
#38: A similar change is in
Philippians 3:19. The KJV:
"Whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things." In the Greek,
"mind" is a verb. In the KJV, the people do the act of minding earthly things. But the ESV changes it to a noun:
"... with minds set on earthly things."
In the ESV, the people don't mind earthly things; their minds are set on earthly things. This fits more with Calvinism because, in Calvinism, we don't get to choose or have control over what we set our minds on or think about. In Calvinism, we don't do the act of minding anything because our minds are set for us, by God, according to what He predestined for us. The minds of the non-elect are set on sin, and the minds of the elect are set on spiritual things. And there's nothing we can do to change it.
Changing it from a verb to a noun takes away our choice, our responsibility, to influence what we think, think about, or pursue. It makes us slaves to what our minds tell us to think, to whatever God sets our minds on (in Calvinism). But since the Greek says it's a verb, we know which translation is the right one.
[I wonder how many changes one can make to the word of God before it ceases to be the word of God.]
A note about the ESV vs King James:
If you really want to get into the nitty-gritty, read these articles about the men who wrote the Greek texts that the ESV is based on: "Westcott and Hort: Translator's Beliefs" and "Westcott and Hort and the Greek Text." The ESV is based on the RSV, which is based on the Greek Texts of these two men (who, it sounds like, rejected the infallibility of Scripture, despised evangelicals, questioned Jesus's divinity and an eternal hell, did not believe Genesis and the creation story was literal, affirmed Darwin and evolution, etc.), which is based on two corrupted manuscripts which differ from the majority of the more reliable manuscripts that the KJV is based on.
So when something says that the ESV has only made 6% changes, it means "from the RSV," meaning that it's 94% the same as the RSV it was based on, a translation which was based on two corrupted manuscripts that disagree with the majority of the manuscripts available. It would be like if a journalist interviewed 100 people about an event ... and 95 of them said the exact same thing, but 5 told a different story ... and the journalist decided to side with the 5 and print their story as fact. Raises some red flags, doesn't it?
In the course of researching this issue, and after not knowing for decades what to think of the whole "which translation is most accurate" debate, I now side with the King James. I mean, I have several other translations, and I think different ones are good for different reasons, such as readability, compare and contrast, to hear God's Word in a fresh way, etc. But when having to decide which one is more reliable and accurate, especially considering the significant differences like those above, I have to side with the KJV (not the New King James, just the King James). And I've never been more sure of it than now, after all this research.
