The Calvinist ESV: 2 Peter 3:5, Romans 9:16, 1 Cor. 7:37

#65-67 in "The Calvinist ESV" series, from the long post "A Random Verse That Destroys Calvinism (And 'Is the ESV a Calvinist Bible'?)":

#65:  A small one: In 2 Peter 3:5, the KJV says "For this they willingly are ignorant of ..."  But the ESV says "For they deliberately overlook this fact..."  I can see how these are similar, but Calvinists don't believe that people can "will" anything on their own ... and so it's no wonder they take out the fact that people "willingly" decided to be ignorant of God's truth, replacing it with just the idea that they "deliberately overlooked" it - which, in Calvinism, would be because they were predestined to overlook it, that God caused them to overlook it, NOT because they themselves willingly chose it on their own.  

#66:  Along similar lines, since it has the same word for "willing," is Romans 9:16.  The KJV says "So then it is not of him that willeth ..."  But the ESV says "So then it depends not on human will..."  Now this again seems like a small change that doesn't really matter, as if they are saying the same thing.  But they are not.  Not by a long shot.

In the KJV, "willing" is a verb, something done by the man.  The man is doing the willing, deciding what to desire, what to resolve to do, to choose.  

But since Calvinists do not believe man can "will" anything on his own, the ESV changes it to a noun, a thing, the "human will" which controls the man, removing the control the man has over doing the action of "willing."  And God, in Calvinism, builds certain desires into the human will that people have to obey, thereby making Him the controller of what we decide.  

And so which one is right?  The KJV, of course, because according to the Greek, the word "willing" is a verb, not a noun.  It's what we do; it's not a thing that controls us.  

  

#67: And now we’ve come full circle, back to the verse that started it all: 1 Corinthians 7:37.  But this time I want to look at another part of it, comparing the ESV to the KJV (now that I know the KJV is the one to go to, that it’s far, far more accurate than the ESV and many others).

Here is the KJV: “Nevertheless, he that standeth steadfast in his heart, having no necessity, but hath power over his own will …”

But here is the ESV: “But whoever is firmly established in his heart, being under no necessity but having his desire under control …”

In review (as I pointed out way at the beginning of this list), the ESV changes the idea of the man having power over himself (his own Will) to the idea that his desire is simply under control, as if passively, as if he himself has no control over it but that it’s just done for him/to him by God, similar to the difference between “I painted my house” and “I had my house painted.”

Anyway, after seeing the KJV, I wondered: Why change “Will” (KJV) to “desires” (ESV)?  These are two different things.  “Will” is about having the power of choice, to decide what you will do.  "Desires" is about merely having feelings about what you want to do.  

But the KJV clearly says that man has power over his Will, implying that man gets to control his decisions/actions, and since this clearly contradicts the Calvinist idea that God controls our Wills, it's no wonder why they had to get rid of this phrase.

But "having his desire under control"?  Now that's something Calvinists can work with.  Because as I already pointed out, this is passive: the man isn't necessarily even the one controlling or deciding his desires, but his desires are merely "under control."  And this allows Calvinists to say that God is the one causing his desires to be under control, controlling his desires.  Not the man.  

You see, in Calvinism, we don't have power over our own Wills, but God controls our Wills by building into them certain desires that He wants us to follow, that we must follow.  As Calvinists say, "We choose to do what we want to do, according to our nature/desires" - a very important caveat - meaning that God gives us the desires He wants us to carry out, even sinful ones, and since those are the only desires we have (and the only ones we can have because we can't change them), then we will inevitably obey those desires, doing what God predestined we would do all along, even sin against Him or reject Him.  (And yet Calvinists still call this "choice," and they believe it's right and just for God to hold us responsible for these so-called "choices," even though that's all we could choose to do, by God's design and control).  

And so "having his desire under control" fits their theology better than they KJV because it gets rid of the idea that man controls his Will.  It makes it so that they can say that God controls our desires, and then our desires control us.    

And on top of all that (a lot of significant changes in this little half-verse), notice also that the ESV takes away the power the man has over his own heart.  

In the KJV, the man himself does the “standing steadfast in his heart,” but in the ESV, he is merely “firmly established,” which, like the passive “having his desire under control,” removes the fact that he himself actively decides/chooses to be steadfast, making it more about it just happening to him instead of him doing it himself.  

It would be like the difference between “While climbing a mountain, I made my footing secure, to stand steadfast” and “My footing was firmly established, but not necessarily by me (maybe because someone else put my feet in cement or tied a rope to my feet or dropped me in a hole so that I couldn’t slip downhill or because a fairy waved her magic wand and turned me into a stone statue that couldn't move no matter what).”  

In the KJV, we do it.  But in the ESV, it just happens to us.

Also, the ESV changes "being under no necessity" to "having no necessity," which I think makes it a little more passive too, as if the man just passively ends up either having or not having necessity.  We either have it or don't have it, based on what God gives us and causes us to do.

In this verse, in the KJV, the man puts no compulsion on himself to marry the woman (he finds no compelling need to do it), but he willingly chooses to.  But in the ESV, the man simply, passively ends up being under no compulsion (without necessarily having any influence over it), which would mean, in Calvinism, that God is responsible for the man being in the condition he's in.  

Put another way, in the KJV, the man is in charge over the "necessity," but in the ESV, the "necessity" is in charge over the man.  

Tellingly, the Greek shows that the word is "having," as in to have, hold, possess (and the man is the one having or not having it).  The word is not "under," as if the man is under its control.  

It's a little thing, but it shows the constant alterations the ESV makes, in order to make it seem as if we are mere puppets on a string, under the control of the nature/desires that Calvi-god gave us, his predeterminations for us.

The KJV is about the man doing it, having control over himself and the power to make his decisions, but the ESV is about it all just happening to him, which fits nicely with Calvinism because then they can say that God determines/causes all that happens and all that we do.

These kinds of changes – where verses are changed from people having active control over their own Wills/decisions (KJV) to them just being passive recipients of things just happening to them [caused by Calvi-god, of course] – are all over the ESV, such as in these verses I already looked at: James 1:12 and 5:11, Romans 6:17, 2 Peter 2:14, and Revelation 22:17 (which also changes “will” to “desires”).  And if I found this many without digging too deeply, I can only imagine how many there really are.

The ESV, and Calvinism itself, is determined to take away the Bible’s emphasis on man having a certain, God-given level of control over his own desires, Will, choices, and actions, making God the determiner/controller of all things, even our desires, choices, sins, and unbelief.  (And they will answer to God someday for it, for changing His Word, His Gospel, for making Him the cause of sin, for blocking the door of heaven to most people, for making God untrustworthy, etc.)

If you trust the ESV, you are being lied to about the Word of God and being led astray from His Truth!

Consider yourself warned.

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.