The Calvinist ESV: "Unbelievers"

#83-85 in "The Calvinist ESV" series, from the long post "A Random Verse That Destroys Calvinism (And 'Is the ESV a Calvinist Bible'?)":



#83-85  I’ve looked before at how the ESV changes the verb “believe” to the noun “believers” and how it changes “them that do not believe (refusing to be persuaded)” to the noun “unbelievers,” making it less about what you choose and more about who you are (who you are born to be, in Calvinism).


Well, I’ve found similar changes where the adjective “unbelieving” (describing those who refuse to believe the gospel – “them that believe not,” in the KJV) is changed to the noun “unbelievers.”  (There are more I am not listing, including a couple where even the KJV words it as “unbelievers”.)


I know this doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it allows Calvinists to say that you are what you are because God made you that way (an unbeliever) instead of it being that we have control/choice over what we believe or don’t believe.  


But we are not “believers” or “unbelievers” by God’s design, locked into something God “predestined” us to be.  We are people who decide to either believe or not believe the truth, to accept or refuse it.


1 Corinthians 10:27 in the KJV: “If any of them that believe not …”.  


     But in the ESV: “If one of the unbelievers …”


1 Corinthians 14:22 in the KJV: “Wherefore tongues are for a sign, not to them that believe, but to them that believe not; but prophesying serveth not for them that believe not, but for them which believe.”  


     But in the ESV: “Thus tongues are a sign not for believers but for unbelievers, while prophecy is a sign not for unbelievers but for believers.”


2 Corinthians 4:4 in the KJV: “… the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not.”  (The people choose to not believe, and then Satan blinds them.)  


     But in the ESV: “… the god of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers …”  (But in this case, Calvinists could say that God created them to be unbelievers and that because they were created to be unbelievers, Satan blinds them, forcing them to not see the truth.)


It’s not that God created/caused them to be unbelievers.  It’s that they were people who chose to not believe the truth, to refuse to be persuaded by it.  


These are subtle changes (changing adjectives/verbs to nouns), but they become more and more significant when it happens all over the Bible, especially by Calvinists who have an agenda behind their word choices, a particular theology they are trying to push, trying to convince people that you either are or are not a believer by God’s design, instead of it being about you choosing to either believe or reject the truth.   




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. 


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