The Calvinist ESV: Romans 10:10
#90 in "The Calvinist ESV" series, from the long post "A Random Verse That Destroys Calvinism (And 'Is the ESV a Calvinist Bible'?)"
(This is the last one in this list for now because I haven't had time to look for more yet. And so close to 100 too!):
#90 (I don't think I did this one yet) Romans 10:10: (KJV): "For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation." This is saying that believing/confession is a prerequisite for - they come before and lead to ("unto") - righteousness/salvation.
But here is the ESV (and many other translations get this wrong too): "For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved." Notice that "unto" is replaced with "and," removing the idea that believing/confessing have to come before (that they lead to) salvation. "And" makes it possible for them to happen in any order or concurrently.
It's like the difference between saying "I got a lottery ticket which led to getting $1,000" (KJV) and "I got a lottery ticket and $1,000" (ESV). Or "I went to the gas station, then the concert" (KJV) and "I went to the gas station and the concert" (ESV). The KJV is in a specified order for a reason, but the ESV does not make it clear that it has to happen in that order or that the first one leads to the second one.
This (saying "believes and is justified/confesses and is saved") allows for the Calvinist idea that the elect are already saved before time began, that their predestined salvation leads to them eventually believing/confession - instead of it being that belief/confession leads to being saved, as the KJV says.
Notice that in the Greek, it's unto, not and. And "unto" is a preposition, which specifies a relationship between two things, direction, how one affects the other. And nowhere in the definition of "unto" or its usage in the Bible does it mean merely "and," which would be just a conjunction, just joining words but in no particular order and with no specification of how one affects the other. "Unto" is meant to specify that the first one (belief/confession) leads to the second one (righteousness/salvation). "And" just means they both happened.
In Calvinism, salvation leads to belief, but in the Bible, belief leads to salvation. As famous Calvinist Loraine Boettner wrote (in The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination), "A man is not saved because he believes in Christ; he believes in Christ because he is saved."
"And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit." (Ephesians 1:13. Believe first... then get included in Christ, saved, sealed by the Holy Spirit.)
So what do you think? Is Calvinism true to God's Word? Or is it just another version of "Did God really say...?"
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.
