Only.me80 #7: MacArthur 3 ("will"/author/ESV)
I was planning on publishing posts every other week for awhile, but I think I'll only need to do that occasionally. So here is footnote #3 on John MacArthur's sermon about Limited Atonement that I quoted in part 4. Apparently, it's gonna take quite a long time to get through all my footnotes, something I didn't plan on when I first started writing this series which was inspired by a comment from a Calvinist reader called Only.me80 (see part 1). Yes, this whole long series sprang from that short little comment. And here is part 2... part 3... part 5... and part 6.
*3 Notice the phrasing MacArthur used: "the sinner cannot will to believe on his own, since he can only believe if God enables him to believe." It's not just "cannot believe," but "cannot will to believe."
And he used this kind of phrasing earlier too: "if they'll only will to believe." It's not just "if they'll only believe" but "if they'll only will to believe."
Why such awkward wording?
Well, adding in "will" is a distinctly Calvinist addition which shows what they really mean.
You see, in Calvinism, we don't control our wills, but our wills essentially control us. Calvi-god decided which kind of will/nature to give every person, and he preprogrammed our wills/natures with certain desires that make us decide what we do. We cannot choose which desires Calvi-god put into our wills and we cannot resist or change them, but we must irresistibly obey them. We don't tell our wills what to do, but our wills tell us what to do.
And so when MacArthur says "if they'll only will to believe," he's really just making an ironic statement... because what he really means is "But, haha, we Calvinists know man cannot will to do anything on his own, that he cannot will himself to believe, but he can only believe if Calvi-god implants into his will the desire to believe which then causes him to believe."
In Calvinism, a person has no influence or control over what their wills want to do and so they cannot decide on their own to believe ("the sinner cannot will to believe on his own"), but Calvi-god must instill in their wills the desire to believe which causes them to believe ("he can only believe if God enables him to believe").
In Calvinism, our Calvi-god-determined wills/natures (with its Calvi-god-determined desires that we must obey) control us, making us "want" to do certain things, which makes us "choose" to do those certain things - the things that Calvi-god predestined us to do. That's the reason we do everything we do, even if it's sin, evil, and unbelief.
But, the thing is, Calvinists know that they can't sound like they're saying that Calvi-god preplans and causes us to sin or that he's responsible for evil. They need to make it somehow seem like we have some sort of real free-will that makes us truly responsible for our sins (when we all know it's Calvi-god).
And so they hide the fact that Calvi-god is the sole reason why we have those sinful desires in the first place, and they use deceptive phrasing like "we sin by nature, according to our wills" and "you did it with our own will... according to [your] disposition... according to [your] strongest desire" to make it sound like we really did choose to sin all on our own and so we can be justly and fairly punished for it. (Because, well, Calvi-god would be an unjust, untrustworthy, evil monster if he caused us to sin and then punished us for the sins he planned and caused, wouldn't he?)
This is what the Calvinist caveat of "by nature, according to our nature/wills/desires" means when they talk about our sin, evil, and unbelief. It's their way of saying not that we make our own real decisions among real possible options or that we choose to sin when we could've chosen to obey or that we choose to reject God of our own free-will when we could've chosen to believe... but it's saying that our natures/wills (ordained and preprogrammed for us by Calvi-god) determine what we desire to do, ensuring that we all do what Calvi-god predestined us to do.
And so the people who were created to have the unregenerated-sinner-nature will only have the desire to sin and reject God, and since that's the only thing they can want to do, that's the only thing they can choose to do, just like Calvi-god predestined. As John MacArthur says in this Soteriology 101 clip, unbelievers are "preprogrammed to believe lies." But because the unregenerate sinners "wanted" to do what they were preprogrammed to do - to sin, to reject God, and to believe lies - Calvinists say that they can be held responsible for it, that they "deserve" their punishment, that it's "justice."
John MacArthur ("Doctrine of Election, part 1"): "You’re guilty. You’re culpable. You did it. You did it with your own will. But God had predetermined it would be done."
R.C. Sproul ("What is free will?"): "In Freedom of the Will, Jonathan Edwards defines biblical freedom. Man is free, he says, to choose according to his disposition [his Calvi-god-determined disposition!]. Human beings always choose according to their strongest desire, and so we make free choices. We do what we want to do [but Calvi-god gave us that desire, that "want," which caused us to "freely" do it]. Apart from Christ we are dead in sin... and wholly disposed to hate God. We only want darkness, and so we freely choose to reject Him. We freely choose to love and to serve Jesus only if the Spirit changes our hearts. Otherwise we remain lost." [So he calls it the definition of "biblical freedom," but he doesn't even get his definition from the Bible. He gets it from Jonathan Edwards... 1700 years after the Bible was written.😒]
Only Calvinists would call it "freedom/free-will/free choice" when it's not really freedom, free-will, or free, or choice at all. Only Calvinists would call it "justice/deserving the punishment" even though people were required to do what Calvi-god programmed them to do, without any chance, option, or ability to do anything otherwise. Only Calvinists would say that ordaining sin, evil, and unbelief is God's Will, that He ordained it because it glorifies and pleases Him (even though Calvi-god will then punish us for doing the glorious, pleasing sins he ordained us to do😕). And only Calvinists would say that we just need to shut up and "humbly" accept all this nonsense even though it sounds terrible, is full of contradictions, and we can't understand how it's possible for God (Calvi-god) to ordain sin, punish us for it, and yet still be good and trustworthy.
(Only Calvinists say this because Calvinism subsists on deception, self-deception, sugarcoating, gaslighting, hidden layers, redefined words, and cognitive dissonance.)
And so when Calvinists use words like "free/freely/freedom," they don't mean that we got to decide what to do among options or that we weren't forced into choosing what we did. But they just mean that Calvi-god didn't have to physically move our bodies to carry out the sinful desires of our natures because we did it ourselves, because we "wanted" to (even though that's all we could want to do, according to Calvinism). We "willingly and freely" moved our bodies to obey the irresistible, preprogrammed, sinful desires of our Calvi-god-determined will/nature, doing exactly what he predestined us to do. (If that's "free," I'd hate to see what being unfree - controlled/forced to sin - looks like!)
But this is really just a Calvinist attempt to trick people into thinking they believe in some level of true free-will and to add in extra steps between Calvi-god and sin so that it seems like we are really responsible for our sins instead of Calvi-god. This way, they can justify our punishment so that Calvi-god doesn't look unjust and untrustworthy when he punishes us for doing what he ordained/caused.
"Calvi-god doesn't 'force' us to sin. No, we sin because we 'want' to do it, according to our sinful natures. And so we are responsible for our sins, not Calvi-god. (And just ignore the fact that Calvi-god is the reason we have the sinful nature and irresistible sinful desires in the first place. Because that doesn't matter, you silly Christian. All that matters is that we 'wanted' to do the sin that Calvi-god made us want to do.)"
It's like if I gave you a magic potion that planted into your will/nature the irresistible desire to throw rocks at every car you saw. You didn't choose to take the magic potion (I forced it on you), you didn't choose which desire was built into the magic potion, and you couldn't choose to resist or change the desire, but you had to do it. You had to throw rocks at cars because that's the only desire you were given, the only thing you were able to choose.
Non-Calvinists (and any logical and fair person who's truly concerned with real justice) would say that I am really responsible for you throwing rocks at cars because I gave you something that forced/caused you to irresistibly want to do it, that you only did it because I programmed you to want to do it, and that you had no choice or ability to not do it. And this obviously makes me responsible for it.
But Calvinists would say that you are responsible for doing it because you did what you "wanted" to do: You "freely" followed the desire in your will/nature to throw rocks, "freely" moved your hands and arms on your own to pick up rocks and throw them at cars (no one else physically moved your hands and arms for you), and so you are responsible for your actions and can be/should be punished. And it doesn't matter one bit that you didn't get to decide which desire you had, that you had no ability/option to change or resist that desire, and that you only did it because you were preprogrammed by me to irresistibly do it. You "wanted" to do it, and so you are guilty. Not me.
Hogwash!
Adding in this extra step of "it's in your will/nature to desire to do it" is a smoke-and-mirrors attempt to shift the blame from Calvi-god to us, deceptively making it sound like we are really responsible for our sins even though we all know it's really Calvi-god.
And even Calvinists know this. And the more "honest" and hardened ones admit it:
A.W. Pink (Doctrine of Election): "Man is a moral agent, acting according to the desires and dictates of his nature: he is at the same time a creature, fully controlled and determined by his Creator."
Gordon H. Clark (Predestination): “[Some people] do not wish to extend God’s power over evil things, and particularly over moral evils… [But] the Bible therefore explicitly teaches that God creates sin.”
Ligonier Ministries ("How is God's sovereignty compatible with man's responsibility?"): "[God] orchestrates all things. He foreordains all things that come to pass."
John MacArthur (Divine Providence: The Supreme Comfort of a Sovereign God): "Every single movement, as R.C. said, of every molecule is controlled by God, and a whole lot of it is evil."
Edwin Palmer (The Five Points of Calvinism): “All things that happen in all the world at any time and in all history… come to pass because God ordained them. Even sin– the fall of the devil from heaven, the fall of Adam, and every evil thought, word, and deed in all of history… He decides and causes all things to happen that do happen... even sin...”
Erwin Lutzer (this quote was found at Examining Calvinism): "Calvinists pointedly admit that God ordains evil... we can say that God permitted evil, as long as we understand that he thereby willed that the evil happen." (The Doctrines That Divide, pg. 210)
My ex-pastor (from a November 2019 sermon about Job): ".. in the end [Satan] will find out he did exactly as God sovereignly decreed, under God's sovereign decree."
[At what point does Calvi-god become Satan? Where is the dividing line? How much evil does he have to do - how similar to Satan does he have to be - before Calvinists will simply admit that Calvi-god and Satan are really the same being?]
Gordon H. Clark (Religion, Reason, and Revelation): “I wish very frankly and pointedly to assert that if a man gets drunk and shoots his family, it was the will of God that he should do it… Let it be unequivocally said that this view certainly makes God the cause of sin. God is the sole ultimate cause of everything…”
Theodore Zachariades (as seen in this clip from Soteriology 101): "God works all things after the counsel of His will, even keeping those kings who want to commit adultery from committing so... and when He wants to, He orders those to commit adultery when HE WANTS TO!"
Vincent Cheung (The Problem of Evil): "Scripture teaches that God's will determines everything. Nothing exists or happens without God, not merely permitting, but actively willing it to exist or happen … God controls not only natural events, but he also controls all human affairs and decisions… Since this is true, it follows that God has decreed the existence of evil, he has not merely permitted it..."
John Calvin (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God): “... how foolish and frail [it is to suggest] that evils come to be, not by His will but by His permission... It is a quite frivolous refuge to say that God otiosely permits them, when Scripture shows Him not only willing, but the author of them... Of all the things which happen, the first cause is to be understood to be His will, because He so governs the natures created by Him, as to determine all the counsels and the actions of men to the end decreed by Him..."
John Calvin (Institutes of the Christian Religion, book 1, chapters 16-17): "everything done in the world is according to His decree... the counsels and wills of men are so governed as to move exactly in the course which he has destined... the devil, and the whole train of the ungodly, are, in all directions, held in by the hand of God as with a bridle, so that they can neither conceive any mischief, nor plan what they have conceived, nor how much soever they may have planned, move a single finger to perpetrate, unless in so far as [God] permits - nay, unless in so far as he commands... [God's Will is] the most perfect cause of all things..."
(And yet Calvinists constantly claim that "Calvinists don't think that people are robots controlled by God." Ha, nonsense! Pathetic.)
Wayne Grudem (Systematic Theology): "[Some people say] that if our choices are real, they cannot be caused by God... [But] It seems better to affirm that God causes all things that happen but that he does so in such a way that He somehow upholds our ability to make willing, responsible choices that have real and eternal results for which we are held accountable." ["Willing, responsible choices" does not mean "unforced free-will choices" or "voluntary choices between possible options." It just means "decisions we 'wanted' to make - and had to make - because Calvi-god created us with a will/nature that contained the desire to do only those things, but he will still hold us responsible for it."]
My ex-pastor (April 22, 2018 sermon): "Nothing is operating outside of His sovereign decree. That means that nothing happens in the universe, not even in the origin of sin and evil, without God not only allowing it but ordaining it."
David Mathis ("Does God 'cause' sin?"): "We May Say That God Causes Sin: For us, the question arises as to whether God can be the efficient cause of sin, without being to blame for it... it seems to me that it is not wrong to say that God causes evil and sin. Certainly we should employ such language cautiously, however..." [Calvinists know that they're totally teaching that God causes sin and evil, but they don't want to sound like they're teaching that God causes sin and evil, and so that's why they're so "cautious" - strategic, deceptive, sugarcoative - about their language, their use of the word "cause."]
So never believe Calvinists who say "Calvinism doesn't teach that God causes or authors sin."* They might not want to admit it to themselves - might've even deceived themselves into thinking they're not really saying it - but it's exactly what Calvinism really does teach. And there's no way around it except for deception, sugarcoating, gaslighting, and cognitive dissonance.
Vincent Cheung (The Problem of Evil): "… man is morally responsible even if he lacks moral ability; that is, man must obey God even if he cannot obey God. It is sinful for a person to disobey God whether or not he has the ability to do otherwise. Thus moral responsibility is not grounded on moral ability or on free will; rather, moral responsibility is grounded on God's sovereignty – man must obey God's commands because God says that man must obey, and whether or not he has the ability to obey is irrelevant..."
At least some Calvinists are honest, presenting Calvinism as it really is, disgusting contradictions and all!
*Sidenote about the Calvinist use of the word "author": Calvinists try to make it seem like we are really responsible for sin and evil - not Calvi-god - by saying things like "God is not the author of sin."
Actually, what they'll usually say when confronted with the fact that their theology makes God the cause/author of all sin and evil is something like this: "Well, the Westminster Confession says that God ordains sin but is not the author of sin: 'God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin.'"
But we all know that if Calvi-god wrote the sin and if we had to irresistibly act out the sin that he wrote, then he really is the author and cause of sin, not us. But Calvinists still deny it, always looking for ways to make us guilty for the sins that Calvi-god wrote, that he predestined, orchestrates, and causes.
And recently-ish I found a sentence in Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology (chapter 16) that shows us another way they do this, that sheds some light on how Calvinists claim that "Calvi-god is not the author of our sin, and so he's not responsible for our sin"... when we all know he is.
Grudem first shares the idea of an author writing a story where one character kills another character, and he says that both the writer and the murderous character fully caused the death of the other character.
And then Grudem reveals Calvinism's slippery use of "author": "God fully causes things in one way (as Creator), and we fully cause things in another way (as creatures). (One word of caution however: The analogy of an author [= writer, creator] of a play should not lead us to say that God is the 'author' [= actor, doer, an older sense of 'author'] of sin, for he never does sinful actions...)"
So, as you can see, Grudem is revealing that they've got two different definitions of author, which essentially mean opposite things (that is so how Calvinism operates, their modus operandi). One definition is about the person who wrote the actions, but the other definition is about the person who irresistibly does the actions someone else wrote.
Normally, we all define "author" as the "writer/creator" of the story [first definition], the one who plans it all out. And us non-Calvinists place blame with the writer/creator, believing that he is the one who is ultimately responsible for everything that happens in the story he wrote because the characters can only do (and must do) what the writer/creator wrote for them to do.
But Calvinists view the word "author" differently, abnormally (as they do most words), placing blame only with the second definition of author: the actor/doer. And so when Calvinists say "God is not the author of sin and so He's not responsible for sin," they merely mean that Calvi-god is not the actor/doer of the sinful action but only the writer/creator of it. And because, in Calvinism, the actor is guilty but the writer is not (non-Calvinists say the reverse), we are guilty because we did the sin Calvi-god wrote, and so we deserve any punishment we get, especially considering that we "wanted" to sin, "according to our desires/natures."😕
Calvi-god can write any sin or evil for others to do, as long as he doesn't act it out himself.
Nonsense and hogwash! [The level of cognitive dissonance someone has to employ in order to affirm this is amazing!]
As John MacArthur and Phil ? say in "Divine Providence: The Supreme Comfort of a Sovereign God":
Phil: "... we confess that God is not the author of evil, and yet we also confess that He’s in absolute control over it... How do you reconcile? Is it easy to reconcile those ideas?"
John: "Well, I think yeah, it’s easy to say God can allow something that He doesn’t actually do. He doesn’t actually act in any evil way ever; He cannot do that."
Phil: "He’s not the proximate cause of it, is how a philosopher would say." ["Proximate cause" and "remote cause" are bogus concepts - not from the Bible - to make it seem like man causes sin when it's ultimately only Calvi-god who does. And once again, as we saw here, here's a Calvinist admitting that their theological views grow out of philosophy.]
John: "No, that’s right. It’s a matter of Him allowing it, but it is not something that God does. I mean, that’s the best we can say." [Calvinism's "allows" is not a true "allows" because Calvi-god only "allows" what he first preplanned, orchestrated, and caused. Another case of deceptively defining and using words differently than the norm.]
Phil: "Yeah. In fact, we go even further. The Westminster Confession says...
... when God allows evil, it’s not a bare permission. In other words, it’s not an unwilling permission. He not only allows it, He decreed it. He intended for this to happen, but not in a way that makes Him the author ["doer"] or cause ["proximate cause"] of evil. These are hard concepts, right?" [Yes, they're incredibly difficult concepts to understand when you get them wrong, when you redefine commonly-used words to fit your views, when they don't fit the Bible's truth, and when you have multiple and conflicting definitions of words and layers of meaning!]
See! So as long as Calvi-god doesn't actually do the sinful actions he wrote for us to do then he is innocent of wrongdoing, but we are guilty.
Bogus!
Only a Calvinist would say that a murderous fictional character who was dreamed up in the mind of a writer - whose actions were dreamed up by the writer and who was required/forced to do what the writer wrote - "fully caused" the murder, that they were in any way truly responsible for the murder.
Because in reality, and according to any and every non-Calvinist, there is no way that the character's choice was a real choice of his own. And so it's absolute hogwash to say that he was a real cause of the murder or really responsibly for the murder. He was not a cause at all, but merely a tool carrying out the wishes and plans of the writer.
The Calvinist's phrase "God is not the author of sin and so He's not responsible" is merely deceptive word-games, trying to fool us into thinking that they believe in some level of true free-will - as if Calvi-god isn't really responsible for sin but man is - even though Calvinism really doesn't teach that at all when closely examined.
[Calvinists have what they call "compatibilism; soft determinism" (and maybe other names), saying that it's "God's sovereignty working together with man's 'free-will' in a mysterious way, enough to make us punishable for our sins." But it's still really just Calvi-god preplanning, causing, controlling it all, because he preprograms our wills with the desires we must obey. He "sovereignly" determines what we will do and what we desire to do, and then we do it "according to the desires of our nature," and then he punishes us for it, as if we were truly responsible for it, even though we're not. This isn't a true biblical "mystery" that Calvinists simply can't understand, but it's a contradiction they can't solve in their unbiblical theological framework.]
I think this kind of two-faced dilemma - these kinds of Calvinist contradictions, created by their bad theology and bad use of words - is why their Calvinist theology books are so long. They have to come up with all sorts of convoluted arguments, circular reasoning, Calvinistic interpretations for verses, "two types of this and two types of that," etc., to make it seem like Calvinism doesn't make God responsible for sin and evil, when it really does.
Every error they make leads to ten more errors to incorporate it, to explain away their damage and contradictions, and to cover up their mess - and on and on it goes until their theology books are 700-pages long and yet they still haven't really scratched the surface, explained anything fully, or sufficiently solved any of their contradictions (which is why they must always resort to "mystery," "tension," and "who are you to question God?").
[Grudem actually unknowingly shoots Calvinism in the foot when he says that the writer also "fully caused" the murder. Because he's admitting that Calvi-god fully causes sin and evil, even if the fictional characters supposedly "fully cause" it too. But the thing is, Calvi-god is the highest authority and power there is, and so it doesn't matter one bit if some lower subservient person (a character in the story) fake-causes or secondarily-causes the murder too. The one truly responsible person is the one with all the power - the only power - to ordain/write/cause anything and everything that happens. The characters are merely helpless pawns in the writer's hands.]
Despite Calvinists' many attempts to deny it, Calvinism totally makes Calvi-god the ultimate cause of sin, evil, and unbelief (in fact, the only free and voluntary causer/chooser of sin, evil, and unbelief), but they try in many ways to make it seem like we - not Calvi-god - are truly guilty for our sins. But it's all hogwash and nonsense!
The ESV (here's a fun rabbit-hole to dive into😒):
Calvinism's unbiblical idea of preprogrammed wills/natures/desires spills over into their beloved translation, the ESV, which interprets verses differently (or repeats the Calvinist-sounding interpretations of earlier bad translations) to make it sound like our wills/natures/desires control what we decide to do. (Thus MacArthur's " "the sinner cannot will to believe on his own" and "if they'll only will to believe.")
And so as more Christians read the Calvinist-biased ESV, they'll become more and more convinced that the Bible really does teach Calvinism... when it really doesn't, when it's really just bad translation and interpretation.
Let's look at a few verses to see what I'm talking about:
A. Here's John 7:17 in the NIV: "Anyone who chooses to do the will of God ..." And in the KJV: "If any man will do his will ..." In the Berean Study Bible: "If any man desires to do his will ..." In the CSB: "If anyone wants to do his will ..."
What do all these have in common: "chooses to do... will do... desires to do... wants to do..."? They are all verbs, something we do, showing that man himself does the action of willing, wanting, choosing.
But now, interestingly, here's the ESV: "If anyone's will is to do God's will ..." The ESV changes it from a verb to the noun "Will" (sometimes I capitalize the noun to distinguish it from the verb), changing it from the man determining what he does... to the man's Will being in control of the man by determining what the man wants and chooses. Very different. Very Calvinist!
B. Likewise, here's Romans 9:16 in the KJV: "So then it is not of him that willeth ..." Once again, "willing" is a verb, done by the man, and it's about what we choose to do or not do.
But the ESV says "So then it depends not on human will..." This is very different. And again it changes the verb "will" to the noun "Will," as if our human Wills (preprogrammed by Calvi-god) control us. [Important note: 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. And so the KJV is correct and the ESV is wrong.]
C. And John 8:44 in the KJV: "... the lusts of your father ye will do..." But in the ESV, it's "... and your will is to do your father's desires." Once again, in the KJV, "will" is a verb; it's what you do. But in the ESV, it's a noun, as if your Will is preprogrammed and determines/controls what you do.
D. 1 Corinthians 7:37 in 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 the KJV, the man does the steadfast standing and has power over his own Will. But in the ESV, both are passive: The man's heart is firmly established and his desire is under control... but not necessarily by him. And notice that the ESV completely gets rid of the idea of man having power over his Will. Instead, it substitutes in "desire," but without saying that he has power over his own desire. In the KJV, the man has power over his own Will. But in the ESV, his desire is just "under control"... but by whom? By Calvi-god, of course. By the preprogrammed Will/nature Calvi-god gave him.
E. Hosea 5:4 in the KJV: "They will not frame their doings to turn unto their God..." But the ESV says "Their deeds do not permit them to return to their God..."
In the KJV, the people have control over their deeds (doings); they will not do what they need to do to turn to God, even though they could. But in the ESV, their deeds (predetermined, caused, orchestrated, controlled by Calvi-god, of course) control the people, not allowing them to return to God.
F. Titus 3:3, in the KJV, says that the people were once "... serving divers lusts and pleasures ..." But the ESV says they were " ... slaves to various passions and pleasures ..."
In the KJV, it's a verb, the people serve their pleasures. But in the ESV, it's a noun, a slave. Changing it from a verb to a noun changes it from what a person does (what they choose to do) to who a person is, as if Calvi-god created you to be a slave to sin and you can't change it.
[To further destroy Calvinism, the Bible tells us how we become slaves to sin (and it's not that God predestines/causes it): "to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness." (Romans 6:16, KJV). We choose whom/what to offer ourselves to, and when we do, we become its servants. Calvinism says that we sin because we're slaves to sin (as if God predestined it and we can't do anything about it), but the Bible shows that we're slaves to sin because we yield ourselves to sin (and if we turn from our sin and turn to Jesus - an ability we all have - then we would cease to be slaves to sin). Same concepts but in a reverse order, which is how Calvinism tricks people about so many things, how it sounds so close to truth when it's really so far away.]
G. Galatians 5:17, KJV: "For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh..." But in the ESV: "For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh..."
In the KJV, the flesh lusts (verb), but the ESV changes it to a noun: "the desires of the flesh," as if the desires decide what we do, instead of us doing the action of lusting. This supports the Calvinist's view that we are not in control of our desires or able to manage them, but that our desires are pre-set by Calvi-god and they control of us. [In the concordance, "desire" is a verb, something we do. And so, again, the ESV is wrong to make it a noun, as if it's something that controls us.]
H. Philippians 3:19 in the KJV: "Whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things." In the KJV, "mind" is a verb. It's what we do. We do the action of minding earthly things.
But the ESV changes it to a noun (shocker, huh😒): "... with minds set on earthly things." In the ESV, it's not that we mind earthly things but it's that our minds are already preset on earthly things, and it determines what we think and do. In Calvinism, we don't control our minds/thoughts, but our God-determined minds/thoughts control us.
But since the Greek says it's a verb, we know which translation is the right one: the KJV. Again. "Mind" is something we do, not something that controls us and tells us what to do.
I. The ESV also often changes the verb "believes/believes not" to the noun "believers/unbelievers," changing it from what we do (what we have a choice about/control over) to who we are, as if we were created by God to be that way and cannot control it or change it.
Example: 1 Thessalonians 2:13 in the KJV: "... the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe." But the ESV says "... in you believers." So who's right here? As the Greek shows, the word is a verb - "believes" - not a noun. So once again, the ESV is wrong and the KJV is right. (Are you seeing a pattern here?) It's that the people do the believing (we all have the ability to believe), not that we either are or are not believers based on what God predestined for us.
And 1 Peter 1:21 in the KJV: "Who by him do believe in God..." But in the ESV: "who through him are believers in God..." In the KJV, we believe in God through Jesus. We find God through Jesus. But in the ESV, it's as if Jesus makes us believers in God. Very Calvinist!
(Some other instances of this are in 1 Thess. 2:10, Acts 19:18, 1 Cor. 10:27, 1 Cor. 14:22, 2 Cor. 4:4, and Romans 15:31)
These are subtle differences, but they are all over the ESV... and they add up, implying something totally different. A completely different Jesus, different God, different gospel, and different way to be saved. (They are all over other translations, too, besides just the ESV, but most clearly and consistently in the ESV, the Calvinist's favored pride-and-joy translation. For more interpretation problems with the ESV, see this post.)
Hmm, I wonder: How many changes can one make to God's Word and Truth before it ceases to be God's Word and Truth?
You know the Jehovah's Witnesses destroyed the Truth with only one change, one added word: Jesus was [a] God. So how much more does Calvinism destroy it with its many changes!
And here's something to think about: In order to copyright something, it has to be a certain percentage different from anything else, right? This means that in order to copyright every new translation of the Bible, it had to make enough changes to the text to be different enough from any other translation. Therefore, I believe, the newer the translation, the more changes they had to make to it, the farther it gets from the original meaning, and the more biblically-inaccurate it becomes.
But the KJV is old and public domain. And it didn't need to make a bunch of changes to get published. Plus, it doesn't have the same kind of significant errors that I think the newer ones have (once again, see this post), translations that are all based on the same bad manuscripts. And so even though it's not perfect (no translation can be when it involves human language and interpretation, when translating one language to another), I trust the KJV above all others.
And I don't trust the ESV at all! In fact, I think that if you use the ESV as your source of biblical truth, you're being lied to and led astray verse by verse, right into hard-core Calvinism.
The ESV and ESV Study Bible are majorly preferred by Calvinists and often considered "The Calvinist Bible." Why? And why would translators of a Bible make these kinds of Calvinist tweaks to Scripture?
Well, Wayne Grudem and J.I. Packer were editors on the ESV Study Bible (this is for the ESV Global Study Bible). Grudem and Packer are both popular, strong, dogmatic Calvinists. Very Big Names in the world of Calvinism. Grudem in the General Editor and Packer is the Theological Editor. And there were many other Calvinist contributors and committee members for this Bible and its study notes.
And regarding the ESV itself (not the Study Bible), several Calvinists worked on the translation oversight committee, at least and from what I can tell, Packer, Grudem, Hughes, Poythress, Ryken (and possibly Collins and Dennis and Arnold).
And so from what I can tell, most of the main people who worked on the ESV and ESV Study Bible are definitely or most likely Calvinists. Would we not expect hardened Calvinists to interpret/translate verses in a Calvinist way, to read Calvinism into the Bible they're creating?
And so when we read the ESV's verse translation and Study Bible notes, we are getting information that has been filtered through and molded to fit the theological views of strong Calvinists, getting large doses of systematically-taught Calvinism.
It's no wonder that in the reviews for the ESV we find many Calvinists giving it a glowing review, at least and from what I can tell: Piper, Sproul, Chandler, Mohler, Platt, Anyabwile, DeYoung, Chappell, Schreiner, Lutzer, etc. This is telling. This is all very telling!
Calvinists helped translate the ESV Bible ... and then Calvinists added the study notes for the ESV Study Bible ... and then Calvinists hold it up as the best version or only version they will use.
You can't get away from the fact that the ESV is steeped in Calvinism. No wonder Calvinists love it so much! And the longer you steep yourself in it, the more you will see things their way.
Furthermore, if you want to get into the nitty-gritty about the ESV translation, read these articles about the men who wrote the Greek texts that the ESV is based on (and various other translations too): "Westcott and Hort: Translator's Beliefs" and "Westcott and Hort and the Greek Text."
Apparently, 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 take Genesis and the creation story literally, 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?
And for one more disturbing thing, here's an interesting article from David Cloud (from Way of Life Literature) about the Bible translations (like the ESV) that are based on Westcott and Hort's texts (you might need to read this a couple times to understand it), called "Are the modern versions based on Westcott-Hort?" (emphasis is Cloud's):
"... [Those who support modern Bible translations] often disassociate themselves from Westcott-Hort and claim that they merely use an “eclectic” Greek text... [and some] imply that Westcott and Hort are irrelevant to the subject of the biblical text because 'no textual critic now holds to the Westcott and Hort theories of textual criticism.'...
This position DODGES THE REAL ISSUE, WHICH IS THE FACT THAT WESTCOTT AND HORT REPRESENTED THE SIGNAL DEPARTURE FROM THE RECEIVED TEXT THAT IS REPRESENTED TODAY IN THE POPULAR THEORIES OF TEXTUAL CRITICISM. Westcott and Hort built upon the foundation established by their predecessors, such as Griesbach, Lachmann, and Tischendorf. Westcott and Hort adapted the textual theories of these men into their own unique blend, and their Greek New Testament represented the first popular departure from the Greek Received Text [the "textus receptus" is the Greek text of the New Testament which the KJV is based on].
While today’s textual scholars do not always admit that they follow Westcott and Hort, many of the more honest ones do admit that they are powerfully influenced by these men.
Bruce Metzger... one of the editors of the United Bible Societies Greek New Testament... makes the following plain admission: 'The International committee that produced the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament...ADOPTED THE WESTCOTT AND HORT EDITION AS ITS BASIC TEXT... ' (Metzger, cited by James Brooks, Bible Interpreters of the 20th Century, p. 264).
... Brooks further states, '... It is the theory lying behind the Greek text used by most modern versions: The Revised Standard, the New Revised Standard, the New English Bible, the Revised English Bible, the New American Bible, the New American Standard, the Good News Bible, the New International Version, and to a lesser extent, also the Jerusalem Bible and the New Jerusalem Bible' (Ibid.).
... Ernest Cadman Colwell, a textual scholar who published a number of widely used grammars and textbooks [says] '... HORT DID NOT FAIL TO REACH HIS MAJOR GOAL. HE DETHRONED THE TEXTUS RECEPTUS....'
...that Westcott and Hort are key, pivotal men in the modern history of textual criticism and that the current 'eclectic' Greek New Testaments continue to reflect, for the most part, the decisions made by Westcott and Hort....
Dr. Zane Hodges [says] 'MODERN TEXTUAL CRITICISM IS PSYCHOLOGICALLY ‘ADDICTED’ TO WESTCOTT AND HORT.... The result of it all is a methodological quagmire where objective controls on the conclusions of critics are nearly nonexistent. It goes without saying that no Bible-believing Christian who is willing to extend the implications of his faith to textual matters can have the slightest grounds for confidence in contemporary critical texts' (emphasis added) (Zane C. Hodges, “Rationalism and Contemporary New Testament Textual Criticism,” Bibliotheca Sacra, January 1971, p. 35).
... The fact is that the Westcott-Hort text represents the first widely-accepted departure from the Received Text in the post-Reformation era, and the modern English versions descend directly from the W-H text... Any man who discounts the continuing significance of Westcott-Hort in the field of Bible texts and versions is probably trying to throw up a smoke screen to hide something."
It sounds to me like it's saying that those who wrote the modern translations of the Bible (like the ESV) try to distance themselves from Westcott and Hort (because they know there are problems with those two men and their interpretations)... while, at the same time, they still use the W-H texts as the basis for their translations. And it's saying that those who try to downplay the errors and damage of Westcott and Hort are trying to hide something, trying to excuse the fact that they based their translation on the W-H texts. Modern translators know that there is a problem with these two men and their texts, but they can't get away from them. They are addicted to them, subservient to their tight reign of terror over Bible translation.
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 most accurate, I have to side with the KJV (not the New King James, just the King James), especially when there are significant differences between the translations.
Such as: Should Acts 8:37 be included in the Bible or not? Should the Trinity be left out of 1 John 5:7 or not? Does it matter if "begotten" is left out when talking about Jesus?
In Philippians 2:6, did Jesus think it was "not robbery to be equal with God" (KJV) or did He do the opposite and 'not count equality with God something to be grasped' (the ESV and many others)?
Does Revelation 13:8 say that people's names were written in the Book of Life before the foundation of the world (the ESV, supporting Calvinism's doctrine of election/predestination)... or does it say something totally different (two possible interpretations of the KJV): that names were written from the foundation of the world (meaning that names have been added to the Book of Life since the beginning, as each new person comes to Christ) or that the Lamb was slain (destined to be slain) from the foundation of the world, that it was God's plan from the beginning to send Jesus to die for our sins to offer us eternal life?
Does Psalm 51:5 say that David was sinful from before birth, from conception (NIV, NLT, CSB), or does it say that David's mother conceived him in sin (KJV, NASB, and even, shockingly, the ESV {even a broken clock is right twice a day})?
Does Ephesians 1:11 say that an "inheritance" was predestined for those who believe (KJV), or does it say that what was predestined is whether or not we were chosen (NIV)?
Does 2 Peter 3:9 say that God wants everyone to "come to repentance" (KJV) or does it say to "reach repentance" (the ESV alone!), and why does it matter (see this post)?
These are some very significant differences. And the more I've researched this, the more I believe that, of all the translations, the KJV is most accurate and trustworthy.
But everyone will have to decide this for themselves.
