“Which Bible translation is the correct one?”

Steve Brown:
Which Bible translation is the correct one? The answer to that and other questions, on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
If you think laughter isn’t spiritual, or that faithfulness to God means conformity to Christian stereotypes, then this program probably isn’t for you. But if you’re looking for honest Biblical answers to hard questions, then welcome to Key Life. Here’s our host, author and seminary professor Steve Brown, along with Pete Alwinson from ForgeTruth.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hi Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
Hey man. I cut you off there.

Steve Brown:
You were going to ask me how I was.

Pete Alwinson:
I know.

Steve Brown:
I thought I would ask how you were first.

Pete Alwinson:
You know, that was nice. I have diphtheria, but other than that.

Steve Brown:
I’ve got jungle rot and leprosy. That’s kind of like Mrs. Lincoln, other than that, how did you like the play? That’s Pete Alwinson. And as you know, he comes in on Fridays. For many years, he was my pastor and now, and he was good because he was a pastor and now he’s good for nothing. And, it’s good to have him here. His ministry, Forge, is an incredible ministry changing so many lives. And you might want to check it out. ForgeTruth.com there’s a wonderful podcast there. And so much video and audio and written material. You’ll be glad I’ve told you about it. And as I said, Pete comes in and we answer questions on Friday. We’ve been doing that for over 25 years. And we love your questions. You can pick up the phone whenever you have a question, and dial 1-800-KEY-LIFE record your question, and sometimes we put you on the air. Or you can write to

Key Life Network
P.O. Box 5000
Maitland, Florida 32794

in Canada, it’s

P.O. Box 28060

Waterloo, Ontario N2L 6J8

or you can e-mail us at [email protected] and if you can help us financially, please do. We’re a member of ECFA in the States and CCCC in Canada. And both of those organizations oversee our books to make sure that we’re ethical. And we were ethical before they came along. But you can check and be generous if you can, if you can’t, we understand. And say a prayer for this ministry. Pete, why don’t you lead us in prayer, and we’ll get to these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
All right. Let’s pray together. Our Great Father, what a joy it is at the end of this week to be able to call you Father, to bow before you, to remember that you loved us before we loved you, that you created us and then recreated us in Jesus. And Lord Jesus, thank you for coming into this world, taking on human flesh without sin and yet taking all of our sin into your flesh, onto your body, into you and experience for the first time being cut off from the Father. And Holy Spirit, thank you for taking the power of the gospel and putting it in our lives and bringing us to you. We honor you and praise you. We need you. We need your power, your presence. And Lord, we ask that right now. We ask that you would bless Key Life. Thank you for the ministry that hits so many people. And we just pray for those that do things behind the scenes here at Key Life, as well as Steve, and just all of those who proclaim your name. And so, Lord, we ask for this week-end that you’d be with our pastors and teachers and priests and leaders, use them in a powerful way. Bring us into your presence and now use this time of Q&A. We give it to you in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. Pete, let’s go to the phone lines.

Caller 1:
You’ve been discussing the five solas of the Reformation, and you mentioned Sola Scriptura. But you’ve got a problem, in the Protestant Church, that is. Which version do you use because there are some who suggest that God only wrote one Bible for the English speaking world, and that is the 1611 King James.

Steve Brown:
Ha ha, well. I like the 1611 King James, but there have been a lot of changes in the language subsequent to its translation, and there needs to be some correction. We’ve also discovered manuscripts that predated those who did the 1611 translation. So, translating different versions of the Bible is an ongoing process that will probably be ongoing until Jesus returns. For those who are trying to get it right. It takes that kind of thing, it takes scholarship, and it takes work. But most of the translations that we use today are pretty good.

Pete Alwinson:
Mm hmm. Oh yeah! I mean, we’ve got the NIV, the ESV, the NASB, the RV.

Steve Brown:
And they’ve got study Bibles for everything. The Bible, the study Bible for ingrown toenails.

Pete Alwinson:
Ha! Oh, man.

Steve Brown:
There are a lot of study Bibles. You know, I’ve, I think sometimes it’s fun to read a paraphrase because it sheds light on it, Eugene Peterson’s comes to mind. And I really love that paraphrase of the Scripture because it’s helpful. But it’s a paraphrase, which makes it a commentary, not actual Scripture.

Pete Alwinson:
Good point. Good point. And we should have both of them in our life.

Steve Brown:
Of course. And I’ll tell you something, Pete. You know, there are even cultic Bibles that are translated by the cult. And there’s enough Scripture in those Bibles to lead somebody to Christ. So, it’s not so much, you know, I already know more of the Bible than I’m living. So, I don’t have to go look at bunches of different translations. You know, what I’ve got is enough. What do you use?

Pete Alwinson:
Well, you know, ESV and the New American Standard are my favorite. You know, the science of textual criticism is powerful and as trustworthy. There’s a lot of good scholars that are behind the ESV and NASB. The NIV is english as we speak it, the New American Standard is English as it’s never been spoken. The RSV

Steve Brown:
Well, they did the most, the newest of that is better.

Pete Alwinson:
It’s better. Yeah, it is. And I did most of my memorization in the New American Standard from the 1970s. And so, I love the, I get the cadence. I get it. You know, you probably, King James and RSV were big. You probably preached out of the RSV.

Steve Brown:
I did. And I grew up on King James. Memorized Scripture to it. It’s a good question, but it’s not one you need to, a lot of people want to fight about it, and get out their guns, don’t do that. Be glad for the translations we’ve got, and we can get insight from a lot of them.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
There isn’t one that this is absolutely correct at every point because that isn’t true. You know, it’s a wonderful story, by the way, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. You know, I was trained in a graduate school of theology that said that Isaiah was not a single book, that it was a family, maybe, or at least there were two Isaiahs. And when they discovered the Scrolls at the Dead Sea, that predated every manuscript we had by almost a thousand years. And when they undid the Scroll of Isaiah, it wasn’t a family, it was just one guy. So, my professors were wrong. I’ve often thought I’d go back, they’re all dead now, but I’d go back and tell them. You know, you lied to me. You shouldn’t have done that.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. You can trust the Bible. It’s the most accurately translated ancient book that exists.

Steve Brown:
It really is. And when people, and there’s another question here, that’s an e-mail. How can we deal with the differences and contradictions in the Bible?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. You know, I saw that and I thought, I liked that. We’ll name one and we’ll deal with it.

Steve Brown:
There are far less contradictions than the pagans would say when they say a statement like that. And if you’re willing to do the homework, if you’re willing to really study, those are apparent contradictions.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. That’s right. They’re just apparent. They appear to us to be at first blush because you’re seeing things from different books of the Bible.

Steve Brown:
That’s right.

Pete Alwinson:
But when you compare the context and what each is saying, then there’s no contradiction and they very much are complimentary to each other. So, don’t buy that argument, push that argument.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. And that’s a great, when Pete said, name one and we’ll talk about it, that’s a wonderful way to deal with it. The next time somebody says about contradictions, say, all right, let’s talk about it, name one and they won’t, nine times out of ten.

Pete Alwinson:
And if they bring something up and you don’t have the answer for it from your own Bible reading, go ask your pastor or somebody else cause there’s an answer to all of these things. We’ve been asked all that stuff.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. Does God perform miracles today? That’s an e-mail.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, he does.

Steve Brown:
I’m an example of that. I’m still walking around.

Pete Alwinson:
A living, breathing example.

Steve Brown:
And I haven’t become a Buddhist, so I’m a miracle. No, really, God does as He pleases.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And I’ve, and I think as pastors, we’ve seen God intervene in some very incredible and supernatural ways in people’s lives. I don’t think that’s the normal way that God works. I think he works through Scripture and through circumstance and through our biography and through other Christians. But sometimes there are things that happen that are unexplainable, except because God intervened.

Pete Alwinson:
You know, I agree. I think that was well put. And I think that what people need to understand is that God is the one who not only created this world, but established the natural laws and holds those laws together. So, there’s a very real sense in which the natural laws with the laws of creation are supernaturally held together. Colossians says that Jesus holds them together and sometimes he suspends those laws and does something that we don’t expect in the physical realm, but he’s always doing it in the spiritual realm.

Steve Brown:
All the time.

Pete Alwinson:
All the time.

Steve Brown:
That’s true. What are the essentials of the Christian faith?

Pete Alwinson:
Oh, the historic doctrines of the faith. What would you say falls, I’d say, you know, the existence of God, that he has revealed himself to us in Jesus and in Creation and in the world.

Steve Brown:
That is the essential.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, that’s the essential.

Steve Brown:
C.S. Lewis, when he wrote his book, Mere Christianity said, these are what, and he was using the basic creed of the Apostles Creed.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Right.

Steve Brown:
And so, the Apostles Creed is basic to the Christian faith, but if you’re a real Christian and you want to be saved, you’ll base it on the Westminster Confession of Faith.

Pete Alwinson:
Right, right.

Steve Brown:
We’re Presbyterians. And that is the confession of our church. But even the confession says there are errors in itself.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right, because it’s a human product.

Steve Brown:
Because it’s a human product. And Scripture isn’t that.

Pete Alwinson:
Amen. Amen. Well, we do have the knowledge of God as he’s revealed himself to us. And there are those historic doctrines of the faith that are helpful, that are so important.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, they really are. I really want and a lot of people don’t believe this, but I want to stay within the mainstream of Orthodox, historic, apostolic Christianity. And if you’re there, you’re safe. We’ve got to go. Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.