Why I Preach from the Received Text

I just want to say what a wonderful gift Mark Ward is to the Body. When he writes, I feel like I’m reading the male version of Peggy Noonan (former speech writer for Ronald Reagan and WSJ editorialist). Every word is precise and significant and measured. If you ever have the pleasure of speaking with him personally, his “in person” manner is identical and drips with graciousness. I, too, grew up in the KJV-only end of the IFB pool for a time. Mark’s ability to engage with their polemics with so much grace and generosity but without every compromising the Truth is a skillset that inspires me.
Thanks, Mark — for your work and for your character!

Thank you, DL Creed, for expressing what I have experienced as well. A living example of what used to be called “a gentleman and a scholar.”

Ward hits on what I think is probably the worst feature of most KJVO thinking; the tendency to demonize opponents. My take is that since a great portion of every KJVO argument I’ve heard (Sorenson, Ruckmann, something from Chick) depends on genetic fallacies like the ad hominem and guilt by association, coupled with a hefty dose of non sequiturs and the like, those who accept the arguments must (transitively) accept the logical fallacies.

The end result is that in the KJVO churches I’ve seen, here is generally a large degree of poor thinking, leading to poor theology and a generally brutal environment in rhetoric. It’s somewhat Godless in effect, IMO.

Just saw Ward speak at DBTS yesterday. It was excellent. He is as engaging a speaker as he is a writer.