How Martin Luther Refutes KJV-Onlyism

1. Luther went back to the originals, not just a translation

KJV-Onlyists often argue that one translation (the 1611 KJV) is perfect and final.

Luther refused to rest on the Latin Vulgate, the “authorized version” of his day.

Instead, he studied the Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament (especially Erasmus’s Greek edition).

This shows that translations are secondary — the source texts are primary.

If Luther were alive in 1611, he would not have accepted the KJV as “the only Bible,” but would have tested it against the original Hebrew and Greek.

2. Luther himself made multiple revisions

Luther revised his German Bible repeatedly (1522 NT → full 1534 Bible → later editions up to his death).

Why? Because he knew no translation is perfect and improvements are always possible.

If there could be only one “perfect” Bible in one language, Luther’s constant revisions would make no sense.

This undermines the KJV-Only idea that a single 17th-century English translation was finalized by God and is beyond correction.

3. Luther believed Scripture is infallible — but only in the originals

Luther: “The Scriptures cannot err. It is certain that the Scriptures cannot disagree with itself.” (WA 7, 97)

He made clear that God’s Word is without error, but when faced with difficulties, he confessed his own ignorance rather than blaming the Bible.

Importantly, this inerrancy applied to the Hebrew and Greek texts, not to any one translation (not even his own).

KJV-Onlyism wrongly transfers inspiration and inerrancy from the originals to a single English version.

4. Augustine + Luther together

Augustine: “I have learned to yield this respect and honour only to the canonical books of Scripture: of these alone do I most firmly believe that the authors were completely free from error.”

Luther agreed with Augustine’s principle — the canonical writings themselves are without error, not later translations.

This is exactly opposite to the KJV-Only claim that God preserved His perfect Word only in the 1611 English version.

5. The spirit of the Reformation

The Reformation principle was: “Back to the sources” (Latin: ad fontes).

Luther insisted on Scripture in the language of the people, but always grounded in the Hebrew and Greek.

If KJV-Onlyism were true, the Reformers would have declared the Latin Vulgate (or their own translations) as the only perfect Bible — but they did not.

KJV-Onlyism actually resembles the medieval Catholic insistence on the Latin Vulgate as “the Bible,” which Luther rejected.

Conclusion:

Martin Luther proves that the Bible itself (Hebrew + Greek originals), not any single translation, is the inspired and inerrant Word of God. He valued translations — and made one himself — but he never claimed perfection for them. His approach completely dismantles KJV-Onlyism, which wrongly elevates one translation above the inspired originals.