J. I. Packer

"I swear in the Name of the Triune God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit that I believe the Bible is none other than the voice of Him that sitteth upon the throne. Every book of it, every chapter of it, every verse of it, every word of it, every syllable of it, every letter of it, is direct utterance of the Most High. The Bible is none other than the Word of God, not some part of it more, some part of it less, but all alike the utterance of Him that sitteth upon the throne, faultless, unerring, supreme."

The above statement is quoted from a sermon preached by J. W. Burgon at Oxford in 1860[1], and it does not specifically refer to the King James Version. Rather, Burgon’s statement is a rhetorical affirmation of the divine origin of all Scripture, affirming the fact of inspiration without discussing the mode of it[1].

What “Bible” Means in This Context

Burgon’s reference to “the Bible” encompasses Scripture as a whole—the original texts and their faithful transmission through history—not a particular translation. Burgon explicitly repudiated the idea that his words advocated a “mechanical theory” of inspiration, stating that “the method of Inspiration is … one of the many things I cannot fully understand, much less pretend to explain”[1]. This clarification is crucial: Burgon believed in divine inspiration of Scripture but rejected rigid theories about how that inspiration functioned.

Important Misunderstandings

The statement has been frequently misappropriated by King James Only advocates. However, what early fundamentalists stood for was the fact of inspiration, not any theory as to the method of it[1]. Burgon himself did not claim the KJV was perfect or that any single translation captured Scripture with absolute precision. His affirmation applied to the original biblical texts and their authoritative content, not to any particular English version.

When Burgon speaks of “every letter,” he means this as a rhetorical expression of Scripture’s comprehensive divine authority, not a literal claim that every letter of every translation is equally authoritative. The statement reflects classical Christian doctrine about biblical inspiration rather than a defense of any specific translation’s perfection.

[1] J. I. Packer, “Fundamentalism” and the Word of God: Some Evangelical Principles (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1958), 179–181.