JIMMY AKIN.ORG

August 09, 2007

James White Has Completely Lost It

(Jimmy Akin)

And by "it," I mean two things: First, his mind, and second, the debate.

The reason I say that is that White has now posted pictures depicting those who have urged him to be more charitable with Frank Beckwith as radical Muslims protesting and urging beheading.

Here are the pictures.

To the first he gave the name "RCfatwa" (i.e., Roman Catholic fatwa):

To the second he gave the name "RCcharity" (i.e., "Roman Catholic charity"--depicting the attitude of the man in the picture as the kind of charity that Catholics display):

ORIGINAL SOURCE.

Toward the end of his post, White seeks to blunt criticism of these pictures (or appears to do so) by saying:

Now, I have obviously attempted to insert a bit of levity, and a bit of humorous sarcasm here, for the simple reason that I'm to the point where you either have to laugh or cry.

I'm sorry, but no. This kind of excuse will not do. Not in the slightest.

You do not compare your interlocutors to Islamists or portray those who urge charity on your part as if they were advocates of beheading those who disagree with them. Whether you feel they are right or wrong, annoying or not, or even reasonable or not, the actions of people engaged in this discussion with White are simply incommensurate with the kind of actions undertaken by radical Muslims.

What White has done here is not humor.

It is vile. It is reprehensible. It is despicable. It is outrageous. If White were thinking rationally, he would see this.

Hence, White has lost his mind when it comes to this. He is not functioning as a rational agent on this topic.

He also loses any debate on this point via special application of Godwin's Law.

Godwin's Law holds that the longer an online discussion goes, the greater the odds of someone making a comparison to Hitler. It is standard practice in many Internet circles--because of the inflammatory nature of this comparison and its tendency to start flame wars and shut down rational discussion--to regard anyone who makes such a comparison (unless you are talking about real-life Nazis or mass murderers) as having automatically lost the debate in question.

Islamists are the Nazis of the post-9/11 world, and thus anyone who depicts his debate opponents as Islamists automatically loses whatever debate was underway due to forfeiture.

He has crossed a fundamental line that shows himself to be incapable of holding a rational discussion. Excuses like "it was just a little levity" count for nothing. Those are the remarks of a troll. The individual has shown that he is not willing to make a good faith effort to abide by the terms of Internet discussions, and there is no point in discussing anything with him--either ever or at least until he seriously and sincerely acknowledges just how far over the line he was.

Discussion over.

James, you lose.

If you were Catholic, I'd tell you to go to confession.

What you did was vile, unacceptable, and childish. You have reduced yourself to the status of a troll.

If you can't immediately see that and make amends then no one, knowing that you are capable of this, should engage you in debate or discussions of any kind.

UPDATE: The above pictures are so vile, particularly in light of 9/11 and the ensuing history and those who have been threatened or killed by radical Muslims, that this should be a matter upon which individuals of all confessional affiliations should be able to agree, including Evangelicals. I would like to invite Evangelicals, including those who have been close to White, to both publicly and privately distance themselves from the actions of Mr. White in posting these pictures as an act fundamentally incompatible with Christian charity. Evangelicals, in particular, can play a spiritual service to White by making this clear to him, since as the pictures themselves illustrate, he is deaf to appeals to charity from Catholics.

Posted by Jimmy Akin in Non-Catholic Apologists | Permalink | Comments (796)

August 08, 2007

Amazing. Simply Amazing.

(Jimmy Akin)

James White has been active in the combox over at Stand To Reason--despite his dislike of comboxes (I guess he uses them when it suits him)--in connection with Frank Beckwith's recent appearance on that organization's radio program.

HERE'S A LINK.

I was told he had reposted some of the material from there on his own blog, and I was thinking about responding to something he said, but then I ran into

THIS ITEM (CURRENTLY) AT THE TOP OF HIS BLOG.

It's amazing. Simply amazing.

The topic concerns a statement Frank made on Stand To Reason that he had read documents from the Council of Trent back when he was in his twenties and then recently re-read them and was surprised by what he read. They did not say what he understood them to say based on his prior reading and what he had been told about them by others subsequently.

No big deal, right? People read something when they're young and green and then read it again years later and realize it didn't say what they thought it said or means something else. Happens all the time, right?

Not, apparently, to the mind of James White.

First, here's the quotation from Frank, transcribed from the broadcast, that White picks on:

If you read the Council of Trent...which, by the way, really shocked me. I expected to read this sort of horrible document, you know, requiring people to stick pins in their eyes, you know, and flagellate themselves, you know, and it turns out that there are things in there that are quite amazing, that the initial grace is given to us by God, in fact, there's a condemnation in there for anyone who says that our works, apart from grace...I mean, I thought to myself, I had not been told...I had been misinformed!

On his blog White poses the following questions:

1) How can a person be shocked by re-reading something they read twenty years ago. Is it your claim that you had completely forgotten everything you had read then? Or is it your claim that you were so completely prejudiced in your twenties that you could not even read the document in a meaningful fashion?
2) How can someone speak of "expecting to read" something in a document that they have already read? Are you claiming that your prejudices were do deep that you had actually made up in your mind things like "sticking pins in your eyes" and "flagellation"?
3) How can you find "amazing" things in a document you read twenty years ago? Did you simply not read it well enough to understand it then?
4)  If you read this document, how is it relevant to claim that you had not been "told" the truth about it? 
5)  If you read the document, how could you be misinformed about its contents? 

Finally, would not a perfectly fair minded reading of these statements lead any rational person to the conclusion that this was, in fact, your first reading of the canons and decrees of the Council of Trent? [emphasis added]

HUH???

White is actually insinuating that Beckwith did not previously read the documents, despite his claim to have done so!

What possible reason would he have to lie about this? Or if the claim isn't that he's lying, why suppose that his memory has gone so wrong on this?

I think what "a perfectly fair minded reading" of Frank's statements would lead "any rational person" to the conclusion that he read the documents--or some of them--back when he was young and inexperienced in matters of theology and then, with a couple of decades of additional learning under his belt, he went back and realized that they were saying something different than he thought. In the meantime, what he had read about them from other sources had colored his understanding of them, and so reading what they really have to say--and now having the background to understand them properly--was an enlightening experience for him.

That kind of thing happens all the time with human beings. It's no big deal and nothing out of the ordinary.

If this, then, is what "any rational person" would be led to conclude by giving "a perfectly fair minded reading" to Frank's statements, I can only conclude that James White is either not a rational person or that he is not giving a fair reading to them (or both).

The way I see it, there are three options (in order of ascending probability):

1) James White is such a supergenius that he always reads every document correctly the first time and remembers it perfectly for decades, without allowing his view of it to be colored by what others have told him about the document (though if he's this kind of supergenius, why hasn't he noticed that other people don't work that way?)

2) James White is not a supergenius but assumes that he is, so that he thinks his first reading of any document is correct and he is so closed minded and incapable of admitting--even to himself--that he has been wrong that he never re-evaluates what a document says and thus has never had the experience of finding out that the document didn't say what he thought.

3) James White is irrationally going after Frank's claim out of a overweening desire to score points that prevents him from seeing what is blindingly obvious to "any rational person" and thus renders him incapable of giving "a perfectly fair minded reading" to the statements of someone whom he has chosen to controversially engage.

Posted by Jimmy Akin in Non-Catholic Apologists | Permalink | Comments (151)

April 13, 2007

Happy Birthday Jack Chick!

(Jimmy Akin)

It's Jack Chick's 83rd birthday today!

BTW, the above picture of Chick (left) has been REMOVED from the website of Victory Baptist Church, which I take as a sign that it is, indeed, authentic.

MORE.

Anyway, happy birthday to Jack Chick! (Unless birthdays are evil or something!)

CHT to the readers who e-mailed!

Posted by Jimmy Akin in Non-Catholic Apologists | Permalink | Comments (73)

February 16, 2007

The Face Of Chick?

(Jimmy Akin)

What you are looking at may be the first known, recent photo of Jack T. Chick (left) to emerge on the Internet.

It is found on the home page of Victory Baptist Church in Clarkston, Michigan and is captioned as "Jack Chick & Pastor Bob Nogalski, Summer 2006."

The figure alleged to be Chick is holding a copy of his tract Bad Bob! and pointing to Pastor Nogalski because of the similarity of Pastor Nogalski's life story to that of the character Bad Bob.

The Victory Baptist Church web site also includes Pastor Nogalski's testimony regarding his life and how it intersects with Bad Bob's.

VIEW THE PICTURE IN THE ORIGINAL CONTEXT.

READ PASTOR NOGALSKI'S TESTIMONY.

READ "BAD BOB!"

Now, the question on the minds of most JA.O readers will be: Is the photo of the reclusive Chick authentic?

In our day and age, photos certainly can lie, and so I'd be interested to know what PhotoChoppers can make of the picture's authenticity. That's a subject I can't speak to, but perhaps we'll hear from some of them in the combox.

What I can say is this: The man in the picture does look (apart from the comic expression on his face) much like I remember Jack Chick looking when I met him at the premier of his film, Light of the World.

YOU CAN READ ABOUT THAT HERE.

And here's the picture I drew of Chick after the event:

I can also say that the setting in which the picture was taken lends some credibility of the photo. It looks to me like the descriptions of the foyer of Chick Publications that I've read. I would guess that Pastor Nogalski visited Chick Publications in Summer 2006, met Chick, and (impressed by the pastor's testimony regarding his connection with Bad Bob) Chick let the picture be taken, likely not realizing that it would find its way onto the Internet.

I've thought about driving up to visit Chick's offices. They're just a couple of hours up the road from me. But I've never done it.

Maybe after this picture, I will.

(BTW, a TEN GALLON CHT to the reader who e-mailed!)

Posted by Jimmy Akin in Non-Catholic Apologists | Permalink | Comments (151)

August 22, 2006

The Title "Doctor"

(Jimmy Akin)

Yesterday Michelle posted about James White's attitude problem and this sparked one of the perennial combox discussions about whether the title "Dr." should be given to White (with or without quotation marks; they're used here because standard English orthography requires quotation marks around words that are themselves the subject of discussion; if I were to initiate a discussion of the word "word," it would get quotation marks too).

For the record, I do not think that this title should be given to White.

I come from an academic family, and doctorates mean something. They are awarded to individuals by accredited institutions to certify that the individual in question has met the academic requirements needed to earn the degree. The individual is thus entitled to the use of the title and the authority and respect it commands.

For an individual to claim this authority and respect based on a doctorate issued by an unaccredited institution is, howeve, unacceptable. Without accreditation there is no guarantee that the individual has academic achievements comparable to those of doctorates being issued by accredited institutions. In fact, most non-accredited institutions issuing doctorates are little more than diploma mills.

To concede the title "doctor" to someone just because they have a diploma from an unaccredited institution cheapens all doctorates everywhere by creating a doorway for bogus doctorates achieve social recognition.

The social recognition of bogus degrees is precisely what the accreditation process was created to prevent. Accreditation is a stamp of approval on a school that it has met the academic standards of the accrediting body and is qualified to issue degrees of the types for which it has received accreditation.

If a school--or a degree program within a school--is not accredited by a competent body then it has not met the academic standards needed and there can be no confidence in the merits of the "degrees" it issues.

The fact that an institution does not have accreditation automatically creates a cloud of suspicion as the vast majority of non-accredited "colleges" and "universities" are diploma mills or little better.

There is, in particular, little reason for confidence in the institution from which White claims a doctorate--Columbia Evangelical Seminary (formerly Faraston Theological Seminary--"Faraston" being a word that was made up by the seminary's founder, who explains it as follows: "In the late '80s, after years of God's faithful watering and cultivating the seed and preparing me, He sent someone to encourage me to take the necessary legal steps to begin the school. The name Faraston is a combination of the name of that individual and my name. Thus, the name Faraston does not glorify any man, but it is a hybrid which is a memorial to God's continued faithfulness. Therefore, 'With the name Faraston, we make known God's faithfulness.' Faraston = God's Faithfulness" [SOURCE]).

There are also serious problems with academic incest at the school, which is run out of a hole-in-the-wall.

Now, White has complained before that the photos at the previous link were taken by Mormons and has criticized me for linking them. In doing so, White committed the genetic fallacy, because Mormonism is not generally an indicator of one's ability to operate a camera. Unless he wishes to maintain that the photos were reutered (which he has not), then I assume that they are genuine, and they speak ill of the resources that the school has at its disposal. It is difficult to see how any serious doctoral-level academic program could be administered from an institution with such meager resources.

The fact is that White has not made the sacrifices needed to attend an accredited school and thus there can be no confidence whatsoever that his "doctorate" is comparable to those issued by accredited institutions (say, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School). White therefore should not be referred to by the title "Dr." He should not hold himself forth to the public as a doctor, and it cheapens all doctorates everywhere to concede social recognition to unaccredited degrees and thus the diploma mill industry that pumps them out.

I therefore follow the practice of simply referring to James White as just "James White."

BTW, I should also issue

THE BIG RED DISCLAIMER: Nothing in this post faults distance learning. I have no problem at all with distance learning as long as it meets academic standards equivalent to those of traditional study programs. I'm sure that, in time, more doctorates will be available from accredited institutions via distance programs, but accreditation is the key to establishing a baseline level of confidence in these programs. Without accreditation, "distance doctorates" must be regarded in the same light as other unaccredited degrees.

Posted by Jimmy Akin in Non-Catholic Apologists | Permalink | Comments (114)

August 21, 2006

Anti-Catholic Snobbery

(Michelle Arnold)

Rhetorical question: When an anti-Catholic Evangelical Christian apologist sees a story about Catholic bishops in southern Africa telling their priests to stop moonlighting as witch doctors for native peoples, does he sigh with relief that the Catholic bishops are defending Christianity or does he immediately start to wonder why the Catholic bishops are complaining?

"Rome is having [a problem] with its priests in Africa "moonlight[ing] as witch doctors" (to use CNN's language), or, more specifically, engaging in prayers to ancestors and in general developing a syncretism between Roman Catholicism and native tribal and regional religions. While one's first thought was, 'Goodness, if a minister in our church were found to be engaging in such idolatry, they would not be "exhorted" to cease, they would be removed forthwith,' another thought followed quickly. Given Rome's violation of biblical teaching regarding prayers to saints and angels, and in particular, given Rome's exaltation of the humble handmaid of the Lord to the Queen of Heaven, isn't this rather understandable?

"I mean, put yourself in the sandals of the person attending the Roman Church in the bush of Africa somewhere. All you've known has been tribal religion, but you also hear about this religion called Catholicism. And so you go to the services and they are sacrificing their god upon an altar and praying to this exalted woman named Mary (could you differentiate between her and one of your tribal deities? Could you? You really think pleading the meaning of 'hyperdulia' is going to work here?) and to spirits like Michael and they are lighting candles and bowing and praying toward a box with something the priest consecrated and put in their and toward images and statues -- just what should we expect folks are going to think? And put yourself in the position of the priest in that rural location. Is he going to really be in a position to attempt to engage in the kind of double-speak Rome's apologists have to use to get around the Bible's prohibition against the very kind of spiritism that is part and parcel of the surrounding culture?"

GET THE POST. (Slight formatting added.)

Stuff like this can really offer insight into the stumbling blocks to conversion facing some anti-Catholic Evangelical Christian apologists. Not only is there a distinct lack of charity toward the bishops who are addressing the problem, but there is a boatload of snobbery toward people of other cultures who this apologist presumes do not have the intelligence to know the difference between the Blessed Virgin Mary and "tribal deities" or between hyperdulia and idolatry, and snobbery even toward a "rural priest" presumed not to know how to teach the Christian faith in third-world cultures.

Posted by Michelle Arnold in Non-Catholic Apologists | Permalink | Comments (363)

June 30, 2006

Read A Little Closer, James

(Jimmy Akin)

A reader called my attention to the fact that James White has posted another piece involving me.

YOU CAN READ IT HERE.

In it, White complains about some ad copy for The Bible Answerman Debate referring to his ministry as a Fundamentalist one.

This is a fair complaint, and I'll talk to the sales and marketing department about changing that.

He also refers to an article that I pointed him to concerning the types of formal debates that I accept.

Unfortunately, White followed what seems to be his frequent practice of not linking to the things that he's talking about, which has the effect that it's harder for his readers to read it for themselves and see if he's handling it accurately.

That's particularly unfortunate in this case because White is handling the article in a demonstrably inaccurate fashion. He complains about our exchange on The Bible Answerman being referred to as a debate and writes:

I would also say that if he [Akin] took his own writing [in the article in question] seriously he would stop calling his BAM appearance a "debate" of any kind. He demands equal time for a debate, rightly so. Nobody gets equal time on a call-in radio program. He demands a clear thesis that is debatable, rightfully so. Just what was the clear thesis statement on BAM again? Uh...right.

Sorry, James. You need to read a little more closely.

As my readers can see from the link I provided above to the article, the opening of the piece reads:

Debates are fun. They can be stimulating, challenging, and informative. No wonder many people find them the most exciting form of apologetics.

I am often asked whether I have any debates scheduled. The usual answer is no, as far as formal debates are concerned. My schedule is packed, and doing a formal debate takes a lot of preparation. I still do a good number of informal radio and television debates (they take far less preparation), but these aren’t as apologetically interesting. They don’t bring the same focus to a subject as a formal debate.

Over time I have developed my own guidelines for when and how to do formal debates. I’ve shared these with individuals who have asked for them, but putting them in print could benefit individuals who haven’t yet ventured into the world of debating but are contemplating it.

White has missed the fact that I clearly distinguish between formal debates (ones that have guaranteed equal time, thesis statements, etc.) and informal ones of the type that occur on radio and television, including such popular shows as . . . say . . . Hannity & Colmes, which has the word "DEBATE" featured prominently in its opening credits without, so far as I know, FoxNews getting a lot of viewers claiming that the guests on that show don't debate issues.

That's not saying that it's good debating or helpful debating, but it's debating.

St. Paul debated with folks in his day, but I severely doubt that he ever did anything in Lincoln-Douglas style.

So . . . I take what I've written quite seriously, James.

I just don't hold that a debate has to have the kind of formal structure that is used by debating societies before it is worthy of the august name "debate."

Next time you want to publicly accuse me of being inconsistent with what I've written, try to make sure that I'm actually . . . y'know . . . being inconsistent.

Posted by Jimmy Akin in Non-Catholic Apologists | Permalink | Comments (25)

June 16, 2006

James White Responds Again--Twice

(Jimmy Akin)

James White has written two more posts in the continuing discussion.

YOU CAN READ THE FIRST ONE HERE.

AND THE SECOND ONE HERE.

My response is in the below-the-fold section for those who are interested.

(Frankly, I'm sick of this myself, though I feel a fiduciary responsibility to have one more post on this aspect of the discussion.)

(Also, in view of my lengthy response below, this was the only post I had the chance to write last night.)

Dear James,

I called The Dividing Line program the other day, as I indicated, because I wanted to call your attention to THIS POST OF MINE, in case you wished to reformulate THIS RESPONSE OF YOURS in light of it. A previous attempt to contact you by the contact form of your site (your e-mail address doesn't seem to be available) apparently failed, and I didn't want to prolong our discussion unnecessarily--though that seems now certain to happen since you are largely offline at present and I will be largely offline next week as I'm planning to put my computer in the shop.

It seems that you misunderstood and thought that I was asking you to respond to THIS POST, which you have now done.

Since the post to which you responded was one of reproof, it is not concerned with the theological point at issue, so I will continue to keep that separate.

I'm not going to attempt to respond to all the problematic points in your posts (e.g., the way you issue a "correction" to my use of the word "interaction" at the top of your first post). That would be tedious, unnecessary, and spiritually counter-productive, but here are a few observations that I hope may move the discussion forward.

1) You are flat wrong in saying that I was responding to you in MY INITIAL POST.

As explained previously, it is a regular practice of mine to set aside parts of a question that I am not familiar with and then try to respond to the underlying issue the listener or reader is asking about.

The reason for this is simple: I'm trying to help people. If I can't help them with every aspect of their question, I try to help them with those aspects I can.

Since I didn't know what of your writing the reader was referring to, and since I didn't have time to do a bunch of research to find out what your current formulation of the korban issue was, I set you aside and responded to how the subject is commonly handled in Protestant anti-Catholic apologetics.

This was on the assumption that the reader was more interested in the relationship between the korban passage and sola scriptura than in specifically why "James White make[s] such a big deal about it." If he was really interested in the latter question then he should have been asking you rather than me, since you have a better knowledge of your motives than I do. The fact he asked me I took as a signal that he was more interested in the issue in general than in you specifically.

Part of your misperception of what I was talking about may stem from a difference in our approaches. My approach is to try to help people as much as I can and to note for them what I can't help them on (e.g., "I haven't read or heard specifically what James White may have been doing with this passage"--the only thing I said about you in the whole post).

Your approach seems to view the apologetic endeavor in terms of debates. From the perspective of a debater it is, of course, crucial to have closely studied what one's opponent has said before one comments on an issue. That's why I said:

Momma Akin didn't raise any children dumb enough to critique another person's position without having locked-down, verified, verbatim quotations of recent origin.

You can be certain that if I ever again accept a debate with you, I would research your position prior to the debate very carefully. This has been my practice in the past, as when you and I debated the subject of perseverance. I read your writings on the subject, prepared responses to the verses you used in them, and quoted your own words back to you. If people want to see the extensive notes I prepared for this debate, they are online.

If you have met other debaters who have not taken the trouble to read your writings on a subject before they debate it with you, that is a misfortune for them and for the audience, for it will hinder the search for truth that is central to the task of debating.

(Your comments to the effect "Hey, no sweat if people don't read my writings first, it just makes my job in debates easier" suggest that you do not view debates principally as getting to the truth but as principally about winning arguments.)

While I do very careful preparation for debates (one of the reasons I have debated so infrequently is the work that I put into preparing for them), it would be simply impossible for me to do that level of research before answering a question on my blog or on the radio show. There aren't enough hours in the day.

Consequently, in these situations I offer what help I can to a questioner without doing extensive research first. I'll tell him what parts of his question I can't help him with--as I did here--and then offer what help I can.

That way more people get helped, which is what I consider my purpose as an apologist to be: helping people rather than debating people. Debates are only a small, subsidiary part of the overall apologetic endeavor, and it is a mistake to view everything said or written by an apologist through the lens of debates.

2) Your accusation that I am being "dishonest" in saying that I was not responding to you is also flatly false.

The fact that you would make this accusation shows the kind of basic lack of trust and ill will that makes it hard for me to debate or otherwise interact with you.

I don't want to engage someone who can't even take a man at his word when he says "I wasn't talking about you" and the words of his text back him up--as illustrated by the fact that except for the one clause quoted above, your name and pronouns referring to you occur nowhere else in what I wrote (and the fact that I titled the post "Korban & Sola Scriptura" rather than "James White On Korban & Sola Scriptura").

3) I did not call you an anti-Catholic.

What I said was that the korban argument is "a staple of Protestant anti-Catholic apologetics," which means (since you professed uncertainty about the meaning of this phrase) that the korban passage is commonly used by Protestants when they are arguing against Catholicism.

Though I did not call you an anti-Catholic in that post, I certainly could have, for you are an anti-Catholic, and in two senses: (1) You frequently argue against Catholicism, meaning that you are engaging in anti-Catholic apologetics and (2) you view Catholicism as such an evil/bad/defective/whatever system that it prevents those who sincerely believe it from being Christians.

Now, in saying that you are an anti-Catholic, I do not deny that you are also an anti-Mormon, an anti-JW, an anti-Muslim and similar things.

Nor do I deny that I am anti- those things. I also acknowledge that, when I am arguing against--say--Calvinism that I am doing anti-Calvinist apologetics. But I am not an anti-Calvinist in the second sense named above since I do not believe that Calvinism is so evil/bad/defective/whatever that it prevents Calvinists from being Christians.

I am perfectly happy to acknowledge Calvinists as brothers in Christ, even if I disagree with certain points of their theological system. You don't do that. Your level of "againstness" toward Catholicism is such that you think it deprives a person of the status of Christian if they really believe what the Church teaches, and that represents a more fundamental level of opposition to Catholicism than I have toward any form of Protestantism.

4) You seem to have the idea that at Catholic Answers the apologists are like a bunch of academics sitting up in an ivory tower all day smoking their pipes with nothing more pressing to do than search out the most academic arguments recently posed against the Catholic faith. This is false.

We don't have an ivory tower; since it's California, we're in a non-smoking building; and then there's the little matter of the going on 20,000 questions a year that my department answers.

The fact that we are trying to help people--as opposed to doing an academic exercise--means that we do not have much time for academic exercises. They have their place, and we do them on occasion, but helping people where they're at takes priority.

If I had the budget to hire half a dozen more apologists, the pastoral needs out there would still be such that it would be foolish to assign any one of them to become a professional James White rebutter.

If someone at the ministry happens to be preparing a response to you or preparing to debate you then I would insist that that person (myself included) closely research what you have to say on the topic at hand, but when such things are not in the works, there simply is no obligation to rush off to read the latest writing or listen to the latest webcast by James White.

Your own arguments for why you in particular are so important that Catholic Answers staffers are delinquent if they don't closely study your writings and debates are perhaps most charitably described as counterproductive to your cause.

People either recognize you as having a particular level of importance with corresponding claims on their time or they don't. Protesting that you deserve more attention, when you have no idea what the other competing demands on their time are (and it's a FAR wider range of subjects than you suggest), comes across as "Don't you know who I am? I'm CHARLES FOSTER KANE!"

And while we're on the subject of Catholic Answers . . .

5) You also seem to have the impression that Catholic Answers is such a monolithic entity that it forms a virtual hive-mind, like the Borg. This too is false.

Catholic Answers allows its apologists, and the non-staffers who write for its publications, to have a diversity of opinions.

The articles published in This Rock--most of which are not authored by Catholic Answers staffers--are not position papers of the ministry. They represent the opinions of the individual authors. While Catholic Answers intends that all articles be within the range of permitted Catholic opinion, and while it thought the substance of the article was of sufficient quality to make it publishable, the ministry does not treat each statement made in an article as the official position of the ministry.

Thus if Dave Palm--or anyone else--writes an article in which he poses several arguments regarding sola scriptura, fine. Those are his arguments, and they may be fairly critiqued and interacted with by you or anyone else. But that does not mean that I or any other individual at Catholic Answers is required to endorse them as his own, and consequently I am not personally invested in them to the point that I have a compelling reason to read rebuttals of them on the Internet.

Unless, of course, I'm preparing to debate the author of those rebuttals and need to see what he said on the subject to better discern the shape of his thought.

Oh, and the fact we aren't a hive-mind at Catholic Answers also means that if you say something to Mark or Pat in 1991 that it won't go into the Borg database and be automatically downloaded into my mind years later.

That would be absurd.

6) On the subject of ad hominems, you accurately characterize what an ad hominem argument is, but this is not the only use of the term.

The phrase ad hominem is simply Latin for "to the man" (technically, "to the person" or "to the human") and any remark directed to the man rather than to his arguments is an ad hominem remark, as in:

1 : appealing to feelings or prejudices rather than intellect
2 : marked by an attack on an opponent's character rather than by an answer to the contentions made [SOURCE.]

or

Usage Note: As the principal meaning of the preposition ad suggests, the homo of ad hominem was originally the person to whom an argument was addressed, not its subject. The phrase denoted an argument designed to appeal to the listener's emotions rather than to reason, as in the sentence The Republicans' evocation of pity for the small farmer struggling to maintain his property is a purely ad hominem argument for reducing inheritance taxes. This usage appears to be waning; only 37 percent of the Usage Panel finds this sentence acceptable. The phrase now chiefly describes an argument based on the failings of an adversary rather than on the merits of the case: Ad hominem attacks on one's opponent are a tried-and-true strategy for people who have a case that is weak. Ninety percent of the Panel finds this sentence acceptable. The expression now also has a looser use in referring to any personal attack, whether or not it is part of an argument, as in It isn't in the best interests of the nation for the press to attack him in this personal, ad hominem way. This use is acceptable to 65 percent of the Panel. ·Ad hominem has also recently acquired a use as a noun denoting personal attacks, as in “Notwithstanding all the ad hominem, Gingrich insists that he and Panetta can work together” (Washington Post). This usage may raise some eyebrows, though it appears to be gaining ground in journalistic style [SOURCE].

If you can't be troubled to do your homework on the different senses of ad hominem and are thus a number of years behind in recognizing the usages it has, that is your concern.

It does, however, reveal that your assertion that "Evidently, for Mr. Akin, if he doesn't like what someone says, or disagrees with what someone says, then they are guilty of ad-hominem argumentation" is simply fatuous.

People who I disagree with aren't ad homineming me if they address the merits of my arguments. They are only making ad hominem remarks if they comment on me or my readers.

Consequently, there is no double standard involved in my posts on this point. I recognize when a statement is directed to the man or to the argument, and what's more, I recognize when I am directing a statement to the man rather than to his arguments.

Criticizing a person's behavior is a perfectly legitimate thing to do when the situation calls for it. Jesus was known to do it.

I knew that in my first post responding to you I would be critiquing your behavior (pointing out why you can't get certain people to engage you) that I would be directing my remarks ad hominem, which is why I kept them in a separate post from the one where I addressed the substance of your argument.

That was the whole point.

I didn't want my criticism of your behavior to be entangled with a serious reply to your arguments, and so I did two posts that kept the two separate. If you read the second post, you will note that I do not criticize your behavior; I only critique your argument.

7) You also need to read more carefully.

Of course, this whole exchange was prompted because you didn't read my initial post carefully and decided I was critiquing you when I wasn't, but in your latest post you fault my pointing out your use of "ad hominems, insults, and jabs" on the grounds that words and phrases I hi-lighted weren't all ad hominem arguments.

No, but they were ad hominem remarks and insults (a species of ad hominem remark) and jabs.

8) In your recent posts, you refer more than once to the idea that I don't want my readers to read both sides. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I believe firmly in people reading both sides, which is why in each one of my posts I have linked to the various posts of yours that I was discussing. In fact, I link them as soon as I mention them so that people can read them immediately. (Thus note that I linked both of your recent posts at the top of this one before saying anything about them.)

I would note that this is a practice you have not followed with any consistency, either in our exchange or in another recent one, where you dismissed as a desire for "free advertising" the request that you link to the other side of an argument you were critiquing and filed the piece in your "Simply Silly" category.

If readers read the other side of what I write (as I hope they do) and end up disagreeing with me then I also am not afraid to be cross-examined by readers--including readers of your blog--which is why I have open comboxes and allow people to critique my posts. Rule #1 on my blog is that people can disagree with me as long as they are polite about it.

I notice that these features are notable for their absence on your blog, and I can understand why. The obnoxious way in which you address your opponents is such that you would have to spend more time than you are willing to in dealing with outraged comboxers.

I also frequently allow those who disagree with me to have their say without me feeling the need to follow it up and have the last word. I allow the reader to decide whether they or I am correct, without adding dramatic-sounding non-commentaries to what they have said like, "Amazing. Simply amazing. I'll let the reader decide between me and Mr. So-and-so, but I think that I have demonstrated a clear difference in our approaches."

9) In your recent posts you also refer to an incident two years ago where you pointed out an error I made in Greek in 1996, before I had studied the language, and it's good that you did, because this illustrates something important.

In particular: It illustrates that I (a) learn with time and (b) am able to admit my mistakes.

Unfortunately, you didn't link to the page where I retracted my erroneous claim, with the result that the readers won't know specifically what I said.

I'LL DO IT FOR YOU, THEN.

I hope folks'll read it so that they can see that I can admit when I am wrong, and I hope they will also take note of the last section of the page, where it is revealed that I am not the only person who can make mistakes in Greek, James.

I have yet to hear you make any public admission of errors on your part, though, whether regarding Greek or anything else. My experience is that, when confronted with an obvious error on your part, you simply stop making the erroneous claim with no admission of error (or you silently delete it from your web site) or (more often) you simply stick to your guns and refuse to acknowledge any error on your part, no matter how blinding the error is.

In discussing my 1996 Greek error, you also complain about having had to correct it "for years" before I retracted it. As I pointed out at the time of the retraction, you never contacted me about it. While I'm happy to admit mistakes on my part, I can't have much sympathy for a person who complains about all the work he has had to do correcting them if he doesn't take the simple step of e-mailing me and alerting me to the problem.

My e-mail address, after all, is clearly posted on my web site.

10) I'm too sick of this aspect of the discussion to continue this post beyond noting two practical consequences:

a) I could have saved myself a lot of trouble by simply deleting your name from the question I was asked (e.g., "Why do some Protestant apologists make such a big deal about it").

I'll have to bear that in mind in the future,

and

b) In view of your attitude, you aren't getting any kind of debate with me--in San Diego or anywhere else--until you demonstrate that you can behave in a more mature manner than you have in this exchange. I simply do not have time for future iterations of this kind of who-is-snarkier-than-whom fest.

(BTW, if you are serious about wanting a debate then, in addition to getting over yourself and learning some manners, you should also read my own published philosophy regarding the kinds of debates I accept. It'll spare you issuing some pointless challenges.)

Posted by Jimmy Akin in Non-Catholic Apologists | Permalink | Comments (177)

June 12, 2006

James White Responds

(Jimmy Akin)

James White has responded to my response.

YOU CAN READ HIS RESPONSE HERE.

Unfortunately, Mr. White wrote his response without having seen the first of the two posts I wrote yesterday.

This is evident from two facts:

1) He makes no effort to modify his ad hominem/insult/jab style of apologetics.

For example, he writes:

How amazing! Does Mr. Akin truly believe his audience will either 1) completely trust him so that they will not even consider what I have written, or 2) blindly ignore the glaring misrepresentation he presents, which flies in the face once again of all my published works wherein I have discussed the relationship between Scripture and lesser authorities, again for over a decade? I am left wondering just who it is Mr. Akin is writing for. Surely it is not for anyone who is listening to both sides!

2) He repeatedly indicates that he is under the impression that the post that occasioned this exchange was responding to him.

For example, he writes:

Akin chose to attempt to address a question about my view of the Corban rule.

He also says that he is perplexed by things that he would have understood if he had seen the first post.

So he simply didn't see it. I'd assumed he would, but he didn't.

Now, I'm not going to kick a man when he's down. This isn't a situation of soldiers in mortal combat, where your duty is to exploit your opponent's weaknesses in order to win. This is meant to be an intellectual exchange designed to get at the truth. It's about truth, not winning.

So I'm not going to try to exploit the fact that White is missing some important information here and that partly shapes his response.

Instead, I want to do the most gentlemanly thing I can, which is to point out the existence of the first post and then give James a chance to modify his response before I interact with it.

He may wish to edit his existing post or he may wish to compose a new, supplementary post, or he may wish to do nothing. If he does the latter, though, I'd ask that he e-mail me so that I'll know that he'd like to let his existing reply stand.

White also indicated--if I read him right--that he was perplexed by the structure of my argument, so I'll provide a brief summary here in case that helps him reformulate his response. It's in the below-the-fold section of this post.

One thing I want to ask is that the readers don't make snarky comments in the combox about the fact that James missed the first post. No "James White hasn't done his homework. Haw-haw," stuff, please. He simply didn't see it. Let's let him have a chance to read it and then reformulate his response in a dignified manner.

Thanks.

My argument begins by identifying Mr. White's major claim, which I quote as follows:

Jesus' plain teaching that we are to examine all traditions by the higher standard of God's Word, even those that claim to be divine in origin.

For the sake of simplicity, I then reformulate this as:

Jesus' plain teaching [is] that we are to examine all traditions by the higher standard of [Scripture].

White here asserts that Jesus has issued a "plain teaching." Now, I know from my own history of having been certain that a passage meant one thing--that it plainly taught it--only to conclude later that I was wrong and that the passage either taught something else or that it doesn't clearly teach what I thought it did. It is easy for someone with passionate doctrinal commitments to fall into the trap of being convinced a passage clearly teaches something when in reality it doesn't. I know. I've been in that trap.

When I've been in that condition, I have not been prepared to acknowledge the force of good evidence that the passage meant something else. I needed to have my horizons broadened a bit first before I would be able to acknowledge that. I needed to start seeing other possibilities about what the passage might mean before I would be ready to acknowledge the evidence that would show me my initial conclusion was wrong.

This is a normal, human, psychological phenomenon. C. S. Lewis referred to it as "obstinacy in belief," and it's a good thing that we have it, because it is what keeps us from being "tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine." If we had to conduct a thorough re-evaluation a belief every time we were presented with a piece of contrary evidence, we'd be revising our beliefs every minute and never get anything done, which isn't what God intends. As a result, when we encounter a piece of evidence that runs counter to a belief we feel strongly about, we tend not to register the force of that evidence. It is only as the evidence starts mounting that we start getting uncertain about our conclusion.

I therefore began my post with a section devoted to showing that Mr. White's claim is not a clear teaching of Jesus.

This is important for two reasons:

1) If Mr. White is wrong and Mark 7 does not provide a clear teaching then that means that the passage might teach something else, in which case it doesn't prove what Mr. White wants and can't be appealed to as a prooftext.

2) Having seen that the passage does not clearly teach Mr. White's assertion, the reader will be better prepared to accept the evidence I offer that Mr. White's interpretation of the passage is, in fact, demonstrably false.

I therefore began by asking what mode of teaching Jesus is using here (direct statement, veiled statement, or example) and concluding it was the last.

I then noted that there are significant problems in deriving a clear teaching from a passage where the teaching is given by example, because one often can't be sure the extent to which the example is meant to be followed. So White will have a hard time deriving a clear teaching from this text.

Having noted this problem, I then do what I always do when trying to figure out what a passage means: Ask what it hypothetically could mean. This exercise is essential to good exegesis because it has the advantage that it opens our eyes to possibilities we didn't see when we first read the text. If we conclude that our first impression was the obvious one and don't do this exercise, we are likely to miss the true meaning. What we need to do as exegetes if first ask what a text might mean and then start eliminating bad possibilities so that we have a better sense of what the text probably means, and hopefully we will arrive at a conclusion about what it does (or at least does not) mean.

I thus offer a list of possibilities of what Jesus may be intending to teach by his example.

In preparing this list, I also reformulate the issue to avoid a time-wasting detour. Mr. White originally phrased matters in terms of "examining" traditions against Scripture. What he means by this, I assume, is judging to be false any traditions that are inconsistent with Scripture, such as the custom of declaring what you owed your parents to be korban.

This formulation of the issue does not get at the heart of the issue between Catholics and Protestants. Both Catholics and Protestants can agree that if a tradition is contrary to Scripture then it is false. That's not big news.

The next question is how one regards traditions that are not demonstrably contrary to Scripture. Here Catholics and Protestants also can agree that some of these traditions are permitted to believers but not mandatory for them (e.g., the custom of having pews and pulpits in churches). So that is not news either.

The real point of difference between Catholics and Protestants--or at least Protestants of Mr. White's school--is whether any of these traditions are divinely authoritative and thus mandatory for believers.

We don't need to argue about the first two points, because we are in agreement on them. It is the third point that is the real issue, and so I chose to refocus the argument on that one.

In the process, I showed that there were a number of possibilities about what Jesus might have meant his example to teach in this passage and thus that it does not provide a clear teaching that all extrascriptural traditions are non-authoritative.

Having done this, I delivered what to my mind is positive proof that Jesus did not mean to teach his audience this by his example, because he could not have done so without undercutting the force of his own oral extrascriptural traditions.

If Mr. White wishes to maintain that all extrascriptural traditions are non-authoritative (at least today) then he will have to argue this on grounds other than what Jesus meant to teach by his example in the korban incident.

I then concluded with a section to answer a few lingering questions that the reader might have, though the point remains that Mark 7 does not show to be false the Catholic claim that there are extrascriptural traditions that are divinely authoritative.

Hope this helps!

Posted by Jimmy Akin in Non-Catholic Apologists | Permalink | Comments (112)

White On Korban & Sola Scriptura

(Jimmy Akin)

James White has now supplied a current description of his thought on the korban passage and sola scriptura, so let's look at what he says.

His basic assertion seems clear. Referring to the korban passage, Mr. White refers to

Jesus' plain teaching that we are to examine all traditions by the higher standard of God's Word, even those that claim to be divine in origin.

By "God's Word," Mr. White means "Scripture," and "even those that claim to be divine in origin" is subsumed by "all," so his claim is that

Jesus' plain teaching [is] that we are to examine all traditions by the higher standard of [Scripture].

If Mr. White's claim is not that we are to examine all traditions by the higher standard of Scripture, I am open to correction on this point.

Now, claiming that the above principle is Jesus' "plain teaching" is a pretty strong claim. In order for a teaching to be plain, there must be (a) an act of teaching and (b) this act must have the quality of plainness--meaning that its meaning is easily ascertained.

A common way that teaching a principle is done is by stating a principle forthrightly. When Jesus gives the great commission he states forthrightly that the apostles are to baptize the nations (Matt. 28:19).

This is not the only way that teaching can occur. One can, for example, teach by stating a principle in a veiled manner. Jesus did this when he used parables, such as the Parable of the Sower and the other kingdom parables (Matt. 13).

By stating matters in a veiled manner, however, the teaching no longer enjoys the quality of plainness, since the veiled nature of the teaching prevents its meaning from being so easily ascertained.

It is also possible to teach without stating a principle at all. This happens when one "teaches by example," as when Jesus himself is baptized even though he has no intrinsic need of it himself (Matt. 3:13-14).

A difficulty for obtaining "plain teachings" from situations that involve "teaching by example" is that there is no explicit statement of principle, meaning that--while it is possible to determine something from the example, the precise extent to which the example is to be followed (or avoided) is often unclear.

This constitutes a difficulty for Mr. White since in Mark 7's passage on the korban custom, Jesus does not state forthrightly that we are to examine all traditions by the higher standard of Scripture. Neither does he state this in a veiled manner such as with a parable. Instead, the most that can be said is that he is teaching a principle without a statement of principle, simply by his example.

Since it is very difficult to obtain "plain teaching" from instances of teaching by example, Mr. White will have a difficult time establishing the idea that "we are to examine all traditions by the higher standard of [Scripture]" from this passage.

So what kind of argument does he use to support his claim?

He restates his argument several times, but perhaps the most concise and focused formulation is this one:

The argument is plain: Jewish tradition about the Corban rule made it a tradition that had a divine pedigree, though passed down outside of Scripture. Jesus specifically subjugated it to Scripture, hence, to follow His lead, we, too, would have to test all traditions by the higher standard of Scripture.

"To follow His lead" is another way of saying "to follow his example," so here Mr. White acknowledges that he is appealing to Mark 7 as a passage in which Jesus is teaching by example, and thus he must be able to find in this passage a "plain teaching" that "we are to examine all traditions by the higher standard of [Scripture]."

A difficulty for this claim is the one faced by all instances of trying to derive "plain teaching" from teaching by example: The extent to which the example is to be followed is often not clear.

It is too easy to improperly minimize or maximize the extent to which the example applies.

E.g., many (including myself) would say that the example of Jesus' example of holiness and self-sacrifice was being improperly minimized if it were maintained that only he needed to be holy and self-sacrificing and that, because of what he did, we are free to be unholy and selfish.

Similarly, many (including myself) would say that the example of Jesus was being improperly maximized if it were maintained that individual Christians--like he--should assert that our relationship with God is so close that "No man comes to the Father but by me" (John 14:6).

Those are clear cases, but they make the point: Examples can be improperly minimized or maximized.

In view of this fact, we must ask what Jesus may have meant to teach by his example in the korban incident.

And here I need to introduce a clarification of the issue: The issue is not whether a tradition can be followed if it does not contradict Scripture. In his blog post, Mr. White acknowledges that "*if [traditions] do not violate the Word of God,* they can be followed and practiced" (emphasis his). Mere followability or non-violation of Scripture is not the real issue, though. Having pews and pulpits in churches does not violate Scripture and so can be done, but the custom of having these fixtures in churches is not the kind of tradition we are talking about.

What we are interested in is authoritative tradition--which is what the Pharisees were asking about when they asked why Jesus' disciples didn't wash their hands. They had the idea that the handwashing tradition was normative for the life of the Jewish community, just as they had the idea that the korban tradition was normative (not in the sense of being obligatory but in the sense of being authoritatively permitted).

The real question is whether extrascriptural traditions can be authoritative in the way Scripture is, not whether they are merely consistent with Scripture. Being inconsistent with Scripture is an indicator that a tradition is non-authoritative, but it is the question of authority that is in focus at present.

It seems clear that Jesus considers the korban tradition non-authoritative because it conflicts with one's obligations under the Ten Commandments, but to what extent is the non-authoritativeness of this tradition generalizable?

Here are some hypothetical possibilities, ranked from minimum to maximum:

1) It is only the korban tradition which is non-authoritative.

2) It is those Pharisaical traditions which conflict with Scripture that are non-authoritative.

3) It is Pharisaical traditions in general that are non-authoritative.

4) It is those pre-Christian Jewish traditions that conflict with Scripture that are non-authoritative.

5) It is pre-Christian Jewish tradition in general that is non-authoritative.

6) It is oral (as opposed to written) tradition in general that is non-authoritative.

7) It is any tradition at all (including written) that is non-authoritative.

This list is non-exhaustive. There are other possibilities as well, and not all of the ones listed above are plausible ones.

In particular, I think #1 and #7 are very implausible.

#1 contradicts Mark 7:13's statement that--in addition to violating Scripture by korban--there are also "many such things you do."

#7 is particularly implausible because it would undercut the authoritativeness of Scripture, since Scripture is itself something that is handed down to us and thus is tradition (from the Latin, traditio "the act of handing on/over"; cognate of tradere, "to hand on/over").

Given his conclusion that "Jesus' plain teaching [is] that we are to examine all traditions by the higher standard of [Scripture]," Mr. White would presumably argue that by is example, Jesus is "plainly teaching" us something along the lines of option #6 (though he might want to swap out the term "non-authoritative" for something else, like "non-divine"; this would not affect the structure of the argument).

The fact that we have a range of possibilities here, some of which are not completely implausible, means that it is not plain that #6 is what Jesus means to teach by his example. There are other options for how far he might intend his example to be pressed.

So there is a logic problem with Mr. White's argument.

The fact that Jesus can be shown to have regarded one tradition as non-authoritative (because it conflicts with the Ten Commandments) does not mean that he regarded all traditions as non-authoritative.

That would be the fallacy of hasty generalization.

In fact, we can show not only that it is a hasty generalization but that it is a false generalization.

It is clear that Jesus gave certain teachings and practices to his apostles, who he commissioned to preach and teach these to others. Though the apostles made use of the Old Testament Scriptures, distinctive Christian teaching and practice went beyond what could be proved from the Old Testament. This did not stop it from being authoritative for the first generation of Christians. The preaching of the apostles apart from Scripture was still endowed by Jesus with authority and was normative for Christian faith and life.

Jesus himself--so far as we know--wrote no books (though there is that one reported letter to the ruler of Edessa, which is considered apocryphal), yet his word was (a) meant to be handed on to others and (b) was authoritative and (c) went beyond what was found in the existing Scriptures of his day.

It therefore counts as (a) Tradition, which was (b) authoritative and (c) not found in Scripture.

This constitutes a problem for Mr. White if he wishes to maintain that Jesus' example at the korban incident means that all extrascriptural tradition is to be regarded as non-authoritative.

It is scarcely likely that Jesus considered his own extrascriptural (meaning: not found in the Scripture of his day) teachings to be non-authoritative.

It thus would seem that--however far Jesus meant those who saw his example to follow it--he did not have in mind option #6 listed above. At a minimum, they were expected to regard Jesus' own oral teachings not found in the Old Testament as authoritative.

And since he gave these teachings to the apostles to hand on to others, meaning them to be authoritative for the Christian community, they therefore constitute authoritative oral tradition as well. Regardless of how other streams of tradition are to be regarded, the oral teachings beyond the Old Testament that Jesus committed to the apostles to proclaim to others must be regarded as authoritative oral tradition.

So Mr. White is wrong about what Jesus was teaching his audience with his example in the korban incident. He wasn't saying that all traditions apart from Scripture are non-authoritative; he was excepting those that he himself would pass on to the Church--i.e., apostolic or sacred Tradition.

We know that in time the apostles and their associates wrote Scriptures that recorded many of these teachings, but if Mr. White wishes to maintain that sacred Tradition is not binding on us today then he will have to find a different basis to argue this than the korban incident.

That one doesn't prove what he wants. Jesus simply was not setting an example whereby he expected the people of his day to reject as non-authoritative all unwritten traditions, for if he had meant this then it would have undercut the authoritativeness of his own oral teachings that went beyond what could be proved from the Old Testament.

Now let me address a few remaining points:

1) Mr. White appears to think it significant that the Pharisees he spoke with regarded korban as a divine tradition. I don't know that these Pharisees did think this (they may have just thought it was a permitted inference rather than something actually passed down from Moses), but suppose they did.

If so, this shows that some traditions can be erroneously regarded as divine.

So what?

The fact that some traditions of the Pharisees were erroneously regarded as divine does not mean that all traditions are erroneously regarded as divine. (That would be the hasty generalization fallacy once again.)

If one happens upon a genuinely divine tradition (like those Jesus handed onto the apostles) then it will be divinely authoritative.

2) Mr. White refers in his blog post to Scripture being a "higher standard" than the traditions to be compared to it, but here we have another mistake in logic.

It does follow from the fact that a non-authoritative tradition contradicts Scripture that the non-authoritative tradition is on a lower level. Unlike the false tradition, Scripture is true and authoritative and thus is on a higher level. But it does not follow from this that all traditions lack truth or authority relative to Scripture.

If one has a genuinely authoritative Tradition--e.g., Jesus' own oral teachings--then it is not non-authoritative compared to Scripture.

3) It is true that any genuinely divine tradition will not contradict what is in Scripture, making it possible to compare the two and see if they conflict. If there is an irresolvable conflict then the tradition in question must not be divine.

But the same thing is true in reverse. Put yourself in the position of a Christian before the formation of the canon: a genuine scripture cannot contradict the faith as handed down from the apostles. Therefore, any scripture that genuinely does contradict tradition must not be a genuine scripture. This is, in fact, one of the reasons that Marcion's Gospel and the Gnostic gospels were rejected.

It is also true among written works: What is said in one book of divine Scripture cannot contradict what is written in another, so if there is a genuine, unresolvable contradiction between two proposed scriptures then at least one of them must be false.

And it is true among unwritten traditions: Sacred Tradition cannot contradict Sacred Tradition, so an irresolvable conflict means one or both is not a genuine Tradition.

The first century Church was faced with a collection of true Scriptures and true Traditions that were surrounded by a mass of false scriptures (like the fake letters circulated under Paul's name) and false traditions. The consistency test was of some use in future centuries in sorting out the true from the false in that you could use the items you were most confident of (be they oral or written) to disqualify items that conflicted with them.

But this does not allow you to appeal to a case of consistency-with-Scripture being used to identify a false tradition as a proof that Scripture is superior to Tradition. It is equally true that consistency with Tradition was used to identify false scriptures.

4) You'll note that I have referred to unresolvable contradictions between elements of scripture and tradition. This is because there are apparent contradictions that can ultimately be harmonized. These occur between Scripture and Scripture, between Scripture and Tradition, and between Tradition and Tradition. We therefore must not be too quick to declare a scripture or a tradition to be inauthentic based on an apparent contradiction. In his providence, God has allowed these tensions to exist, and he expects us to work through them.

5) Earlier I pointed out that the real issue was not whether a tradition fails to contradict Scripture (as with the modern custom of having pews and pulpits in churches). As an alternative, I suggested that the real issue was whether there were unwritten traditions that were authoritative. By this, I meant divinely authoritative in the way Scripture is (not just authorized by a human authority acting independently of God's authority).

Because I went beyond the language used by Mr. White in recasting the discussion this way, he might wish an alternative formulation of what the underlying issue is--though if I read him correctly he would agree that it is not enough for a tradition to be merely consistent with Scripture. If he wishes to propose an alternative formulation to the issue being whether extrascriptural traditions can be (divinely) authoritative then I am open to this, but it will not affect the conclusion of the argument: The korban incident does not establish that extrascriptural traditions lack the divine authority that Scripture enjoys.

There are, of course, other aspects to the subject of how Scripture and Tradition are related and how we can know which proposed scriptures and traditions are authoritative, but these are separate questions.

The point has been established that the korban incident does not show that all extrascriptural traditions are non-authoritative: If it did, Jesus would have been undercutting his own teaching.

Posted by Jimmy Akin in Non-Catholic Apologists | Permalink | Comments (66)

You're So Vain; I Bet You Thought That Post Was About You

(Jimmy Akin)

James White has periodically complained about certain Catholic apologists not wanting to interact with him, and this week I was reminded of why.

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THIS POST,

he just can't resist ad hominems, insults, and little jabs, and he has a constant assumption that he is of such unique importance that people in the field must be intimately familiar with whatever he writes or says or they reveal their own inadequacy.

This makes it difficult to interact with his arguments because of the obnoxious way he presents them.

So here's what I'm going to do.

First--in this post--I'm simply going to document how the way that James conducts himself makes it hard for others to interact with him and then--in a second post--I'll lift the arguments he makes out of the matrix of snottiness in which he embeds them and interact with them directly.

The reason I'm taking this two-post approach is that James's ungentlemanly style has nothing to do with the merits of the arguments he makes, and I don't want the two subjects to be entangled.

Since the manner in which White conducts himself toward other apologists is more of a matter between apologists, you may not be as interested in this subject.

Fair enough. If this isn't your cup of tea, I totally understand.

So I'll place it below the fold in this post so that it doesn't take up further home page real estate.

First some background.

Recently I received an e-mail from a reader who said:

What is the Korban Rule, and why does James White make such a big deal about it when he speaks of sola scriptura?

That's all I had to go on, so I didn't know what material by James White the reader may have had in mind. He might be thinking of a book or tape that White put out years and years ago, or he might be thinking of something much more recent. Since I don't hang on every word that issues from the mouth of James White, I don't read his blog, I don't listen to his webcast, and so I don't know what his most recent arguments regarding korban and sola scriptura might be.

Now, Momma Akin didn't raise any children dumb enough to critique a position based on old memories of what someone said years ago, when they may have said something different in recent days.

In fact, Momma Akin didn't raise any children dumb enough to critique another person's position without having locked-down, verified, verbatim quotations of recent origin.

So I didn't.

Instead, I did what I always do when someone asks about something a person has said and I don't have the quotation in front of me and so can't comment on it: I indicated that I haven't seen the quotation and then I talk about the issue in general terms rather than what the person in question may have said about  it.

If you listen to me on the radio, you hear me do that kind of thing all the time.

Thus in MY POST ON THE SUBJECT, I explained "What is the Korban Rule?" and then said:

I haven't read or heard specifically what James White may have been doing with this passage, but it is a staple of Protestant anti-Catholic apologetics.

The blue part is the only thing I said about James White in the entire post. I didn't focus on him as an individual or what he may have said. I just mentioned him to set him aside and get at the issue as it is commonly handled in Protestant anti-Catholic apologetics.

White then responded with A POST titled:

Jimmy Akin More than a Decade Behind

Notice that he's begun with an ad hominem. My post was titled "Korban & Sola Scriptura," because I was interested in talking about an issue rather than an individual, but for White the headline--the first thing he wants his readers to see in introducing the matter--is to say something nasty about me.

He then writes:

I was informed today that Jimmy Akin had made some comments regarding sola scriptura, the Corban rule, and my comments on the subject.

Actually, the third point was a piece of misinformation: I did not comment on White's comments. I deliberately avoided doing so.

White's characteristic use of ad hominems, insults, and jabs then begins. These are directed toward me, my readers, and Catholic apologists in general. Here are some samples:

In looking at his blog article found here I was just a little surprised to discover that Mr. Akin, the lead apologist for Catholic Answers, has not done his homework on this particular subject, and in reading the comments left by Roman Catholics on this blog entry, it seems the majority of them are happy to go on second-hand research as well, a sad state of affairs. The question Akin is responding to is, "What is the Korban Rule, and why does James White make such a big deal about it when he speaks of sola scriptura?" Of course, I do not make a "big deal" out of it. I have addressed the issue in relationship to the failed attempt by Rome's apologists to get around Jesus' plain teaching that we are to examine all traditions by the higher standard of God's Word, even those that claim to be divine in origin.

He goes on in that vein, and can't resist throwing in more insults and jabs whenever he raises the subject of me or my readers (e.g., "I am truly surprised at the shallow nature of this response by Akin," "How can Akin be ignorant of this?", "Sadly, in reading the comments left by Roman Catholics after this very poor example of Catholic apologetics, no one seemed to notice, and no one seemed to have actually read any semi-meaningful non-Catholic critique of Rome's position") and he closes with one of his patented, sonorous "Oh, the burden that we, The Chosen, face!" declarations ("The task for all who believe in the sufficiency of God's Word remains ever present in all forms of evangelism, as we have seen over and over and over again, whether we are seeking to bring the message of life to Muslims, Mormons, or Roman Catholics").

His remarks are marked by the constant assumption that I am talking about him (E.g., "You will note that nothing here comes close to actually responding to what I have said," "he accuses Protestant apologists, and myself by implication, of the error of 'hasty generalization'"), to which one is tempted to reply: "James, please read carefully. Not everything is about you."

White's basis for the claims that I am "more than a decade behind" and that I have "not done [my] homework" is apparently found in four items that he raises in his post:

1) "Here is the basic presentation I made in The Roman Catholic Controversy a decade ago"

2) "Further, in responding to a Catholic Answers article in This Rock Magazine over a decade ago now, I wrote"

3) "I believe this topic has come up in the many debates on sola scriptura that I have done since the first in August of 1990"

4) "I remember pointing this out to Patrick Madrid and Mark Brumley at a seminar they did in Phoenix fifteen years ago" (italics his).

Now, there are several absurdities connected with the idea that I should be instantly familiar with what White said or wrote on korban on these occasions.

First, if--as White says--he does not make a big deal out of the korban passage then he hasn't really made it a signature of his ministry, and presumably it's a small part of his presentations. He thus would be expecting me to be familiar with a minor aspect of his arguments if, as he says, he doesn't make a big deal of this.

Second, the second point on the list concerns a response he wrote to an article by David Palm that involved Moses' Seat and the Mishnaic tract Aboth.

But if White were familiar with my writings, he would know that I don't make use of these in my apologetics, so I have had little reason to read his refutation of Palm on these points. (Not like I have reason to go rushing out to read White's responses to other apologists in general.)

Further, what White said in reply to Palm is simply irrelevant to what I wrote.

The fourth point on the list is perhaps the most absurd: I not only wasn't at Mark and Pat's seminar in Phoenix fifteen years ago, I wasn't even Catholic fifteen years ago. The only way I would have learned what happened there is if Mark and Pat were so thunderstruck by what White said that they felt the need to memorize it and repeat it to me years later. (They weren't, and they didn't.)

Underlying all of these items is an assumption on White's part that he is of such unique importance that I should be familiar with what he said on these occasions.

I'm sorry, James, but you're just not that big a fish in the overall scheme of things.

I've got Dan Browns to fry, and a whole field of world religions to interact with, not to mention the questions people have about their own faith.

Ministering to people is a supply-and-demand thing, and there just ain't that much demand for answers to your arguments. In order to meet people's needs, I need to spend much more time working through moral theology and canon law and the issues raised by the latest anti-Christian book/movie/TV show/news story than your stuff. Economics is the study of the application of limited resources that have alternative uses, and my time is a limited resource with alternative uses, so I've got to use it economically.

The idea that I--or any Catholic apologist--have any kind of an obligation to become a specialist in the writings of one individual is simply hubristic. You are not the naked singularity into whose gravity well everything in apologetic spacetime must be drawn.

My department answers going on 20,000 questions a year, and I did a quick estimate of how many are related to James White's arguments. My preliminary finding was that about 00.25% of them are. Even if I'm off by a factor of two, we're only up to one half of one percent, so it would be foolish of me to assign someone in my department (or myself) to become a specialist in James White's works given the overwhelming pastoral needs elsewhere.

Even aside from the issue of how many requests we get for information on White, the constant assumption by a person working in a field that his writings are of such unique importance that other professionals are delinquent if they haven't studied them in minute detail is so arrogant and offputting--especially when combined with a seemingly pathological addiction to ad hominems, insults, and jabs--that it makes one simply not want to deal with him.

So James: If you want an explanation for why you've had difficulty in getting certain Catholic apologists to engage you over the years, this is a big part of why.

Posted by Jimmy Akin in Non-Catholic Apologists | Permalink | Comments (216)

December 21, 2005

How To Spot An Anti-Catholic

(Michelle Arnold)

If you're ever in doubt over whether someone who insists that he is not anti-Catholic really is anti-Catholic, drop in on his blog when a story that highlights the foibles of some Catholic is making the rounds of the blogosphere. Does he carefully note that such a story may be silly but reflects poorly only on the Catholic in question and not the Church as a whole? Or does he snatch up this handy stick and start using it to beat the Church while ignoring those Catholic bloggers who are decrying the silliness?

Case in point: When a Polish Dominican friar, not a monk as the press claimed, sought a recording of John Paul II's heartbeat for playback at a Christmas Mass, Catholic bloggers rolled their eyes and duly noted that this was a Bad Idea. It wouldn't have taken an Evangelical blogger much research to find the posts by Mark Shea, Amy Welborn, and JimmyAkin.org (written by yours truly). You would expect an Evangelical apologist who vigorously denies charges of anti-Catholicism to report on such posts in his coverage of the subject. At the very least you would expect him to refrain from giving the impression that all Catholics or the Church as an institution approve of such goings-on.

In the case of Evangelical apologist James White that just ain't the case.

White not only reaches for the stick and starts swinging; but, in his eagerness to make the Church look bad, he repeats a basic error in the media report:

"Monk [sic] Seeks Recording of JPII's Heartbeat: OK, this is just plain creepy, but then again, the listing of what Frederick had at the castle church at Wittenberg is just as creepy, just not high-tech. There is something so very non-Christian about this kind of thing you wonder how anyone with a scintilla of respect for biblical teaching could possibly find it attractive."

GET THE POST.  (The quote is current as of my visit on 12/20 at 12:40 PM Pacific Time.)

Had White bothered poke around some of the major Catholic blogs, of which he has demonstrated in the past that he is a reader, he would have found out that Dominicans are friars, not monks. (Yes, Mr. White, there is a difference.) But then he would have seen that this particular news story was of an anomaly in the Catholic world, not representative of Catholicism in general, and wouldn't have had nearly as much fun giving his own readers the impression that Catholics do not have "a scintilla of respect for biblical teaching."

Although the particular "relic" in this case -- JPII's heartbeat -- is of questionable taste, authentic relics are not "creepy." Catholics appreciate them because they have much more than "a scintilla of respect for biblical teaching."

READ ABOUT THE BIBLICAL BASIS FOR RELICS.

Posted by Michelle Arnold in Non-Catholic Apologists | Permalink | Comments (18) | TrackBack

August 30, 2005

A.K.A. Benedict XVI

(Michelle Arnold)

While reading James White's responses to Karl Keating's August 23rd e-letter, I came across a strange assertion in White's follow-up "Even When I'm Wrong, I'm Never Wrong"-response. Setting aside the question of the merits of White's critique of the e-letter, since that boxing ring is already occupied, let's look at White's defense for his error in calling Benedict XVI by the name of Boniface:

"I notice a few folks out there who are extremely excited and happy that when I quickly put together a response to Karl Keating on his ridiculous attack upon John MacArthur that twice I referred to Pope Boniface instead of Pope Benedict. Ignoring the substance of what I wrote and focusing solely upon mixing two artificial names (shall we just call him Joseph Ratzinger and stop the pretension of the Papacy and its naming policy?), some have jumped on this as if it has some kind of meaning."

Setting aside also the question of whether White should have thrown together an off-the-cuff response or should have more carefully considered the issue before offering a careful and measured response (or offered no response at all if he didn't have such time to spare for the matter), let's look at the claim that there is something "pretentious" or "fake" about popes taking new names.

The practice of a pope choosing a new name is an ancient one, stretching back to John II, who reigned in the sixth century and felt that his given name of Mercurius (derived from the pagan god, Mercury) was inappropriate for a Christian leader. We could even cite biblical support for the practice if we note that Jesus changed Simon's name to Peter (cf. John 1:42). While this doesn't directly support a pope choosing his own new name, it does show that taking on a new name is not antithetical to Christian piety or theology.

In modern times popes have often chosen their new names in order to honor loved ones, to demonstrate solidarity with predecessors, or to indicate the direction and goals of their pontificate. Thus, John XXIII chose his father's name; John Paul I and John Paul II chose to honor predecessors and indicate continuity with them; and Benedict XVI explicitly stated that his name honored both the patron saint of Europe and a peacemaker pope, which indicated his own goals.

This isn't simply a Catholic phenomenon. When Edward VIII abdicated the throne of England in 1936, his younger brother Albert succeeded him to the throne. The abdication had caused a great scandal in Britain, causing many to wonder about the future of the monarchy. In order to calm such fears and to demonstrate the continuity of the British monarchy, Albert chose to take his father's name and be crowned King George VI. His choice was still fresh in the minds of royal protocol experts years later when his daughter Elizabeth succeeded him. Asked by her advisers what name she would be known by as queen, the new monarch is said to have responded "My own, of course."

My guess is that James White is not entirely ignorant of the history of papal names. Unlike sensationalistic anti-Catholics like Jack Chick, Dr. White shows some familiarity with the actual teachings of Catholicism. My guess is that he once again threw together a response without thinking through the claims he was making in the course of that response. He was likely more interested in dismissing criticism of his original sloppiness than in critiquing a Catholic custom. In short, he was more interested in proving himself right than in serving truth.

UPDATE:  Karl Keating has published his own response to James White in his August 30 e-letter.

GET THE E-LETTER.

Posted by Michelle Arnold in Non-Catholic Apologists | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBack

June 24, 2005

Roman Catholic "Romanism"

(Michelle Arnold)

A recent thread, now closed, on the Catholic Answers Forums caught the eye of Protestant apologist James White. One of the Catholic posters said:

"I have a lot of missionaries who come to 'save me' from Romanism."

Puzzled, James White responds on his blog:

“Please note: Roman Catholics can refer to ‘Romanism’ all they want. Scott Hahn has done a tape series called ‘Romanism in Romans,’ for example. No one will blink an eye. But, if I use the term ‘Romanism,’ Dave Armstrong will write a 24 page article about it.”

GET THE POST.

Not to mention that the subtitle of Karl Keating’s first book Catholicism and Fundamentalism is The Attack on "Romanism" by "Bible Christians."

So. Does James White have a valid point? Are Catholics guilty of a double standard?

No, not really.

In both the quotation of the person White quotes and in the subtitle to Karl’s book, the word Romanism is used in acknowledgment of the manner in which Catholicism is perceived by anti-Catholics. Indeed, Karl’s subtitle makes this acknowledgment explicit with the scare quotes. The Catholic poster is using the word in the same fashion but without the scare quotes.

In the case of Scott Hahn’s tape set, it can be argued that the word Romanism is used in the exact same fashion: As a play on words that is intended to demonstrate that those anti-Catholic Protestants who think the letter to the Romans is exclusively Protestant in its theology would be surprised by how much "Romanism" the apostle Paul spouts. Given Dr. Hahn’s affection for puns, as demonstrated in his many books, it is unsurprising that he would choose to give his tape set on Romans such a title.

The word Romanism can also be used by Catholics in another way: It can sometimes be used as an inside joke between Catholics who know that it is often used in a derogatory fashion by anti-Catholics. Much as some African Americans have adopted for each other (sometimes even as a term of affection!) a certain word that is highly-offensive when non-African Americans use it to refer to African Americans, so some Catholics occasionally use words such as Romanist and Romanism to affectionately tease each other.

But the fact that some Catholics occasionally use otherwise anti-Catholic words to refer to themselves or to their religion does not give license to non-Catholics to presume that the words are any less offensive or anti-Catholic when non-Catholics use such words to refer to Catholics and/or Catholicism. Just as it is common sense that a white person using the "n-word" for a black person is committing a gravely-insulting racial slur, so it should be a no-brainer that a non-Catholic using the word Romanism as a substitute for the word Catholicism is adopting a religious slur.

Language can be a very tricky thing. A sign of the mature use of language is the recognition that certain words or phrases are sometimes appropriate and sometimes inappropriate and that the duty of a polite person is to learn the distinctions and observe them -- however puzzling he may personally find such distinctions to be.

Posted by Michelle Arnold in Non-Catholic Apologists | Permalink | Comments (42) | TrackBack

June 17, 2005

Grace To You (Except If You're Catholic)

(Michelle Arnold)

Phillip R. Johnson, executive director of John MacArthur's Grace To You ministry, comments on his blog about reports that payouts in priestly sex-abuse cases have topped $1 billion dollars. His premise is that these payouts prove that the Catholic Church's claim of infallibility is false. My thanks to him for offering me the opportunity to step into the world of fisking:

"Start with the pretense of papal infallibility [of which we will not define so that you do not know it has nothing to do with impeccability]; forbid everyone in the core hierarchy of the church to marry [except, oh, say, Eastern-rite priests, Protestant clerical converts who are already married, and permanent deacons]; embrace a notion of <scare quote>'spirituality'</scare quote> with <overblown rhetoric>the most superstitious form of sacramental externalism at its core</overblown rhetoric>; and demand that all your members blindly and reverently accept the authority of the church's earthly leaders no matter what [and even though those same leaders deny they have this kind of absolutist, tyrannical form of authority I've heavily implied, make non-members blindly and reverently think such a demand is made of Catholics] -- and what kind of result would you expect?" [emphasis Johnson's].

GET THE BLOG POST.

Certainly not truth-in-advertising from non-members who presume to attempt to explain to other non-members what the Catholic Church believes and teaches, that's for sure.

Posted by Michelle Arnold in Non-Catholic Apologists | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBack

June 11, 2005

How Cheeky!

(Jimmy Akin)

CHT to the reader who sent a link to the following Jack Chick parody . . .

(Click to enlarge.)

READ THE COMIC.

Posted by Jimmy Akin in Non-Catholic Apologists | Permalink |