January 4, 2005

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The world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is
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The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the
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United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. Well, good morning, good afternoon, wherever you are.
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It is 11 o 'clock here in the Mountain West and it is very, very wet outside.
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Lots of winter storms. This is the second one. We've got another one coming in Thursday, Friday, another one
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Monday, Tuesday. Can't complain. Not complaining, especially since the snow level is going to get down to like 4 ,000 feet.
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And that's the kind of storm we need because we've had a nine -year drought going on. And that's the kind of storm that refills our reservoirs.
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So not complaining, but it's awful unusual for us.
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There's no choice about that. The frame of my door has swollen at home and it's like I'm doing a scene out of a cop movie.
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Every time I try to get out of the house, I hit it with the shoulder and boom, it pops open and that's about the only way to do it.
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So everything is just soaked and the wood out here is going, what is this stuff?
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This is what is water? What do you do with that? Anyway, welcome to The Dividing Line. Hey, some of you are absolutely overwhelmed with the blog explosion that has taken place.
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It's not going to last forever, so enjoy it while you can if you enjoyed it all. What I like about real blog software is
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I've got blogs set up to post all the way through tomorrow morning, and I don't even have to be here to do it, which is sort of cool.
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And so I'm going to try to keep up with at least a blog article a day, something new per day.
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And obviously, I've got series going. I have a series responding to a specific
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Islamic apologetic attack upon the canon of Scripture and upon the reliability of Scripture and the transmission of Scripture, so on and so forth.
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So that's been going on. I think we're on number 11 now for that one. And yeah, I've got a class right afterwards, man.
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I'm jetting out of here. As soon as the music starts, I'm going to say, see you later, folks, and I'm gone because I teach at 1 o 'clock today, our time.
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And we're talking, man, the freeways aren't looking real good, so I'm going to be rushing right out the door to get to class, teach from 1 to 5, four hours.
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It's a Jan term class, and I'm actually sort of used to that because that's like what I do in the summers at the main campus in Mill Valley, teach this class or a similar class in a very condensed period of time.
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And that's going to be really tricky after lunch. I hate being the guy who speaks after lunch.
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That's very difficult. I will need to bring plenty of Rush Limbaugh ties, Coogee sweaters, anything very colorful to keep people awake.
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Do lots of role -playing. That's lots of fun. Anyway, what was I saying? Oh, trying to keep up with those things, trying to keep up with the serieses.
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But one of the series that I started this week is I started to respond to Dave Armstrong's book,
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The Catholic Verses. Now, most people know that I've had a number of encounters with Mr.
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Armstrong over the years. He initially wrote to me back right at the time of his conversion, and he calls.
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If you write anything to him, it's a debate. So if you write a couple of letters back to him, even if they're not overly focused or long or whatever, it's a debate.
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And so I've found him very difficult to deal with over the years, and quite honestly,
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I just don't see that he follows an argument really well. He's very sensitive. If you say anything, he's going to run off and accuse you of ad hominem, even though he doesn't follow the standard definitions of ad hominem.
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But the fact of the matter is, he put out a book, and some of his books, like he has a book that I got called
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A Biblical Defense of Catholicism, and this is a self -published book.
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There's no editor in the sense of a Bethany House or something involved with this particular book.
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And I had looked through it, and I had made some comments that the man does not know how to do exegesis.
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It's a fact. I went through it and demonstrated that. But that book really didn't have a lot of distribution.
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Well now he's put one out with Sophia Institute Press. Now that's an actual publisher. And so that means it's going to get actual distribution.
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And so I was starting to hear just a little bit, not a lot, but a little bit about, well, have you heard about this book?
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And that means the book's getting at least some level of distribution. So it would be useful to a wider audience to go ahead and to respond to some of the arguments that are presented in the book, the
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Catholic verses, and especially this fits our ministry perfectly because it says 95
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Bible passages that confound Protestants. Well what are we known for?
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We're known for doing biblical exegesis, debating on biblical subjects.
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Look at the debates that we've done in regards to, you know, Greg Stafford in the
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Deity of Christ issues. We present a biblical argument. And so obviously a book that talks about 95, and yes, that's purposeful in regards to 95 theses, 95
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Bible passages that confound Protestants. Well that's a challenge. This is an assertion and the book starts off by saying, talking about how, you know, he's going to be doing biblical exegesis.
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He's going to be, page 12, Roman numeral 12.
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I just opened this up. I shall contend throughout this book that far too often
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Protestants do not take all of scripture into account and that they are guilty of eisegesis, reading into scripture one's own presuppositions, at least as often as Catholics are, if not more often.
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Protestants especially on a popular level often emphasize relatively few proof texts the exclusion of a great deal of relevant biblical data.
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Well you know there's truth in that. There's truth. How many times have I accused
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Protestants of eisegesis? But if you're going to identify eisegesis on somebody else's part, guess what?
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You better apply the same standards to yourself. And so I ordered the book, at least
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I didn't, you know, just get it from a library, I actually paid for it, Mr. Armstrong, I hope you're happy about that, and got it in and all
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I did, in fact people, I'm getting, the amount of criticism, I take the time to once in a while go over to Dave Armstrong's blog and look at the comments section, it's amazing.
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It wouldn't matter for most of these folks what I said. It really wouldn't. For most of these individuals on this board, like Patrick, a fellow by the name of Patrick especially, it would not matter if I absolutely documented to the nth degree, error after error on Armstrong's part,
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Patrick would never see it, he can't see it. His tradition glasses have been surgically attached, forget it.
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But it's been interesting, very interesting to read at least some other folks and to see how they've responded.
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One of the criticisms that's been thrown my direction is, well he's just picking on the easy stuff.
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I've only done, how many have we done, six, seven so far? I think, I don't have it up right now.
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I think there's one more that's going to appear, I think at noon today, I think right as the program's finishing. I think the final one on Luke 128 appears, if I recall correctly.
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And then I actually take time to sort of take time out and take a look at the presentation of someone else in regards to the
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Immaculate Conception, Scott Hahn, at least I'm equal opportunity. And in fact,
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I compliment Dave Armstrong by saying at least he tries to make a biblical case, something that Scott Hahn didn't bother doing in his book on Mary, and so I have some material on that.
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And so all I did was I opened it up and I just flipped it open, and it happened to flip open to a section on penance at first, and so I read the comments and went, well see there's the eisegetical error, here's the unfounded assertion here, here's the mistake made there, and so that's where I started.
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And then when I got done with that, I looked for something else, and obviously I wanted to make the Luke 128 discussion in regards to the
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Immaculate Conception a little bit longer because that's an issue, how many times have we debated that issue?
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We've debated that issue against Roberts and Jance, we've debated that issue against Patrick Madrid. Well, Patrick Madrid, not specifically, in writing anyways, in the
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Roman Catholic Controversy, against Jerry Matitix, of course. And there's been a lot of discussion about that particular subject, and so we turned to that.
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And the next section that I intend to do, what was the next section I was going to, that I did,
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I've already written and I don't think it's posted yet, I think that one maybe is the one today or tomorrow.
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But there's exactly two verses, well, not two verses, two passages, a grand total of one, two, three, four, five verses.
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Chapter 4 of the Papacy, and of course it's Matthew 16, 18 -19, and Isaiah chapter 22, verses 20 -22.
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And I don't say a whole lot about Armstrong there, other than to basically criticize him for not responding to what's out there, to the rebuttals of the material that he presents.
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They're right in front of him, he couldn't possibly not know about them, but he just ignores them. He just, you know, does nothing to actually show that he's serious about promoting these passages as confounding
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Protestants. When you're holding a book in your hand, when you cite, you've got Eric Svensson's book, on Luke 1 -20, you've got the
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Roman Catholic controversy. You can look in the back of the book and look up Isaiah 22 -22.
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There's a reference there, there's a footnote there. And it presents, it shoots holes in your entire argument.
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It's right there in front of you, but you ignore it? How is that meaningful apologetics? That part I haven't figured out.
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And so that one's going to be coming up, the one on the Papacy. And so there's all sorts of stuff on justification, salvation, and things like that.
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And so I've just been going through it. I didn't start at a particular point or anything like that.
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I figure after I've gone through about 20 -25 verses or so, and demonstrated that there is a consistent pattern of eisegetical misunderstanding and an inability to deal with the text, that that will have answered the questions.
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And we will have taken the time to demonstrate that here's another resource that demonstrates that it is not the
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Protestant that is confounded by the biblical testimony. It is, in fact, the consistent
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Roman Catholic who rejects Sola Scriptura and who accepts the traditional authority of Rome and has violated
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God's truth in the process. So that's all I've been doing. Amazingly, if I take the time, if I write two, let's say
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I write two paragraphs, and I demonstrate that what Dave Armstrong has said about the lexical meaning of a word is untrue.
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That he doesn't understand, he's not accurately handling the material and therefore is confusing verbs and nouns, and he'll quote a lexical source about a noun over here and just automatically transport that into a use of verb over here, doesn't seem to understand that if you're dealing with a participle, that that raises all sorts of syntactical issues that touch on meaning and application that you wouldn't have if you're dealing with a finite verb or with a noun, or all sorts of things like this.
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He just simply doesn't give any evidence of understanding these things. If he does understand these things, then he's guilty of misrepresenting them.
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And in fact, it's odd. I've even tried to just point out, it seems to me the man's ignorant of these things, and that's considered ad hominem.
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I'm not ignorant of these things. OK, then that means you're grossly misusing them, and that's even worse.
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Which is worse? To be ignorant of something and to wander into it and talk about stuff that you shouldn't be talking about because you don't know anything about it, or to knowingly misrepresent scholarship and the truth, which is worse.
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Neither one's good, but one is something a lot of people do, and the other involves being dishonest, doesn't it?
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And so it's fascinating to read the comments, because basically yesterday,
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Mr. Armstrong melted down. He had been trying to respond, and the responses, and again, there's links, you can go read this for yourself.
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The responses have basically been, he's so mean to me, he's picking on me, he's insulting me instead of, well, actually, here's where the grammar actually supports my position.
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Here's where the lexicons support my position. Actually, I did understand the difference, and here's where I argued it. He doesn't do any of that, because he didn't in his book.
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On an exegetical level, this book is very, very bad. And I'm being just as consistent, you know, there's a lot of Protestants that get mad at me because who else have
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I applied this exact same standard to? Dave Hunt. You can't accuse me of being an unfair
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Protestant here. These Roman Catholics that are just, you know, having a conniption fit out there. Haven't you noticed that I have absolutely been consistent at this point in applying the same standards to Dave Hunt or to Norman Geisler that I'm applying to Dave Armstrong?
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I have. I mean, come on. I'm going to go after anybody who makes claim
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X and then doesn't follow through on it. We're talking about God's truth here. It's what you're supposed to do. And so one of the big things, the complaints, is ad hominem, ad hominem, ad hominem.
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It does not seem that anyone knows what ad hominem argumentation is. For example, in Mr. Armstrong's article where he basically melts down and says,
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I'm going to stop talking to these people. I'm going to stop responding to these people, which
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I'll be quite open in what I think has nothing to do with what
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I've said in the sense of, oh, they're just so mean and there's just no reasoning with them. The simple fact of the matter is
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I'll make it very, very plain. The reason that Dave Hunt's doing this, Dave Hunt, starts the same letter.
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Dave Armstrong is doing this is pretty much the same reason that Dave Hunt won't debate me. He can't.
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He can't. The facts are not on Dave Hunt's side. The facts are not on Dave Armstrong's side.
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He can't respond. Dave Hunt is never going to show us this mythical Hebrew original.
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And Dave Armstrong has gone into hiding of, I'm not going to talk to these folks anymore.
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I'm not going to respond anymore because he can't respond anymore. He has no ability to respond to the demonstration of his errors outside of simply going, you know what?
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I pull it from distribution. I was wrong. You're right. The facts are against me.
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I repent. And the chances of that happening are not overly good, though it would be nice to see it happening.
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In that article, which he titles, New Year's Resolution 2005,
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Moving On from Anti -Catholic Intransigence and Invincible Ignorance, AACA 12 -Step
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Program Answering Anti -Catholics Anonymous with a List of Ongoing Ad Hominem Attacks from Anti -Catholics. Now, again, this is not the first time we have documentation from Mr.
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Armstrong in the past saying he would never respond to me anymore. That's it. Well, it never happens.
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And this won't stay the same either. Once I stop this review and the dust settles, then everything will be back to normal.
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That's my prediction, anyway. But which, of course, may be enough to make him stick with it.
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But anyway, at the end of this article, there is a listing of these ad hominem attacks. So let's listen to some ad hominem attacks.
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Here's what I said. This is from New Year's Day. Armstrong simply doesn't understand the process of scholarly examination of a text and as a result runs headlong into walls trying to act like he does.
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The result would be humorous if one, this wasn't a serious subject. Two, if he didn't think he was truly proving providing meaningful exegesis.
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And three, if the doctrine was irrelevant and as a de fide dogma of Rome, it isn't.
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Now, some people may not like the fact that I was very straightforward here, but by excising these little statements out from their context, you're not representing them.
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I have invested a fair amount of time recently, ask the people around me, in providing the foundation for each one of these statements.
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And after you go through Mr. Armstrong fumbling around trying to respond to Eric Svensson and clearly not even understanding what
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Eric's saying, he doesn't understand why Eric says what he says. The next one he lists. But it is just here that Armstrong shows he is lost in the discussion for when
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Eric Svensson makes mention of facts in passing that are directly related to these very issues, D .A. misunderstands them and does not see their relevance.
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This is a standard of this. This is repeatedly seen in Armstrong's work.
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He will go off on a tangent on something that if he understood the process of how you examine a text, what facts are relevant, why they're relevant, the relationship of lexicography and semantic domains to grammar and to grammar in context, which is syntax.
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If he were to understand any of that, then he wouldn't be going off and investing three or four pages on something that actually has nothing to do with the subject in the first place.
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So these are factual statements. And if I had just if this was the substance of what I've written, then he would have reason to complain.
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But I didn't just write this. This is substantiated by the argumentation.
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This is a conclusion or an observation based upon the facts.
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Here's another alleged example of ad hominem. Armstrong consistently ignores the citation of Roman Catholic scholarship when it stands in his way.
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Well, since he doesn't take it into consideration at all, then he's either ignorant of it or he's doing what
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I said. He can't be ignorant of it because in this particular instance, he put ellipses in to cut it out.
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He's quoting from Eric Svensson. He reads Eric Svensson quoting Roman Catholic scholarship.
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He cuts the Roman Catholic scholarship out, quotes Svensson, and then ignores it. Nobody on Armstrong's blog will respond to that.
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They won't even allow that. Well, yeah, that would be useful, Dave, if you would address
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McHugh's statement, because McHugh is saying what Svensson is saying and and he's a
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Roman Catholic. And so it can't be anti -Catholic bias on his part. And wouldn't it be a much fuller, more convincing argument if you'd take the time to at least acknowledge this?
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And maybe explain why, you know, you took McHugh's quote out, but then didn't respond to it.
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Don't you think that's what serious minded Roman Catholics who know Dave Armstrong should be saying to him?
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Isn't that what they should be saying? Because again, I've got a real good standing to say this because there's lots of doors have been slammed in my face because I've dared to say that to Protestants.
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I've dared to criticize bad argumentation against Rome, bad argumentation against Mormonism, bad argumentation against the
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Watchtower Society. I'm consistent, so I can sit here and go, excuse me, why aren't you guys?
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Is it just sort of as long as it's in service of Mother Church that all is well? It doesn't matter whether it's truthful or not.
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Is that really what we're facing here? Here's another alleged example of ad hominem. This kind of utterly amazing mishandling of Scripture is sad to observe, let alone to realize that it has appeared in publication.
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But to see how easily refuted it is should cause one to wonder at the power of tradition. He doesn't even seem to understand what would be necessary for him to establish such a claim.
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Now, by the way, let me put the ellipses in here. But to see how easily refuted it is should cause one to wonder at the power of tradition.
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Dot, dot, dot, ellipses. He doesn't even seem to understand what would be necessary to establish such a claim.
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Dot, dot, dot, without providing any meaningful basis in his presentation. Dot, dot, dot, and evidently no attempt to get
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Armstrong to reason coherently from sound exegesis or to utilize scholarly sources properly will succeed either, for his tradition is all too clear.
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Now, what's in the middle of all those dot, dot, dots? Factual, consistent, citationed argumentation.
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That's what's in the dot, dot, dots. That's what provides the context. And that's why none of these things are ad hominem.
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The next one, all Mr. Armstrong did in attempting to respond to Svensson was prove that in reality Dave Armstrong does not understand the basics of how to respond to sound, simple, scholarly observations regarding the subject.
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Once again, that's the conclusion to an argument. It isn't the argument. Therefore, it can't be what?
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Ad hominem. Why? Because ad hominem is a logical fallacy.
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It is meant to be the argument. I looked up, here's, here's, I didn't write this.
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This is from a very common internet source, Wikipedia. Look it up under ad hominem and it gives you a definition.
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A traditional, regular ad hominem argument would follow this form.
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Regular ad hominem. One, A makes claim B. Number two, there is something objectionable about A.
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Number three, therefore, claim B is false. And so if I were to be approaching
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Dave Armstrong's material and I were to, he were to make the statement that Cacarta Mene at Luke 128 means that Mary was full of grace from the point of her conception.
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That's claim, that's A making claim B. A is, of course,
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Dave Armstrong. Claim B is that Cacarta Mene means that Mary had a fullness or a plenitude of grace from the time of her conception, therefore was protected from the stain of original sin.
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Therefore, for me to engage in ad hominem, I would have to then note something objectionable about A, about Dave Armstrong.
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And so then say that claim B is false on the basis of something that's objectionable about A.
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So here would have to be the form of an ad hominem argumentation. Well, Dave Armstrong says that Cacarta Mene at Luke 128 means that Mary was, had a plenitude of grace from the time of her conception.
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But we all know that Dave Armstrong has curly hair and that he draws really bad cartoons.
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Therefore, obviously, Cacarta Mene does not mean that Mary had a plenitude of grace. That is ad hominem argumentation.
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It is meant to be an argument. There is a conclusion given and the conclusion does not fall from the argument that is given.
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That's ad hominem. Nothing I said was that because nothing that Dave Armstrong is citing is an argument.
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It is a conclusion. It is an observation based upon argument. It's not the argument itself.
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I did not say Dave Armstrong is wrong about Cacarta Mene because Dave Armstrong doesn't know how to do exegesis.
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First, I demonstrated that Dave Armstrong can't do exegesis. I demonstrated that he misuses lexical sources.
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I demonstrated that he ignores grammar and syntax. And I documented these things from the original texts.
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Those are the little dot, dot, dot parts. And so since he can't respond to that, then what he does is he takes the dot, dot, dot parts out and tries to make it look like I'm a terrible, horrible, nasty, mean person.
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And that's the reason why, of course, then he doesn't have to respond anymore to what's being said.
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And so if you go over to Dave Armstrong's website and to his blog and you start reading the material that is found there.
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In fact, I'm going to go ahead and take a, I'm going to renew the picture here, if you knew the picture, refresh the page.
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Whoa, we're up to 38 comments. It was 33 at the start of the program.
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And five comments have been added since I was, since I even started here.
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These things take on a life of, and they're big ones. Wow, they're very long.
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Oh, Tim Enlow even got into it here. Wow, this could set new records.
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What was that one we got into a while back? Like a hundred and some odd comments in one thing.
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That's very interesting. Anyway, it is amazing to read what people are saying here.
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It truly, truly is. It's hard for me. This one
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I found interesting. A fellow named Steve commented. And this is interesting because the article that I wrote that will address this hasn't appeared yet.
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So no one could know what it was that I had to say on it. So it's sort of funny that that would happen. Steve, today, actually at 540, well, 545.
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It must be like someplace on the other side of the planet or something. Anyway, Steve, that must be
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Greenwich Standard Time. Maybe that's what they, that's how it is. Anyway, Steve says, it seems to me that perhaps this is just a recognition that the apologetic arguments are played out and at an impasse.
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The recent history of Catholic apologetics is Carl Keating and Catholic Answers demolishing the traditional American know -nothing fundamentalist anti -Catholicism, which gave rise to White and Lowen -Svenson, who in turn provide a more coherent
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Protestant counter -argument. I see DA's work as rebutting this group's more sophisticated and historically informed argumentation.
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However, after 10 plus years of engagement, perhaps everything that can be said has been said. After all, there is no new information to end of the debate.
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Well, there's one thing that there's, there's a little bit of truth and a lot of error in that statement.
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Little bit of truth is Carl Keating, Patrick Madrid, Catholic Answers, Jerry Matitick, Scott Hahn.
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Obviously, in the late 1980s, early 1990s, the whole landscape changed.
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I would have to sadly agree with the phrase know -nothing fundamentalist anti -Catholicism.
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When you talk about someone like a Jack Chick, those folks cannot even begin to stand up to the argumentation of a
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Scott Hahn. No question about it. My ministry, Eric Svensson, yeah, obviously, we are going to respond to the best the other side has to offer.
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That's where the difference in my perspective lies. I do not see Roman Catholics doing that.
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I don't see him doing that. That's one of the things that to me, honestly, demonstrates the fact that there is a fundamental truth issue between us is that you watch
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EWTN, you listen even to the apologists, they are not responding to the best that's out there.
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They're not responding to the toughest that's out there. They are happy to repeat the same things over and over again.
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Okay, that's been my observation. And there is no question that my debates against Jerry Matitix and Mitchell Pacwa in 1990, 1991, changed the direction that these folks were going.
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Because up till then, let's face it, Jerry Matitix was running around and beating up on local pastors, and they weren't prepared, and they got run over like a steam shovel.
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And then, especially the papacy debate in Tempe, Arizona, between myself and Jerry Matitix, moderated by Scott Hahn, that changed things.
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Scott Hahn stalked out angry, Jerry Matitix was no longer with Catholic Answers a month later, all of a sudden, the movement toward a defensive posture rather than the offensive posture began to take place.
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And Catholic Answers used to put out a tract that encouraged people, if you had a quote unquote anti -Catholic pastor preach a sermon against Roman Catholicism, that you were to approach him and see if he'd be willing to debate a
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Catholic apologist. They don't publish that tract anymore, at least to my knowledge. I could be wrong, but I certainly haven't seen it for quite some time.
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They don't do it anymore, because they do not accept the challenges from others outside any longer.
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It's now more of a defensive posture than it was before. Things have changed.
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And I think we had a major, major role in that, no two ways about it. And I'm very thankful for that.
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But going back to this comment, Steve says, I see DA's work as rebutting this group's more sophisticated and historically informed argumentation.
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I'm sorry, that's the whole point of my review. Dave Armstrong has the
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Roman Catholic controversy in his hand. He cites it. And I should go back and drag out the stuff that he wrote to me back when he was putting this book together about Matthew chapter 23.
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It is, if you want ad hominem, there we can, if you want smug, there's a difference between the two, but if you want smug, there is some real smug emails that got sent my direction.
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He was very, very proud of his efforts in Matthew 23, which, of course, we're going to be addressing, which evidently now he won't be responding to.
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But he's got the book in his hand. It's been amazing to me. One of the arguments he's made.
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Well, I don't have to. I don't read James White's books. I read Dave Armstrong's books.
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It's not enjoyable, but I read Jimmy Akin's books. I read
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Scott Hahn's books. I read Carl Keating's books and Patrick Madrid's books. Why do
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I do that? Because I'm an apologist. That's what you have to do. If you don't read what the other side is saying, you can't call yourself an apologist, can you?
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That part I don't understand. Of course you can't. Of course you can't. And so do
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I enjoy doing that? No. In fact, I have many times complained. I'll see discussions of good books and channel, and I don't have enough time to read a lot of good books anymore, and that's not good.
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I probably need to take a year off and just read good books. And especially with some of the books that I write, the books
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I have to read to write them are not enjoyable at all. I was just sitting here. Where did it go?
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Here it is. I was just sitting here reading a chapter before the program started from The Next Reformation, Why Evangelicals Must Embrace Postmodernity.
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Carl Rasky's work, and I'm a baker, academic work, and I don't enjoy that.
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That's not edifying to me. But if you're going to address these things, if you're going to be involved in Christian apologetics and encouraging people to a serious faith, well, you know what?
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You don't have much choice there. You got to do what you got to do. And so that's what we've been doing.
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And so the problem that I have with Dave Armstrong is that he's got the book in his hand, and he argues, well,
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I don't read his books, and I can respond to what he said to Matthew 23 without responding to what he said two pages beforehand.
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No, you can't. If it's right there, and you are writing on the subject of Sola Scriptura or against Sola Scriptura, and two pages prior to something you do cite, a hole is blown right through your argument, facts are presented that are completely contrary to your own position, and you hide that.
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You say nothing about it. That's not honest. That's not apologetics. I don't have any respect for that.
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And I'm going to point it out. You're misusing your audience when you do that, aren't you?
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How can you say you're showing respect for your audience when you know there's an argument there that they may run into, but you don't address it.
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You just ignore it. Now, I'm not saying that every single book has to be 9 ,000 pages long, but the fact of the matter is this book could have been how many pages we got here?
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We got 237 pages. This is not a tightly typeset book, okay?
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You could have put another 15 -20 % worth of text into the same number of pages if you jolly well wanted to.
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And when you claim to be presenting... I would rather have had 20 verses that confound
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Protestants and had serious arguments presented than 95 fluffy pieces.
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95 fluffy passages. Most of the time, these passages are cited and there's no exegesis offered.
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It's just, well, here's what the text says, and my Catholic tradition says this, and therefore we move on from there.
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That's not meaningful argumentation. That should not be something that any...
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And folks, if you're sitting there just sort of sitting back going, that guy's ripping on Dave Armstrong today.
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You know what? Honestly, I think that if you've been in a serious
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Bible -oriented, Bible -preaching church for the past 10 years, you should be able to refute clearly and exegetically at least 90 of these 95.
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There's a couple things where there might be some specialized historical stuff, and certainly stuff on Luke 128 takes a little bit of background knowledge.
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No two ways about that. But still, the argumentation is so basic and so clearly fallacious.
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Folks, you as the believer listening to me right now, okay? The person on my side here, you need to be able to think logically and clearly.
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You need to be able to identify clear, obvious, logical errors in arguments.
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It really bothers me when I see otherwise solid folks, and they're befuddled by the simplest arguments.
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I mean, they're befuddled by bad argumentation. Bad, bad, bad.
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And they'll come into channel, for example, and say, Hey, what do you think about this? And they'll throw something out, and I'm just sort of looking at them like,
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Are you being serious? Yeah. I mean, how would I respond to that?
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Well, have you noticed that the primary foundation of the argument hasn't been established?
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Oh, yeah. Wow. Hey, thanks, Dr. O. That's great. Off they go. I'm like, wow, that's not good.
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This idea of discernment, that's not a good thing.
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Really, really not a good thing. So my whole point, honestly, when
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Steve says, however, after 10 plus years of engagement, perhaps everything that can be said has been said, baloney. Baloney, why am
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I not hearing Roman Catholics giving a meaningful answer to the fact that their use of Isaiah 20 through 22 is modern?
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The early church didn't do that. The early church didn't view it in that way. Are they going to seriously try to argue that the reason is, well, everybody believed in the papacy?
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That's one of the things I'm going to be pointing out in the article. I guess it later comes out today. That's one of the things that just is amazing to me about what some of the stuff that Scott Hahn says.
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He's got much less reason. He's got much less defense for doing this kind of thing.
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And yet he does. He makes claims about the Immaculate Conception being very popular in the early church. That's baloney.
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That's absolutely ridiculous. It didn't take me 30 seconds to have a scholarly source sitting next to me from a
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Roman Catholic perspective that completely refuted that, including even the citation that Hahn used.
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That kind of, you know, he has no excuse. OK, because he knows. I remember after the debate at Northwest Community Church in December of 1990.
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That was the one that Hahn and Matitik showed up 20 minutes late to the to the debate. It's the only time
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I've had a debate that started that late. I was standing there talking with him and Hahn was quoting stuff from John Owen and Jonathan Edwards, you know, and he knows the process.
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He knows how not to make that kind of claim, because when you make that kind of claim and people know better, then your credibility is damaged.
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And yet, for some reason, he makes it anyways. That part I don't understand. At least, you know, Armstrong can just throw his hands up and say, look,
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I'm not I'm not a scholar. I have no scholarly training. I've I can't read the original languages, but he won't do that.
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He should. Because if he then said that. What would be the following?
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What would be the follow up? Well, then you might want to avoid publishing books where you pretend to address these issues.
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When I say pretend, because you don't you don't get into the material, you don't actually actually follow through on what you what you claim you're going to do.
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And then and here's the main thing. Then you turn around. And claim to have refuted people who do know what they're doing.
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And your reputation is actually based upon your own ignorance. You'd understand what they're saying. That's not a good thing.
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That's not a good thing. And you know what? Some serious minded Roman Catholics should have been pointing this out a long time ago going, you know,
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Dave, oh, maybe you might want to reconsider this.
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But you see, there is a there is a club. And as long as it is in service to Mother Church, then we all just pat each other on the back and say, that's great.
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That's wonderful. And look at all those divided Protestants. Well, you know what? Truth divides.
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Jesus seemed to say something about that, didn't he? Yeah, he did. He said a lot about it.
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So the the comments, especially the first few, I mean, after that starts going off and other other things, there was this one fellow that was
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I suppose I should find this. If you want to want to read the the ramblings of a of a person who probably wouldn't be real wise to engage this person in in debate.
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And Tim and Lowe had made some comments about how and I can't you know, I really can't blame
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Tim at this point. I mean, let's face it. You know,
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Tim turned the comments off in his blog and Dave Armstrong had had a heyday with that. And so now Dave Armstrong runs and hides and Tim goes and that's what's going on there.
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But here's what it says. Got to have a throw a little levity in here.
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Tim can make all the smug, smarmy remarks he likes, but the facts are undeniable.
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Protestantism can never, ever be true. And all the smarmy remarks he throws at Dave can't make what is false true.
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Why should I or any intelligent human being with more than three brain cells even consider Protestantism?
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I'm supposed to reject the immaculate conception of Mary or the assumption of Mary or the authority of the
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Bishop of Rome because blah, blah, blah. There is no Bible verse explicitly says or mentions a insert alleged unbiblical
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Catholic teaching here. Thus said doctrine must be false question mark. Yet I'm expected to believe scripture is sufficient.
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Yet there is no Bible verse explicitly says that scripture is sufficient question mark. I am supposed to reject all tradition as traditions of men yet wink at the tradition of the
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New Testament canon. On the other hand, I suppose to believe the doctrine of scripture being sufficient is implied in 2
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Timothy 3, 16 -17. Even thought, should be though, it doesn't literally say scripture is sufficient.
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There's an extra, we're missing a parenthesis here somewhere. Yet if I try to claim the assumption is implied in Revelation 12, even thought, again, should be though, it doesn't literally say
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Mary was taken into heaven with her body, then that is illegitimate simply and sole because it's
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Catholic. I'm just reading it as he wrote it. Remember, this man is very intelligent as he informed us. How can anybody with an ounce of common sense believe such a comical and self -refuting man man -made religious system such as Protestantism based as it is on some of the most obnoxious set of double standards
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I've ever seen? It boggles, B -O -G -E -L -S, which would be boggles the mind and thoughts followed by five exclamation points.
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Well, you know, in each one of those particular things he brought up there, there are responses that evidently he has not himself taken the time to look at or acknowledge, but that's the kind of thing that's there.
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I don't know that that would be a good person to have on the program.
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He might be like somebody else and end up quoting Proverbs 129 repeatedly. So anyway, you can run over to Dave Armstrong's website and read all this.
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I was accused of being dishonest because I should mention this. I noted it on my blog. I had mentioned yesterday when this article first appeared that Dave had pulled all the other stuff off his blog because when it first appeared, there were two articles on the blog.
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That was it. That was it. Everything else was gone. It was blank. You could scroll up and down. There was nothing there but the sidebar.
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And that happened at the same time that this New Year's resolution came up. Looked to me like he pulled everything off, so I mentioned it in passing.
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Later in the day, it all came back on. Was it just a mistake? A formatting thing?
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Hey, that can happen. Very easy to have happen. Maybe it was due to 2005. I don't know why it was.
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All I know is when I made my comment, there were only two articles on the blog. Then later in the day, he puts it back up.
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And now I'm dishonest for having lied about him. He didn't say that, but Dave Armstrong didn't say it because he probably knows whatever it was that happened.
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But somebody else did. I think Patrick. Yeah, this Patrick guy did. How completely dishonest
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I am and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And all it was when I read it, there were only two blog entries there.
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Everything else had gone poof and disappeared. And yet that proves that James White Man is a mean, terrible, horrible, nasty man.
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And he lies and he's dishonest. And I haven't, other than the Protestants who've posted on that section, in that comment section, which is at 38 comments.
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Let's refresh the page here. 44 comments. It's exploding.
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We're up to 44 comments now. It does move very, very quickly.
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Anyway, oh, here's one from Diane. Dave cannot support his claims and indeed doesn't know what is necessary to do so.
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Translation, Dave can't argue his way out of a paper bag. Plus, he's an idiot. Not necessarily. I don't think
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Dave's an idiot. He's quite adept. He's quite the historian of the Beatles, for example. But that does not give you the ability to actually address the biblical text, does it?
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Sounds pretty ad hominem to me. Oh, more misuse of ad hominem. That wasn't an argument, was it?
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More the point, it's puerile. I like that name. Puerile is a good. We need to use bigger words like this because the tendency in American culture is to get simpler and simpler.
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We need to use nice words like this, like puerile. That's just how my two kids argue with each other. They love insults at each other without bothering to provide the least substantiation.
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Therefore, that would be spelled differently. But anyway, anyone who can read my blog entries and think that's what
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I've done. And yet it says, perhaps someday Mr. White and his cronies will similarly grow beyond their puerile tactics.
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Well, Diane, you know what? Someone can look at what you said and look at what
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I've written and go, you know what? There's no connection here. So why would you be so completely disconnected from what it was
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I said? Now, I just saw somebody come in channels. Very interesting. Eliezer from LivingTorah .org.
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Maybe he's found the Hebrew original of Acts. Somebody ask Eliezer there if he's found the
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Hebrew original of Acts. Oh, it's that Canadian Scott.
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He's been writing on there. That's why people are responding all the time. So very, very interesting.
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I'll go over there and just compare. Compare the argumentation being provided there with what we're providing on the blog.
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And you'll see that some folks will say, well, you shouldn't deal with that kind of thing.
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You just should let it go. It's beneath you. Well, it's interesting.
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Let me offer an apology, and I use that in the classic sense, an apology for investing the time to do so.
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Specifically, you need to deal with the information that is getting into people's hands.
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And I specifically got an email earlier in the week that really encouraged me because it was from an individual who mentioned, you know what, this specific book was given to a family member of mine.
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And well, in fact, here, let me just read it. I won't mention any names here, but this was very encouraging. And it says, thank you very much for your recent blog topics on the
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Catholic verses. My grandfather recently gave me this book, telling me that even though I don't believe that any exegetical interpretation of scripture that is contrary to Rome will stand, this book proves the
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Bible does teach even those doctrines you say the Bible refutes. Anyway, he wanted to tell me that I had to read the book before he would even discuss any of the matters which
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I have ardently been debating with him so that he would see the Gospel of Grace. I have been reading it, but have, and then it, unfortunately, my thing here, but have, and I've just cut off that point.
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But obviously, that is very encouraging to me.
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Here's a situation where someone needs this kind of response, needs this kind of documentation, needs this kind of information.
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If the book is being used in that way, then you need to respond to it. Is it as enjoyable as what might be called a more highbrow interaction with material that might be considered better?
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No. But is it more useful? Well, it depends. Is the highbrow information getting into situations of stopping a grandson from sharing the
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Gospel with his grandfather? If it is, then you deal with that. And if all
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I ever dealt with, by the way, was the Dave Armstrong -level stuff, and I never did reviews of Scott Hahn's stuff.
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I never did reviews of Jerry Matitick's, then I would be doing what
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Dave Armstrong is doing. I would be ignoring the higher -level apologetic and just picking on the bad stuff.
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But you have to deal with all of it. And you try to recognize that, you know what, there are
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Roman Catholic apologists who've presented a much more coherent argument here. But you know what?
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The more coherent and scholarly the argument, the less, not broad, but the less strident the claims of the
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Roman Catholic apologist. You ever notice that? That the more scholarly their arguments are, the more careful they are of the claims they're making.
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And the problem is, the less strident claims don't sell as well. They don't get people as excited.
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I mean, you get some hardcore folks that are real excited about the infallibility of the
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Pope, you know, and they're going to love that. They're going to love the people who speak to their issues.
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And they're not necessarily going to like the less conspiratorial, the more scholarly, the more drawn -out arguments.
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I know that. Believe me. My books on Mormonism, for example, are no longer in print. There's a reason for that.
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Because for most publishers, what they want is they want you to take the same material and repackage it with some new catch every few years.
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The idea of having a book that just accurately documents things, you know, that's just not what sells.
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I know that. I face that as a reality all the time on this side of the fence. And it happens the other way, too.
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So anyway, I think that if the book is out there, it's being used to get in the way of the proclamation of the gospel, then it needs to be addressed.
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And if Mr. Armstrong can't defend his material, well, so much the worse for Mr.
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Armstrong, maybe he will move on to doing something else. Maybe he will recognize this isn't something he should be doing.
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Maybe he'll think twice before putting himself in that situation again. Whatever.
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Okay, fine. The fact of the matter is, these passages that Dave Armstrong cites do not confound a biblical believer.
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They do not substantiate Roman Catholic belief. And as such, they need to be exposed.
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And the truth about them, especially, you know, he gets into some stuff later in the book that I could care less about.
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But when you're talking about authority, sola scriptura, the gospel justification, the things that Rome has made de fide dogmas that Rome has added to the gospel,
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I need to go back to the 1996 debate with Jerry Matatix and pull out that little section where he says that we have the same warrant to believe in the bodily assumption of Mary as we have to believe in the resurrection of Christ.
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I need to pull that one out and have it ready to play here on The Dividing Line. I also need to pull out his section where he identifies the bodily assumption as a part of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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If you're not preaching the bodily assumption, you're not preaching the gospel. I need to have those available just so that, because people tend to lose sight of what's really important.
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That's important. There you have the redefinition of the gospel itself.
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You have a group adding to the gospel something that redefines it, changes it, etc.,
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etc. And that's a vitally important issue. And to hear that and to hear it so boldly, to hear it so clearly, that shocks people.
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It sort of wakes them up and goes, wow, this is important. This, we're talking about the very definition of the message of the
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Church of Jesus Christ. It's exactly right. And once you abandon Sola Scriptura, once you embrace the concept of the authority of the
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Roman Magisterium, then what Jerry was saying was that since Rome is the ultimate authority and Rome has defined the bodily assumption,
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Rome is also the one that defines the resurrection. And you are dependent upon Rome's authority for your knowledge of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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Think about that one for a second and you'll see why it is necessary to respond to this kind of literature that's being put out.
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And it is not ad hominem argumentation to take the time to accurately represent.
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Notice, no one has even tried to document that I have misrepresented Dave Armstrong.
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They can't. I'm giving the direct citations. It's obvious the book's right there.
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I'm not misrepresenting him. I've accurately represented him. And it is not ad hominem argumentation to, after accurately representing him, after accurately refuting his argument, demonstrating his argument is based upon misunderstanding, to then make the statement, it seems that Mr.
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Armstrong does not understand what would be required of him to establish the claims that he is making.
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If he does understand, then the only thing we can say is that he is purposefully abusing his audience by knowing what the standards are and ignoring them.
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Knowing what the standards are and setting them aside and offering to the public for their money a product that simply isn't worth it.
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Is that what people want us to say? Well, leave it up to you. Hey, thanks for listening to The Dividing Line today. Should have taken some phone calls today, but we were sort of doing that, letting the
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Roman Catholics speak for themselves there, reading from the article. Don't forget, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, I'll put this on the blog.
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Thursday, The Dividing Line is at the same time. I'm leaving right now to go teach.
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And so Thursday, 11 a .m. Mountain Standard Time, 1 p .m. Eastern Standard Time is when we'll have
58:36
The Dividing Line. So keep that in mind. We'll see you then. God bless. You can also find us on the
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World Wide Web at AOMIN .org, that's A -O -M -I -N dot O -R -G, where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates and tracks.