Polygraphing the Words of James White, Pt. 2

Part One.

The Westminster Confession of Faith in 1646 as part of its definition of sola scriptura says,

The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man's salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men.

Scripture alone is sufficient for all of anyone's doctrine.  Someone can get all of his doctrine of the preservation of scripture from scripture itself.  Yet White says that, no, your doctrine of scripture can change from something derived alone from scripture, because extra-scriptural evidence changes doctrine. This violates sola scriptura.  White by his own admission doesn't believe sola scriptura.  Many doctrines will change with that approach.  White may say he changes only this one, but it buttresses all the changes anyone wants to make.  This is his admission.  This isn't me trying to create a problem.  I'm just the reporter.  It isn't the only issue for him, but it is at the root of his problem.

In part one, White said that we (that includes me) didn't do history very well.  How history is done well in this instance is interpreting the original intent of the framers of the London Baptist Confession.  That is historical theology.  To do that, you read what they wrote on the same subject. Again, we're talking about the doctrine stated therein, not what someone like Calvin or Beza said about a few textual variants.  Calvin made 41 statements about variants and on 37 of them, he agreed with his textus receptus.  He was a textus receptus person.  The four that he didn't still were available to him.  He knew about them.  He accessed them.  You've done history well, regarding doctrine, if you accurately represent what the people were saying.  In his earlier ecclesiastical text video, White says that Calvin disagreed with "a number of TR readings" -- that is a misrepresentation. In the relatively few mentions of textual variants, he agrees with the TR 37 out of 41

White is saying that doing history well means guessing something that the authors of the LBC would have done or they would have believed or they would have written if conditions were on the ground the same as they were three hundred years later.  Benjamin Franklin would have gone to the moon. We are saying that they derived their position from scripture.  You can not only see that in the confession, but you can also see it in all their writings, when they discuss the doctrine of preservation.  They start with what scripture says about its own preservation.

At 48 and following of his first video, White says the methodology is the issue, the how God did it. The London Baptist Confession and believers of that period talk about how.  The following statement in the LBC in the section on scripture represented a fundamental of their method:

Yet, notwithstanding this, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth of Scripture and its divine authority, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.

The method that God used through His Spirit is represented well in the bibliological confession of Thomas Ross:

Scripture teaches the verbal, plenary preservation of the verbally, plenarily inspired autographa (Psalm 12:6-7; Matthew 5:18; Matthew 24:35);   that the preserved words would be perpetually available to God’s people (Isaiah 59:21); and that Israel was the guardian of Scripture in the Mosaic dispensation (Romans 3:1-2), and the church the guardian in the dispensation of grace (1 Timothy 3:15). The Holy Spirit would lead the saints to accept the words the Father gave to the Son to give to His people (John 16:13; 17:8). Believers can know with certainty where the canonical words of God are, because they are to live by every one of them (Matthew 4:4; Revelation 22:18-19) and are going to be judged by them at the last day (John 12:48).

This is the methodological presupposition, which is the basis of believers writing that God's words were "kept pure in all ages."  Further statements in his confession reveal further this truth:

God intended for His Word to be recognized and received by the churches as a whole (Colossians 4:16; Revelation 1:3-4). . . .  The Bible promises that God would lead His saints into all truth, and that the Word, all of His words, are truth (John 16:13, 17:8, 17). Believers are not to set themselves above the Word but receive it with the faith of a little child, rejecting secular and worldly “wisdom” (Matthew 11:25-26; 1 Corinthians 3:18-20). . . . The Bible shows that the true churches of Christ would receive and guard these words (Matthew 28:19-20; John 17:8; Acts 8:14, 11:1, 17:11; 1 Thessalonians 2:13; 1 Corinthians 15:3; 1 Timothy 3:15). . . . The Bible presents as a pattern that that believers would receive these words from other believers (Deuteronomy 17:18; 29:29; 1 Kings 2:3; Proverbs 25:1; Acts 7:38; Hebrews 7:11; 1 Thessalonians 1:6; Philippians 4:9; Colossians 4:16).

Richard Muller writes in his Post Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 2, Holy Scripture: The Cognitive Foundation of Theology (p. 541):

All too much discussion of the Reformers' methods has attempted to turn them into precursors of the modern critical method, when in fact, the developments of exegesis and hermeneutics in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries both precede and, frequently conflict with (as well as occasionally adumbrate) the methods of the modern era.

This is what I've said about comparing what believers did 1500-1850 and what Westcott and Hort did. They weren't the same.

The LBC authors presupposition about the text is the same as about the canon, because they are both theological.  They believed that scripture was self-authenticating.  John the Baptist recognized Jesus. That didn't mean that John had authority over Jesus.  Believers received the text of scripture.  In JETS, July 1997 (p. 204), Roger Nicole writes:

There is a notable parallel here with the establishment of the OT canon. God entrusted his OT oracles to the Jews (Rom 3:2), and they were providentially guided in the recognition and preservation of the OT. Jesus and the apostles confirmed the rightness of their approach while castigating their attachment to a tradition that was superimposed on the Word of God (Matt 15:1–20; Mark 7:1–23). God entrusted his NT oracles to his people in the churches, and they are nearly unanimous in the recognition of the NT canon. . . . The consensus of churches on the NT is an index and evidence of the Holy Spirit’s guidance. The Holy Spirit is the moving authoritative force.

Keith A. Matheson wrote recently (2001) in his book The Shape of Sola Scriptura (p. 319):

But although the Church is a fallible authority, [scriptural teaching] does not assert that this fallible Church cannot make inerrant judgments and statements. In fact, in the case of the canon of the New Testament, adherents of [scriptural teaching] would confess that the fallible Church has made an inerrant judgment. But do we believe this because a particular Church tells us so? No, we believe this because of the witness of the Holy Spirit, which was given corporately to all God's people and has been made manifest by a virtually unanimous receiving of the same New Testament canon in all of the Christian churches. This is not an appeal to subjectivism because it is an appeal to the corporate witness of the Spirit to whole communion of saints. The Holy Spirit is the final authority, not the Church through which He bears witness and to which He bears witness.

Much more could be said here, but this is the thinking of believers on the text of scripture, paralleling with the reception of the canon, they received the text also.  The text is actually what the Bible talks about, the words of scripture.  The canon is an outgrowth of that theologically.

At about 49, White ridicules my mention of his brushing the authors of the reformation period and post reformation period confessions, reformed scholasticism.  He himself in his ecclesiastical text video dismissed them by saying that he "doesn't believe in the infallibility of reformed scholasticism," smearing them as scholastics instead of biblical theologians.  It was the early reformers who have been proven to be influenced by scholastics, not the authors of the LBC.  Influence of scholastics and the wholesale capitulation to scholastics are much different.  Either way, you can't just dismiss the doctrine of hundreds of years of believers with a name call, which is what he does.

At 49:22, White says that he didn't call anyone reformed scholastics, but read someone else who talked about reformed scholasticism.  That's not what he was doing in his ecclesiastical text video, so this if falsehood #7.  White needs to go back and listen to what he said.

After 50, White goes back to something he has been saying a lot.  The people who agree with the statement on preservation in the London Baptist Confession will be stuck in their internet chat and not able to deal with people in evangelism in the real world, since they have so much evidence they'll be able to use.  I'll call this falsehood #8, because it is not true.  I am quite confident that I have personally evangelized more people in my lifetime than White.  As a pastor, I've influenced then many others to evangelize even more.  Where I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, I deal with every religion in the world on a regular basis, ones that I would guess that White has never met.

You reading here who are James White apologetic fans really do need to reconsider your support of him.  I've preached through all four gospels.  Jesus presented evidence, no doubt, but that was not the basis of faith.  These were signs that He was the Messiah, but for men to believe, they must receive His Words.  Paul expands on this by saying that the problem is the suppression of the truth.  It's a volition problem, not an intellectual one.  Jesus said that they must want the will of God, or they would not know the doctrine.  I can't cover all this here, but White does not have a sound, scriptural apologetic, and this is seen again and again.  He is caught up in his own knowledge and thinks that he contributes a lot through that, and in so doing, confuses a lot of people.  I recognize he calls me dangerous.  The religious leaders called Jesus a lot of things.  The name-calling, which White employs again and again, means nothing.  The rebellion problem of even Muslim scholars will only be changed by a powerful, scriptural message, not a man-centered evidential one.

If you go out and evangelize and use the Bible, that's enough.  The Bible is sufficient for every good work.  The Bible has all that you need.  You don't need the so-called mound of evidence White refers to.  The enemies of God may mention it, but it really is a distraction in the matter of evangelism.  I have found that I need that evidence more for someone like James White and others like him, more than I need it for any kind of evangelistic work.

I said that White was overturning accepted doctrine, and White just before 50:30 asked me to show him a counsel that was binding upon him.  There is no counsel binding anyone, that is true. The Bible is binding though, and Paul said that some will depart from the faith, not all.  This is the value of historical theology.  You can't expect everyone to be wrong on doctrine.  Especially seeing the quality of the belief of that period, the biblical theology of those men shouldn't be dismissed.  White is doing that at his own peril.  He's saying they're wrong and he isn't showing why they're not from the Bible. He says they're wrong because of the extra-scriptural evidence.  I haven't been pointing out the strawmen of White through this whole analysis, but this is a strawman, that someone was referencing a counsel binding upon him.  He goes into a tirade over something that didn't happen.

White after 50:40 says that the believers of that period used the TR by default and not by choice.  You can't have it both ways.  You can't point out Calvin and his agreement with a few non TR readings (he calls it "a number") and then ignore the 37 where he agrees with the TR reading.  That is not default. Nevertheless, we're not talking about the text itself at this point, but whether their doctrine was correct.  White includes that in his assessment.  If they had the papyri, their doctrine would have changed too.

At 51, White says, "sorry but this is just very badly written."  I had one pronoun without a referent in a blog post that I changed after hearing White critique it.  That could have been better written, it's true.  A lot of times when I write these posts, I break a long paragraph into two and I don't clean up the referents.  I agree with White on this one sentence, but not everything.  What I want you to consider is a White, who uses very often very long verbalized pauses, "uuuuuuuuummm," and all the time is using wrong noun pronoun agreement. He slaughters the language on a regular basis.  I'm being kind here.  This is just another strategy to discredit by him.  I think he should just keep on the subject here.

At about 51:30, White says that only King James onlyism causes division among evangelicals, not belief in the preservation of scripture.  That agrees with my point.  Evangelicals don't care about preservation of scripture as much as they do what causes division.  They relegate the doctrine of preservation to a non-essential.  You have a wide range of beliefs that are acceptable in order to keep unity.  This is why White gets a pass for much of what he says from evangelicals.  On the other hand, I've said in the past, a change in versions in a church through the last 25-50 years has caused more division even than Ruckmanism.  I believe the latter causes it too, but not to the extent that all the new versions have.

At 52:15 and following, White says that any text you use has been mediated to you through textual criticism.  That is not a doctrine of scripture.  The doctrine is that God preserved the text and ensured that it was available to every generation of believers.  I don't give credit to textual criticism for getting me my Bible.  Yet, this is how White thinks.

At 53:49, White says that "Erasmus had the biggest influence on the production of what is called the textus receptus."  Aland says that the textus receptus already existed before Erasmus and it was the text before Erasmus that was agreed upon by the churches.  In other words, Erasmus was taking the received text and printing it.  There wasn't very much amendment occurring.  This wasn't Erasmus pulling in text families and culling together an apparatus.  The political scene had changed and the invention of the printing press came along, and he was able to print a first edition.  What was a hand copy became a printed one.  I refer you back to the Muller quote above in the evaluation of what went into a reformation era text.

After 54, White continues to harp on the idea that the entire history of the transmission of the text of the Bible was regular textual decisions.  Not one speck of theology comes in here, nothing supernatural at all.  This not the language you would hear from believers until post-enlightenment.  They talked about what God had done in preserving His Words.

After 54:30, White mocks the idea of providential preservation, saying that I can believe that angels brought down "an Oxford calfskin bound King James if" I want.  He turns from an original language text preservation to an English translation in order to brush it as some type of Ruckman position. That is falsehood #9.

After 55, White says that when he says "preserved perfectly," he means all the original readings still exist.  That is a conservative evangelical eclectic text position.  It is a new position on preservation that began with Warfield in the late 19th century.  The adherents have no biblical basis for it.  It is an attempt to straddle what the Bible teaches with their assessment of textual evidence.  I have never met someone who believed it after one or two questions, as weak, unbiblical, and unhistorical as it already is.

First, the explanation of White is not what God tells us to expect about the preservation of His Words.
Second, the explanation of White is not what the writers of the London Baptist Confession believed.
Third, the explanation of White isn't actually preservation, because then the Words would not have been available for use by God's people in all ages.
Fourth, the explanation of White will result in a never ending process with an unsettled text.
Fifth, the explanation of White comes from unbiblical presuppositions.
Sixth, the explanation of White clashes with at least what I've ever heard from those who say the same as him, because no one I have talked to believes that there is a manuscript existent with the original reading of 1 Samuel 13:1.  I'm guessing that White doesn't know of one either.
Seventh, the explanation of White is a human invention.

At 55:15, White says he can defend his position and has with some fairly knowledgeable opposition.  I don't believe he can defend it against what I've written above.  Even if he could, he's starting with an unscriptural position to defend.  Last, he can't defend it, because to defend it, he would need to know what was in the original manuscripts,and so he'll never be able to say he's sure.

White's riff after 55:30 is funny if you majored in biblical languages like I did.  He's showing off in a condescending way, and he just looks silly doing it.  It is the true straw man here, because the biblical and historical position isn't the preservation of a "manuscript."  There isn't a belief that this one perfect hand copy made its way down through history.  It is the belief in the preservation of Words.  He asks, "Which one?"  The belief is a presupposition.  If you believe what the Bible says about preservation, it is what you believe.  Is there a text?  Of course there is.

At about 56, White says no two manuscripts are identical.  That is falsehood #10.  He should read Wilbur Pickering, who actually did look at the Byzantine manuscripts and found that several of them were identical.  This is a common eclectic text falsehood.  If he keeps saying it, after reading Wilbur Pickering and checking that out, then he's lying.  At this point, we'll just say he's not well informed, despite acting like he is.

As White wraps up the first video, he says that "this stuff is dangerous, because it destroys faith."  Faith comes through hearing the Word of God, and the Word of God doesn't teach what White does. What White teaches is what is faith destroying.  When the Bible says God preserved every Word so that someone believes God preserved every Word, that is the strengthening of faith, not its destruction.  Not knowing what the Words are, that is what destroys it.  That's what White believes.

More to Come.

Polygraphing the Words of James White, Pt. 1

Instead of providing background for this post, if you want to get up to speed, you can do seven things:  (1)  read my four part series last week (1, 2, 3, 4), (2) then read my five part series from two weeks ago (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), (3) to really get serious, read Thou Shalt Keep Them, (4) read everything I've written here and at Jackhammer on the preservation of scripture or the version issue, (5) read what Thomas Ross wrote at his website, (6) above all, read what the Bible says about its own preservation, including the methodology (which we talk about in TSKT), and (7) read the historical theology of the preservation of scripture between 1500-1850 (look here at Richard Muller's book to get a good grasp,but there are many other places).  If James White would have at least read what I'd written before he made these last two videos, then he would have heard the answers to some of his questions or attacks (not that it would have mattered to him).

After Thomas Ross linked to my articles defending him at the Logos forum, James White started talking about them on his Dividing Line program, which you can watch live on his youtube channel. The first one is the last third of a show he calls, KJVO Deceitfulness.   A whole second video he titles, King James Only Straw Manism:  Kent Brandenburg.  Maybe there is more to come, but I wanted to begin on these first two.

It really is not my goal at all to win a debate here.  I want us to cut through the dust cloud to see the truth in this.  I hear and understand everything James White is saying.  I'm going to be very careful in looking at these first two sessions.  You are welcome to ask questions and even challenge, but please keep it on the topic.  I don't want to deviate to Ruckmanism, double inspiration, English preservationism, or whatever one might call that, unless it is necessary.

I certainly don't want to argue a straw man.  What reason would there be?  I have no intention in dealing with something James White is not really saying.  I am arguing with what James White does say, which is also what most critical  or eclectic text advocates say and write, and then some that is just pure James White, his own novel ideas.  I guarantee you that the one erecting a straw man is White.  Does anyone who reads here and has watched his words in the recent videos think that he represents what I believe and teach, or even what I wrote?

If James White and I did debate one another with a neutral moderator, which I would, and I'm sure our church would send me to do that, we could ensure that we understood each other perfectly and the games would end -- of course, I mean his games.  I understand that a lot of professing Christians like White.  With the way the country is sinking, it's just where we're at, but I believe this could contrast the biblical and historical position with what White offers.

As I write this, I'm watching them completely through for the first time (the first one starts at 40:40). I will number every one of his falsehoods, bold and italicized and will also point out when he uses a form of personal mockery that is completely unnecessary.  Some of it with White, I believe is just normal for him. I'm saying a kind of ridicule comes natural to him, but I'm going to expose every instance of it.  I want you to know that I know, and that this is the means White uses.

My biggest issues with this particular teaching of White about scripture are that (1) it dishonors God, the Author of the Bible, by contradicting what God said about His preservation of scripture -- that makes Him a liar, (2) it teaches and influences people away from a biblical position on the preservation of scripture, which leaves those people less certain, more easily swayed by false teaching and practice, and less faithful, (3) it revises a huge portion of history in order to justify the new doctrinal position and practice, and (4) it relegates the Bible to unsettled, open to further and further change, which results in a transference of human authority over scripture and diminished in its authority.  White becomes the enabler of doubt and weakness, until it reaches apostasy. He also perverts a biblical apologetic, elevating external, human documentation above the Word of God.  He thinks and then says the real spiritual battle is accomplished through spouting off manuscript evidence framed in the rules of textual criticism.  God is not glorified by that.  I could say much more here.

White begins in the first video by talking to himself, "What is this guy's name again?  Uuuuh, yes, Kent Brandenburg." My name is in the bibliography of his book (p. 342).  I'm not saying he did know my name, just that one highlights a lack of name recognition by saying such a thing.  How could he be ready to do a whole segment on someone and not know his name?  This strategy, by the way, acting like someone is a nobody, is what the religious leaders did with Jesus when they couldn't undermine the authority of what He said (see John 17:15).  It is an ad hominem argument that characterizes a loser.

Next James White identifies me a "King James Only guy."  You should know that title is still a pejorative, even more so, which is why White uses it again and again.  You use that title and you already drag it into the Gail Riplinger crowd, to whose position White is closer than me in his bibliological presuppositions. If she is KJVO, then I'm not.  We're not close to the same. I'm saying that I'm more radically different than the rank and file KJVO than White is.

Falsehood #1:  At 40:50 White calls me a "reformed King James Only guy."  I'm not reformed. He shouldn't make that statement unless he knows.

At 41:29, White editorializes that "there is something about hiding behind a keyboard that they're able to just speak in absurd ways."  The implication here is that these people who write against White are cowards, who would never say it to his face.  I'm not afraid of White intellectually, spiritually, or physically.  White doesn't inspire fear in me at all.  It really is not that hard for him to say things to a camera either.  I watched the Steven Anderson interview and White is about (literally) ten times more civil in person than he is when he's alone in his studio.  Anderson believes a false gospel, something that White never mentions in his long interview.

At 41:50 White says that he "vaguely remembered Kent Brandenburg and some weird King James only thing that he had said."  'It had to be vague because this guy is not someone that anyone would remember.  He's a nobody, ya know.'  'He's also weird.'  White being White.  A weird King James only thing in my case would be that the Bible teaches its own perfect preservation and availability.  Very weird.  There were two small posts written by Alan Kurschner that most today would call "drive-bys" or "trolling." They were nothing substantive -- just deceptive shots with the intention to hurt.  These comments by White serve no purpose except to poison the well before he gets started -- 'this guy is a kook, just know that to start with.'  He spends a long time on a backwater hayseed.

Falsehood #2:  At 42:20 and following White calls Thomas Ross's claim that White's position contradicts the 1689 London Baptist Confession an "abjectly ahistorical abuse of the writers, the framers, the 1689, and others."  It seems that if you string together a lot of words that start with "a," they have a better chance of being true.   I don't know who he means by "others," but White does not believe what the 1689 writers believed.  White in essence admits this right afterwards, but explains that it was because those writers didn't have the same manuscript evidence then that White has today. We're just talking about what they believed.  White doesn't believe what they believed.

Pause here for a moment to think about White's riff between 42:20 and 43:05.  Does the doctrine of scripture change because of new manuscript evidence?  That's what White is saying.  Even Burgon didn't have what we have today, he says, and if those earlier did have it, he is saying that their doctrine would have been different.  Like his.  Their doctrine though came from scripture.  That position in the confession came from a biblical presupposition.  They would interpret the outside evidence through an internal lense. This is critical that you understand what White is saying.

White then says after 43:05 that if you don't approach history like he does, that is, interpret the Bible in light of new historical documentation, that you are one of these people who don't "do history very well."  This is a post enlightenment method in which the doctrine can only be true if it can be verified as historical.  This method necessitates a willingness to progress in doctrine.  If they had what we had today, he's saying, they would have been different.  The London Baptist Confession at that juncture was what it was, but with new extra-scriptural evidence, it could progress.  This thinking was popularized in Germany in the 19th century and came to the United States from there through American professors trained in Germany.  It is a kind of rationalism.  It's why our constitution can mean something new too as history progresses.

White's method is also a two book approach.  You've got one book, the Bible, and the other book, history or science, which is what modern textual criticism is.  The two synthesize to a new truth. This is how doctrine progresses through history in White's mind.  White is presenting this like it is the Bible, but notice that he doesn't use the Bible to make the presentation.  Actually, based on what we see from him, White would just laugh and roll his eyes and mock the whole idea.

After 43:15, he says if you don't use this historico-critical approach, you are using history as a bat. We are batting James White out of sheer sadistic joy.  Do you see what White does here?  It's not that, and this is where White doesn't understand or is lying or is deceived too.  The uniformity of Christian doctrine, the unity of the Spirit, testifies to the truth of the doctrine.  I have mentioned this two or more times in these posts.  If you can't find your doctrine in history, you should be concerned, because not everyone is going to be wrong, especially when it is accompanied by exegesis.  For White to keep going with his fiction after 43:20, it is enough that I'll call it Falsehood #3, that this guy (Thomas Ross) just wants to be combative, proverbially fisticuff with James White.

To equate me with the Riplinger types, next White says he's surprised that my headline didn't have more capitals and underlines and red blinking lights.  He meant it as an insult.  I've seen a few of those websites.  Ironically, White's show itself has some characteristics like those websites, with the oddball props around him and the way that he uses them at times.  He has the plasma lamp in the back.  In his second video, he proudly pulls out his old, 1550 Stephanus and takes a long sniff of it. Before that, he talked about the safe that held the copy, looking all proud of himself.  He inserts regular short brags about his biking exploits at whatever elevation. I could go on (maybe later :-D ).

At about 44:25, James White begins to read my first post, the first question that I ask, as to whether believers were wrong on the doctrine of preservation for hundreds of years.  This, he says, is the straw man.  He scoffs at that for the next few minutes, laughing, tickled with himself -- "Just do that type of thing, um, I could put him on a little thing" -- professing that you know it's not going to be good when your first sentence is a straw man.  After that, you kind of wait for him to tell you how it is, ya know, a straw man, as he rocks back and forth, and his mouth opens, and he says, "And, um, that's the way it is."  Then he moves on.  We know it's a straw man, because he says it's one.

White doesn't answer my first two questions.  He implies, "no," because he explains why it's no, because of what we know today about the character of manuscripts.  What that means, he says, "is that to try to drag them in and make them participants in the current debate is illogical and dishonest." What?  That is falsehood #4, where White essentially is voiding the London Baptist Confession statement about preservation because they didn't have the same manuscript evidence.  To bring up their statement ("drag them in") he says is illogical and dishonest.  Illogical and dishonest.  He then says that is strawman number one.

A "strawman" is to give the impression that you've refuted someone's argument, when you've set up a replacement, a straw man, that is an easier argument to knock over, and then say that you just refuted his argument.  To make even a straw man argument, you've got to make an argument.  Those first two questions haven't even concluded an argument yet.  I'm arguing in that first paragraph that it's a serious thing to reject the doctrine of the London Baptist Confession.  If White is doing that, it's a serious thing.  Is that a serious thing to White?  It seems, no.  However, it isn't a straw man.

At 46, White says I'm lying when I say he rejects biblical and historical preservation of scripture.  I will call that falsehood #5.  Let's hear what White says in defense of his charge that I'm lying, because if I am lying, I really should stop that.  I know what those men meant about preservation.  I've read about everything we still possess from the period of the LBC and before about preservation.  Daniel Wallace says they were wrong about preservation.  White parks awhile, broadbrushing the lying King James Onlyists.

White holds up his book, and says people have read that book, King James Only Controversy.  White says he has defended the preservation of scripture.  That doesn't surprise me.  I said biblical and historical position.  He says to make that absurd argument destroys credibility right off the bat.  OK. And?  "Why do you all do this?"  He asks, you all.  He takes time to talk about how that King James Only are liars.  He drops Sam Gipp and Steven Anderson, guys who don't in fact believe in preservation of scripture.  He asks why I want to be associated with names like those?  Because I dream to be associated with liars?  Then he adds Peter Ruckman and Gail Riplinger.  We really have almost nothing in commong, but this is White.

I bring up how that about everyone believed those confessions.  And White says, which confessions? He lectures that there are differences between them that are important.  Oh really?  How are they different on the subject we're talking about, the preservation of scripture?   They're not actually.  And the Helvetic confession teaches the same.  Which confession teaches something different on that? None.

White says at 48 that "the issue as everyone who has honesty and integrity knows is not the issue of the preservation of scripture.  It is the methodology of that preservation."  No, falsehood #6,  it really is preservation itself that is the issue too.  Were all the words preserved for that generation of believers?  White doesn't believe that.  He believes we didn't have all of them available until the papyri, for instance, were found in the 20th century.  Those were lost for at least 500 years.  That's not just methodology.  Method is an issue too, and scripture and the confessions both also talk about that, and White doesn't agree with those either.  So, putting aside his slander that I'm a liar without integrity (I thought it was only KJVO that called people liars...hmmmmm).  I never called him a liar or lacking in integrity.  I said he might be lying about this, but I didn't know, because he could be deceived or not know what he's talking about.

More to Come.

More on James White Coming Sooner than Normal

Hey everyone!  I don't know if you watched James White's dealing with my posts here, but he was absolutely struggling.  It was in the ballpark of former Texas Governor Rick Perry in the previous election cycle of Republican debates.  I'll point out where he gets stuck, and he does.  So much of what he says is false. I am sticking with what my title said:  he is either lying, doesn't know what he's talking about, or he's deceived.  It's very good that he's on record with this.  What he's doing is helpful to us.  I'll deal with it.  Everything.  I wish I could faster, but I have another life.

Now read Thomas Ross's Friday post from today.

Cut Church Building Program Costs by Thousands of Dollars and, as an Individual, Save Large Sums; or as a Business, Increase Your Profit Margin

I intend to respond to James White's attacks myself also, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.  Stay tuned.  Below is what I had earlier prepared--may it be a blessing.

Our church has recently expanded our building, and we have saved large sums of money without changing anything we are buying.  I as an individual have also done the same, and so have a lot of other people in our church.  How?  The answer is buying discount gift cards.  You can save 5%, 10%, or even 20% or more on major merchants.  In our church building project, we purchased a lot of stuff from Home Depot.  You can frequently get Home Depot gift cards at around a 10% discount, so on $10,000 worth of purchases, the church saves $1,000. Individuals can save money in the same way on merchants from Walmart to Target to Ace Hardware to the Cheesecake Factory.  (You can even save more if you initiate your purchase over the Internet; find out how by clicking here.)

A goodly number of companies buy gift cards at a discount and then resell them.  (By the way, you can also sell gift cards you do not want to these companies.)  Companies such as Gift Card Rescue, Cardpool, and Raise are examples.  You can purchase gift cards from them at up to 30% off the retail price or more, and sell them gift cards that you are not using and are not going to use for up to c. 90% of the face value. They generally offer free shipping on gift cards and a guarantee that the gift cards are indeed worth their face value.  Is there a catch?  I do not believe that there is.  Basically all these companies do is serve as the middle-man between people who have gift cards they do not want and those who do want them.  I would be delighted if your church saves large amounts of money and is able to redirect those funds into the ministry, and would also be happy if you as a person are able to do the same thing.  For more information or to get started, click here.

Finally, you can get c. 4% off the purchase price of anything you can get with an American Express card; find out how by clicking here.  You can use American Express in connection with the discounted gift card purchases mentioned above, and so get an extra few percentage points off your purchase.  However, this is not the main point of this post;  the main point is the ability to purchase gift cards at a discount, which is described in more depth here.

TDR

More James White on the Version Issue: Either He Doesn't Know What He's Talking About or He's Lying -- Pt. 4

For everyone's information, James White yesterday dedicated the final third of his Dividing Line program to this series.  He covered three paragraphs, but he says he's going to be dealing with everything.  I highly doubt that, but we'll see.  He titles it "KJVO Deceitfulness."  OK.  He starts at 40:30 here until the end, and promises to keep going on his Friday program.  I haven't kept up with James White, but I got involved because someone emailed me about his ecclesiastical text video and thought I should watch it.  Then he did the July 28 program on the statement of Thomas Ross on the Logos forum.

White uses 19 minutes and he says perhaps one thing new, that is, he really does believe in preservation of scripture, and acted angry that anyone could say he didn't.  By that he means that all the words of scripture exist in manuscripts in the world somewhere, so anyone saying he doesn't believe in preservation is a lying deceiver.  Just let that sink in.  Besides that, he said nothing new.  He categorized me with two Ruckmanites, Sam Gipp and Steven Anderson.  He called me a reformed KJVOist.  He called the first post in this series, "this horrifically dishonest and deceitful article by KJV Onlyist Kent Brandenburg."  I'll be dealing with what he says in his new videos about me.

Some of you may wonder why I might not call in to his program, figure out the timing of it and try to get a phone call.  If you call into his show, you'll just be a tool for him.  What I would be glad to do is debate him with a real moderator.  I would do that with him.  He would be defeated.

I want you all to know that I'm not backing down with White.  It should be obvious to any thinking and especially godly person that he isn't telling the truth.  I'm not judging why.   He just isn't.  I'll leave the why to him.

At 1:14:41, White asks sarcastically concerning Erasmus, "Are you going to tell me he was inspired?"  This is the "benefit" of White sitting and talking to himself.  This is a stupid question. He doesn't say that in a moderated debate, because it is foolish.  He's intimating that those who wrote the confessions (you know which ones I'm talking about, but there were several that taught the same thing over many years), believed in some kind of double inspiration.  White is smearing their trust in providential preservation, that God assured them of the text of scripture through the testimony of the Holy Spirit, with this type of question.  He doesn't provide a theological alternative and he doesn't have one, so he mocks and ridicules at one of the highest extents of anyone out there.

White asks then, "Are you going to tell me that Erasmus is the final authority on these things?"  What person do you know that believes that position on planet earth?  Who believes that?  What's the point of that question except to slander?  James White is now calling me a liar and deceitful.  I am straight shooting this.  I guarantee you that.  Only the doctrine itself is at stake for me.  White doesn't affect my church one bit or really anyone else that I know.  I say that White either doesn't know what he's talking about or he is lying.  I thought of a third alternative, but it could be under the first, that is, he is just deceived.  I also think that is possible.  These questions and statements are on a level of ridiculousness that say something is wrong with him.

Just after 1:15, White says that there was no counsel that said TR versus Alexandrian versus Western, etc., because they didn't know about "these things."  These things.  What things?  They didn't know what they believed about preservation of scripture, how it was done?  Of course they did.  It's all over the place in their writings.  White just doesn't like what they wrote.  He doesn't report what they wrote. He could.  He doesn't.

White refers to citing their authority (the LBC authors) about something they never even contemplated or had an opportunity to deal with.   He says that is an abuse of their confession.   It's actually representing what they believed. Using it to attack him is an abuse, he says.  He doesn't believe what they believed, and it is complete legitimate to point that out.  Believing that the manuscripts exist somewhere is not preservation.  Believing that you have them in your possession is preservation.  The latter is what they believed.  This is the spin of White and others like him.

White continues, saying it is all indefensible., because the parallel to this is "take whatever Uthman(?) says."  He's equating it to Muslims.  It isn't the same argument by a long shot, but I've already answered it in earlier posts in the last three weeks.  Scripture is self attesting, and the Holy Spirit testifies to it.  He doesn't do that with the Koran.  This is how White insults.  Someone could do the same tit for tat, but what does that accomplish?  It would be crazed on the same level as White.

White condescends and insults people who believe the 1689 position, shortly before 1:17, saying that the people who take it are just on facebook impressing one another.  The guy he's talking to does more evangelism in a week than White does in a year, I would suspect.  He's one of the most evangelistic men I know.  He's one of the best Christians I know.  He's never had a facebook page.  White likes calling people a liar, but it's very easy for him to be loose with the truth.  Debating one "scholar" in a mosque is not categorically better than evangelizing all the Muslims in your community during the year.  The pride of White about his exploits is disgusting to me here.  I would be happy if he just did it, but the fact that he acts like it is more significant than what everyone else does is sick.

White charges after 1:17 that these men are like this because it isn't evangelistic with them.  Oh my. It's just a head wag here.  I know Thomas well.  This is so wrong -- so, so wrong.  It's a worthless, less than worthless shot to take.  He does this kind of thing over and over, but it's just a self-aggrandizing personal assault.

Just before the 1:18 mark, White connects what Thomas commented to being more and more "cooly reformed."  Thomas is trying to be the coolest reformed guy.  This is one of those, if I had just sipped a beverage, it would have spewed on the keyboard.  One, Thomas isn't reformed.  Two, he is one of the least cool people you ever met.  He is the anti-cool.  He makes James White look like James Dean.  A guy that memorizes verses while he brushes his teeth.  That's not cool.  Then White says he's "sick and tired of Calvinists."  Laugh.  Thomas is not a Calvinist.  Maybe White can make a video now criticizing Thomas for not being a Calvinist.

White next says, "Facebook is not the church!"  Who is he talking to?  I'm quite sure that Thomas does not have a facebook account.  He's one of the most diligent and vigilant Christians I know.  Then he says, "The local pub is not the church!"  Hahahahaha.  Thomas is a total prohibitionist.  I'm quite sure he doesn't even look at alcohol.  Who is White talking to?

As I watched White riff through the end of his monologue, there was some great irony.  He was defining sovereignty for us -- "you don't get to run your life."  I'm quite sure that Thomas Ross is as submitted to his church and faithful in his church as anyone I know.  Nothing defines "running your life" like your deciding what the Bible is.  Instead of the Bible being a settled text, dependent on the sovereignty of God, no, it's an ongoing process up to us.  That is James White running the Bible, and others like him.

I'm going to keep going with this series, answering White's recent videos, where he talks about what we've written here.

More James White on the Version Issue: Either He Doesn't Know What He's Talking About or He's Lying -- Pt. 3

Part One.  Part Two.

After the 1:13 mark, with mocking tone White asks, "What edition of the 'texti recepti' is the one being referred to by the 1689 that I allegedly don't believe as a reformed Baptist elder?"  The "which edition" question is sort of supposed to be the clinching argument against preservation for CT advocates (it's the same one that Ruckmanite George is asking us here to buttress his position, by the way).  Of course those men in the late 17th century were well aware of the various editions of the TR, when they wrote that God kept His Word pure in all ages in the original languages.  Their theological predisposition led to a strong biblical presupposition of God's preservation of His Words.  That's what one will read in all of their writings.  They believed they had every Word and all of them available to them in their age, because God had kept them pure.

White wants to move this from the biblical and theological to the forensic.  I say "forensic" because as someone with a Christian worldview, I believe that theology represents total truth, so it is as scientific as gravity.  There is a science to theology.  God is real.  He is doing what He said He would do.  That is scientific, like I believe in creation and the flood.  The Bible is scientific.  The canonization of 66 books is scientific.  The Holy Spirit pointed those out by means of the unity of the Spirit in His people.  They agreed through the Spirit on those books.  Believers applied that same science, already established by God's revelation, to the text of scripture.  That's how it reads.  That is what they believed.  Their approach was theological, which is scientific.  White rejects that science for man's reason and observations and documentation, superior science to him, and what can really prove something out there in his apologetical battlefield.

The authors of the confessions didn't tell us what edition of the TR, but it was the TR, because the TR was what was available.  We can't assume that they would choose something different, when their doctrinal statement says that God kept what they had pure in all ages.  What they didn't have wasn't preserved for them.  That is the science behind it.  It is a biblical and theological presupposition that can't be and should not be infringed.  If you do, you've stopped believing in preservation, that is, you've stopped believing God, believing what He said He would do.  If this was the position of believers and you want to overturn that, you've got to do more than what White is doing.  You've got to show how that their scriptural presuppositions were wrong and then show yours.  He does nothing like that, because in his worldview, theology isn't science.

White incredulously asks, "If you can't produce 'it' [an edition the LBC to White had to be talking about], don't put it in writing I don't believe what the confession states."  There are at least two fallacies.  One is simple.  He is arguing from a false premise, because LBC wasn't referring to a printed edition, but to the Words themselves.  Second, it is non sequitur, that is, the conclusion doesn't follow from the premise.  The LBC wasn't talking about an edition of the TR.  We know that from reading what these men wrote.  The two fallacies interrelate.

From there, White asks, "What manuscript?"  He dangles his TR in front of the camera and says with a disdaining, sinister tone, "Because as you know, there is no manuscript in the universe that reads exactly as the textus receptus."  I understand that these are pat, oft repeated modern arguments for a critical text, that bring no theological underpinning.  Their theology is an absence of theology -- atheological. His statement is very loaded.  By "manuscript," he means hand copy.  He says, "reads," which is present tense, so the hand copy must exist in this generation to count as authoritative.  If it existed in the past to provide a basis for a TR edition, but it isn't available today, for the sake of his argument that can't be true, even if it is true.  "Exactly" means it could be only a very few words for this statement to be true.  All of that is why I say, "loaded."

Over a hundred years elapsed for time to consider the questions White is asking, and yet those men still wrote those confessions based upon their biblical presuppositions.  The fodder White uses to discredit them does not overturn the doctrine.  The small list of words to which White refers that form the basis of his entire argument don't overturn what God said about His Book.  The textual questions have sufficient answers to the one with scriptural presuppositions. Again, White must deal with the underlying doctrinal position.  He also  must consider the uniformity of that doctrine.  It was what everyone was writing and saying.  There were hundreds of years of this, and when it was replaced in the 19th century, it didn't come with an accompanying exegetical basis.  There is no doctrine believed by Christians that should be supplanted without a thorough exegetical explanation to start, which provides a clear biblical antithesis to the false view. The exegesis should proceed the other reasons.

By the way, changing established doctrine could be called and usually is referred to as "heresy."  It is dividing off the established, settled, believed teaching.  That is what is happening with White.  He's desperate about the charge against him, but he isn't dealing with it like he would other doctrines.  He doesn't believe this doctrine the same as other ones.  This is no semper reformanda.

White says, "That's the problem with this ecclesiastical text stuff (emphasis his)," mocking the biblical position of historic Christianity with purposeful slang.  It isn't the problem or a problem, either.  It's a doctrinal position that comes from proper exegesis of the text and then applying that right interpretation.  That's how they did things then, and that is the problem for White.  He doesn't like the LBC position, but if he's going to overturn it, he needs to dig into the theological and biblical presuppositions, because that's where they were coming from, unlike him.  Critiquing what they possessed is not enough.  He says this stuff can't give us a text.  It actually did give us a text, as he knows.  They used the textus receptus. They settled on that.  He's making a big deal about things that they didn't, because he has an agenda he's using that for.  That's all it is.  These people were giants compared to James White and he's ripping on them for his own purposes.

The minor differences between those editions were not enough for them, and, yes, the King James Translators settled on particular words as a basis for their translation.  I don't accept that they didn't have mansucript evidence, because I don't know, but I do accept the scriptural presuppositions for the position.  That's where my authority comes from.  Scriptural authority prevails over White.

White makes one outlandish statement or question after another and presents multiple strawmen in a kind of scorched earth methodology.  Shortly after the 1:14 minute mark, he squishes his face in the most foul way, and says, "Erasmus, the Roman Catholic priest (emphasis his) had to do textual criticism.  He had to, even amongst the small number of manuscripts he had, make choices, and at times he made choices based upon the Western text that was found in the Latin Vulgate.  You've got to live with that reality."  This is a red herring.  It's a smoke cloud.  It's a fog.  Whatever metaphor you want to call it.  After almost 200 years, everybody knew about all that, and they all still believed what scripture said.  White throws in "Roman Catholic" and "Latin Vulgate" and "textual criticism."  None of that changes what the men wrote in 1689, representing what people believed then.  Consider what Kurt Aland himself writes in two publications, The Text of the Church? and The Text of the New Testament:

It is undisputed that Luther used the Greek Textus Receptus for his translation of the German New Testament in 1522 and all its later editions (although the term itself was not yet in use at the time). . . . [So did] all the translators of the New Testament in the 16th century (e.g., the Zürich version). All the translations of the 17th century, including the King James version of 1611, the 'Authorized Version, were also based on this text. Thus the New Testament of the church in the period of the Reformation was based on the Textus Receptus.  It is equally undisputed that in the 16th or 17th century (and for that matter well into the 18th century) anyone with a Greek New Testament would have had a copy of the Textus Receptus. . . . Finally it is undisputed that from the 16th to the 18th century orthodoxy’s doctrine of verbal inspiration assumed this Textus Receptus. . . . [The] Textus Receptus . . . in this period . . . was regarded as preserving even to the last detail the inspired and infallible word of God himself. . . . [T]his Byzantine text was regarded as ‘the text of the church’ . . . from the 4th . . . century.

Everyone knows that, including Kurt Aland.  That is what they believed in 1689.  Whatever cloud White wants to stir to further his agenda, this is all still true.  You can't believe those confessions and also believe what White does.  He denies what they wrote.

More to Come.

More James White on the Version Issue: Either He Doesn't Know What He's Talking About or He's Lying -- Pt. 2

Like the series I did two weeks ago, I'm going to keep writing here on this until I'm done with an analysis of the video last week by James White.  This is part two (part one).

At about the 1:09:30 mark, White says there are numbers of ecclesiastical text positions because the teaching is vague purposefully.  That is extreme overstatement.   White should know and I believe does know that the fundamentals of this position, which is biblical and historical, are found in the historic confessions of faith and in the writings of the contemporaries of those confessions.  These kinds of statements are strategic for his followers.  I believe he feigns this kind of incredulity.

It is true that of those who hold what is being called the ecclesiastical text position, not everyone will agree on every single word of the New Testament text translated by the KJV committee.  They all agree in the preservation of all the Words and that all the Words must have been kept pure in all ages like the confession says.  That narrows it down to very few differences.  They believe there is a settled text, one already established, given testimony by the Holy Spirit through the church, just like He did the canon.  They all agree every word is important, but disagreement over a few words is vastly different than post-enlightenment, rationalistic textual criticism.

There was a uniformity for numerous generations in the belief that God has preserved every word, all of them, and made them available for every generation of believer.  Among the very few differences over a very harmonious, homogeneous text, they agreed on the doctrine.  Even when there was a movement toward replacing this view, it started in academia, not in the churches, in the pew.  There still may be a majority of professing believers who think they have a perfect Bible and haven't even grasped what is happening.  They are just thinking that someone has modernized the translation without knowing the underlying text was replaced -- a bait and switch.

The few differences between words in TR editions couldn't be and wouldn't be spun into an ejection of the entire text for a new one and a wholly different approach.  That wasn't faith in what God said.  That was doubt or uncertainty.  If this is going to be argued, those people and that position need to be represented in good faith.  White doesn't do that.  He stirs up a dust cloud of confusion for people.

After 1:10, White says that "as far as we know" there was never a church counsel and that the Westminster divines didn't examine manuscripts.  There's a lot to unpack just in those few points.  If you listen to White other times, you know he doesn't agree that canonicity of the books of the Bible comes out of church counsels.  He sees this as a Roman Catholic view.  I agree.  He says the canon is a theological issue.  With that belief, why does he apply a different standard here to the Words?  He will refer to the Protestant canon.  He doesn't have a problem saying that.  They didn't need a counsel, because there was agreement.  I don't agree that these men didn't look at manuscripts.  When you read John Owen, you know he looked at them.  White is conflating examination of manuscripts with rationalistic criticism of the text.  Consider what Richard Capel wrote in 1658:

[W]e have the Copies in both languages [Hebrew and Greek], which Copies vary not from Primitive writings in any matter which may stumble any. This concernes onely the learned, and they know that by consent of all parties, the most learned on all sides among Christians do shake hands in this, that God by his providence hath preserved them uncorrupt. . . . As God committed the Hebrew text of the Old Testament to the Jewes, and did and doth move their hearts to keep it untainted to this day: So I dare lay it on the same God, that he in his providence is so with the Church of the Gentiles, that they have and do preserve the Greek Text uncorrupt, and clear: As for some scrapes by Transcribers, that comes to no more, than to censure a book to be corrupt, because of some scrapes in the printing, and 'tis certain, that what mistake is in one print, is corrected in another.

That well states their thinking, thinking that is not held or agreed upon by White.  He rejects the historic and biblical position because he staggers at the promise of God through unbelief (Romans 4:20).  White chooses theological presuppositions for canonicity, when the biblical basis for those same theological presuppositions applies equally to the text.  Textual variants are too great a hurdle, a barrier, and he stumbles over them.  He rejects the historic and biblical position and is willing to make hundreds of years of believers bibliological apostates to justify his position.

If you want to talk about vagueness, shortly before the 1:11 mark, White says that the Westminster divines would not have known what the text looked like at the beginning of the medieval period, like we do today.  I'm speaking of the idea of "what the text looked like."  How vague is that?  Are we talking about one hand copy, about the numbers of manuscripts that existed?  "What the text looked like"?  "The text"?  Like there was "the text" making it's way through history?

What White does is extrapolate back from the 19th century some kind of ongoing textual criticism through history, rather than an ongoing faith that God has preserved every Word, the attitude that believers would have always had in the Bible.  We know they had the latter and White ridicules that. It's as if in the 16th century after the advent of the printing press and a sudden explosion of publication of scripture that believers reached a bibliological dark age --  as if when they had more access to the Bible than ever, they were as dark on the doctrine of scripture as they had ever been.

White also talks at around 1:11 like he knows "what the text looked like" in the beginning of the fourth century and at the beginning of the sixth century.   He asserts that he knows and that those men didn't.  But he doesn't, at least through textual criticism. He doesn't know that.  He's only guessing.  White doesn't know what they had or didn't have then by some historical or documentary means.  We know by faith, but not by looking at what someone unburied.  Those are guesses, and that is vague.  I would say as vague as one could get, but one can get even more vague than White if he takes the same trajectory as White to its dubious end. White's approach is highly destructive.  It is faith smothering.  It is also dishonoring to God.  As much as White would want to keep salvation 100% divine with almost no human intervention, he's willing to throw the Bible into a test tube for man's experimentation.  Sovereignty becomes ironically a very taffy-like concept.

Shortly before 1:12, White goes apoplectic over a strawman that he erects, at most an entertaining bit of theater on his part.  He holds up a Trinitarian Bible society copy of the TR and asks when did they take that and agree on that, then he grabs a Nestles-Aland in his other hand asks when did they reject that?  What are White's assertions supposed to mean to someone?  He is ridiculing that entire several generations of believers as some kind of theological and intellectual neanderthals.  White is a tower, a monument, a giant, while they are rolling out the baby toys in the nursery.

White is making two points.  First, he doesn't have record that there was an ecumenical counsel of believers that got together to vote on what the words were.  That is supposed to debunk an ecclesiastical text position.  There is no record of that happening because that isn't what Christians believed.  They received what they had.  They believed they were in good shape. White is saying they weren't, but he's basing that on his presuppositions, that the text had been lost to them.

Second, they didn't textus rejectus, that is, they didn't again hold some counsel to reject the minority manuscripts.  The ecclesiastical position is that however that did occur, either that they didn't have it or they did know about it and they saw it as inferior, it did occur.  What looks to White as unavailable was rejected because of its lack of availability.  God's Words were kept pure through all ages, so if they didn't have it, there was a reason.  If you believe in the preservation of scripture, then what you don't have isn't preserved. That's kind of root to the idea of preservation.  If I look into the refrigerator for the jelly and there's no jelly, then jelly wasn't preserved for me.  I'm sorry I can't go into physical incantations as you read this so that my entertainment value can trump White's, because that is the best thing he's got going, that is, if you like that kind of thing.

White also argues from silence.  He says they, the Westminster folks, would have known about Calvin.  Known what?  They would have known that Calvin said he believed that one particular word was the right one above another, both available to him.  That was not an "aha" moment to them, as White portrays it should have been.  They couldn't figure that out?  The existence of a textual variant didn't shake them.  That wasn't a lack of preservation to them.  Not only would men make errors in hand copies, but they also know that there would be purposeful textual attack.  They still believe in perfect preservation of the Words, because they believed preservation was a divine task, like inspiration and salvation.  White believes God can save you from all your sins, He can preserve you through the heights and the depths, but He couldn't do the same for His own Words.  That is in fact where White is in this.

Around 1:13, White says that in 1689 they would not have known about the Trinitarian Bible society printed edition of Scrivener.  Total strawman.  That's not the position.  The translators translated from words.  They translated.  They were translators.  Those words were available.  They were kept pure in that age.  They believed that.  That's the position.  This is a game White is playing.  Understand that. White is playing a game.  When I read the books from that era, they often refer to the original language text.  Did they not believe they had an original language text?  When they wrote the LBC in 1689, they referred to the original language text.  Was there one?  Of course there was.  This is again just rhetoric from White.  It's not dealing with their doctrine, what they believed.  It's just dramatics, a show really.  If you agree with White, you are at least in tacit compliance to him, and you are a subscriber to his show, really like a reality TV show with a false front town.

More to Come.  I know I'm going snail pace, but this matters.

More James White on the Version Issue: Either He Doesn't Know What He's Talking About or He's Lying

Is it possible that Christians were wrong on the doctrine of preservation of scripture for hundreds of years?  Were they bibliological apostates?  That's a big, serious charge, but it is the one that James White has been making again and again in recent videos to erase the record of biblical and historical beliefs on the preservation of scripture.

In every century, men will be wrong in doctrine.  It is an entirely other matter to say that the confessions agreed upon by essentially every believer were wrong.  The statements made about the preservation of scripture were repeated again and again, and no one offered an alternative.  It is much more likely you are wrong. To overturn the established doctrine, you better do a great job of exegesis to show that they were not true.  James White does not do that.  Like he deals with most of his contemporary detractors, he calls them names -- "reformed scholastics."

White gets a pass from almost all evangelicals, except for those to the far left of him, because they long ago capitulated on preservation along with a percentage of fundamentalism.  Most evangelicals relegate this issue to a non-essential with the biggest problem the division they say it causes.  White will mention this too on a regular basis.  However, it is a very serious problem because the Bible is a supernatural book.  It's God's Word.  When you subjugate it to the human laboratory for testing and twisting and probing, it takes on a different nature.  If it isn't preserved perfectly, then it lacks in authority, something less than full authority.  These men know this. They know it.  White knows it.

White's position is that a percentage of the words of scripture have been lost and are in need of restoring.  It isn't a settled book to him.  More work needs to be done and post-enlightenment textual criticism, a rationalistic exercise, is the means.  In this new video and others, he implies that Calvin is an example of someone from the applicable era that was doing this.  He's the historical go-to guy to establish that some of those men were doing the same thing.  This is called a spin.  He is spinning Calvin.

Everyone knows that errors were made in hand copies.  That's all Calvin was writing.  The position of the day was that an error made in one was corrected in another.  Yes, they compared manuscripts, but it is a lie to say that's the same as textual criticism and also ignore what they believed and taught.  To equate what they believed with textual criticism is a lie that in published form started with Benjamin Warfield, that we've talked so much about here.  The authors of the confessions did not believe that providential preservation was textual criticism.  They believed they possessed the Words in the apographa (the hand copies) in an identical form as the autographa (the originals). That was their belief, what we might call a presupposition.  That is also their point in the confessions, that the original language text was kept pure in all ages.  White denies all of that.  It was not kept pure in all ages to him.  There hasn't been an age to White that it has been pure since shortly after its inspiration.  That age is off in the future, that is, unless we redefine pure, which is something less than Tide detergent.

What is the presupposition of White?  You don't hear it. He doesn't refer to scripture one time to reveal what believers should expect for preservation.  He doesn't do this.  His kind do not do this. The only one I hear do this is Ehrman and Ehrman reports it, and then says God didn't do it, explaining why he's an apostate.  White just won't say.  It's painful.  Part of it is that he and people like him don't believe their own position and they are fudging or spinning.  White will say he believes in the preservation of God's Word.   It is Clinton-esque, because he means "Word" singular, not plural.  You know this.  He doesn't believe we know what the Words, plural, are.  He doesn't think that anyone can know what those are and the biggest exercise in his quest here is to show that we don't know what they are either.  He uses a lot of ridicule to do this.  The antics don't mean anything, but they work like the scoffers of 2 Peter 3 succeed with people about Christ's second coming.

White's entire manner of operation is to attempt to cause doubt to those who believe in perfect preservation by questioning particular texts of scripture.  He requires them to indicate to him an exact hand copy of the Greek text that has the particular wording of the textus receptus.  If you can't do that up to his standard, then your entire belief must fall.  You must recant.  Recanting is denying the biblical and historical position for the critical text position, the modern version position.  There is no longer a settled text and the words are now in doubt.  He will only stop bothering you if you come to his position or call your position a preference alone.  It can only be a preference.  It cannot be a matter of doctrinal division.  You must be fine with his position or yours, but yours especially cannot be superior.

If White can get you to admit that you are unsure about even one word of scripture, that we don't know what the exact wording is, you are now the same as him.  He will be satisfied with that.  If you say that you do know, then you are vague. Vague means that you cannot produce a hand copy or at least show it in microfilm.  Even if you could, White could argue against it.  None of this is based on scriptural presuppositions, so it is all faithless.  The idea of faithlessness is what grates on White.  He hates that.  I understand it, but it's true.  And that faithlessness is what has produced the new understanding of inerrancy that continues on a sliding scale.

White's modern opponents he smears with the idea that they are cloistered away with reformed theologies, reading one after another, while he's out there fighting the good fight with the only method that will work in the real world.  None of what he says here is true, either because he doesn't know what he's talking about or he's lying.  I'm not saying there aren't a few people who just sit and read books without participation in any spiritual warfare, but you can't broadbrush all the opposition like that.  It's not true.

In the new video by White, he reads Thomas Ross's giving of his credentials in answer to a baseless attack on a Logos forum that said that his kind could "care less what the original Greek and Hebrew said." Thomas does care and he gave a brief synopsis as an answer to the inaccurate charge.  The absurd provocateur could not recognize that none of the books Thomas included were double inspirationists or English preservationists.  All of those books believe that preservation is in the original language.

White excludes the context for Thomas's inclusion of his bonafides and proceeds to mock Thomas for including them.  That's how he starts.  If Thomas was a "backwater" hayseed English-onlyist, White would have mocked that.  You can't really have it either way with him.  This is how he operates though.  Evangelicals love it.  White blatantly lies about Thomas by saying that he started off a response like that.  This was not how Thomas started.  This was how he answered the man who said he didn't care about original languages.  How else do you answer someone who says you don't care about original languages?  Why did White need to mock Thomas for that?

White complains that he is always attacked when he provides a resume.  People don't point out arrogance of White because he touts his credentials, which he does as much as anyone I've ever seen from a human being, but because of how he acts.  This is another example of it.

At 1:06:20, White says that he has "dealt with every strain of King James Onlyism."  He uses "strain" as opposed to "type," even as "strain" makes it sound like a disease he's dealing with.  I would agree that White has dealt with every type of KJVO.  Thomas could have phrased this a little better.

I would say that White has not debated anyone who could debate him.  He might say that he takes them as they come, all of them, and maybe he's right, but there are men that could do a much better job debating him than those he has chosen.  I've never seen him take on one of them.  D.A. Waite and Jack Moorman and Theodore Letis were very bad at debating, actually even at speaking.  Those who want to hear or watch a debate, at least want someone taking their position who can do the job.  I understand that someone like White will debate a Gipp or a Riplinger, because they do represent a sizeable group of revivalist fundamentalists, who take an indefensible and novel position. I can also see how White is bothered by the assertion, because he has debated many, many now.

White is also true when he asserts that the Ruckmanites cause most of the trouble and get the most attention.   I think White is right to say that Ruckmanites have caused many church splits.  I know this to be true, but taking on a different Bible than the King James has caused more church splits than the Ruckman position.  Many men have brought in a new Bible to a church and split it wide open.   Young people stay.  Old people leave.  Does White oppose those splits too?  Thomas wants to see a debate with White that will represent the biblical and historical position and argue it like he would want it to be argued.  I hope it happens sometime.

Just after 1:08, White gets to his main problem with Thomas's comment.  Thomas wrote:

I wish Mr. White would agree with the 1689 London Baptist Confession of faith he subscribes to as an elder at a Reformed Baptist church and recognize that "The Old Testament in Hebrew (which was the native language of the people of God of old), and the New Testament in Greek (which at the time of the writing of it was most generally known to the nations), being immediately inspired by God, and by His singular care and providence kept pure in all ages," and recognize that when his own confession of faith quotes 1 John 5:7, Mark 16, etc. it means the Textus Receptus is the Word of God, not a critical text that did not exist nor was in use by God's people and thus was not kept "pure in all ages."

I think that is a good comment from Thomas. That sets off a very important consideration for White, that I mentioned above.

White asserts after 1:09:20 that Thomas's comment is "vague purposefully."  I laugh.  It's not true. I believe what Thomas is writing, and there isn't an attempt to be vague.  That is a red herring.  White must do a little more exploration before he could make that conclusion.

By being "vague," White means that someone must state his position on what each exact Word of the originals are.  If you just say that you believe in perfect preservation, that is vague.  You can't say that you believe that believers were led by the Spirit to the proper wording, like the Holy Spirit indicated the 66 inspired Books.  No, you've got to tell him what those words are, and then there is haggling over how trustworthy was that particular hand copy and the degree of authenticity of the textual evidence, blah, blah, blah, blah.  Is it sure, likely, probable, possible, or doubtful?  We don't know, so we are to get specific about applying terms like that?  Obviously, the Bible itself becomes vague and unsettled with White's ideas.

White would argue, no, we're more sure because we believe the science.  The science is sound.  We can't say with certainty what the exact words are, but we are left with a high degree of certainty, higher than the writings of Plato -- one handed applause for that.  Roar from believers, happy that Plato loses to the Bible.  This is not the historic or biblical way to deal with the Bible.

How we should deal with the words ironically is how White deals with the canon.  White goes totally presuppositional with the canon.  He rejects the Roman Catholic approach to the canon.  He says the canon is a theological matter.  Why? Why can't the canon be historical and scientific?  The loss of a whole book is too devastating to White, so he chooses to go presuppositional, even though the textual critic world treats these, the canon and the words, the same.  This is what is vague.  Why the different approaches?

White uses a documentary type of method.  This the method of modern science.  If you can't produce the document now, it didn't happen.  You can't say it happened.  Warfield brought this method back from Germany and thought he was saving evangelicalism by implementing it on the text of scripture.

The method of believers has always been to trust God's leading through His Spirit.  That resulted in a settled text and established one from which one could not take away nor could one add.  Only a settled, established text, which is the nature of God's Word, could be added to or taken away.  They assumed that God would do what He said He would do.  They believed that.  It was done.  Then believers just went about living what they trusted was perfect, until the enlightenment and the advent of modern rationalism.

More to Come