Firstly, one certainly doesn’t need exhaustive knowledge of God to distinguish good from evil requests. We must distinguish between requests that are simply not God’s will with requests that are intrinsically evil. Dr White conflates them and comes to false conclusions. Secondly, what if Mary brought a “bad” request to Jesus? Catholicism doesn’t claim that Jesus does everything Mary requests, no questions asked.

Dr White then goes on to say that “honoring your father and mother does not mean granting everything that they ask”. Straw man! Who ever said it did? The point is that Jesus is more inclined to do things if his mother asks. Remember the unrighteous judge who did what he was asked to do, because the woman bothered him about it day and night? Why do we pray at all, unless we think God may be willing to listen? Remember when Mary asked Jesus about the wine, and Jesus said “woman, what has that to do with me”, but then he did it anyway? Obviously there are things that God won’t do unless we ask enough and in the right way.

Dr White also criticises the Catholic apologist for asking why we would expect to find intercessions to Mary in particular in the bible. The point that Dr White misses is that Mary is at the end of the day, just one of the saints, and we wouldn’t expect her in particular to be singled out. He also misses the point that Mary may well have been still alive when the NT was complete which would of course mean there would be no reason to expect this to be in there.

I think it’s quite interesting that it took 5 years for anybody to bring up the fact of this miscitation, and it took an Orthodox Christian to do it. With White’s wide circle of devoted fans, don’t you think one protestant would have looked up the citations to see what the context of them is, and reported back that the citation is wrong?

It seems fair to say that White’s band of followers survive on quote books, rather than testing what he says from the source documents. Apparently few of them read the Church Fathers either. Hey, I used to be there. But then I started checking up on him. Now I’m not protestant any more.

However, what do we find in the White/Ehrman debate of January this year? Surely the most important question of the debate is whether we have the original readings somewhere in the manuscripts. How do we know if we do? When Ehrman pressed White on this, it all came down to appeals to authority figures, and a slogan “tenacity of the text”. 

Unfortunately, nobody knows how tenacious the text is, because we can’t measure how many readings that made it into the text eventually were lost from the text. It’s like standing at the top of the mountain and saying it is easy to climb because of all the people who make it to the top. Unless you can measure how many people didn’t make it, you have no argument. We can’t measure how many readings were lost, we can purely look at those that weren’t. Judging by the existence of a number of singular readings (some of which actually made it into NA27) and readings that exist in the Fathers, there were certainly readings that were lost and nearly lost (though not necessarily original ones).

So we have White as a radical skeptic meeting an even more radical skeptic in Ehrman and having to appeal to authorities like Wallace and Aland. Hmm. What was that about inconsistency and failed arguments?

Dr White seems to want to criticise the practice by saying that isn’t someone judging someone’s salvation by seeking intercession from them? Well, when Jesus said “Judge not, lest you be judged”, he was surely talking about judging negatively. The intention is to avoid self-righteousness criticism of others, not to avoid thinking well of other people.

But doesn’t Dr White do the same thing? If he seeks intercession from someone at his Church, surely he is judging that they are someone who is right with God, otherwise what good are their prayers? Does that mean Dr White claims infallible knowledge of others salvation? Of course not.

From my point of view, I have the same amusement with Dr White, as he is a skeptic of many things, meeting Ehrman as a more radical skeptic.

A lot of Dr White’s comments and arguments have been assertively pointing to the Christian community of the 1st century acting as a confirmation that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wouldn’t have embellished or changed the story about Jesus, because the community would notice such a change and reject it.

Well ok, why can’t I argue that early figures like Clement, Ignatius and  Polycarp who knew the apostles could have served the same function with apostolic teachings as the community did in safeguarding Jesus’ teachings much earlier?

Why can’t I argue that the Christian community of the 2nd century acted as a community to not allow any changes to the apostolically mandated practices? Why can’t I point to Tertullian and Cyril of Alexandria and other very early Christian figures who take Chrismation for granted as an apostolic practice and make the same argument as Dr White that only radical skepticism would argue that the Church could have corrupted the teaching, seeing as the community would have safeguarded it?

How is doubting these things different to doubting the apostolicity of the pastoral epistles for example? In this very episode White advocates throwing out the periscope of the adulterer because it is not originally in John. Even if not originally in John, how does he demonstrate that it is not aposotolic and/or not scripture? Yet he is keen to toss it out of the bible altogether. What substantive objection could he raise against throwing out all the pastoral epistles? He would be left to argue about percentage points of probability, but couldn’t actually say anything decisive against someone in his church if they decided they weren’t going to accept the pastorals as authoritative, when Dr White is making his own emendations.

Why couldn’t I move the argument into the 3rd century? It merely becomes a matter of degree of skepticism how far you go forward before skepticism gets the better of you.

So if this is Dr White’s big argument, didn’t he just explode his entire epistemology which is to doubt the apostolicity of the early extra-scriptural practices? Isn’t inconsistency the sign of a failed argument?

Dr White is left in the difficult position of arguing that his particular level of skepticism is the appropriate one. How could he criticise me for being less skeptical?

Let me try and explain the point that Dr White misses. In the non-Reformed view, if you believe in Jesus, you’ve got every reason to believe you will be saved if you persevere. And whether you persevere is within your own control. So the system is quite straight forward.

But in the Reformed view, there are a whole bunch of people who think they believe in Jesus, but who aren’t even saved now. By introducing this whole new category of people who seem to believe in Jesus, and who think they believe in Jesus, but don’t really, all assurance just went out the window.

At least perseverance is known quantity. We have to have faith and keep having faith. But Calvinism introduces a “je ne sais quoi” to the salvation equation. Nobody can really tell you for sure whether the kind of faith you have now, is saving faith. If its not the faith that was caused by the regeneration of God, but is the wrong kind of faith, in some indefinable kind of way, you may be inevitably destined to fall away. And there is nothing you can do about it, if you are not regenerate. It is inevitable.

Now how can there be any assurance under these circumstances? In a bid to avoid the uncertainty of perseverance, Calvinists have sacrificed the assurance of the here and now.

His first argument is that it is unfair to compare one “entity”, the Roman Church, with the thousands of sola scriptura entities. Rather we should compare one entity (Rome) with say Reformed Baptists.

Given the relative age and size of Rome versus Reformed Baptists, I don’t know that this is a valid defence. I mean, I could start off my own denomination with just me as member, and have 100% unity, but it wouldn’t thereby be much of an argument against a church which has stood for 2000 years and has a billion members.

But lets ignore that for a moment. What is this entity of “Reformed Baptists” that he speaks of? There is of course, no such entity. If you want to define Reformed Baptists as those who agree with the 1689 Baptist Confession, haven’t you just defined your group in terms outside sola scriptura? Haven’t you just defined yourself as winner by means of a document? I guess I could write a 10,000 page treatise on what I believe, then define by proclamation an “entity” of all those who agree with the document, and then proclaim victory that all those who agree with me, uh.. agree with me. That’s claiming victory by fiat.

On many occasions, James White has made the statement that the doctrine of substitutionary atonement is a distinctly reformed viewpoint, and those non-protestants who pay lip service to the idea of substitutionary atonement, and yet are not reformed, are inconsistent.

Of course, isn’t it a bit of a problem for Dr White to admit that substitutionary atonement arises during the reformation? If this doctrine is so supposedly important, why did we have to wait 1500 years for Christians to figure this out?

In this Dividing Line, Dr White poses the question of why God would put onto Christ all the sins of people who he knows will not be saved. Of course, this is only a problem for someone enslaved to a penal substitution model of the atonement.

The whole of creation is damaged goods due to Adam. Christ didn’t die only to save people, but to redeem the whole created order. Rom. 8:21 ”that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption”. Dr White is so focused on the situation of the elect that he is missing the bigger picture. All of creation is what Christ came to redeem, and he succeeded in that. But he doesn’t force those to stay who want to opt out. Why would Christ die for those who will not be saved? Well, why did he die for the whole created order? The non-elect are part of the created order, and they don’t get a special exemption. Only by focusing on a penal model is this even an issue.

Dr White poses the problem in terms of Christ attempting to, but failing to save those who he knew weren’t going to be saved. But the issue is not Christ failing to do anything, but of people not wanting to be saved. It’s like Christ patches up the hole in the Titanic so it won’t sink, but then people throw themselves overboard and drown themselves anyway. The Titanic is the created order, and all you’ve got to do is accept the redemption that has been provided.

The double payment argument is that if God sends people to hell, then they’ve paid for their sins twice, once in hell, and once by Christ on the cross. But people go to hell, because they choose to, not because a payment needs to be made. They are in hell because they don’t want Christ.

In it the Southern Baptist speaker expresses the conviction that nowhere does scripture teach that we are born guilty. Rather, after Adam we are born with a “sin sickness” that makes it inevitable that we will sin. How completely Eastern Orthodox of him!

Dr White responds with a rather limp argument. He asks why children die since “the wages of sin is death” (Ro 6:23). But surely the context of Ro 6:23 is not temporal death, but eternal destiny. Eternal life versus damnation. Surely Dr White will not argue that people who sin more inevitably die earlier? Or even that those “in Christ Jesus” (v23) will die later or not die at all compared to those who are not.

Furthermore, did not Christ die despite being sinless? Since Adam, the whole of creation is damaged, and death is now part of the world, whether or not a particular person sins.

Of course, the problem is since Dr White is arguing for the sufficiency of scripture, there isn’t a whole lot more to say since there aren’t any more scriptures that can be pressed into service on this topic.

And here is the fundamental contradiction that the protestant faces: he must admit that the apostles did not teach or advocate sola scriptura, because he knows that during their ministries the new testament wasn’t written, and the old testament was insufficient as the sole basis for the Christian faith. So the protestant must try and argue that some verses teach sola scriptura, all the while engaging in double think, knowing that the new testament church didn’t and couldn’t function with sola scriptura.

All protestants when pressed will admit this, but they won’t tell you how the church was to transition from oral authority to written only. The scriptures don’t mention such a transition and the church never implemented it.

So why are protestants so dead set on a doctrine that isn’t taught in scripture? Why must they find, somewhere this teaching? Nobody in the early church dreamt that the bible should be independently interpreted outside of the recognized church. There was no controversy about this up until Luther.

Of course the reason is that Rome forced Luther into an untenable corner. And Luther only perceived two solutions, either submit to the authority claims of Rome, or come up with a whole new way of looking at the world. He was a man of his age. Humanism was the new catchcry. Everyone wanted to decide for themselves what truth was.

It’s notable that with all Luther’s studies, he didn’t just one day cry “Eureka”, I’ve discovered sola scripture, and from there figure out his new beliefs. Rather after he was forced into a corner he had to find a new rule of faith and moved on from there.

But millions of Christians before, during and after Luther read the same bible and don’t find sola scriptura in it. If scripture is supposed to be sufficient, and sola scriptura is its first principle, then that’s quite a contradiction. Protestants find sola scriptura in scripture because they feel like they’re in the same corner Luther was in. They must find sola scriptura somewhere because otherwise they would end up in Rome, and they don’t want to end up there.

In Chapter 11, Dr White embarks on the attempt to make the early Church Fathers to be sola scripturalists. This kind of reminds me of Roman Catholic prooftexting to make the early fathers believe in an infallible papacy. The snippets sound good when you are preaching to the faithful. But once you read the fathers in their entirety it doesn’t look like the prooftexts. And as we shall see, even turning White’s limited list of Fathers into sola-scripturalists is far far away from an accurate representation of them.

One of the Fathers Dr White mentions is Basil the Great of Caesaria. But Basil gives the clearest and most outspoken defences of tradition among the Fathers, as we shall see.

Here is the quotation as it appears in Dr White’s book:

“We ought carefully to examine whether the doctrine offered us is conformable to Scripture, and if not, to reject it. Nothing must be added to the inspired words of God; all that is outside Scripture is not of faith, but is sin.” – Prologomena 2, work 3 Ascetic.

Now, there’s something very interesting about this citation. Basil never wrote any work called prologomena. This prologomena is actually the Schaff prologue to Basil’s works, where he gives a one sentence quotation from a work called The Moralia (τὰ ἠθτκά). Apparently White didn’t have access to this work, so he relied on this acontextual Schaff quote.

Isn’t Dr White here conforming to comical stereotype of protestants who quote the fathers, but haven’t read them? Here we have a proof positive case where White is quoting a work of Basil, but clearly hasn’t read the work, since his citation is second hand.

As for the quote itself, we shouldn’t take it too seriously since we don’t have the context. But the first thing we should note is that the context is sin. The immediately prior sentence (the only context Schaff provides us with) is: “Sins into which we feel ourselves drawn against our will are the results of sins to which we have consented. Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost consists in attributing to the devil the good works which the Spirit of God works in our brethren.”

Is the “doctrine” which is spoken of doctrine in general, or doctrine concerning sin? Without more context it’s hard to say.

The next thing to note is that it talks of doctrine being “conformable” to scripture. Not whether the doctrine comes from scripture, but whether it is conformable to scripture. Of course, Orthodox can easily agree with this. If you can’t conform a teaching to scripture, it is wrong. Next it says that nothing must be added to the inspired words of God. Again, nothing controversial here. It’s only the last phrase which is slightly more problematic. But I suspect it must be interpreted or translated in light of the first phrase. Outside scripture means not conformable to scripture.

Lest anyone thing I am trying to special plead Basil’s meaning, remember that Basil has explicitely supported the authority of Tradition. I for one want to interpret Basil according to his overall writings, not prooftexting from a document I haven’t even read. Here are the Basil quotes supporting Tradition:

“The one aim of the whole band of opponents and enemies of “sound doctrine”is to shake down the foundation of the faith of Christ by levelling apostolic tradition with the ground, and utterly destroying it. So like the debtors, — of course bona fide debtors. — they clamour for written proof, and reject as worthless the unwritten tradition of the Fathers.” Basil the Great, Chapter X, Oration on the Holy Spirit,

“In the same manner the Apostles and Fathers who laid down laws for the Church from the beginning thus guarded the awful dignity of the mysteries in secrecy and silence, for what is bruited abroad random among the common folk is no mystery at all. This is the reason for our tradition of unwritten precepts and practices, that the knowledge of our dogmas may not become neglected and contemned by the multitude through familiarity.” Chapter XXVII, ibid

“Time will fail me if I attempt to recount the unwritten mysteries of the Church. Of the rest I say nothing; but of the very confession of our faith in Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, what is the written source? If it be granted that, as we are baptized, so also under the obligation to believe, we make our confession in like terms as our baptism, in accordance with the tradition of our baptism and in conformity with the principles of true religion, let our opponents grant us too the right to be as consistent in our ascription of glory as in our confession of faith. If they deprecate our doxology on the ground that it lacks written authority, let them give us the written evidence for the confession of our faith and the other matters which we have enumerated. While the unwritten traditions are so many, and their bearing on “the mystery of godliness is so important, can they refuse to allow us a single word which has come down to us from the Fathers; — which we found, derived from untutored custom, abiding in unperverted churches; — a word for which the arguments are strong, and which contributes in no small degree to the completeness of the force of the mystery?” ibid

“Is answer to the objection that the doxology in the form “with the Spirit” has no written authority, we maintain that if there is no other instance of that which is unwritten, then this must not be received. But if the greater number of our mysteries are admitted into our constitution without written authority, then, in company with the many others, let us receive this one. For I hold it apostolic to abide also by the unwritten traditions. “I praise you,” it is said, “that ye remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances as I delivered them to you;” and “Hold fast the traditions which ye have been taught whether by word, or our Epistle.” One of these traditions is the practice which is now before us, which they who ordained from the beginning, rooted firmly in the churches, delivering it to their successors, and its use through long custom advances pace by pace with time. If, as in a Court of Law, we were at a loss for documentary evidence, but were able to bring before you a large number of witnesses, would you not give your vote for our acquittal? I think so; for “at the mouth of two or three witnesses shall the matter be established.” And if we could prove clearly to you that a long period of time was in our favour, should we not have seemed to you to urge with reason that this suit ought not to be brought into court against us? For ancient dogmas inspire a certain sense of awe, venerable as they are with a hoary antiquity. I will therefore give you a list of the supporters of the word (and the time too must be taken into account in relation to what passes unquestioned). For it did not originate with us. How could it? We, in comparison with the time during which this word has been in vogue, are, to use the words of Job, “but of yesterday.” I myself, if I must speak of what concerns me individually, cherish this phrase as a legacy left me by my fathers. It was delivered to me by one who spent a long life in the service of God, and by him I was both baptized, and admitted to the ministry of the church. While examining, so far as I could, if any of the blessed men of old used the words to which objection is now made, I found many worthy of credit both on account of their early date, and also a characteristic in which they are unlike the men of today — because of the exactness of their knowledge. Of these some coupled the word in the doxology by the preposition, others by the conjunction, but were in no case supposed to be acting divergently, — at least so far as the right sense of true religion is concerned.” – Chapter XXIX ibid

“Had I not so done, it would truly have been terrible that the blasphemers of the Spirit should so easily be emboldened in their attack upon true religion, and that we, with so mighty an ally and supporter at our side, should shrink from the service of that doctrine, which by the tradition of the Fathers has been preserved by an unbroken sequence of memory to our own day.” Chapter XXX ibid

I think any honest person reading the above quotes can see that at best, Dr White is grossly distorting the overall picture of Basil’s position. Isn’t White always the first one to bleat when someone misrepresents his position? Doesn’t he always want people to actually read the works he has written on a topic, rather than taking a snippet out of context? But his is exactly what White does to Basil.

Another Father that is given the treatment is of all people, Augustine. White gives the following quotes:

“I must not press the authority of Nicaea against you, nor you that of Ariminum against me; I do not acknowledge the one, as you do not the other; but let us come to ground that is common to both—the testimony of the Holy Scriptures.”

Of course, Augustine is debating someone who has received some different traditions than himself. No doubt if he was debating someone who had received a different canon of scripture, Augustine would have debated him using what books they had in common too.

But that doesn’t answer the question of Augustine’s approach to traditions that are catholic and common to all:

” the custom, which is opposed to Cyprian, may be supposed to have had its origin in apostolic tradition, just as there are many things which are observed by the whole Church, and therefore are fairly held to have been enjoined by the apostles, which yet are not mentioned in their writings.” – Augustine on baptism, against the Donatists.

Here Augustine says that it is fair to assume that some things were enjoined by the apostles, even though they are not mentioned in their writings. His criteria is that they are “observed by the whole church”. This is the very criteria that Orthodox espouse.

or another quote:

“As to those other things which we hold on the authority, not of Scripture, but of tradition, and which are observed throughout the whole world, it may be understood that they are held as approved and instituted either by the apostles themselves, or by plenary Councils”. – Augustine, Letter LIV.

How much clearer does it get? Augustine was no sola scripturalist. This is as clear as day. Is it really honest to try and present Augustine as a sola scripturalist? Is that really standing for truth?

Here’s another of White’s quotes:

“Neither dare one agree with catholic bishops if by chance they err in anything, but the result that their opinion is against the canonical Scriptures of God.”

As Orthodox, I couldn’t agree more! Bishops are judged by the scriptures. They are also judged by the Holy Tradition of the Church. But does this make Augustine a sola scripturalist?

I think the point is made. While Dr White can find some quotes that seem to sound vaguely like sola scriptura in the Fathers, once you read the Fathers in context they don’t look very sola scripturaish at all. If we used the prooftexting methodology of White, we should all accept the papacy now, since this method has been used to equal effect by Rome.

Dr White’s presentation of the Fathers has been shown to be less than honest.

In Chapter 9 White discusses tradition vs scripture. White argues (in reference to 2Th 2:15 and 1Cor 11:2) that “in none of these passages are we given even a hint that the content of what is traditioned differs in the slightest from what Paul is writing to the churches”.

This seems to contain an odd assumption, namely that the Thessalonians already had access to Paul’s corpus of writings. Certainly they didn’t have access to all of them, since they weren’t all written yet, and it doesn’t seem particularly likely that they had access to all of the other written ones either.

So we must ask ourselves, are there any truths found outside of 1 and 2 Thessalonians that are important to the Christian faith? Of course there is. In fact there are many things in the Gospels that are not found in Paul’s writings at all, but quite likely were known to the Thessalonians via oral traditions, like the sayings of Jesus. And so the scholars think, the scriptural gospels were probably written after Paul.

So when Paul said “hold to the traditions”, most certainly he was referring to a lot of stuff that either he never wrote, that he didn’t write yet, or that may in the future be written (although it’s doubtful that Paul is predicting what is going to be written).

Now surely we must interpret a book in the context in which it is written. At the time it was written, even a protestant ought to admit that there was a lot of oral tradition that wasn’t written down yet. Wasn’t the oral tradition the source of the canonical gospels? Isn’t that where Luke got his information? A protestant might think that eventually everything important was written down, but that assumption has nothing to do with the text and circumstances of 2 Th 2:15. That would simply be an extra-scriptural assumption, not a scriptural teaching.

From my point of view, I don’t wish to assume one way or the other. Paul says to hold to the traditions, whether written or oral, I don’t wish to make a-priori assumptions about what Paul was thinking. That Paul went to the trouble of explicitly mentioning oral tradition, to me says a lot.

White goes on to argue that because Paul refers to what he spoke “in the presence of many witnesses”, that there can’t be extra-scriptural oral tradition because it was not secret knowledge. Of course, nobody is arguing that tradition is secret knowledge. That is what’s called a straw man. There is no cause for equating oral with secret and written with public.

White then goes on to argue that what Paul taught in public is “the gospel”. It’s not clear what White means by this. Does he mean that for example, qualifications for elders in the books of Timothy are not the gospel and Paul didn’t teach them in public? That would be an odd assumption to make. Obviously Paul taught many things that went beyond the core bare facts of the gospel. In fact, references to a future “rebellion” etc, a few verses earlier, can hardly be described as the core gospel message.

White goes on to mention 2 Th 2:5 where Paul says “Don’t you remember that when I was with you I used to tell you these things?”, arguing that Paul’s reference back to his oral teaching means they are the same. But this is surely begging the question. Cannot a person refer back to their oral teaching in a written document without repeating everything? That he mentions a particular point and refers back to his oral teaching as “these things” in no way implies 10 verses later that he wants the Thessalonians only to hold to what is written. To do so would have meant ignoring all the oral teaching not yet enscripturated (at a minimum), like the sayings of Jesus, and the qualifications of elders. This is an attempt again by White at prooftexting.

White goes on to press one of his favourite hobby horses, a passage from Irenaeus that seems to indicate that he received the teaching that Jesus was over 40 years old when he died. (White erroneously interprets the passage to mean he was over 50). Since Jesus is usually reckoned to have died at age 33 1/2, that gives a 6 1/2 year discrepancy. Thus, so the argument goes, an early tradition is false.

Actually, the earliest suggested birth date of Jesus is 8 BC, and the latest suggested crucifixion date is 37 AD. That easily could allow for Jesus to have been over 40. I don’t see any great problem believing he was over 40. The bible.org web site gives a probable birth of 5 BC and crucifixion of 33 AD, which would make Jesus 38, but they say it could be as late as 36 AD. Maybe Irenaeus needs to be given more credibility.

But let’s say Irenaeus was mistaken. Not every claim by a father is tradition. The church sifts traditions, and those that are both credible and important it raises to the status of apostolic tradition. Since this remark is found in Irenaeus and nowhere else, and is then more or less forgotten, it is not at the status of full blown Holy Tradition.

What happens if we take White’s objection and apply it to his own position. If a supposed error 100 years after Christ can be made about an important fact, then what about scripture itself? Could the Church have been mistaken that 2 Peter was written by Peter for example? I’m sure Mr White would fall back to some argument about how the support for 2 Peter is much greater than that for Jesus’ age. Exactly! It is the widespread support which makes a tradition authoritative, whether it be 2 Peter or anything else. Inconsistency is the sign of a failed argument.

James White goes onto argue that today we are actually better placed to understand the scriptures than they were two centuries after Christ! Supposedly this is because of all the access we have to documents and scholarship and commentaries and computer technology. I find this general attitude to be lunacy, even though there is some kernels of truth in it. Apparently then, the reason the Church has been off the rails for 1800 years is we needed the full resources of modern academia applied to scripture so that we can figure out what it means and find the true faith. Amazing!

Mr White starts by introducing the concept of canon(1) and canon(2). Canon(1) is the books God has inspired. Canon(2) is man’s knowledge of Canon(1). He goes on to argue that the list of canonical books is not itself an object of revelation, but rather is an artifact of God’s inspiring of books. One can agree with this in so far as God hasn’t dropped out of heaven an intact list. However an artifact of revelation IS revelation. If God inspired books and revealed to his people that a particular book is inspired (and White agrees this happened), then this revelation that a book is revelation IS revelation. And it’s also extra-scriptural revelation in that knowing that book is canonical occurred outside of scripture. White doesn’t seem to notice that he admits as much when he refers to God “leading his people to a functional sufficient knowledge of the canon” (P103). Here we have White admitting to extra-scriptural revelation that is, in his own parlance “above” scripture, in that it defines what scripture is.

P103: “Once we realize that it is Scripture, not man’s knowledge of he canon, that is inspired and that canon(1) exists perfectly in God’s mind, we can see that the clarity and knowledge of canon(2) is dependent not upon human beings, councils, churches or anything else in this world but instead upon God’s purposes in giving us inspired Scripture in the first place. Is a clear knowledge of the canon’s extent important to the function of scripture in the church? Yes. So does it not follow that God will both providentially preserve the Scriptures and lead His people to a functional, sufficient knowledge of the canon so as to fulfill His purpose in inspiring them? Indeed, will He not exercise just as much divine power in establishing and fulfilling His purpose for the Scriptures (their functioning as a guide to the church) as He has in inspiring them?“.

There are enormous problems in this quote. Firstly, I see no link of logic between the proposition that because Canon(1) exists perfectly in God’s mind, therefore Canon(2), aka man’s knowledge of the canon, is not dependent on human beings. Surely it is the very fact that we are not privileged to know the inner mind of God that we are in some way dependent on human beings to know the canon. Unless God dropped a leather bound bible on your head while out for a walk, your knowledge of scripture is indeed dependent on 2000 years of preservation and knowledge of the canon is the result of many centuries of discussion and development.

Dr White’s point is that it is God who “leads His people” into this knowledge. It would therefore follow that if I want to obtain this knowledge I need to locate and track down “His people” to ask them the canon. How is this different to what Orthodox have been saying all along? This all pre-supposes that you know where “His people” are, because you can’t ask an invisible church what the canon is. Nor can you just assume that all churches have the same canon, even for the NT, contrary to White’s glaring error on P108 that there is no disagreement on the NT. (The non-Chalcedoneon churches have a significantly shortened NT, missing the catholic epistles and Revelation).

Even if we accept Dr White’s view of the world (one which, by the by is extra-scriptural in itself), it solves nothing. If God leads “His people” into knowledge of the canon, then the first thing you need to do is plunk down your money on who the people of God are. And you’ve got to be specific, you can’t ask questions of an invisible church.

Then White makes the speculation that shouldn’t it follow that if God went to all the effort to inspire scripture, that he would go to at least as much effort to lead his people into knowledge of canon? A reasonable supposition Mr White. Wouldn’t the same line of thinking also lead us to suppose that he would put at least as much effort into making sure his Church interprets it correctly? Why go to all the effort of inspiring scripture, and preserving scripture, only to have his people spend millennia not only not believing sola scriptura, but neither interpreting it correctly until Calvin and Luther came along to enlighten us?

On P107, Dr White argues that knowledge of the canon is based on God’s purpose in giving and revealing scripture, and not on the infallibility of the Church. In large part this is all a bit of a word game. Obviously if the Church is infallible, it would be precisely because of God’s purposes in revealing knowledge to the Church. On the other hand, if the Church is not infallible, but merely is the official repository for God’s divine knowledge about the canon (or anything else), then what functional difference does it make? Either way, what the Church tells you is infallible, because it is of God. Whether it is infallible because it received God’s knowledge, or infallible in and of itself is something for the scholars to debate, since the end result is the same.

On P108, Dr White makes his erroneous claim that there is no disagreement over the NT canon. However let’s ignore that complaint for the moment and concentrate on the agreement in the Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant churches. Look at what we have here: White is making an argument that this agreement is a sign that God is working his purposes in the Church to make such an agreement come about. Well that’s just great. Now how come when the undivided Church agrees on other things, it is completely irrelevant as to ascertaining where God is at work? As they say, inconsistency is the sign of a failed argument.

On P109, Dr White argues that there can be no post-apostolic revelation. However he has just finished lecturing us that God’s revealing knowledge of the canon to His people happened over centuries. Inconsistency again?

From P112 to the end of the chapter, Dr White gives an excursus on the Apocrypha (Deutero-canon). Here he makes very little scholarly effort and makes his usual one-liners. He says that the Jews rejected them. Firstly, there is no pre-Christian list for White to obtain this knowledge. Secondly, it appears from post Christian sources that many Jews at least included some of them, and rejected some of the Proto-canon. He quotes Romans 3:2 – the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. But who was entrusted with the deutero-canon if not the Jews? And then White quotes the list of people and Fathers who seem to have rejected the deutero-canon. But for all this waffle, White cannot tell us what the OT canon is. He lists a bunch of people, and probably doesn’t have the exact canon of any one of them. How does this assist his argument? It’s back to one opinion against another. Then he makes various arguments related to the council of Trent, which are more applicable to Catholic than Orthodox. However the same principles apply: he ignores that in the Catholic / Orthodox theology, the faith is embodied in the Church, not just the scriptures. Therefore having the exact canon figured out is far less important to us than to him. One verse more or less could change Dr White’s entire theology. Not so for us.

Article II: We affirm that the Scriptures are the supreme written norm by which God binds the conscience, and that the authority of the Church is subordinate to that of Scripture. We deny that Church creeds, councils, or declarations have authority greater than or equal to the authority of the Bible.

Does anyone else see the irony that a protestant church council would deny the authority of church councils, and not provide any scriptural argument for it? What good is that?

And there’s that phrase again: “subordinate authority”. Apparently then, church councils, creeds and declarations DO have authority, only it is subordinate. That would mean I suppose that the doctrine of apostolic succession IS an authoritative doctrine, being as it is, not denied by scripture.

Article V: “We affirm that God’ s revelation in the Holy Scriptures was progressive. We deny that later revelation, which may fulfill earlier revelation, ever corrects or contradicts it. We further deny that any normative revelation has been given since the completion of the New Testament writings.”

Again, where is the scriptural backing for saying that there is no later revelation? It may well be true, but being as there is no golden and final index for the scriptural canon, who is to say that the “progressive revelation” is in fact ended? The Chicago declaration presents a tradition, not a scriptural fact. Irony.

Article VI: “We affirm that the whole of Scripture and all its parts, down to the very words of the original, were given by divine inspiration.”

Not a little controversy has come from this statement. Scripture is inspired in “the original”. However we don’t possess the original. So we must trust the divine providence in the Church for transmitting to us something sufficiently well preserved as to contain the true faith. In the case of books like Matthew, the earliest manuscripts (from memory) date from well into the 4th century, i.e. a time when even protestants don’t disagree that the Church was in large part the same as modern Eastern Orthodoxy.

Article XVI: “We affirm that the doctrine of inerrancy has been integral to the Church’s faith throughout its history. We deny that inerrancy is a doctrine invented by Scholastic Protestantism, or is a reactionary position postulated in response to negative higher criticism.”

Why was it important to these protestants that the belief was held “throughout history”? Doesn’t sola scriptura and protestantism claim to be on a journey to recover the true faith from the bible alone? To be even concerned about what the church believed “throughout history” is itself quite odd for a document that concerns itself with a sola scriptura position.

Dr White then gives an explanation of how to do sound grammatico-historical exegesis. He lists criteria such as knowing who the author is, his situation, the audience and historical setting, the meaning of words etc. Of course a number of these categories require going well beyond scripture. Much of our historical and lexical knowledge comes from outside of scripture, in such things as other ancient documents, historical digs etc. And that historical information itself has to be interpreted. What if I, after doing historical research, conclude that the Jews had icons in their synagogues. Am I then permitted to let that assessment colour my interpretation of scripture? Apparently so, since the grammatico-historical method allows for it.

Dr White likes to talk a lot about the perspicuity of scripture. But is this only after obtaining all this historical information? What did the scriptures mean in all those centuries when all this historical and lexical information wasn’t available? What will the scriptures mean in the future when we discover a whole lot more historical information? Something different? I mean, it’s all very well to say that historical and new lexical and textual information can shed light on the bible, but will that change the faith? If not, why all the fuss about the grammatico-historical method? If so, what might the faith be in the future?

White makes the argument that “If Paul believed we should look to a papacy, or to some Spirit-led prophet, or to some group of leaders, or to some new source of revelation, this would be the place to delineate this all-important source of aid for his beloved Timothy”.

As Orthodox, I agree that none of these other possible sources of knowledge are either legitimate or referred to by Paul. Neither do we believe in new sources of revelation per se.

But let’s look closely at what Paul does tell “his beloved Timothy”: 

You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them (v14).

What are these “things you have learned” and who are these people Paul says Timothy knows “whom” you have learned them from? I think this is clearly a reference to Paul’s oral instruction to Timothy. It’s probably not the New Testament, since that body of work is not assembled yet. In any case, the context is “the sacred writings which you knew from childhood” which cannot possibly be the NT. What Paul is saying is that he has passed on (traditioned) the teachings to Timothy, that Timothy trusts those he received it from, he has been convinced of them, and thus he should continue in them.

Paul having discussed his oral teaching to Timothy, then goes onto discuss the scriptures.

White actually equates the trustworthy sources of v14 with Timothy’s trustworthy godly parents. And that he identifies them as godly by their behaviour, attitudes and character. Well if Paul is listing the scriptures and the trustworthiness of Timothy’s parents in the same breath, how much more might we believe in the trustworthiness of the people of God in his Church? How much more might we believe that some of those trustworthy people Timothy received the wisdom of salvation from, might have been in his local synagogue or local people of God?

Dr White goes onto discuss the issue of the meaning of “fully equipped”. As many have noted, the text doesn’t actually say that scripture fully equips you, rather it says that scripture is provided that you may be fully equipped. Secondly, it could be stretching things to translate it as “fully equipped”. The lexicon could support something like “well fitted”, which rather tones down the more extravagant claims. Thirdly, it equips you for “every good work”. While a hyper-literal interpretation would have that to include being able to solve all theological questions, more likely Paul is simply referring to regular good works, not providing a rule of faith in the Church.

Dr White goes on to discuss the issue that Paul is probably referring to the OT scriptures, and thus this passage would “prove too much”. White’s response is that Paul is referring to the role of scripture, not the canon of scripture. This is all very well, but the fact is that Timothy was NOT fully equipped by the OT scriptures for teaching the revelation of the Christian message. Surely we must understand the intention of Paul’s instructions to Timothy in light of the manifest inadequacy of the OT scriptures for teaching the full Christian message. Either we need to recognize Paul’s reference in v14 also to the oral tradition, or else we need to have a more practical understanding of “good works” in the context of Timothy and what he has achieved “since childhood”, which presumably didn’t include preaching the resurrection in the old covenant.

In summary, Dr White’s presentation of 2 Timothy 3:16 smacks of proof texting. It doesn’t actually make sense in the context to have it be a proof of sola scriptura, especially since everybody including Mr White admits that the apostolic church, in times of “enscripturation” as he puts it, was not practicing sola scriptura, and was not therefore fully equipped by it.

2 Pet. 3:15-16 “Regard the patience of our Lord as salvation; just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.”

Dr White comments that this means that taught and stable people therefore do not distort the bible. That’s fine, but taught by who? Apparently the bible alone isn’t enough by itself, you also need to be taught. Presumably Mr White would not include being taught by, oh say the Mormons. So you have to be taught by the right people. But who?

Most of the rest of the chapter is taken up with Dr White saying nice things about scripture, which is fine, but not supportive of sola scriptura.

One comment he does make is about the beginning of Luke where he writes to Theophilus that you may “know the exact truth” or “have certainty”. You see, Dr White disagrees with many of his protestant reformed brethren in that he tends toward the end of the spectrum of saying that everything is certain, and there are no fuzzy edges to divine revelation. We will keep this in mind for later when we visit the canon later on in the book.

The 1689 confession, as an authority in Dr White’s church, even a supposed subordinate authority, acts as a tradition which colours the opinions of all its members, just as much as the Catechism of the Catholic church (CCC) colours the understanding of the members of that Church. Actually, the analogy is quite apt, since the CCC is not considered infallible to that Church, but it certainly colours the understanding of the people in it.

In a discussion with a Reformed Baptist, I challenged him to give us the verse that condemns polygamy, as Ch 25 of the London Confession condemns. He didn’t come up with one. And yet I’ll bet that Dr White wouldn’t perform any polygamous marriages. That’s because he has a tradition, but won’t admit to it. 2000 years of Christian practice has influenced the 1689 confession, and has in turn influenced James White.

What is a subordinate authority? Dr White doesn’t really define it. One possible definition would be an authority that restates what the ultimate authority states. Would it restate it more clearly than the ultimate authority? If so, wouldn’t it be adding clarity where God left it unclear? White says on P 35 that it is unreasonable to believe that God intends to create perfect unanimity on every issue. So if this subordinate authority restates what is less clear in words that are more clear, hasn’t it then added certainty where God intended lack of certainty? On the other hand, if all it does it restate scripture with the same clarity, why do we need the subordinate authority?

Or is the subordinate authority allowed to make rulings that go beyond scripture, and as long as it does not contradict scripture, it is ok? Is that how a subordinate authority works? If so, how is it different to many traditions that protestants won’t accept, such as say, the doctrine of apostolic succession? Scripture never condemns apostolic succession, so therefore we can teach it by means of a subordinate authority teaching? White goes on to deny that any creed or council can bind a Christian’s conscience. Presumably then, the subordinate authority cannot bind it either. So again we might ask, what good is the subordinate authority? In fact, what sort of an authority is not actually authoritative in the very arena it claims to speak? We can well see that some things are authorities in one area, but not in others. But the only area something like the 1689 confession speaks to, is in theology, and if this authority is not authoritative in that arena, then it really ought not be an authority at all.

Let’s take the proposition that the bible is somewhat unclear on infant baptism. On the other hand the Westminster Confession is very clear. How authoritative then is the Westminster Confession? After all, surely a clear authority trumps a less clear one, since one has 100% certainty what the clear authority is teaching, and only partial certainty on what the unclear one is saying. If Mr White found himself in the Presbyterian Church by birth or otherwise, would he be compelled to be submitted to that authority and never leave to become a baptist? If not, then it’s really no authority at all. 

In short, Dr White makes a big fuss about ultimate and subordinate authorities, but they appear to be categorizations that don’t make a lot of sense.

I thought it would be interesting to go through Dr White’s book, “Scripture Alone”, and see what we find.

In Chapter 1, Dr White opens with “Three Arguments Related to Scriptural Sufficiency”:

ARGUMENT ONE) That men, having language as such a natural part of their nature, God would therefore communicate with them in language. Written documents would best serve this purpose.

This may well be an argument for scripture, but it is not an argument for scripture alone. Language is a special part of being human, to be sure, but being in community is likewise a special part of being human. Likewise, conformity to community expectations, aka tradition, is simply the way people work. James is fond of accusing everyone of having traditions. It’s true, we all have traditions. The difference is, do we admit that traditions are the way people work, and consider the possibility of Spirit-led traditions? If we’re going to make an argument based on the nature of man, which James has embarked on here, all must admit that we are influenced by the community in our theological understanding, and thus a Spirit led Church ought to be a central part of how a smart God would order affairs.

ARGUMENT TWO) That Scripture declares itself to be the Word of God, and that the Matthew 15 / Mark 7 incident puts tradition as subservient to tradition. The traditions of 2Th 2:15 is “the gospel itself” and doesn’t include anything else.

In the recent debate the Mt 15 / Mk 7 incident was discussed. I pointed out that never is the dichotomy between the scriptures and oral teachings. Rather the dichotomy was between the word of God and the traditions of Men.

I did a word study on “word of God” and found that almost all occurrences of this phrase in the bible refer to some oral proclamation. Paul refers to the scriptures as a “tradition” in 2 Th. And while in Greek, the scriptures are referred to as the γραφαὶ, aka the “writings”, obviously some writings are the traditions of men. Obviously the neat protestant pigeon holes of word of God = Scriptures, γραφαὶ = Scriptures, and γραφαὶ is not traditions of men, is found to be mere protestant traditions, with no exegetical foundation.

I gave another interpretation: the “traditions of the elders” (Mt 15:2) refers to some traditions of men not accepted by all the people of God, and thus non-authoritative. This interpretation at least has some support in the text.

As everyone knows, Jews have a lot of traditions, all of them in some way related to their religion. If Jesus had wanted to condemn all extra-scriptural tradition, I find it odd that he picked one that is so obviously wrong, that even a pagan can figure out this is not the right thing to do. This is no tricky point of theology, it’s a basic point of morality. As we know, Jesus was fond of overriding even the scriptural laws (witness Mt 19:8 where he overrides the law of Moses on a point of morality). To be consistent, a protestant should look at this passage and conclude that scripture is not a final authority.

That the traditions of 2Th 2:15 refers to the gospel only, is rather assuming what one has to prove. For a start, a word study on “gospel”, would not lead us to believe that the word refers to something like the protestant altar call. Secondly, Paul says to hold to the traditions he taught them. To say that Paul did not want them to hold to anything but some kind of “core” teachings and forget the rest would be special pleading. Surely Paul tried to teach them everything he knew, not just some “core” part which James considers to be the “gospel”.

ARGUMENT THREE) James gives a personal testimony on how important scripture is in his life.

Of course, I could give any number of personal testimonies on how important the tradition of the Orthodox Catholic Church is to its members. I dare say no protestant really understands this personal experience either.

Of course, thousands of allegations of error have been levelled against the rest of the canon too, with corresponding responses. We need only suggest various possibilities:

• Maybe there was a different king named Nebuchadnezzar. This is certainly the simplest answer.
• Maybe Nebuchadnezzar conquered Assyria at some point, and ruled it from Nineveh when he travelled there.
• Judith was written in Hebrew, but only the Greek survives. Maybe the translator made an error.
• As a last resort, one might always speculate there has been a scribal error in the manuscript history. There are other unresolvable difficulties in some names in the bible. Luke 3:33 has an unresolved textual variant, as does Matthew 8.28. Since the book is older, the manuscript tradition of Judith is far sparser than for the New Testament, and we may not be aware of variants in the history of the text.

Update: On the 2009/01/02 Dividing Line, Dr White mentions this article and makes fun of it. On the suggestion that there was another King called Nebuchadnezzar he laughs and says “Yeah, I run into folks called Nebuchadnezzar all the time”. Is Dr White seriously arguing that his circle of friends in Arizona in the 21st century is indicative of names in the Middle East well over two thousand years ago? It is a simple matter of historical fact that there were more than one king named Nebuchadnezzar. Do the research. This is a non-response from Dr White, and it speaks volumes that he has to make fun of it. On the suggestion that Nebuchadnezzar might have conquered Assyria at some point he mocks it saying that not a word of it was mentioned in all of history. This is pretty ridiculous. How much do we really know about the empires from this time period, all the wars they fought and the places conquered at various times? We only have quite fragmentary knowledge. Anyone who would claim otherwise is just blustering. Does any actual document or historical account even survive from within the civilization of Nebuchadnezzar? Nope. So we are supposed to know everything that went on inside a civilization that never documented its activities. Please. He then makes fun of the idea that the translator made a mistake by saying “so the translator had to translate Nebuchadnezzar wrong and Nineveh wrong”. No Dr White. We don’t have to assume both are wrong, it could be only one is wrong and this would alleviate the apparent contradiction. Is Dr White suggesting there are no unsolved geographical or proper name textual problems in his canon? If so, he ought to know better. For example, nobody knows in Luke 8:28 whether the correct name is Gadarenes, Gergesenes or Gerasenes. These are all real but different places with similar names, but the textual history is too confusing to know which is the original reading. And the book of Luke is a much more recent book than Judith AND we happen to possess the original language. Why does Dr White make fun of a legitimate point? Then he tries to equate a scribal error with a translational error for the 4th point. Cannot Dr White distinguish translational from scribal problems?

This entire response from Dr White is beneath him. The real problem is Dr White’s double standards. The problem of Judith is certainly no greater than a whole host of other alleged bible difficulties. For example, Jacob bought a sepulchre from Hamor (Josh 24:32) and Abraham bought it from Hamor (Acts 7:16). It’s a pretty similar kind of contradiction. Did Nebuchadnezzar rule from Nineveh or Babylon? Did Abrham or Jacob purchase the tomb?

Do we want to talk about apparent contradictions between secular history and biblical history? How about the biggest one, which is the bibles’ genealogy from Adam to Christ being 4000 years or so, and secular history claiming the first humans existed hundreds of thousands of years ago. Whether someone named Nebuchadnezzar ruled from Assyria is a miniscule problem compared to this.

Dr White is simply inconsistent, and inconsistency is the sign of a failed argument.

“2Pet. 2:1 But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. “

When someone calls into the Dividing Line about this verse, it is generally not very informative, since the argument about why the verse doesn’t mean what it appears to, is so long and nuanced, that its difficult to articulate it on a radio show. You can find a long summary of the argument here.

If you read this summary carefully, it seems to concede that the word agorazo (bought) is used in the New Testament 24 times in the sense of buying chattels and articles, with the other 5 times the word is used redemptively. Since the object in 2 Peter 2:1 is not a chattel, this is rather embarrassing for Dr White’s position. Therefore to save the argument, what needs to be done is to slice and dice the data differently. Instead the question is posed in terms of redemptive uses and non-redemptive uses, and the aim is to find some differences between 2 Pe 2:1 and the other redemptive cases as an argument for putting this verse in the category with non-redemptive uses, which are in reality cases of purchasing chattels. Of course, with only 5 other cases, it is not hard to find or invent some differences and argue for the other category. This is what I like to call slice and dice exegesis. You keep slicing and dicing the categories until you find one that agrees with your thesis.

Here is how Dr White’s main argument goes: If “bought” means “redeemed”, then these people were in fact redeemed, and if they were redeemed they were saved. It can’t allow for being potentially bought or potentially saved. The Arminian position is that Christ allows you to be saved if you opt into this plan of redemption. Since these people were “bought”, they must actually be saved, so the whole Arminian interpretation falls apart in a mass of contradiction.

Here’s the problem: The Orthodox understanding of salvation is opt-out. Christ buys redemption for all, and we start out our life saved by this act. But some opt out of the system and are lost.

If we wanted to use an analogy this is the one I would use. If it wasn’t for Christ’s redemption we would be in the state inherited from Adam. i.e. we would be like slaves – slaves to death, sin and the devil. Christ buys back the slaves which are all mankind, (“by death he tramples down death” as the liturgy says). However despite Christ now being the rightful owner, some of these former slaves to death go AWOL back to being slaves to sin.

This buying back of the slaves includes all mankind. 1Cor. 15:22 ”For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.” 1Tim. 4:10 ”we have fixed our hope on the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of believers.” Romans 5:18 “So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men.”

The problem with those who will be lost is not that they haven’t been redeemed – they have. The problem is they are going over the hill and rejecting the redemption.

So there is no need to read into the text “potentially bought”. They were bought! In fact, we could say they were bought and owned, and even possessed, but they jumped ship.

Now Dr White would like to try and say that the buying in 2 Pe 2:1 was some kind of non-redemptive purchase – something like God “buying” Israel from Egypt (even though the bible never expresses it like that). A few problems: firstly, Israel is an icon of the New Covenant anyway. Yes God did redeem all Israel from Pharoah. Anybody who didn’t get out of Egypt did so because they opted out of it, not because God held any back. Secondly, Peter is not discussing the old covenant, but problems that will arise in the future with people in the new covenant. Who are these people in the New Covenant who are bought but not redeemed? Dr White is not a Presbyterian, who might include babies in that category of people in the covenant but not redeemed. Is Peter specifically predicting that the only people who will bring in destructive heresies will be former Jews who were purchased in some old covenant sense, but gentiles will be free from error? That hardly seems likely or reasonable.

The final attempt in slice and dice theology is to make a point of the word used for God here: despotes or master. So the argument goes, this word is only used to describe God as a master of the whole human race, rather than in a redemptive sense of God of a redeemed people. But from an Orthodox point of view, that is the argument! God has redeemed the whole human race, not potentially in some Arminian kind of way, but actually. So he is the owner of the whole human race, even in the old covenant, and even redemptively. The whole point of what is revealed in the New Covenant is that there is no distinction between the set of people God is master of, and the set of people he has bought redemptively. God has revealed how gentiles fit into the plan of redemption. Dr White tries to introduce a distinction that we argue does not exist.

If Dr White’s argument is that despotes indicates that God owns and bought all mankind in a non-redemptive sense, one must ask where, when and how does this purchase take place? A purchase indicates some kind of transaction or event. But if we are just born into this state of ownership, then no purchase took place. Where in the bible is this transaction described?

In conclusion, at least from an Orthodox viewpoint, Dr White’s arguments look like a straw man. The argument against the obvious interpretation of agorazo (bought) fails because it ignores the Orthodox model of considering all men really and actually “bought”. The argument in favour of some other interpretation fails, because it it ignores the most obvious categories of chattels vs redemptive, rather than trying to shoehorn purchase of people into some non-redemptive category. The despotes argument fails both for its extreme subtlety as well as providing no convincing alternative interpretation of what and how something was purchased. The argument that we must reject the plain reading because it would introduce some kind of contradiction into scripture is to be rejected because as we have seen, scripture does teach elsewhere that that all men are bought: “through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men.”

This is kind of the moral equivalent to Bart Ehrman’s comment that the New Testament has 500,000 textual variants. While technically correct (5000 manuscripts x 100 variants per manuscript gets you there easily), its hardly a balanced and informative overview of the situation, since comparatively few of those variants have a viable claim to being the original text. In the same way, while Dr White may be able to pull out a quote from the Fathers supporting all manner of things, comparatively few of them would have a viable claim to being the tradition of the catholic church. Dr White is quick to criticise Ehrman for his comment, but hasn’t seen the parallel in his own comment.

In the same way that Dr White sees little merit in Ehrman’s slogan, why should I see merit in Dr White’s slogan? It’s certainly a frequent experience of people reading the Church Fathers, that they are surprised to find out how catholic/orthodox they are. You don’t generally find people who read the church fathers and whose primary discovery therein is that they didn’t agree each other. They must have agreed enough that people are converted by the discovery they were catholic/Orthodox rather than Protestant.

In this case, since the Orthodox Church includes 1 and 2 Esdras as found in the Septuagint, it is in my interests to concur with Dr White. And I have to concur that this scenario is the most likely.

However I must also point out that this is far from certain. Dr White is guilty of making a possibility or a probability into a certainty. Because back in the 4th century it was common in the Septuagint to split these books up just as Trent did.

St. Jerome in his Preface to Samuel and Kings lists this book as “the eighth, Ezra, which itself is likewise divided amongst Greeks and Latins into two books”. So according to Jerome, this book the Jews had as one book, the “Greeks and Latins” had as 2 books.

Origen says the Jewish Ezra is “Esdras, first and second in one”, so it appears as if Origen also followed this numbering. Cyril of Jerusalem notes that “first and second of Esdras are counted one” 

Opposed to this evidence, Augustine in his writings appears to count 1 and 2 Esdras according to the custom found in later copies of the Septuagint – i.e. where 2 Esdras is equivilent to Ezra/Nehemiah. Since Augustine was in North Africa where Hippo and Carthage are, and since Augustine was contemporary with these councils, then Augustine’s numbering should be assumed, so the argument goes. On the other hand, Augustine was familiar with Jerome’s work, and thus his numbering.

I think the argument about Augustine does indicate a probability that Trent’s list was different, but the way such widespread characters as Origen, Jerome and Cyril assume the other numbering makes it far from certain. It does a disservice for Dr White to make a mere probability into a certainty.

Dr White argues that if the Jews were entrusted with the Oracles of God, they must certainly have known what books were included in those Oracles.

It is of course a leap of logic to assume that any one person or a particular subset of people must therefore have known. That subset is always assumed to be whatever person or group Dr White is quoting (excluding of course, anybody whose canon was different to his).

But does Dr White’s thesis fit the historical facts? Actually, all the evidence suggests that the Jews were at least in part confused about the canon. As I’ve pointed out elsewhere, pretty much every list referring to the Jewish 22 book canon contains a slightly different list of books. If “entrusted” is supposed to be equivilent to “widespread knowledge and acceptance”, then the facts do not concord with that.

Furthermore, it doesn’t allow for the time it takes to recognise the canon. The Jews may have been entrusted with the Oracles, but they were also the ones who murdered the prophets as Jesus says in Matt. 23:31. Apparently they didn’t recognise these writings at the time. Being “entrusted with the oracles” MUST include a time period to recognise those books. There is no reason to suppose that this process had concluded at the time of Jesus, as opposed to being ongoing. And if it was ongoing, there is no reason to freeze the opinions of a small subset of Jews from a particular place and time.

Now, at any one time in the history of Israel, there could be prophets active in writing new scripture. And it may have taken some time for books to be definitively agreed on as scripture. For some reason, protestants assume that books written in the last two centuries BC can’t be scripture unless ALL the Jews agreed it was. Then we are quoted Romans 3:2, that the Jews were “entrusted with the oracles of God”. Why is this a good argument against the deutero canon? Who was entrusted with the deutero canonicals if not the Jews? And why is there supposed to be some kind of hard break in the discernment of scripture? The early church consisted entirely of Jews. Can’t they continue the process of discernment of the OT? Does Romans 3:2 imply that the people of God can immediately discern perfectly the canon of scripture? If so, why did it take till the 4th or 5th century at least, to begin to settle the NT canon?

Firstly, this is in part assuming what you want to prove, unless you wish to define the Jews as purely the sect surviving the Roman wars of 70 AD and living in Jerusalem and continuing the Hebrew text lineage. Why should we ignore the Greek Jews of the diaspora?

Secondly, while Origen acknowledges the Jews of his day with a shorter canon, he himself did not thus limit himself. Perhaps he saw what the rest of the Church saw, which is that the opinion of post-Christian Jews is less significant than the Messiah-believing Jews and Church.

Thirdly, Origen’s list excludes Esther. If Origen was so smart and knew so much, why don’t Protestants excise it from their canon?

However there are no lists contemporary with Jesus that can attest to this. The Council of Laodicia mentions a 22 book canon, but includes Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremiah. Melito lists 22 books but includes Wisdom of Solomon, but excludes Esther. Origen’s 22 books includes the Epistle of Jeremiah. Gregory of Nazianzus excludes Esther.

If we accept the concept of some kind of settled 22 book Jewish canon, we might just as well exclude Esther and include Baruch, the Epistle of Jeremiah and Wisdom since the earliest sources give no aid and comfort to the particular Protestant 39 books. Dr White needs to gloss over these inconvenient details to make things seem very cut and dried and simple. However, by appealing to a supposedly settled pre-Christian canon, Dr White actually denies himself a canon, since nobody knows what those books were. If he wanted to go down the road of saying that his particular collection is right because it is time tested, I might just as well say the same thing in including Baruch, Wisdom and the Epistle of Jeremiah.

There are a number of problems with this arguments. Firstly, he states as a fact what is considerably less certain. We have no way of knowing if Josephus – the sole witness to this claim, writing well after the temple was destroyed – knew what he was talking about. Scholars acknowledge that the character of Josephus’ writings is apologetic in nature, and that he has a penchant for exaggeration. Under these circumstances, a possibility can become a probability and a probability can become a certainty. Is it possible an apologist could overstate the certainty of his case? Well certainly, because Dr White himself is in this habit of stating mere probabilities as certain facts, as he does here! Feldman in “Josephus, the Bible and History” says that Josephus frequently exaggerates and propagandizes, especially in defence of Judaism. D. J. Silver in “The Story of Scripture” says that Josephus revealed his wish rather than the actual state of the biblical canon.

Secondly, stating what was in the temple ignores the long process there can be in recognising the canon. Even 5 centuries after Christ, one could have found many churches where the book of Revelation was not “laid up”. To point to the canon at any particular time as if it must be settled by a particular date, ignores the way canon is recognised. Why should we see a “hard break” between the people of God as Israel and the people of God as Christians? As we see in Acts, the early Christians attended synagogue. There was no hard break.

Thirdly, scholars recognise that the Christians inherited a Greek Septuagint that included the so-called deuteros. While there was some variation in the exact set of deuteros, the general fact is that the deuteros were included. Few Jews could speak Hebrew, but many if not most could speak Greek. If the Christians inherited the deuteros from the Jewish Synagogues throughout the world, that means the deuteros were “laid up” in the synagogues.

Fourthly, Dr White has spent a great deal of time arguing that the Jews had no “magisterium” analogous to the Roman Catholic magisterium. If so, then what the Pharasees were doing in the temple is of little consequence. 

Fifthly, we don’t actually know what canon Josephus was advocating. Some scholars say that Josephus’ canon excluded Ruth and Lamentations. H. Graetz suggests that Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes were not included. L. B. Wolfenson and S.Zeitlin think that Esther and Ecclesiastes were excluded. Still others exclude Chronicles, Ezra and Esther. The reason scholars can differ so widely, is that no-one really knows for sure what books were in Josphus’ 22 book list. To assume it must equate to the Protestant 39 books is simply hope.

Here’s the thing: how many Catholic or Orthodox decide one day to read the church fathers, and having done so then decide that they really ought to be protestant?

Anyway, what he did do is point out Dr Lawrence W. Carrino who apparently did some shows on a New York evangelical radio show called Iron Sharpens Iron. Well it turns out he only did one show, which I downloaded, in which he presents himself as a “thorough expert on this religion” (Orthodoxy).

Well the first three quarters of the show, it all seems reasonably fair, and fairly accurate, but then it all seems to fall apart at the end.

The first time it starts to go down hill he starts to present Orthodoxy as a “Byzantine relic”. So he says, Orthodoxy is shaped by the culture and thinking of Byzantium, an empire that died out. While Orthodoxy holds to many central tenets of the faith, much of it, the bits that claim to be unique, is actually 11th to 14th century Byzantine culture. Claims that the liturgy and doctrine have not changed is simply not true, so he claims.

Wow, big claims there. When he is asked for an example, he brings up theosis. Do my ears deceive me, or is he claiming that theosis is an 11-14th century development, shaped by Byzantine culture? Seriously, that is too silly to even respond to. Anybody who has read the Fathers knows that the idea is very clear in for example Athanasius, who was talking about this when Byzantium was a backwater village.

Next he laments that in Orthodoxy, there is no assurance of salvation. Which branch of Christianity provides full assurance? Even the Calvinists, who present themselves as the apex of certainty, say that there are many people who think they are saved but actually have deceived themselves, were never truely saved and will be certainly lost.

He dismisses 2 Peter 1:4 (“partakers of the divine nature”) as weak support for theosis. Then he defines theosis as being “partaking of God’s divine energies, transformed into the image of God”. So, how is that definition different to 2 Peter 1:4? Isn’t partaking God’s nature the same as being transformed into his image? What is the problem?

Next he goes onto say that there is “no notion of penal substitution” in Orthodoxy. This is of course, a little exagerated, in that we recognise ideas along those lines in the Fathers. Orthodoxy would say this is one way of understanding the multi-faceted jewel of Christ’s atonement, but it’s not the primary way. He complains that if you’re going to use a non-biblical word (like theosis), then its definition had better be in scripture. Where does scripture say that Christ’s death is to be understood in terms of penal substitution? It doesn’t! Yet he makes this idea central to the gospel! Orthodoxy would tend to assign full-blown penal substitution theory to Ansel, who ironically is from the 11th century, that window of time that he accuses Orthodoxy of re-inventing itself. He accuses the idea of theosis as engaging in non-biblical categories. How ironic.

He goes onto say that Orthodox sources concerning theosis completely fail to mention penal substitution. (I guess they have that in common with the bible, which also fails to mention it). But anyway, why would they since theosis and atonement are different areas of theology? It’s a bit like asking why some protestant works on sanctification might fail to discuss penal substitution. So what?

Of course no polemical protestant discussion would be complete without them accusing somebody of believing in salvation by works. He accuses Orthodoxy of not believing we are saved by the finished work of Christ, but rather God is redeeming the physical world and transforming people through theosis into something that he could accept. That doesn’t sound Orthodox to me at all. Yes, we do believe God is physically redeeming his people through theosis, but who said that we need to complete this theosis process to be saved?

Let me just cite one Orthodox church to make the point. 

“WHAT MUST WE DO TO BE SAVED?
Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ (give yourself up to Him, take yourself out of your own keeping and entrust yourself into His keeping) and you will be saved. (Acts 16:31)
He saved us. It was not because of any good deeds that we ourselves have done, but because of His own mercy that He saved us… (Titus 3:5)”

But maybe these are westernised Orthodox? What are the ethnic Orthodox saying? Bishop Theophane of Tambov in Russia in 1847 said “We are saved by the grace of the Holy Spirit which is ours without cost because of our redemption by Christ.”.

So what exactly is Mr Carrino’s problem with theosis? Does he deny that God is reshaping his people to be more like Christ-God? Does he deny that the sacraments are used by God for this purpose? The Westminster confession says “Worthy receivers, outwardly partaking of the visible elements, in this sacrament, do then also.. really and indeed, … receive and feed upon, Christ crucified, and all benefits of His death”. Is not Christ’s death somehow beneficial to our becoming more Christ like? Is it such a heresy to believe that?

Dialogue between the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland and the Russian Orthodox Church concluded that “the traditional Lutheran doctrine of justification contains the idea of the deification of man. Justification and deification are based on the real presence of Christ in the word of God, the sacraments and in worship”.

Does Mr Carrino know better than the Lutherans?

Clark Pinnock is a well known evangelical. He said: “The key thing is that salvation involves transformation. It is not cheap grace, based on bare assent to propositions, or merely a change of status. Romans 5 with its doctrine of justification is followed by Romans 6 with its promise of union. It is not just a matter of balancing two ideas; it is a matter of never conceiving of the former without its goal in the latter. For the justified person is baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. If there is no newness of life, if there is no union with Christ, if there is no coming out from under the dominion of sin, there is no salvation”.

Sounds like theosis to me. No union with God and participating in his newness of life and transformation into the likeness of God, equals no salvation.

For someone claiming to be “really listening” to what Eastern Orthodox are saying, Mr Carrino disappoints. I realise he has only limited time on a radio show, but I can’t see anybody Orthodox seeing his presentation as a realistic representation of Orthodoxy.

However there’s a fatal admission here. And that is that the interpretation of the bible is in large part determined by the hermeneutic and background which the reader brings to the bible, and not by the bible alone. If the result depends on your hermeneutic, then there goes sola scriptura out the window.

And of course, what hermeneutic did the early Church bring to the scriptures? The early Church were mainly Jews. They’d spent their entire lives immersed in the OT scriptures. Clearly they didn’t as a general rule read the apostles’ letters and then go and interpret the OT from there. Rather they interpreted the apostles’ teachings from the framework of their lifelong relationship with the Torah. If Dr White concedes that this hermeneutic leads to infant baptism, then he has ceded the debate on two levels.

I might also add that his entire lines of argument against infant baptism doesn’t even begin to work if you have a sacramental world view. He says that Presbyterians are heading down the road of sacramentalism, but I don’t recall him ever in his career interacting with this world view. He can afford to throw out that comment because his Baptist audience will automatically recoil against that teaching, but without knowing why.

In the second excerpt, Dr White no doubt thinks it helps him because it refers to the “word” and to the word only should Christians find it necessary to give heed.

Sounds protestant now, right? But is this “word” the scriptures? Protestants automatically assume it is. But could the “word” actually be the entire apostolic tradition, both written and oral? Now Athanasius previously refers to Luke’s recording of what he received from the saints, commenting “For as each of the saints has received, that they impart without alteration”. But does that mean that Athanasius is therefore advocating scripture because of his reference to Luke? No, I don’t think so, rather he is holding up Luke as an example to us of someone who heard the oral tradition from the saints and handed it on.

Is that reasonable, or is that just me with my “Tradition glasses” on, as Dr White puts it? Well, let’s look at the context. The context is of course, the Church following feasts. Does the bible say Christians should keep feasts? Uh, no it doesn’t. What is Athanasius’ reasoning to keep the feasts? Basically, because all the Churches keep them. (aka “Tradition”). So why bring up Luke? Because he mentions the feast? Uh no, but he was someone who passed on the “opinion of the saints”, which is Athanasius’ entire argument about why to follow them.

Which brings us back to the key quote: “But after him and with him are all inventors of unlawful heresies, who indeed refer to the Scriptures, but do not hold such opinions as the saints have handed down, and receiving them as the traditions of men, err, because they do not rightly know them nor their power.”

So clearly, to Athanasius, the opinion of the saints is (a) extra-scriptural, (b) authoritative and (c) endued with “power”.

Then Dr White cuts off the context. Hmm, I wonder why… Let’s give more of the context…

“So we are not remiss in giving notice of its seasons, as we have received from the Fathers. Again we write, again keeping to the apostolic traditions, we remind each other when we come together for prayer; and keeping the feast in common, with one mouth we truly give thanks to the Lord. Thus giving thanks unto Him, and being followers of the saints, ‘we shall make our praise in the Lord all the day,’ as the Psalmist says. So, when we rightly keep the feast, we shall be counted worthy of that joy which is in heaven.

We begin the fast of forty days on the 13th of the month Phamenoth (Mar. 9). After we have given ourselves to fasting in continued succession, let us begin the holy Paschal week on the 18th of the month Pharmuthi (April 13). Then resting on the 23rd of the same month Pharmuthi (April 18), and keeping the feast afterwards on the first of the week, on the 24th (April 19), let us add to these the seven weeks of the great Pentecost, wholly rejoicing and exulting in Christ Jesus our Lord, through Whom to the Father be glory and dominion in the Holy Ghost, for ever and ever. Amen.”

If Athanasius means, as Dr White would have us believe, that Athanasius thinks Christians are only bound to “give heed” to the scriptures, where in the scriptures does it mention these feasts, these fasts and these dates that all the Churches were to keep? And why does Athanasius above boast about being a “follower of the saints”?

And if they are in the scriptures (which of course they aren’t), why would Athanasius find himself saying that those not following the extra-scriptural “opinions of the saints” do “err, because they do not rightly know them nor their power.”? He wouldn’t need to say that, all he would need to do is refer to chapter and verse.

And even if Athanasius did believe in sola scriptura, following the written word only, why would he be mentioning this teaching here? Athansius’ whole point is to convince people to follow the prescribed fasts and feasts, and a homily on sola scriptura here is certainly not going to help him at this point. No, the only reasonable assumption is that the “word” that Athanasius advocates Christians to follow is not merely the written word, but the oral tradition as well. 

Dr White is baffling here, making the Fathers into that which they are not. He assumes what he has to prove, namely that the word of God and the apostolic tradition is limited to that which is written.