![\"Moses3\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/572\/2017\/03\/Moses3.jpg\")
<\/div>\n(5-5-05)<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
[see all the other installments of this multi-part debate on my\u00a0James White web page<\/a>: second section]<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Mr.\u00a0White\u2019s words will be in blue<\/span>; my former words in green<\/span>.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n<\/div>\n One of Mr. White\u2019s ongoing criticisms of my writing is that there is too much<\/i> of it, and that I seek to overwhelm opponents by sheer tonnage of words. Hence, in our last exchange, he wrote, on 12-29-04:<\/p>\n Now, of course, DA will respond with text files (liberally salted with URL\u2019s) that will average 10x the word count of anything I have to say. That\u2019s OK. I shall . . . let him take home the bragging rights to verbosity and bandwidth usage.<\/span><\/p>\n Since he wanted to make this charge, I was determined to write less than his total words in my responses throughout. I did indeed do this, so that at the end of those multiple exchanges, the tally was as follows: My percentage of words over against White\u2019s, compared to his \u201caverage\u201d prediction: 6.0% (5110 actual, compared to a predicted 79,620 \/ 16 times less)Following up on this objective measure of what is actually<\/i> occurring in these discussions, I thought it would be interesting to see what the tallies were for the present topic. It\u2019s even more lopsided this time. The section in my book, The Catholic Verses<\/i>, which was devoted to White\u2019s argument, was 2,259 words. White\u2019s eight-part response was 8,249 words, or 3.65 times longer than what he was responding to (whereas my last total response was only 64% as long as White\u2019s material to which I replied). My argument from my book was, then, 27% as lengthy as White\u2019s reply to it.<\/p>\n If I follow White\u2019s \u201coutwrite the other guy\u201d method, I would produce roughly 30,109 words in the upcoming installments. It\u2019s highly unlikely, however, that I will need nearly that many in order to refute his argument. I just wanted to prove that White too often practices what he preaches against. That said, I won\u2019t feel constrained to write less<\/i> words than him (that point having been proven), but I certainly won\u2019t write 3.65 times more <\/i>than his words.<\/p>\n I shall now respond to White\u2019s paper: The Catholic Verses: Matthew 23:1-3 (Part I) <\/a>(1-22-05):<\/p>\n This will be my final installment in response to Dave Armstrong\u2019s The Catholic Verses<\/i><\/span> [italics added presently]. It is not that there are not many more passages that could be addressed, it is just that there is so very little actual exegesis in the book that the real essence of its self-enunciated claim to provide a defense of the Roman Catholic exegesis <\/i>of the text of Scripture has already been refuted, repeatedly, and there is no reason to proverbially beat the dead horse.<\/span><\/p>\n As I pointed out many times in the earlier debates over my book (obviously to no avail, which is a rather annoying and frustrating characteristic of debates with White: he habitually ignores one\u2019s clarifications and corrections, even of plain factual matters: this is virtually universally reported by Catholics who have debated him), the book is not, technically, about, or consisting of, exegesis per se<\/i>. He has never grasped this<\/a>. The fundamental purpose of the book is actually quite different<\/i>. I explained in my Introduction<\/a>:<\/p>\n I shall now proceed to offer a critique of common Protestant attempts to ignore, explain away, rationalize, wish away, over-polemicize, minimize, de-emphasize, evade clear consequences of, or special plead with regard to \u201cthe Catholic Verses\u201d: ninety-five biblical passages that provide the foundation for Catholicism\u2019s most distinctive doctrines. This is not a scholarly work, as I am no scholar in the first place, merely a lay Catholic apologist; but it is not \u201canti-scholarly,\u201d and I will incorporate scholarship wherever necessary to substantiate the argument.<\/span><\/p>\n We see, then, what the purpose is. It is more of a logical<\/i> critique of Protestant exegesis and particular tendencies and manifest biases in dealing with certain \u201cCatholic-sounding\u201d verses. It\u2019s a somewhat subtle distinction, but a very<\/i> important one, for our purposes. If White doesn\u2019t even comprehend the fundamental nature and methodology<\/em> of my book, then he can hardly offer a compelling refutation of any part of it with which he deals. One must first understand what one purports to refute. That\u2019s rule number one in any debate, and I think White (as a frequent debater, who clearly prides himself on being very good at it) would readily agree with that general principle. I know what my own book is about (as the world\u2019s greatest expert on my own book), and if White did also, then he would cease misrepresenting<\/i> (inadvertently or not; I assume the former) what it was about.<\/p>\n He keeps harping on what he seems to think is the plain fact that I wouldn\u2019t know how to do proper exegesis if my life depended on it. Well, that may or may not be true. Since I don\u2019t claim to be a scholar who specializes in exegesis (or a scholar at all), and my arguments don\u2019t depend on that fact, it is a rather moot point. The book is not a commentary. It is a reasoned critique of flaws in historic, mainstream orthodox Protestant commentary; especially those having to do with prior biases brought to the task of exegesis itself.<\/p>\n And one can do that \u2014 point out simple logical flaws and evasions \u2014 without having<\/i> to be an expert on exegesis, or a Bible scholar (that would obviously help<\/i>, but it\u2019s not absolutely necessary<\/i> for my particular purpose). One simple example will suffice in illustrating this point. I may not know the slightest thing about trigonometry or calculus. But if I, as an observer of a math professor, notice that there is a simple mathematical error in a complex equation or proof written out by the expert (say, 3 x 4 = 14), it is quite proper and not at all presumptuous for me to point that out, and \u201ccorrect\u201d the expert. I don\u2019t have to know everything there is to know about trigonometry or calculus, or know as much as the expert knows, or even (in this instance) anything at all<\/i> about it. All I have to know is that 3 x 4 = 12, not 14. Complex, systematic errors can be built upon the simplest of logical errors. And non-experts can point these out.<\/p>\n Likewise, when it comes to historic exegesis and commentary on Holy Scripture, I don\u2019t have to be an expert on how to interpret such-and-such a Bible passage (with knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, and eight years of theology, New Testament, Old Testament, etc., etc.) in order to note that someone is ignoring a key aspect of it, or introducing extraneous concerns that have little to do with the verse, or using it to lodge yet another gratuitous and textually irrelevant \u201cdig\u201d at Rome, etc. I don\u2019t need to be as brilliant as Calvin and Luther obviously were, in the neutral, non-polemical sense of loving and interpreting Scripture, and providing many true insights which we as Catholics would agree with. It simply doesn\u2019t follow.<\/p>\n My book had to do with logical critiques and examinations of underlying assumptions which Protestants bring to the \u201ctable of exegesis,\u201d and various techniques that are used to dismiss implications that are thought to be too \u201cCatholic.\u201d The book is filled with examples of this. It\u2019s useless to present twenty of them. One would have to buy the book. But that is the methodology of it.<\/p>\n I think the central approach and thesis of the book is brilliant. I can say that because it wasn\u2019t my<\/i> initial idea at all. My publisher, Sophia Institute Press, came up with it, and asked me to write the book. I quickly \u201ctook\u201d to the idea and became quite enthusiastic about it. It\u2019s a unique approach and type of apologetic that no one else has yet tried, to my knowledge. But it\u2019s not exegesis per se. It is about<\/i> exegesis (meta-exegesis<\/i>, if you will), not exegesis itself<\/i>. It is much more about human bias, and the effect of prior theologies and predispositions upon exegesis, than about exegesis of texts (considered in isolation). In that way it is even somewhat of a psychological<\/i> analysis, as it deals with our axioms and presuppositions, and how they affect our interpretations (sometimes leading to outright eisegesis<\/i>). In any event, as long as White keeps falsely claiming that it is simply an exegetical work, he is grossly misrepresenting the book and making a massive straw man, which strikes me as quite odd, for one who is an author himself, of many books.<\/p>\n One would think that he could at least get the central purpose<\/i> of the book right, before proceeding to critique it. But this ties into my point, too: White despises Catholicism as the purveyor of a \u201cfalse gospel,\u201d so in this instance he has distorted even the purpose<\/i> and nature<\/i> of a work which defends what he despises. His overwhelming bias disables him from providing a cogent critique. He feels he has to discredit the argument at all costs, even if he falsely portrays it (and myself) in so doing. This need not be deliberate<\/i> (bias works quite well subconsciously), but it is a strong influence nonetheless, whether deliberate or not. Anti-Catholicism will do it\u2019s dirty work, every time. And it becomes as easy as breathing, after years of practice.<\/p>\n White has issued endless remarks about how \u201cignorant\u201d and clueless I am when it comes to the Bible (as we saw in my compilation of his potshots in the Introduction), so I thought it was important to deal with this misguided notion that he has, at some length, right at the beginning of my replies, so readers (especially those who haven\u2019t read my book) will be under no delusions as to what my book is about<\/i>; what it is actually dealing<\/i> with, subject-wise.<\/p>\n For example, in the sections relevant to soteriology I would be more than happy for someone to compare the \u201cexegesis\u201d offered by Armstrong with the relevant sections of The God Who Justifies<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n As the purposes were fundamentally different in both works (as explained above), the comparison would be completely irrelevant (and invalid). But several people have done Catholic counter-exegesis of soteriological verses, and White has simply ignored them. For example, Ben Douglass recently wrote an excellent paper along those lines, and White blew it off, on the grounds that Ben is a traditionalist (a variation of his timeworn theme that someone isn\u2019t \u201cimportant enough\u201d to waste his valuable time on).<\/p>\n That has nothing to do with the merits of his exegetical argument<\/i>. On the other hand, if White declines merely because Ben is in a category that he doesn\u2019t like, and has had bad experiences with (which I could understand), then how is that different from my decision not to debate anti-Catholics (the present instance being excluded, under my \u201cpoint-by-point loophole\u201d)? Yet White has constantly chided me for my decision, implying that I am a coward, and that it is a rationalization. Very well, then, if I am a \u201ccoward\u201d, then so is White, when he refuses to interact with someone who has done a great deal of work in an area where White claims to be an expert.<\/p>\n But I promised to address the one section Armstrong had sent to me prior to the publication of the book. He had even invited me to interact with him on the topic, but I declined, in light of the character of his presentation (which we will note below).<\/span><\/p>\n Yet I am mocked by White and taunted for generally declining to interact with anti-Catholics: the sort of people who have now constructed fake blogs, using my name, pretending to be me, in an attempt to claim that I am a completely-obsessed \u201cnarcissist\u201d or \u201cmoron\u201d or that I \u201chate\u201d my theological opponents, etc. Eric Svendsen (a major anti-Catholic apologist and good friend of White\u2019s) just called me a \u201clunatic\u201d on his discussion board today. I\u2019ve been called \u201cfilth\u201d and \u201cscum\u201d and had my apologetics characterized as \u201cfoaming-at-the-mouth\u201d and so forth. I\u2019ve had people say I don\u2019t have a \u201creal job\u201d because I am a Catholic apologist; real charitable stuff.<\/p>\n So (quite naturally and reasonably, I think) I decided that people who express themselves in those terms (including White himself, but to a considerably lesser extent than the bilge cited above) are not worth interacting with. But White sees that decision and claims that it is really<\/i> motivated by my fear and inability, and the brilliance of my opponents\u2019 arguments (even stating that my Lenten break<\/i> this year was due to his unanswerable arguments!). It\u2019s one of White\u2019s many double standards. He can do the same thing I do, and that\u2019s fine. He\u2019ll condemn and make fun of my reasoning for doing the exact same thing that he<\/i> does. He decides that certain people are unworthy to debate; so do I. But in this case, his opinion was unreasonable: Ben\u2019s category of traditionalist or how well-known he might happen to be at present has nothing<\/i> to do with his arguments. White has no problem debating Gerry Matatics, who is also a traditionalist (and quite a bit to the right of Ben Douglass).<\/p>\n I refer to his section on pp. 43-53 on Matthew 23 and \u201cMoses\u2019 Seat.\u201d Like the section on Luke 1:28, clearly Armstrong is drawing from his many Internet articles, cobbling together the most serious attempt mounted in the work. If he does not succeed here, he truly succeeds nowhere in The Catholic Verses<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s true that I worked very hard on this section, because White\u2019s argument provided me with plenty of opportunity to point out serious error. But if I were a reader, I wouldn\u2019t put too much stock in White\u2019s generalizations about my book, seeing that he doesn\u2019t even understand its fundamental purpose.<\/p>\n Matthew 23:1-4 1 Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to His disciples, 2 saying: \u201cThe scribes and the Pharisees have seated themselves in the chair of Moses; 3 therefore all that they tell you, do and observe, but do not do according to their deeds; for they say things and do not do them. 4 \u201cThey tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men\u2019s shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger.<\/span><\/p>\n Here White cites some unknown version of the Bible (he doesn\u2019t tell us, and I don\u2019t feel like rummaging through my 30 or so versions to find out). I thought it might be either the NASB or the NIV, but it was neither. In my book, I cited verses 1-3, in the RSV Bible:<\/p>\n Matthew 23:1-3<\/b>: \u201cThen said Jesus to the crowds and to his disciples, \u2018The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses\u2019 seat; so practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach, but do not practice.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Here begins the longest sustained condemnation of the spirit and practice of Pharisaism in all of Scripture. Indeed, so strong, so compelling is the condemnation here that this passage was embarrassing to many Continental New Testament scholars in post World War II Europe. For most in less conservative circles this passage is considered a later polemic of the Christian church, reflecting a reality many decades removed from the ministry of Jesus. But in reality Matthew 23 \u201cfits\u201d perfectly right where it is. Its broad outlines have been seen throughout the Gospel in the conflict with the Jewish leadership, and it then forms the foundation of the judgment coming upon Jerusalem that appears in chapter 24. The section to which Mr. Armstrong refers begins a long litany of woes pronounced upon the hypocritical attitudes of the scribes and Pharisees. It is, in essence, the introduction to the blistering section that is Matthew 23.<\/span><\/p>\n I have no particular beef with this, other than to note that Jesus\u2019 condemnations of the Pharisees were of a general nature (there were many corrupt Pharisees), not necessarily of the entire system of Pharisaism itself, considered apart from the behavioral and attitudinal corruptions of the time. Indeed, many aspects of early Christianity were adopted more-or-less wholesale from Pharisaical tradition (rather than from the Sadducees). But Christians of White\u2019s general school and outlook, usually take a very dim view of the Pharisees altogether, and don\u2019t acknowledge these historical and theological nuances. This is where the influx of Jewish scholarship into New Testament studies and exegesis in recent decades has been very helpful.<\/p>\n I had briefly commented on this passage in The Roman Catholic Controversy<\/i>, and it is to the following that Armstrong responds in The Catholic Verses<\/i>:<\/span><\/p>\n *****<\/p>\n The final passage we will examine presents the idea of \u201cMoses\u2019 seat.\u201d Some modern Roman Catholics present this passage as substantiation of the idea of a source of extra-biblical authority receiving the blessing of the Lord Jesus. It has been alleged that the concept of \u201cMoses\u2019 seat\u201d is in fact a refutation of sola scriptura, for not only is this concept not found in the Old Testament, but seemingly Jesus gives His approbation to this extra-Scriptural tradition. But is this sound exegesis? Is this passage being properly understood? <\/span><\/p>\n First, we note that the passage has spawned a plethora of differing understandings amongst scholars. But a few items immediately remove the Roman apologist\u2019s interpretation and application from consideration. First, \u201cMoses\u2019 seat\u201d refers to a seat in the front of the synagogue on which the teacher of the law sat while reading from the Scriptures. Synagogue worship, of course, came into being long after Moses\u2019 day, so those who attempt to make this an \u201coral tradition\u201d going back to Moses are engaging in wishful thinking. Beyond this, we are here only speaking of a position that existed at this time in the synagogue worship of the day. Are we truly to believe that this position was divine in origin, and hence binding upon all who would worship God? It certainly doesn\u2019t seem that the New Testament Church understood it that way.<\/span><\/p>\n We first note interpreters such as Jeremias and Carson view this passage as engaging in biting irony. The Jewish leaders have presumed to sit in Moses\u2019 seat, as suggested by Merx, Moulton, and Zahn, focusing on the use of the aorist tense of the verb \u201cto sit.\u201d They sat themselves in this place, but improperly. Such an understanding is certainly in line with the biting attack that follows immediately in the rest of the chapter.<\/span><\/p>\n But I am more prone to accept Gundry\u2019s understanding, in which he rejects the satirical interpretation and instead notes,<\/span><\/p>\n So long as sitting in Moses\u2019 seat qualifies the speaking of the scribes and Pharisees, \u201call things whatever\u201d does not include their interpretative traditions, but emphasizes the totality of the law. \u201cTherefore\u201d establishes the qualification. They do keep their traditions. But they do not practice what they speak while sitting on Moses\u2019 seat. Hence their traditions are not in view. Though elsewhere Matthew is concerned to criticize the scribes\u2019 and Pharisees\u2019 interpretations of the law, here he is concerned to stress the necessity of keeping the law itself. As usual, his eye is on antinomians in the church. (Robert Gundry, Matthew: A Commentary on His Literary and Theological Art (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), pp. 454-455.)Indeed, the Lord\u2019s unwillingness to become an \u201cecclesiastical rebel\u201d is in perfect harmony with the Scriptural teaching on the subject of authority in the church. There was nothing in the tradition of having someone read from the Scriptures while sitting on Moses\u2019 seat that was in conflict with the Scriptures, and hence, unlike the corban rule which we saw earlier in Matthew 15, Jesus does not reject this traditional aspect of Jewish synagogue worship. He does not insist upon anarchy in worship in the synagogue anymore than His apostle Paul would allow for it in the worship of the church at Corinth. It is quite proper to listen to and obey the words of the one who reads from the Law or the Prophets, for one is not hearing a man speaking in such a situation, but is listening to the very words of God. Indeed, when Ezra read the law to the people in Nehemiah chapter 8, the people listened attentively, and cried \u201cAmen! Amen!\u201d at the hearing of God\u2019s Word. And who can forget the result of Josiah\u2019s discovery of the book of the covenant in 2 Chronicles 34? It is proper to have men in positions of authority in the synagogue, just as in the Church. But Jesus points out that the listener is still to exercise a critical eye, for he is not to imitate the evil behavior of those who have been entrusted even with the sacred duty of leading the people of God in worship.<\/span><\/p>\n To leap from Jesus\u2019 refusal to overthrow the form of synagogue worship that was present in His day to a wholesale endorsement of extra-scriptural, oral traditions is to make a leap of monumental proportions. And in light of the passages we have already examined that refute the need for such an extra-scriptural rule of faith, I suggest that the use of this passage by Roman apologists is in error.<\/span><\/p>\n *****<\/p>\n In our next section we will review Armstrong\u2019s case on Matthew 23 and \u201cMoses\u2019 Seat.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n This is different from my copy of his book, dated 1996, so I assume that it is from a revision (or else White is cutting-and-pasting from a slightly different manuscript version of his own). In my copy, this (i.e., something similar<\/i> to it) appears on pages 100-101. I\u2019ve cited it in full in order to present his book remarks in their full context (and because I generally include all or almost all of my opponents\u2019 words in dialogues, anyway). I won\u2019t, however, respond at this point, since that is what I did in my book; I\u2019ll wait till he makes his counter-argument, then I\u2019ll cite my book as necessary.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Moses with the Ten Commandments (1648), by\u00a0Philippe de Champaigne (1602-1674) [public domain \/ Wikimedia Commons] *** (5-5-05) *** [see all the other installments of this multi-part debate on my\u00a0James White web page: second section] *** Mr.\u00a0White\u2019s words will be in blue; my former words in green. *** Let\u2019s Get the Word Games Out of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2331,"featured_media":10537,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,1068,448],"tags":[3771,3786,3767,3770,1996,3765,3432,3517,1995,933,1936,3144,911,2831,2835],"class_list":["post-10540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bible-and-tradition","category-james-white","category-jews-judaism-old-testament","tag-christianity-mosaic-law","tag-jesus-jewish-tradition","tag-jesus-the-jew","tag-jesus-the-pharisee","tag-jewish-tradition","tag-jews-and-christians","tag-judaism-and-christianity","tag-moses-seat","tag-oral-torah","tag-oral-tradition","tag-pharisees","tag-rabbis","tag-sanhedrin","tag-synagogues","tag-torah"],"yoast_head":"\n
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\nWhite: 7962 words \/ Armstrong: 5110 words (or 64% as many as White\u2019s words, or White outwriting Armstrong by a 1.56 to one margin \u2014 roughly three words for every two that I wrote)<\/p>\n