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Reformed Baptist anti-Catholic apologist Bishop<\/a> \u201cDr.\u201d [???<\/a>] James White pontificated in a post of his entitled, \u201cT4G, Sole Authority, and Church Tradition\u201d<\/a> (4-12-12):<\/p>\n \u00a0I must disagree with Mr. [C. Michael] Patton at a very important point in his discussion. He wrote in his article,<\/span><\/p>\n Without tradition being an authority we would not even have the Scriptures themselves, as it is only through tradition that we know what Scripture is actually Scripture. The Scriptures have no place where there is an inspired list telling us which books belong in the Scripture (we call this the \u201ccanon\u201d of Scripture). It is through the traditions of the church that we know which books are the final authority. Therefore, tradition must be an authority to some degree.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n I would like to suggest to Mr. Patton that at this point he has, in fact, fundamentally compromised on the doctrine of\u00a0sola scriptura.<\/i>\u00a0Or at the very least, he has put himself in a position where he could never defend his doctrine of\u00a0sola scriptura<\/i>\u00a0against a sharp critic of his position. I invested a fair amount of space in my book,\u00a0Scripture Alone<\/i>, discussing the issue of the canon of Scripture. I suggested that the common approach of defining the canon on a merely historical basis misses the fundamentally theological nature of the canon itself. I pointed out that the canon is a necessary artifact of the act of inspiration. The canon exists of necessity. Since God inspired some books but not all books, that means a canon exists\u00a0de facto<\/i>. God knows the canon infallibly because God knows his own actions infallibly. Since God has a purpose for the church to know the extent of His act of inspiration in providing to us the Scriptures, then God will expand the necessary effort to make sure that the church receives the blessing and gift he has given to us in Scripture, and that includes having a sufficient knowledge of the canon to accomplish His ends. But Mr. Patton identifies the canon as a \u201ctradition of the church.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n White stumbles badly on this, and falls into vicious self-contradiction, in at least four different ways, as I shall now proceed to demonstrate. I have maintained that this is inevitable for any<\/em> Protestant trying to defend the biblical canon minus the Catholic Church, because it\u2019s a fundamentally flawed position, and no one can make a silk purse out of a sow\u2019s ear, as the old saying goes.<\/p>\n 1) Semantics<\/strong>\u00a0\/ Tradition the \u201cDirty\u201d Word<\/strong> White plays games with the word \u201ctradition.\u201d C. Michael Patton (an ecumenical Protestant with whom I had several friendly dialogues) is honest enough to admit the obvious: sacred, apostolic tradition was indeed necessary in order for the proclamation of the biblical canon to be made in the first place. White doesn\u2019t like the word, because it sounds so \u201cCatholic\u201d (even though it is eminently biblical<\/a> as well), so he comes up with this notion of \u201cthe church . . .\u00a0having a sufficient knowledge of the canon.\u201d Nice try, bishop, but ultimately silly and sophistical: a distinction without a difference.<\/span><\/p>\n 2) Which<\/em> \u201cchurch\u201d?<\/strong> The question also immediately becomes, \u201cwhat is this \u2018church\u2019 that White refers to?\u201d Of course, it is the good ol\u2019 Catholic Church:<\/p>\n Pope Innocent I concurred with and sanctioned the canonical ruling of the councils (in 393 and 397) of Hippo and Carthage (Letter to Exsuperius, Bishop of Toulouse<\/i>) in 405. He also reiterated this in 414.\u00a0Carthage and Hippo were preceded by a Roman Council (382) of identical opinion, and were further ratified by Pope Gelasius I in 495, as well as the 6th Council of Carthage in 419.<\/p>\n The Protestant reference work,\u00a0Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church<\/i>\u00a0(2nd edition, edited by F. L. Cross & E. A. Livingstone, Oxford University Press, 1983, 232) states:<\/p>\n The list from 382 \u2014 which\u00a0The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church<\/i>\u00a0deemed as \u201cidentical with the list given at Trent\u201d includes: Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Tobit, Judith, and 1 and 2 Maccabees. Baruch was included as part of Jeremiah, as in St. Athanasius\u2019 list of 15 years previously. This is indeed identical with the Tridentine list, and comprises the seven \u201cextra\u201d deuterocanonical books in Catholic Bibles which Protestants reject from the canon as \u201capocryphal.\u201d Nevertheless, there they are in the Council of 382.<\/p>\n The Council of Carthage accepted the same list, as detailed by Brooke Foss Westcott (A General Survey of the History of the Canon of the New Testament<\/i>, Grand Rapids, Michigan Baker Book House, 1980, reprinted from 6th edition of 1889, 440).<\/p>\n Thus, this same \u2018church\u2019 (which White manages to somehow rationalize to himself \u2014 in classic Baptist fashion \u2014 is not<\/em> the historic Catholic<\/em> Church), clearly is<\/em> the Catholic Church, complete with popes (Innocent I, Gelasius I, and Damasus) and a crucial council in Rome in 382, which somehow inexplicably produced \u2014 verified by two Protestant scholarly reference works \u2014 the same scriptural canon that the Council of Trent merely reiterated<\/em> nearly 1200 years later. All this, but of course we \u201cknow\u201d that there was no Catholic Church or no \u201ctradition\u201d involved: simply because we either \u201ccan\u2019t have<\/em>\u201d that or can\u2019t bear<\/em> the horrific thought even for a second<\/em>.<\/p>\n 3) Dreaded \u201cApocrypha\u201d<\/strong> Note that the deuterocanonical books were included in this list of books that also managed to correctly determine the 39 canonical books that Catholics and Protestants agree with. This creates a huge problem in and of itself. If indeed God the Holy Spirit was guiding the [Catholic] Church to the true tradition of the true canon and recognition of what was already inspired and determined by God (which books were in it), to (how did he put it again?) \u201csufficient knowledge of the canon,\u201d then how in the world can this proclaimed canon have books in it that White and Protestants do not<\/em> think are canonical? And of course, these books were arbitrarily removed after the \u201cReformation\u201d (for one reason, because they clearly taught prayer for the dead and purgatory) with supposed Protestant \u201cauthority\u201d: which truly is none at all in and of itself, because it\u2019s not apostolic, with valid ordination.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n 4) Where<\/em> in the Bible?<\/strong>\u00a0This is where it really gets fun and interesting. Where is this unique, One<\/strong>-Time <\/em>[and one time only<\/em>!!!] Infallible Guidance<\/em> of the [Catholic] Church, so that the \u201cchurch\u2019 is able to come up with the biblical canon [minus, alas, the \u201casterisk\u201d of seven mistaken ones] in the Bible? After all, that is (as White explained earlier in his paper), \u201cthe sole infallible rule of faith for the<\/span> [Catholic] church.\u201d<\/span> Therefore, for this view he is expressing now to be infallible and unquestionable, it necessarily<\/em> (as a purely logical matter) has to be found in that same Scripture. Otherwise, it collapses into a dreaded \u201cunbiblical\u201d \/ \u201cextrabiblical\u201d tradition [of men]: which White and Protestants detest. So where is<\/em> it? To refresh the reader\u2019s memory, here again is White\u2019s claim:<\/p>\n God knows the canon infallibly because God knows his own actions infallibly. Since God has a purpose for the church to know the extent of His act of inspiration in providing to us the Scriptures, then God will expand the necessary effort to make sure that the church receives the blessing and gift he has given to us in Scripture, and that includes having a sufficient knowledge of the canon to accomplish His ends.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n That idea or belief has to be found in Scripture<\/em><\/strong>, in order for White\u2019s position to be internally consistent and coherent. But (I\u2019ll save you the trouble of looking), it ain\u2019t there<\/strong><\/em>, folks. Not only is a bald list of the canonical books not present in the Bible (tables of contents were added later), but there is also found\u00a0nowher<\/em>e this idea that God would guide His Church only so far for it to produce the list of what already was intrinsically the inspired books of Holy Scripture. Then (so the mythology proceeds) everything would reduce to the default position of sola Scriptura<\/em> as a rule of faith, and the \u2018church\u2019 would again descend to fallibility: in which state it has resided ever since (i.e., in the ultimately ahistorical fantasy land between every Protestant\u2019s ears).<\/p>\n That leaves White with an arbitrary [Protestant] tradition of men, which is entirely, utterly unbiblical and extrabiblical, just as sola Scriptura<\/em> itself is, which means in turn that it is a viciously self-refuting<\/em> (not to mention, also highly embarrassing<\/em>) anomaly in his stated position.<\/p>\n There is no way out of this dilemma for the Protestant who accepts sola Scriptura<\/em> as his or her rule of faith. None, zero, zip, nada, zilch . . . The honest Protestant will have to acknowledge and face this at some point. C. Michael Patton (and even one of White\u2019s heroes, the late R. C. Sproul) admirably did so. James White did not and could<\/em> not (because I think he instinctively knows that this would be the slow death of his overall position), and so he descended to silly sophistical game-playing (hoping his readers wouldn\u2019t notice). We see the result, and it\u2019s not pretty. We know this because of how he describes Mr. Patton\u2019s stated position:<\/p>\n I would like to suggest to Mr. Patton that at this point he has, in fact, fundamentally compromised on the doctrine of\u00a0sola scriptura.<\/i>\u00a0Or at the very least, he has put himself in a position where he could never defend his doctrine of\u00a0sola scriptura<\/i>\u00a0against a sharp critic of his position. . . .\u00a0It is another example of how many of those who are in the forefront of evangelical proclamation today have not seriously engaged Roman Catholic apologetics especially on the issue of authority.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n White is quite sharp enough to know that if he called a spade a spade here, that he would be in the same exact epistemological \/ ecclesiological boat that Patton is in, and so \u2014 knowing that \u2014 he chose the usual route of sophistry and obscurantism and obfuscation, over simple intellectual and historical honesty, including (with high irony) even an honest consideration of what Holy Scripture teaches about authority (which it gives to Church and Tradition as well as to itself, in a harmonious \u201cthree-legged stool\u201d scenario).<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Photo credit:\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>Stewart Black<\/a>\u00a0(11-15-16) [Flickr<\/a> \/ CC BY 2.0<\/a> license]<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Reformed Baptist anti-Catholic apologist Bishop \u201cDr.\u201d [???] James White pontificated in a post of his entitled, \u201cT4G, Sole Authority, and Church Tradition\u201d (4-12-12): \u00a0I must disagree with Mr. [C. Michael] Patton at a very important point in his discussion. He wrote in his article, Without tradition being an authority we would not even have the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2331,"featured_media":40869,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,1068],"tags":[779,616,482,33,535,1877,2366,933,32,536,35,47],"class_list":["post-40866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bible-and-tradition","category-james-white","tag-apostolic-tradition","tag-canon-of-scripture","tag-canon-of-the-bible","tag-christian-authority","tag-holy-bible","tag-infallible-authority","tag-james-white","tag-oral-tradition","tag-rule-of-faith","tag-sacred-scripture","tag-scripture-alone","tag-sola-scriptura"],"yoast_head":"\nA council probably held at Rome in 382 under St. Damasus gave a complete list of the canonical books of both the Old Testament and the New Testament (also known as the \u2018Gelasian Decree\u2019 because it was reproduced by Gelasius in 495), which is identical with the list given at Trent.<\/ul>\n
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