James White Agonistes

The Dividing Line of May 21, 2013, found here, is all the evidence I need—in sooth, all the evidence you need too, dear reader—that Dr.* James White (Th.D., D.Min., etc., etc.), of Alpha & Omega Sophistries, is so predisposed to see lack of intelligence, seriousness, credibility (fill in your noun of choice) in Catholic apologists, that he will let himself be played on like a pipe. No need for Catholic apologists who engage the good Dr.* White to wait for him to invent straw men. You can hand him one of your own making: He will grab it, tear it to shreds, stomp upon it, and cackle in triumph. Meanwhile, you can proceed with your serious apologetic, and he won’t bother to touch it. To expose a fool, he doth become a fool.

Showing How the Author Had More Success Than Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

Perpend: Long before I wrote this article, and this one, I had the suspicion that Dr.* White could be incited to rip up a straw man in like fashion; that he could, by subterfuge and bluff, be fooled into attacking a joke (as though it were serious) and leaving the real argument unanswered. I decided to put that suspicion to the test.

The background to all this is that, for lo these many years, Dr.* White (Th.D., D.Min., etc., etc.) has more than proven that you can worry him all-out barmy with any the most whispering mention of the “33,000 Protestant sects.” Or invent the number of your choice; how oft he hath fixated on the number and overlooked the serious argument behind the number! Sooth, ’twas not all that long ago, dear reader, he perched behind his Dividing Line microphone to caw at Michael Voris for citing a figure of 40,000 sects. “Inflation!” quoth Dr.* White.

Thus made I query, whether, if I cited some fantastical number, cudgeled out of the ether, I could madden him to a like degree of spleen? That might be fun:

So, Dr.* White, did you know that there are 725,403 Protestant sects? And all of them due to sola scriptura!

Then thought I aright, thus: No, best not to make the figure too high; else, it shall be obvious you’re trying to needle him. Inflate the number, but only enough to achieve the spleen while still sounding as though you may be serious. Yes. But how to do that?

Anon I hit upon the way; to wit: to figure out what the number of Protestant sects would be today, given the standard mathematical formula for exponential growth. I let the math create the joke for me. And I decided to write it all out in such a way as to combine: (1) playing it straight; (2) hamming it up just enough to make it obvious that I was joking—obvious, I aver, to anyone not temperamentally predisposed to expect silliness from Catholics. (Sooth, my good Baptist asperser, to include a picture of Doctor Emmett Brown? does not that scream parody, McFly? anybody home, McFly? think, McFly, think!) (3) shamelessly giving the joke away—using such expressions as “exaggeration” and “parody” (in the very text of the selfsame article, no less), posting it under “humor,” including a note in my sidebar to indicate that I am “often known to wander into satire and parody without warning.”

My guess—a correct one, it turned out—was that Dr.* White wouldn’t notice these giveaways. A clever pickpocket can pick your pocket in front of heaven and earth and never be seen by eye of man. Sometimes the best way to pick someone’s pocket is to do so boldly and in plain view of all. (And no, I’ve never picked anyone’s pocket. But I have sometimes played April Fools jokes in May.)

Meanwhile, I decided to include, around the joke, a serious exegetical argument involving St. Paul’s words in Ephesians that there is “one church.” I even included a dense passage analyzing the Greek, te ekklesia, etis esten to soma (Eph. 1-22-23) [1]. My guess was that Dr.* White (Th.D., D.Min., etc., etc.) would be so distracted by the joke—which he would take seriously—that he wouldn’t bother to address himself to the real argument; that he wouldn’t bother to notice his beloved Greek language; that he wouldn’t bother to do any exegesis of the passage from Ephesians I mentioned; that he wouldn’t bother trying to reconcile Paul’s words with the scandal of sectarianism (regardless the true number of Protestant sects).

No. Instead, he would spend the entire time—so I guessed—cawing and fulminating about how lacking in reason Catholic apologists (specifically, myself) are.

Easier to be Played on Than a Pipe

So what did Dr.* White say on the Dividing Line? Did my guesses prove accurate?  Did I pluck out the heart of his mystery? Did I sound him from his lowest note to the top of his compass?

Dear reader, perpend:

I.  He began by describing me as a convert to “Romanism,” hence displaying—from this absurdly loaded if yawningly overused word—the anti-Catholic bias that informs everything he says.

II.  Next, he declared that I—I, Scott Eric Alt—have “decided” (motu proprio, ’parently) that there are 48,500 sects. Hence making it clear how far the joke had flown over his vast and substantial pate.

III.  He described his own “refutation” of the now-conservative and laughingly outdated 33,000 figure as “absolutely thorough”—just to make it clear that, while Romanists, papists, and mackerel-snappers are irrational, no such irrationality enters the vast and learned brain of Dr.* White (Th.D., D.Min., etc., etc.). Not in the least. He noted that I had “dismissed” his refutation, though he failed to mention the basis upon which I did so. (To convey a crafted impression of whimsical, out-of-hand breeziness on my part.)

IV.  He noted—an evident reference to my joke, which he took seriously—that such a “mindset in service of Rome is cultic.

“It’s cultic, Mr. Alt!” he cawed.

Yes, it appeareth, Dr.* White hath now decided that jokes are “cultic.” No doubt indeed they are graven images! Between you and me, I’m confident they’re positively Bacchanalian! In a less dangerous century, Alexander Hislop exposed the pagan origin of jokes, but unfortunately we are backsliding now, and the papists are growing bold.

“There is no reasoning with this!” Dr.* White sputtered in a round of liquid bile. “It’s absurd on a level that is beyond respectability!”

Yes, it appeareth, Dr.* White hath now decided that “respectable” people don’t make jokes. Jokes are beneath the Bunyanesque intellectual stature of Dr.* James Robert White (Th.D., D.Min., etc., etc.).

V.  He said, sarcastically, that “All those Mormon groups are a part of the 33,000!” Dear reader, I confess I’ve searched in vain through both my earlier blog articles for even the smallest passing reference to Mormonism or Joseph Smith.  This would appear to be an obsession on the part of Dr.* White, which he hath a need to project onto me.

(Speaking of Mormonism, sidekick Rich Pierce guffawed at the notion that that worthy religion has any concern at all for sola scriptura. What neither he nor Dr.* White pointed out, however, was that, in my article, I specifically attributed the 33,000 sects to private judgment, not to sola scriptura. I went out of my way to point that out. Dr.* White and Mr. Pierce went out of their way to ignore it and to attribute to me an argument that I specifically denied.)

Dr.* White proceeded to discuss the “mathematical formula” (a discovery of pure genius on my part, incidentally), calling it “foolishness” that’s not worth responding to. (Even though that particular piece of tongue-in-cheek fun was the only thing that Dr.* White bothered to respond to.)

VI. He said, of me, “I don’t think he mentioned anywhere that this same source [the World Christian Encyclopedia] listed many Roman Catholic [sects].”

Truth be told, Dr.* White (as it must and shall), I did. After giving a precise breakdown of where the 33,000 sects come from (you can check it out yourself, if you dare), here is what I said:

Totaled, this gives us a num­ber of approx­i­mately 33,791. Remov­ing “Ortho­dox” and “Roman Catholic” from the list, we are left with a total of 32,768.

Certain it is that this distinction between 33,791 and 32,768 makes all the difference in the world to the credibility of Protestantism. Jeepers creepers, a full three percent difference, let me rub my eyes! But I imagine if Dr.* White was not going to bother to read what I wrote all that carefully, it is not much of a stretch to speculate that he wouldn’t notice that the “formula” and the 48,500 figure were tongue-in-cheek [2]. What does it say—to any reasonable person—that Dr.* White would attempt to refute an article that he made such a half-Equus africanus asinus effort to read in the first place?

VII. He, Dr.* White, referred bitingly to the “wide-eyed, I’m a convert” notion that there’s “only one church.” Prithee count St. Paul in with this same “wide-eyed, I’m a convert,” “mind-numbed zombie approach” that Dr.* White “doesn’t respect,” since it was Paul who first said there is only one Church (Eph. 4:4) [3]. (But Dr.* White doesn’t mention that part of my article.)

“I would rather,” Dr.* White said, “have someone who engages in thought.” Yes, it appeareth, Dr.* White hath now decided that you can’t engage in thought and parody at the same time. Parody is an existentially thoughtless thing to do, in the large-minded opinion of Dr.* White (Th.D., D.Min., etc., etc.).

VIII. He asked “on what logical level” I would assume that there has been a “constant increase” in Protestant sects, since some Protestant churches are closing. (The cells it takes to figure that one out.)

But forsooth, Dr.* White, on no logical level at all. It was a joke—a joke you missed in your red hot scarlet feverish desire to prove yet another Catholic apologist ridiculous.

I would, however, invert the question on you: On what logical level would you assume that, just because a few Protestant churches here and there are closing, there hasn’t nevertheless been a net increase in sects? On what logical level would you turn an anecdotal observation of your own into evidence of the duplicity of Catholic apologists?

And further, Dr.* White, you said that churches—mere buildings—are closing; you did not say that sects are dying off. Peradventure sects may become smaller in their respective size but greater in their overall number. Is there an inconsistency in that? Peradventure churches are closing because their members have all gone off into a score of schisms. Indeed, that would accord with the standard Catholic understanding of the eventual outcome of private judgment; namely, that everyone “becomes his own pope.” Everyone is his own church, a sect unto himself; and to discover how many Protestant sects there are, you wouldn’t need to go to any World Christian Encyclopedia but instead to the phone book. Just count all the names.

IX. He, Dr.* White, concluded, “This is absurd on a level that means there is no reason to ever talk about Scott Alt again. He has completely made himself unworthy of anyone’s even bothering. And yet this is what slavery to Rome does.” (Hence promoting me to the status of an archetype.)

Dear reader, imagine that! With nothing else to go on but a tongue-in-cheek section of a single blog article, which he misread stupidly, Dr.* White (Th.D., D.Min., etc., etc.) has taken upon himself the role of arbiter whether I’m worth “bothering” with or talking about. If I may make honest declaration here, I doubt whether Dr.* White has read enough of my blog articles, or taken the time to get to know enough of my background or history or reasons for converting (contra what he knee-jerkingly presumes them to be), to make any such judgment. His dense neurons are firing into air and assaulting the clouds. I have no evidence that Dr.* White has bothered to read even the very few remarks I’ve made about my conversion. The specifics and chronology of my conversion I have yet to write. (They are coming.)

He, Dr.* White, is all confidence and self-certainty, however, that I couldn’t possibly have had mature or decided or rational reasons for becoming Catholic; and his only evidence is a joke that he made no effort whatsoever to figure out actually was a joke. Who’s the dupe here?

And, Dr.* White, perpend, consider, ponder, and ruminate: Could I possibly have gotten an M.A. degree (from an accredited university), with a 3.69 GPA, by absurdity that’s not worth bothering with?

Meanwhile, does Dr.* White mention my discussion of Ephesians, or my analysis of the Greek? No.

Does he mention my discussion of Dave Armstrong and how no one should insist upon some specific figure of sects? No.

Does he mention my discussion of the scandal of sectarianism, which holds true however many sects there are? No.

Does he mention this passage at the end of my article:

Dr.* White seems to be oper­at­ing under the assump­tion that if he can just get the num­ber of Protes­tant sects low enough, he can sleep the sleep of the just. Con­trari­wise, some Catholic apol­o­gists seem to feel that the higher the num­ber, the greater the case against Protes­tantism they have. But the fact is, St. Paul says that there is one Church. Does it really mat­ter whether there are 49,000 sects, or 9000, or two?

No.

Does he mention anything, in fact, that I said or meant seriously? No.

He would rather let the whole world know that he is easier to be played on than a pipe.

The Calvinist Tweak

I know that Dr.* White has a great admiration for Rush Limbaugh. (A lover of fractals, he was in a similar way a lover of the Limbaugh tie collection.) Now, one of the things Mr. Limbaugh is very good at is what he calls the “media tweak.” He will say something that is wild exaggeration, wild parody, wild hyperbole—something he comes nowhere close to honestly believing—and yet his detractors will nevertheless take him seriously and become appalled. Why, how can Rush say such a ridiculous thing! Sometimes, they will call the show, outraged, and Rush will continue to play it straight, as though he really is serious. And that will lead to further outrage on the caller’s part. If you’ve ever watched the Dittocam, you can see the laughter and the joking in Rush’s eyes, and yet these things are utterly missed by those who are predisposed to think of Mr. Limbaugh as an extremist but haven’t taken the time to listen to the show all that often, if at all.

Dear reader, I pulled a Rush Limbaugh on Dr.* White. Call it the “Calvinist Tweak.”

There was a serious point to all of this, though: Catholic apologists are in one very important sense at a disadvantage when engaging Dr.* White. Before the first word has been uttered, Dr.* White already assumes the Catholic to be lacking in reason and rationality. That is particularly true about converts. My joke was meant to expose that bias and smug self-satisfaction on the part of Dr.* White. I decided to test whether I could say something wildly ridiculous, meant as a joke, and yet have Dr.* White believe that that’s really what I think.

The fact that I succeeded in doing so illustrates the bias of Dr.* White. He is not capable—not at the moment—of engaging Catholic apologists on a serious level, because he is too busy trying to make them look ridiculous.

In this case, I handed Dr.* White the “ridiculousness” like a head in a charger.

Now, when (and if) Dr.* White wishes to address himself to my serious discussion of Ephesians chapter 4 and the scandal of sectarianism—forget the numbers, let’s talk about the scandal—I’m ready to engage that discussion. If Dr.* White will let go of his need to think of those on the other side of the Tiber as just too silly and lacking in reason, then—and only then—we can have a serious discussion about the differences between “Rome” and “Geneva.”

Barring that, I shall continue along in defense of the Catholic Church without the need to bother with Dr.* White. And he can keep imagining he doesn’t need to bother with me.

Endnotes

[1] τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ, ἥτις ἐστὶν τὸ σῶμα.

[2] Couldn’t it even be said that they were a parody of Catholic attempts to exaggerate the number of sects? You’d think this would be a parody Dr.* James Robert White (Th.D., CES) would appreciate!

[3] ἓν σῶμα καὶ ἓν πνεῦμα, καθὼς καὶ ἐκλήθητε ἐν μιᾷ ἐλπίδι τῆς κλήσεως ὑμῶν· εἷς κύριος, μία πίστις, ἓν βάπτισμα· εἷς θεὸς καὶ πατὴρ πάντων, ὁ ἐπὶ πάντων καὶ διὰ πάντων καὶ ἐν πᾶσιν.

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