
We made it. I mean it’s not like we debated Bart Ehrman or like we debated in a South African Mosque, but we made it. On September 8th, James White spoke of our work here. I mean this is like a dream. I’ve always wanted to be on Dr. White’s Dividing Line. I mean, its like having the privilege of giving a TED Talk but without needing to talk. The always brilliant and ever trenchant James White offered a brief but brilliant and trenchant critique of some of our work here. What do you think his brilliance yielded for his listeners? What kind of conclusions did he come to do you think?
If you are Dividing Line fan this may be difficult to answer because of his blinding brilliance and awesomeness, but believe it or not James White deftly accused us of committing a category error of all things, indeed many category errors that astound. Honestly, when I heard this I was completely caught off guard. I immediately asked myself, “Has Dr. White ever accused someone of such an error? I’m not sure, but that accusation sounds really really scary so we must be like super wrong.” In the end though I could only conclude, “Wow, what a unique and thoughtful critique from such an astute scholar.”
But Dr. White wasn’t finished. He had another more penetrating piece of analysis. Again Dr. White with careful precision and balanced rhetoric compared some of our work to that of a 19th century Muslim apologetics book written by an Indian Muslim scholar. You might think White’s comparison here accounts to a guilt by association fallacy, but you’d be wrong. Dr. White is far too brilliant and trenchant to commit such logical fallacies.
Category errors and Muslims, whatever shall we do? At this very moment given such devastating critique I feel we may need to shut down StandardSacredText.com.
Furthermore, who I am to debate someone who debated Bart Ehrman? Who I am to debate someone who visited South Africa one time and debated in one of the Mosques in South Africa? My my, what incredible credentials. Not even the Apostle Peter attained to such credentials. Really, there is only one thing left for Dr. White to do given his obvious brilliance and penetrating observations and that is to debate Bart Ehrman IN a South African Mosque.
I appreciate the sarcasm. But it is true, it’s hard to listen to James White for more than 45 seconds and not hear him mention that he’s debated Bart Ehrman. I’ve listened to that “debate” a couple times. The outstanding characteristic of that debate was that White and Ehrman agreed on all points related to textual criticism; but Ehrman said he’s an unbeliever, White says he’s a believer. Other than those two contradictory assertions, they agreed on everything (except White’s understanding of some of the details of textual criticism turned out to be rather simplistic, which Ehrman had to educate him on, which White readily accepted). It was clear that the only reason for the debate was so that White could forever after claim he “debated” Bart Ehrman.
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