My Response to Dr. James White

My Raymond Brown Collection

Yesterday Dr. James White responded to my post: James White Is Extremely Dishonest And Should Not Be Taken Seriously. His response showed some anger but its understandable since I aggressively attacked his apologetic methodology against Catholicism. The same methodology used by Shabir Ally when criticizing Christianity as a whole.

The episode of the Dividing Line is here. The first ten minutes are Dr. White going after me.

As someone who has an interest in Islamic apologetics, readers of my blog know that I often post on issues related to Islam and the Quran. I have also responded to Jewish Rabbis and even Catholic apologists like Jimmy Akin. I also responded to Dr. White in another post, which can be found here.

http://allanruhl.com/dr-james-white-and-the-development-of-doctrine/

Now to respond to Dr. White. He claims that its fair game to quote these liberal scholars since Fr. Stravinskas went to Ivy League schools where they would have been studied. I should point out that all Ivy League schools were founded by Protestants and are now secular. In other words, they were never Catholic schools. However, there is a good chance that he interacted with the liberal works of Raymond Brown while at these schools.

James White claims that since Fr. Stravinskas studied these works at his school, they are fair game to quote. Does Dr. White really want to go down this road? Raymond Brown’s works are studied at Protestant seminaries throughout the western world. Some of his works are published by Yale University Press such as An Introduction To The New Testament and his two volume commentary The Gospel According to John. Raymond Brown also taught at Union Theological Seminary which is a Protestant school. Since Brown is highly studied in Protestant circles then by Dr. White’s standard’s Shabir Ally can quote him without hesitation. This is to say nothing about the other liberals who are taught and still teach at Protestant seminaries.

Dr. White often tells the story about how he had to study the works of ultra-liberal scholar Gerhard von Rad. Is it okay for a Muslim to quote von Rad to White? No, because conservative Catholics, Protestants and Muslims believe in the supernatural and quoting liberals who suspend their supernatural worldview(If they even had one to begin with) when studying scripture to prove a point in inconsistent.

It should be pointed out that even though Brown is popular in many Catholic circles, McBrien remains very controversial. He has never been appointed to the Pontifical Biblical Commission even though Brown was. Dr. White should also know that Pope Paul VI took away most of the authority of the Pontifical Biblical Commission in 1971 so their views don’t carry much weight in the Catholic Church today. It’s ironic that Raymond Brown was only appointed to the Pontifical Biblical Commission in 1972 when they didn’t carry much authority. Dr. White failed to point this out.

Dr. White also stopped reading my post part of the way through. I give another devastating example of him using Raymond Brown in a Shabir Ally-like manner. I also talk about how I recently had an opportunity to quote a well known liberal Jewish commentary to a Traditional Jew and did not out of consistency. Instead I used evidence consistent with both of our views. Hopefully people will read the post for themselves and draw their own conclusions.