The art of Protestant-Catholic polemic, now in its fifth century, continues to thrive. One of the more recent installments, James R. White’s The Roman Catholic Controversy, is a tendentious, hard-nosed approach. His project is unfortunate, since White squanders a wonderful opportunity to give his Evangelical readership a long-needed appreciation for the depth and complexity of Roman Catholic thought. But White only reinforces a suspicion well entrenched amongst conservative Evangelicals.
An in-depth critique of the book would be too lengthy and repetitive, but it seems that comments on several key chapters are needed. In this review I shall critically analyze several of White's key arguments, apologizing at the onset: some of my comments, being concerned with argumentation, will be best understood by the one who has already read the book.
Chapter 4
White argues (successfully, I believe) that the belief "Rome is infallible" is a fallible belief. Any fallible belief is not certain, therefore the Catholic is not certain that they have an infallible authority. (50)
Realizing that this kind of argument could work against his own Protestant position (substitute "Scripture" for "Rome"), White suggests a way Evangelical theology does not fall to this same critique. He suggests that there are people who hold that certainty about all things is a necessary condition for certainty in any matter. But we never learn who these people are, and I fail to think of anyone who holds to this position (White spars against these same phantoms on p. 57).
Nevertheless, he treats this position as a viable and relevant objection. He suggests that certainty comes with true, not with exhaustive, knowledge. This move is a bit confusing, because it suggests that "true" is meaningfully ampliative to "knowledge." From Socrates onward, most epistemologists agree that while there may be false belief, there is no false knowledge because knowledge is a justified true belief (truth is already packed into the meaning of "knowledge"). Does White say anything more in "true knowledge" than he does in "knowledge"? If so, then he is using the term "knowledge" in an unusual way, one that he never explains. If not, then White’s position is merely that certainty comes with knowledge.
He then admits that his knowledge is limited and fallible (51). Thinking that somehow the limitedness of his knowledge has prompted the charge of fallibility, he defends the idea that he can have knowledge, even if it is limited.
But who is this supposed to convince? No one expects White’s knowledge to be unlimited. The question is this: How many of White’s beliefs really are knowledge? How many of his beliefs are justified and true? No one cares how limited they are. If White has no certain justification that "there is no other infallible rule of faith outside of Scripture" (62), then his belief is not certain, and therefore it is not knowledge. Furthermore, if he has no certain justification for his beliefs, then he has no certainty, even though he has previously claimed to have certainty (42-43). White fails in his principal task: to show how the Protestant axioms about Scripture and its authority are not fallible beliefs.
Chapter 5
Here White explains what Sola Scriptura is and is not. White’s analysis of 2 Tim. 3:14-17 best exemplifies his position. He claims the passage teaches the following:
White is lavish in his citations of lexical definitions of Greek words. In some situations certain Greek words can be translated by certain English words. But this does not mean that the use of a particular word connotes its alternative meanings, and White's reliance upon this technique is very unwarranted. So while it is interesting that exartizô can be rendered "sufficient" in some contexts, this nuance is negligible in the Timothean passage.
In White’s final passage in this chapter, he commits the "part to the whole" fallacy. He shows that Jesus rejected the tradition of the Pharisees, and takes this as license to reject tradition per se.
While this chapter afforded White the opportunity to cite numerous Biblical verses to articulate the Protestant view with all the clarity and transparency he claims for it, White has cited only the verse in Timothy. Unfortunately his explanation does violence to the Greek, and suggests that there is no Scriptural basis for sola scriptura.
Chapter 6
One would expect from a chapter titled, "The Thousand Traditions," an examination of the disparity of traditions within the Roman Catholic Church, particularly since White claims that Rome is more liable to varying interpretations of Scripture than Protestants are (71). Instead of an examination of interpretive anarchy in the Catholic Church, we are treated to something a bit more humdrum—the explication of two alternate Catholic ways of approaching the relationship between Scripture and Tradition. Instead of attempting to reconcile the two approaches as best as he could, White does all he can to set the two at odds. White fails to see the way the "partim-partim" party and the "material sufficiency" party use the same terms in different ways (not an illegitimate thing to do), and thereby fails to convey that identical Catholic teaching can be articulated in different ways.
White continues by asserting that the Church of the 4th century cannot "in any way be said to be identical to, or even closely related to, modern Roman Catholicism." (82) Yet he fails to report that Rome continues to hold nearly all of the dogma, liturgical practices, and hierarchical structures extant in the 4th century. St. Athanasius would far sooner recognize the Catholic mass (even post-Vatican II) than he would the worship services of Protestants.
More remarkable, White appears to infer that Ss. Basil, Athanasius, and Augustine held to Sola Scriptura (55, 84), ignoring key components of their thought. He claims that patristic theology on the atonement was at irreconcilable variance with itself, disregarding virtually all scholarship, which agrees that the Fathers’ thoughts, albeit complex, is easily reconciled with itself and with Biblical verses (see, for instance, Frances Young, "Atonement," in the Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, 2d ed., s.v.) (84).
Chapter 7
In this chapter White first articulates the Catholic argument against Protestant thought: If Sola Scriptura is true, then anyone who applies Sola Scriptura will be united. This is not the case, therefore Sola Scriptura is false.
Attempting to argue tu quoque, White tries to show that this argument undermines the Catholic position. He assumes that the acceptance of the Magisterium of the Church necessitates unity amongst Catholic believers. Since this does not happen, the Magisterium is false.
This is the first time in the book that White has attended to the belief of the average Catholic to demonstrate his claim. Before this, he carefully treated only those positions that he thinks best and most authoritatively articulate the dogma of the Catholic Church. The Catholic has every right to object: Unity of doctrine is not determined according to the many Catholics who presume to speak for their Church. It is determined according to the Magisterium. The Magisterium necessitates a unity of teaching. Therefore Catholics do not fall to this argument.
In his second defense, White attempts to show that Sola Scriptura ought not necessarily produce unity. After all, people could use a textbook mistakenly and produce a wide range of views on the material.
Unfortunately, White does not consider the problems of this analogy. If Sola Scriptura is correct and a wide variety of views come about, then is there not a problem in the methodology? If people misuse textbooks and derive peculiar views, then does it not seem that they are attempting to use the material apart from the disciplines that undergird the material? Is not the best corrective to the situation this, to introduce these people to the teachers and tradition around which the textbook was written? This is the kind of objection White should address. Instead he shifts his subject, absurdly claiming (without argument) that Catholic teaching entails that the Holy Spirit did a poor job of inspiring the Bible, and that the Bible is self-contradictory (91, 92).
Further on, White countenances the Catholic argument from the canon: Suppose the canon is infallibly correct. If so, it is because of some reason either in Scripture or not in Scripture. Since Scripture gives no reason for the canon, the reason must lie outside. But anything not in Scripture is not binding upon the Christian (p. 60). (or: Anything not in Scripture is fallible.) Therefore the canon is not binding upon the Christian (or is fallible).
To this, White replies that the argument depends upon viewing the canon as a separate entity from Scripture. (93) But does it? Simple substitute for "canon" something that has no separation, such as "every bit of Scripture." The argument remains valid.
White tries to answer the problem by explaining that the canon is "a function of Scripture, or, to be more specific, it is a result of the inspiration of Scripture itself." (93) This initial explanation, muddled at best, gets no better. We do not learn what a "function" is, nor do we learn how and where the inspiration of Scripture defined the canon. Historians recognize the contingency of history on the canon, but White does not give us the tools to reinterpret history in such a way that we can agree, "Canon is not made by man" (93) and, "is not defined by us." (94) Not only is he silent on the historical data, but he offers no support for these positions from the Bible itself. And yet White claims that his explanation of the canon has somehow undermined the Catholic argument. (94)
White claims that the Bible precedes the Church: Although the Church preceded the NT, the OT preceded the Church. But he fails to take into account the notion that the Church is the People of God—those people in covenant with God—and it includes people from the time of Adam. The Catholic position is that the People of God (i.e., Israel, before Christ; the Church, afterward), have always preceded and defined the canon. In fact, if White had realized this before, he would not have asked why Catholics no longer follow the lead of Jewish leadership. (94) In fact, they claim to do exactly that, since they claim to be the Jewish race, the offspring of Abraham.
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There are many other defects in White's book. Its saddest aspect is this: White gives his readers little reason to deeply engage Catholic thought. This kind of bad polemic complicates and prolongs the disputes. It teaches that humility is not a virtue. It assures those who regard Christians to be intolerant and unteachable that they are right. For shame.
Joel Kalvesmaki
Seattle, Washington
c. 1998, rev. 2003