his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit,
1 Peter 3:19-21 in which he went and preached to the spirits in prison, [20] who
formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. [21] Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,
are “sinful people, people with agendas, people who want to find something in the Bible that isn't really there.” And presumably many of those Protestants who reject adult
baptism or non-regenerative baptism think the same of White, since they accept the same principle of perspicuity of Scripture that he accepts. They must explain somehow why Protestants can't agree on such an important doctrine, given this “clearness” of Scripture. So they accuse others of blinding sinfulness, or they claim that baptism is merely a
“secondary issue,” upon which men can disagree, and that's fine and dandy, or else they start to question perspicuity itself. On page 92 of the same book, White writes:
Are we to believe that the Bible is so unclear and selfcontradictory that we cannot arrive at the truth through an honest, whole-hearted effort at examining its evidence? It seems that is what Rome is telling us. But because the Scriptures can be misused, it does not follow that they are insufficient to lead us to the truth . . . The reason that Rome tells us the Bible is insufficient, I believe, is so we will be convinced of Rome's ultimate authority and abandon the God-given standard of Scripture.
I don't have to believe this as a Catholic. I think Scripture is pretty clear (I've always found it to be so in my many biblical studies), but I also know from simple observation and knowledge of Church history that it isn't clear enough to bring men to agreement. White says that is because of sin and stupidity. Certainly those things are always potential factors. But I contend that the rampant disagreement is primarily because of a false rule of faith: sola Scriptura, a notion that excludes the binding authority of tradition and the Church, which entities produce the doctrinal unity that sola Scriptura has never, and can never produce.
“Rome” doesn't “tell us” what White thinks it tells us. What Catholics teach is that central authority and tradition is necessary for doctrinal unity; whether Scripture is “clear” or unclear. And we think Scripture itself teaches this (which is precisely why we believe it).
White thinks in dichotomous terms (a characteristic and widespread Protestant
shortcoming), so for him, to accept binding Church authority is to somehow “abandon the God-given standard of Scripture,” as if it were a zero-sum game where Scripture is the air in a glass and the Church is the water added to the glass: the more water
(“Church”) is added, the less Scripture there can be, so that a full glass of “the Church” leaves no room for the Bible at all as the “standard.” Of course, none of this is Catholic teaching, nor does it logically follow from the notion of Church authority. It's a false dilemma and false dichotomy. But a certain Protestant mindset and mentality cannot grasp this. Thus, White states in another book:
One will either subjugate tradition to Scripture (as the Reformers taught) or one will subjugate Scripture to tradition, and this is what we see in Roman Catholicism. The Pharisees, too, denied that they were in any way denigrating the authority of Scripture by
their adherence to the “traditions of their fathers.” But Jesus did not accept their claim. He knew better. He pointed out how their traditions destroyed the very purpose of God's law, allowing them to circumvent the clear teaching of the Word through the agency of their traditions . . . If Christ was right to condemn the Pharisees for their false traditions, then the traditions of Rome, too, must be condemned.
( Answers to Catholic Claims: A Discussion of Biblical Authority, Southbridge, Massachusetts: Crowne Publications, Inc., 1990, 56)
What about the many false traditions in Protestantism? We know for a fact that many many such false traditions exist because there are competing views which contradict each other. That entails (as a matter of logical necessity) that someone is wrong, and dead-wrong. They can't all be right. There can't be five true doctrines of baptism
simultaneously. Therefore, false “traditions of men” exist in Protestantism, and would be condemned by Jesus just as vigorously as supposed “false traditions” of Catholicism. But do we ever hear White railing against those? Of course not. He doesn't write books and articles about Martin Luther's grave errors (from his own point of view) or about those of, say. St. Augustine. Instead, he accepts the view (or at least his behavior
suggests this) that a lot of Christian doctrine is up for grabs and is “secondary.” He winks at the diversity, just as all Protestants must, faced with an opponent like the Catholic Church, which has at least preserved doctrinal unity (whether one agrees with the content of that unified doctrine or not).
. . . Next Mr. Palm says that since the Pharisees stood in this alleged line of
succession, their teaching deserved to be respected. The problem is, however, that the Lord Jesus often did not respect their teaching. The issue in Matthew 23 was not respect for the teaching of the Pharisees, but respect for the authority of the person who sat in Moses' seat. The two are not necessarily co-extensive, . . .
It's very difficult to argue that Jesus did not refer to their teaching, seeing that He said, “practice and observe whatever they tell you.” One would have to believe that this “whatever” included no doctrine. To make such an arbitrary distinction between “authority” and “teaching” is ludicrous (especially the more one knows about Jewish teaching methods and the history of Hebrew religion). If Jesus had said, rather: “practice and observe whatever I tell you,” or, “practice and observe whatever the apostles tell you,” White wouldn't have the slightest doubt about what was meant. He wouldn't try to limit the scope and extent of the authority.
and what is more, there is nothing in the passage that even begins to suggest that the Lord Jesus is making reference to the entire idea of extra-biblical tradition, authority, etc.
No? This is plainly false, by the following straightforward logic:
1. Jesus said of the Pharisees, “practice and observe whatever they tell you.”
2. But Pharisees believed in an authoritative oral tradition, which included some content not included in the Bible (but not necessarily contrary to biblical teaching).
3. Therefore, Jesus was giving sanction to the teaching authority of oral “extra-biblical” tradition.
He is saying to obey the authorities in the synagogue service.
No He isn't; He is saying, “practice and observe whatever they tell you.” That's not limited to the synagogue, much as White might wish it to be so, for his own purposes. To read into this the acceptance of an entire concept of oral revelation passed down through some “magisterium” is to be way beyond what is written.
It doesn't have to be “oral revelation”; only authoritative oral teaching that goes beyond the letter of Scripture. That is enough to be blatantly contrary to sola Scriptura.
Mr. Palm then says, “Jesus here draws on oral Tradition to uphold the legitimacy of this teaching office in Israel.” This is simply untrue. There is nothing in the passage that even makes reference to “oral Tradition.”
“Moses' Seat” was itself such a tradition, which was not in the Bible. The very term comes from oral tradition. The words “oral tradition” don't have to be there; the content is. This is a remarkably silly statement from a man as educated as White. Even he agrees that the notion of “Moses' Seat” is not found in the Old Testament, and that it comes from Jewish tradition.
This can only be identified as wishful thinking, based upon an anachronistic insertion of later developments back into the text.
If you have no case, grotesquely exaggerate the flaws in the opponent's position (or manufacture some) and hope that your readers (or jurors, as the case may be) will be fooled . . .
. . . Mr. Palm's attempt to use the chair of Moses suffers from the same problem as his first attempt: it assumes what it seeks to prove. It is circular, and does not provide anywhere near sufficient basis for its conclusions.
That is far more true of White's reply, as I think has been abundantly shown by now. Elsewhere in the article, he wrote:
engage in conflation and paraphrastic citation than we in our modern Western world . . . And why should we believe that Mr. Palm's leap into the undocumentable realm of “oral tradition” is any more solid than any of the suggestions that have been given for a Scriptural source? If anything could be drawn at all from the phrase h'rethen dia twn prophetwn, it would be that this is indeed a conflated citation, drawn from the plurality of the prophets rather than from a single prophet.
This exhibits White's peconceived notion that whatever is cited in some authoritative manner in the New Testament will somehow be shown to be from the Old Testament, even if this entails citing several passages together as one. Thus, he writes in one of his books:
Did Jesus give place to the Jewish leaders' claim that they were the true inheritors of the traditions of Moses? Did He for a second acquiesce to their claim of “interpretive
authority”? Surely not. He held those who claimed to “sit in the seat of Moses”
accountable to the words of Scripture, despite their claim to be in sole possession of the “correct interpretation.” . . . Jesus did not participate in their “veneration” of “tradition.” . . . just as He rebuked the elders of the people of Israel for making the word of God null and void through their supposedly authoritative traditions, He would say the same thing today to the Roman Catholic people . . . For Him, the Word was final, it was not lacking in anything.
(Answers to Catholic Claims, 30-32)
But that assumption is strictly arbitrary, of course. White admits that the New Testament writers drew from many sources (he could hardly deny this even if he wanted to), but of course he has to deny that any were authoritative. With Matthew 23:1-3 it is different because Jesus is sanctioning Pharisaical authority in a blanket sense. In so doing, He necessarily is giving legitimacy to oral tradition, for this is what the Pharisees believed. What is more, Mr. Palm slips into the common misrepresentation of sola scriptura that fills Roman Catholic apologetics works: the idea that sola scriptura, if it is true, must be normative during times of revelation.
Why would it not be? On what basis? The Bible says no more about this concept (exactly nothing) than it does about sola Scriptura itself. A false, novel principle is introduced with no biblical substantiation, then it is made the formal rule of faith of Protestantism, then it is argued that things were different during Bible times than they were now, with regard to the demands and nature of sola Scriptura. I just don't see any indication of that in Scripture.
biblical evidence. We all wait with baited breath. If he cannot do so, why does he believe this? He would have to do so on “extra-biblical” grounds, and to do that is to concede virtually his entire position, as any number of distinctive Catholic doctrines could be defended as also not explicitly biblical. But I maintain that there are no biblical proofs whatsoever for what White is contending (sola Scriptura and the idea that it only really starts applying after the Bible is complete). It's completely arbitrary, and yet another instance of begging the question and assuming what one is purporting to prove.
Sola scriptura refers to the functioning church, not to the church being founded and receiving revelation on a regular basis from living apostles.
I ask again, where is the support for this idea in Scripture itself?
There are no living apostles today, and revelation has ceased (even Rome agrees on this point). The issue now is, what is the infallible rule of faith? Does the Bible teach that that which is theopneustos (“God-breathed”) is sufficient to function as the regula fidei? Yes, it does. That is the issue.
But where?! The Bible is sufficient for salvation and teaching, but it doesn't follow from those truths, that the Church and tradition are not binding and authoritative. Sola
Scriptura is not so much false in what it asserts but in what it fails to assert, and what it positively excludes, contrary to Scripture.
In his book, Answers to Catholic Claims: A Discussion of Biblical Authority, White goes to even further extremes by coming to his conclusions for little reason other than his preconceived notions (more circular argumentation). Thus, he argues:
But what of 2 Timothy 2:2? Does this not indicate the existence of an oral teaching that could be passed down separately from the written record? . . .
. . . are we to believe that what Paul taught in the presence of many witnesses is different than what is contained in the pages of the New Testament? . . . Why should we limit what Timothy is to pass on to only those things that are not contained in the Bible, but instead make up some “traditions” that were to be entrusted to a particular class of individuals - those holding the “apostolic succession”? There is nothing to suggest that there was the slightest difference between what Paul had taught publicly and what he had written . . . Are we also to assume that there is more in the “oral teaching” than we have in the New Testament? Why? On what basis?
(Answers, 59-60) White repeatedly engages in massive question-begging:
But what of Acts 2:42? Does it not say that the early Church, long before the writing of any of the New Testament, was devoted to the apostles' teaching? Yes, it does say that.
But again, what does this have to do with the concept of the Bible being the sufficient rule of faith? We are not living in the time of the apostles, are we? New revelation is not being given right now, is it? . . . Then Acts speaks to us of a very unusual time, does it not? There is nothing in the fact that the early believers in Jerusalem devoted themselves to the Apostles' teaching that indicates that this teaching to which they devoted
themselves is other than what we have in the New Testament! Is there anything that would suggest that what the Apostles taught these early believers was different than what they taught believers later by epistle? Do we not have accounts of the early sermons in the book of Acts that tell us what the Apostles were teaching then? Do we find the Apostles saying “what we tell you now we will pass down only by mouth as a separate mode of revelation known as tradition, and later we will write down some other stuff that will become sacred Scripture”? Certainly not. The fact that the early believers were devoted to the Apostles' teaching should only strengthen our desire to also be devoted to the Apostles' teaching - as it is found in the sacred Scriptures.
(Answers, 40-41)
There is absolutely no indication whatsoever that there is any difference in content between the message preached to the Thessalonians and the one contained in the written epistle. The Roman Catholic Church has no basis in this passage [2
Thessalonians 2:15] at all to assert that the contents of these “traditions” differs [sic] in the slightest from what is contained in the New Testament. Are we to assume that when Paul proclaimed the Gospel that he said something different than when he wrote his epistles? No, both Peter and Paul mean the same thing when they speak of evangelizing. (Ibid., 61)
. . . for many Roman Catholic apologists, simply demonstrating that the apostles spoke something is enough to demonstrate that the written word is not sufficient. The
underlying assumption is that what was spoken has to contain information that is not in what was written . . . We point out that there is no basis for asserting that the spoken teachings of the apostles differed in any way from the written record they left to us. There is no evidence of a belief in a second “mode” of revelation in the New Testament - no acknowledgment of a revelation outside of that given by the Spirit in the Scriptures. (Ibid., 62)
White again engages in rhetorical irrelevancy by asking, “Do we find the Apostles saying 'what we tell you now we will pass down only by mouth as a separate mode of
revelation known as tradition,' . . . ?” What this has to do with anything, I have not the slightest idea. But I guess it helps White to bolster his extremely weak case -- with holes large enough for a truck to drive through --, to pretend that Catholics believe in sola traditio.
The transitional period to which White refers (“We are not living in the time of the apostles, are we? New revelation is not being given right now, is it?”, etc.), would
actually be far longer than the lifetime of the apostles. It would extend all the way to the end of the 4th century, when the canon of the Bible was fixed (including the so-called “Apocrypha,” which was included in Bibles all the way till the advent of Protestantism, when these books were “demoted” and first removed). So sola Scriptura could not be applied in the sense it is today, until almost 400 A. D., when Church authority and tradition set the limits of the canon. Does this not strike one as an exceptionally odd and weird point of view? The question of the canon itself is an extremely fascinating one and troublesome for sola Scriptura, but that is beyond our purview here.
One must also call attention to the fact that being separate from Scripture does not automatically mean “different from the teaching of Scripture.” There need not be any conflict. Catholics believe that Scripture and Tradition are “twin fonts of the one divine wellspring.” Sacred Tradition is not so much “different” from Scripture as it is “more.”