My Debate with James White - 12.12.13

THE DEBATE SUMMARY

By Christian J. Pinto

Well, the debate between myself and James White took place last night on the Fighting for the Faith radio program with Chris Rosebrough.  Planned months in advance, and preceded by controversy every step of the way (as everyone knows who has kept up with this issue), it all came down to just 90 minutes where we discussed Sinaiticus, Simonides, Tischendorf … and Jesuits.  For the record, I wish to say that Mr. Rosebrough was, overall, very considerate and handled the debate fairly.

In the immediate aftermath, it is interesting that most of White’s followers have been very reluctant to claim “victory” on his behalf – something they are known for doing.  While supportive of his effort, they seem to have generally cooled their typical insults against us.   Well, most of them anyway.  But we discovered the following Twitter exchange where Jim De Arras tweeted James White:

Jim De Arras@jmdearras2h: “I think you did yourself a disservice arguing with that moron.  He will declare victory and gain followers.”

It is important to acknowledge that Dr. White wrote back:

JamesWhite@DrOakley16892h: “Brethren, brother Pinto is no more of a moron than I am a Jesuit.  Let’s hold ourselves to a proper standard, shall we?”

I am certainly glad to see Dr. White make the effort to compel his supporters towards greater civility, but I can honestly say that after dealing with the Critical Text proponents for the past six months, they can be every bit as fanatical and unreasonable as any extremist on the Bible version issue.  Yet the above tweeter was concerned that our side would “declare victory and gain followers.”  Why?  Most likely because he realized that Dr. White simply had no salient arguments against the central issue, which was whether or not Constantine Simonides was telling the truth when he claimed to have authored Codex Sinaiticus in 1840.  

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Wisdom from Charles Spurgeon on Critics & the Bible

 “Believe in the inspiration of Scripture, and believe it in the most intense sense…. If you adopt theories which pare off a portion here, and deny authority to a passage there, you will at last have no inspiration left, worthy of the name.

“If this book be not infallible, where shall we find infallibility? We have given up the Pope, for he has blundered often and terribly; but we shall not set up instead of him a horde of little popelings fresh from college. Are these correctors of Scripture infallible? Is it certain that our Bibles are not right, but that the critics must be so?

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The Cris Putnam Review

A review of our film, Tares Among the Wheat was posted on LogosApologia.org by author, Cris Putnam.  He refers to the thesis of the film as A Conspiracy Without a Goal.   While we are not at all offended by the disagreement, we find a number of considerable problems with his arguments, which we present below.  Mr. Putnam writes that:

“The film is centered on the idea that Codex Sinaticus or ‘Sinai Bible’ was actually created as part of a Vatican conspiracy to undermine biblical inerrancy.”

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Dave Hunt on Codex Sinaiticus & Codex Vaticanus

With so much activity of late on the issue of the credibility of Codex Sinaiticus, and with it the Codex Vaticanus, we are thankful to have found two articles from the late Dave Hunt on the subject.  While Dave was certainly not "King James Only" with all that that label applies, he primarily used the KJV because he believed it represented the Majority Text for the Bible.  He also believed that the manuscripts used for the Critical Greek Text (i.e. Vaticanus & Sinaiticus) were badly corrupted.

Click here to read the first TBC article

Click here to read the second TBC article

Codex Sinaiticus: Weapon of the Higher Critics

Below is a link to a BBC documentary called "The Beauty of Books" that covers the history and influence of the Codex Sinaiticus, loosely referred to as the world's oldest Bible, but more specifically containing what is said to be the oldest complete copy of the New Testament.  This documentary reveals how the manuscript is used by the higher critics as a weapon against the Bible's inspiration and inerrancy.  Notice at the ending how Dr. Scot McKendrick from the British Library says that Sinaiticus is proof that the Bible was "evolving" in the fourth century, and so that should be "a caution to people about how they interpret and how they use this text." 

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