THE VATICAN IS NOT THE ONLY SITE
TO FOG
THE AIR WITH SMOKE [04/21/05]
This afternoon, I checked James White's
website where he writes blogs [website articles]
[http://www.aomin.org/index.php?itemid=386] to see if anyone had relayed my
recent email to him, and if he had perhaps reacted to it. There is now some sort
of "smoke" [White?] rising from his website chimney about the matter. Rome isn't
the only chimney that can fog "white" smoke into the air.
Brother James
has sometimes implied that he is a qualified debater, but if we must judge of
his abilities from the blogs he has written about issues I have raised both last
year and more recently, he still has some room for improvement.
It is not
the mark of an adept debater or polemist to attempt to discredit an adversary by
the use of misrepresentation. One only discredits himself by resorting to
diversionary ploys.
Brother James has discredited himself even in the
headline of his blog, erroneously stating that "Bob Ross Supports and Encourages
Anti-Lordship Viewpoint."
I will give Brother James or anyone else $100
for every statement I made in my recent email which "supports and encourages the
anti-lordship viewpoint."
"Lordship" was not even discussed in my email.
As a debater, James should have learned a long time ago that first-and-foremost
one is to deal with the "proposition," and not be guilty of what logicians call
"ignoratio elenchi." James was obviously simply trying to divert attention away
from the main issue which I raised in my email. In other words, he was merely
"fogging the air."
James also alleges >>Ol' Bob has earned his
right to sit around and call me a heretic and help out the non-Calvinistic Zane
Hodges style Arminians and their view of faith as intellectual assent that can
fail and never involves repentance.<<
Again, James can earn another
$100 if he will produce one word I said in my email which dealt with and "helped
out" the "view of faith" of Zane Hodges style Arminians. He simply sent more
smoke from his chimney by this remark.
James could have spent his time
and words much more appropriately if he had at least attempted to address the
issue about which I wrote, if he wanted to blog about it. I doubt that he would
have been able to blog better than his lame blog of a year ago, but at least he
would not have revealed that he has the inclination to "blog off into the wild
blue yonder" onto some other issue. This is the mark of a "novice," not of a
mature polemist.
Furthermore, Brother James professes to adhere to "1689
London Confession," but if and when he sets forth a view of the New Birth which
is consistent with this Confession, we will be among the first to congratulate
him, and will be happy to do so. The view he now advocates is more in line with
the Hardshell Baptist view of regeneration than with the London Confession.
Brother James also seems pleased to be identified with the non-creedal
view of regeneration advocated by Pedobaptists Louis Berkhof and R. C. Sproul,
men who also hold to the fantasy that infants are regenerated in fulfillment of
an alleged "covenant," their being the offspring of believers. James does not
seem to "cotton" to our suggestion that he "borrowed" his view on adult
regeneration from such sources, but I did not discern that he differs with them
other than on the "infant" regeneration issue.
At any rate, we hope James
can take these few observations to heart, and try to bring his blogging
practices more into line with what is legitimate in the field of controversy. --
Bob L. Ross
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