My Debate with James White - 12.12.13
Thursday, December 12, 2013 at 3:57PM NOTRadio 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.