In my experience, most Evangelical critics
of the LDS Church are grossly ignorant, not just of the Bible (something
covered in great depth on this blog) but also the Book of Mormon and other
texts in the LDS canon, with Ron
Rhodes and Marian
Bodine being good examples of such.
In 1996, James White wrote an article,
"Of
Cities and Swords: The Impossible Task of Mormon apologetics," where
he revealed his lack of intellectual abilities, resulting in Matthew P. Roper
writing a scholarly rebuttal to White's ill-informed piece:
Matthew P. Roper, Review
of "Cities and Swords: The Impossible Task of Mormon Apologetics (FARMS Review of Books 9/1 [1997]):
146-58.
Indeed, White's article was so poorly
researched that Paul Owen and Carl Mosser wrote:
The article by James White, "Of Cities and Swords: The Impossible
Task of Mormon Apologetics," was an attempt to introduce evangelicals to
LDS apologetics, to the work of FARMS, and, in the process, critique the group.
This article failed on all three points. White's article does not mention a
single example of the literature we have presented in this paper. He does not
accurately describe the work of FARMS, or of LDS scholarship in general. He
gives his readers the mistaken impression that their research is not respected
in the broader academic community. We believe that we have demonstrated that
this is simply not the case. His attempted critique picks out two of the
weakest examples. Not only does he pick weak examples, he does not give even
these an adequate critique. This is nothing more than "straw man"
argumentation. (source)
To see White's poor grasp of biblical
exegesis, see my post, “James
White (and John Owen) on Hebrews 10:29,” for instance. At least White is
consistent in being a lousy researcher of both the Bible and the Book of
Mormon. It is really unfortunate that so many young Protestants I encounter
online think he is worthy of their respect and trust.
