Wednesday, April 27, 2016

James White vs Matthew Roper on the Book of Mormon

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.