In 2011,
James R. White and Daniel O. McClellan had a blog exchange, initially on
whether "Mormonism" is "Christian" but also contemporary
biblical scholarship. Jaxon Washburn has done a great service by bringing the
entire exchange together at James
White and Daniel McClellan: The Challenge of Mormon Academia for Evangelical
Apologetics. As he has written in various forums introducing this page:
From April 8th, 2011 to May 16th, 2011,
Reformed Christian apologist, James R. White, and Latter-day Saint academic,
Daniel O. McClellan, penned a series of written exchanges on the subject of
Mormonism. While not formally structured in any moderated sense and taking
place close to a decade ago, I believe that this lengthy debate illuminates
multiple patterns—originally identified by Mosser and Owen in 1998—in which
contemporary Evangelical apologetics fails to effectively respond to Mormon
academic thought.
Though of course not representative of all
Evangelical apologetic treatments of Mormonism, James White typifies an
all-too-common and none-too-convincing form of Evangelical counter-cult
outreach toward Latter-day Saints; one that has become increasingly
insufficient in the face of Mormon scholarship.
I invite you to see for yourself what I mean.
In your opinion, who walked away with the more compelling argument here?
For me,
there is no question: White embarrassed himself, just as he (and Jeff Durbin)
embarrassed themselves when they tried to respond to my article Refuting
Jeff Durbin on "Mormonism"
