"For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. This is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day." (John 6:38-39)

"My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand." (John 10:27-28)

That's why white doesn't post the answers to my questions on his blog. Answer the questions in the threads: Is Jesus Christ God, is the Holy Spirit God etc. He can't answer those questions because he thinks he is a god. He is a pretex evangelist. Any obedient Catholic in this forum can defeat James White in a debate using the Catechism. James White IS a straw man with no moral courage.

Yeah...I read it. It kinda' feels like being called out by Jack Chick. If I'm not with my wife in the delivery room (which is a distinct possibility), I may indeed give him a call. I'll probably listen (at least for a bit), but if he's too freaky-zealous I'm not going to "poke a rabid dog with a stick". That's just plain silly, and I'm not going to present an occasion of sin for either of us. If he doesn't act like a humble servant of God, I see no reason why I should encite him into acting even more haughty or beligerant. If his debates are any indication of how he conducts himself on the radio, my expectations are pretty low. If he has learned how to respect people, however, and treats others with Christian charity and humility, I see no reason why I shouldn't call in.

Funny. I read in the past that White doesn’t believe that K. Keating won’t debate him because he (Keating) says that he is too busy with other aspects of his apostolate. However, he expects everyone to take his word for the reason that he won’t debate Sungenis. He says something like Sungenis is not mainstream enough. Then he (White) debates someone like Rutland. I have asked in this forum who Rutland is and no one can (or hasn’t) told me. He is apparently unknown to most if not all folks here. I never heard of him before But I’m thinking that there aren’t many here who do not know who Sungenis is. Did you see the clips of the White/Rutland debate? Rutland may be a very good Catholic but he is not up to taking on the likes of White. Sungenis is. White is obviously afraid of losing. And he would.

After all...if James White converted to Catholicism....who would he debate? How would he earn a living?

In a state of fear and panic James White has begged me not to debate him on justification! He grovels asking that I pick any other topic but not THAT!

   Well, maybe that is overstating it. James wants to do another topic. He suggests Purgatory. Unfortunately, that is poor debate topic and it does not get to the heart of the matter.
   My areas of special interest is St. Paul and Justification. I know that area inside out. It is also the only thing that matters in a cath/prot debate. As Martin Luther stated the heresy of "justification by faith alone" (JBFA)is the doctrine upon which the Deformation stands or falls. If it can be shown that the prot doctrine of JBFA is false, then the whole prot system collapses and Catholicism remains standing triumphant. Purgatory is trivial by comparison and is indeed a derivative topic from Justifcation.
   This is a grudge match, James. We debated this topic before and you lost. You have written several books dealing with Justification. Why are you afraid to revisit the topic now? You should be able to do this one in your sleep.
   Puragatory is out. Our respective fans what to hear us do justification. We should give them what they want.

If someone does not hold fast to this unity of Peter, can he imagine that he still holds the faith? If he desert the chair of Peter upon whom the Church was built, can he still be confident that he is in the Church?”
St. Cyprian, Unity of the Catholic Church

Hi Gang,
I am getting a bit tired of James’ hysterics. If he wants to keep going postal about our debate, well let him. I have another debate in November that I must prepare for. When my kids were young and we put them to sleep they would cry in protest. We found the best way to handle it was just to let them cry. Goodnight James!
PAX CHRISTI
Bill

Dave's post makes two claims. One, James White did a, b, c, d, e, f-z14, and when these are linked to passing statements he made about Rutland ("Notice once again the 'poison the well' technique."), James is a hypocrite. I've never cared for this sort of argumentation, the hallmark of embittered spouses and certain political activists, storing up grievances and unloading them when opportune. These matters should be dealt with at the time or left alone; if you did try to resolve them and they were not met to your satisfaction, that doesn't make them relevant. For even if James really is the Pharisee of all Pharisees it doesn't negate his claims against Rutland. Jesus rebuked the Pharisees. He did not condone lying about them.
   The second claim is that James is boasting about the debate (with occasional, subsequent mention of Rutland perhaps doing the same). Dave links us to this as James's "post-debate" analysis. This is James's post-debate analysis. I attended the debate and James's speaking engagements in the days following. He was happy with the debate. The post Dave linked to re: Rutland was in response to Rutland's false claims about the debate, not to the debate's content. James's position has always been "that both sides should simply leave these judgments to the listeners (let their arguments speak for themselves)."
   If it was really "his ongoing goal, apparently, to make all Catholic dialogue opponents look as ridiculous as possible," why did James say he was happy with the debate? Why did he hold out hope as late as June 12th that Rutland would correct Sippo's errors?
   The "hand-shaking controversies" section is inane. I've attended 14 of James's debates. He is always courteous to his opponent and expects the same from his audience. This is one of the reasons he has a good relationship with Mitch Pacwa (last I checked, a Roman Catholic). He did not shake hands with anyone for the rest of the weekend. He even apologized for it last Sunday from the pulpit of a Baptist church. Baptists aren't RCs.
   Dave hopscotched through the interaction, picking out enough to justify another White-is-a-hypocrite conclusion ("if Rutland is guilty of these things, that it is nothing that White has not been doing himself for many years"). But those things that Dave calls "these things" were not the crux of the discussion. The issues prompting James's posts were Sippo's falsehoods and Rutland's eventual endorsement of them, nothing else.

   What James fails to mention these e-mails took place over a period of about thee years. White has used this same statement to claim that I “perused” Mr. Arnzin. We entered into a discussion about debating well before the 2004 Great Debate. The truth is that Mr. Arnzin approached me about the 2005 debate. ...
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17:02:00 - Category: Roman Catholicism - Link to this article -

Bill Rutland Tries to Provide Cover for Rome

06/13/2005 - James White

   Well, you have to give him some credit. Mr. Rutland did not wait a few months to make his views known, as some in the past have done, but chose to comment on the debate and to go ad-hominem within a few days, joining, it seems, the rest of the cyber-RC apologetics community in throwing sufficient dust in the air to keep the attention off of the real issues for a little while. Given that I am accused of any number of things by Mr. Rutland's post on the Catholic Answers Forums, allow me to once again set the record straight.

   Having just completed a debate (Great Debate X, 6/9/05) with Mr. White I feel that I have a unique prospective on the man as a debater. He is a very good debater and knows Catholicism as well as about any Catholic. The problem is that he has a hatred of the Church that borders on obsession.

   Notice once again the "poison the well" technique. I do not have to start off, "Mr. Rutland, who apostatized from his profession of faith only a few years ago, obviously hates his former faith." I would be more than happy to let anyone simply view the debate for themselves and see if someone is filled with "hate" or whatever. And isn't it odd that if a Roman Catholic is passionate, they "love the Church," but if a Protestant is passionate, they "hate the Church." The double standard, which we have documented for many years now, goes on. ...
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00:05:00 - Category: Roman Catholicism - Link to this article -

Art Sippo Lies About Thursday's Debate

06/12/2005 - James White

   I just read the following coming from Art Sippo's keyboard. I honestly hope Bill Rutland will write to him and rebuke him for posting such outrageous lies, I truly do. Sippo writes:

Sadly, Mr. Swan you are coming into the middle of a discussion about which you know nothing. I was privy to the pre-debate antics of Mr. White. He had kept the format of the debate secret until last week when Bill Rutland finally DEMANDED to know it. It was then that Mr. White dropped the bomb-shell on him that there would be short opening statements (I think it was like 10 or 15 minutes) followed by 90 minutes of interogation with 5 minute final statements.

   This is an outrageous lie. There is not a shred of truth in it, and I can document it. Sippo, of course, cannot, but documenting his outrageous claims has never been one of his strong points anyway.
   We have used the same format for debate for a number of years now. Bill Rutland wrote no less than six e-mails to Chris Arnzen, who arranges the Great Debate series, asking to participate. One would think that a person who wants to participate in the series would actually have taken the time to observe the most recent debates in the series itself. In any case, the entire outline of the debate, including the order of speaking, time frames, etc., sent to Mr. Rutland did not differ one iota from the time frames used by Gary Michuta and Mitchell Pacwa in the preceding two debates, and were almost identical to those used by Patrick Madrid (I recall some slight alteration of the time frames agreed to by both sides immediately before the debate in conference with Bill Shishko in the Madrid debate, though I do not recall the details). This alone exposes Sippo's lie (great secret when it has been used for years and video taped, isn't it?), but there is more. ...
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12:20:56 - Category: Roman Catholicism - Link to this article -

The Brave RC Apologists at Envoy

06/10/2005 - James White

   I was finishing up a few items on this "down day" after the debate (I am finally getting the hang of this: never schedule anything for the day after a debate---why did it take me 15 years to figure that out?) and getting ready to pack up and head down to New Jersey (Please, Lord, if you could, and I know this is a tall order, but, could I make it through the Belt Parkway and over the Verrazano Bridge without...You know...hitting an accident?) when all of a sudden this strange thought hit me: I wonder if anyone has commented on the debate over at the Envoy web board? I had not looked at the board since before leaving for Massachusetts, so I figured there would probably be something there, especially since Art Sippo struggles to go a day without posting something about how I fear him, etc. So I popped by. And guess what? Yeah, you guessed it.
   It is definitely ironic, less than twenty four hours after engaging in the tenth annual "Great Debate" on Long Island, (my 56th moderated, public debate, and my 34th against a Roman Catholic apologist) to read the words of folks who, though they have never met me (and, in my experience, have never attended a debate, or even taken the time to listen to one) know all about my very soul. For example, one kind lady, Betsy, writes, " James White is a liar, a coward AND a wimp." No, documentation did not follow. Does it ever? But one particular fellow, john6jmj (ironic for any Roman Catholic to make reference to John 6, when you think about it---and in last night's debate, Mr. Rutland refused to even touch the text of John 6:37, claiming we really can't know what the grammar means because, he said, God transcends time!), really got on a tear because Sippo has said he has had a standing challenge for me to debate him since 1991 (the date of our encounter in Toledo, the one where he demonstrated that in public he then had the behavioral standards of a ten year old). So he's jumping up and down and is all excited, and writes, "Patrick, all I hear about is how great James White is. Now the truth comes out. Sounds to me like Dr. Sippo is ready to go." I wonder where he hears that? Then he starts losing control: ...
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19:44:51 - Category: Roman Catholicism - Link to this article -

A Quick Note on Last Night's Debate

06/10/2005 - James White

   Lord willing, as you read this, I am sleeping away. But before I hit the hay at 3am eastern time, I just wanted to report briefly on the Great Debate X. I was tremendously happy with the results of the debate, both in terms of turnout and as far as the debate itself was concerned. I had hoped the gospel would be clearly proclaimed, and it was. I had hoped that the foundational incoherence of the Roman system would be seen, and it was. All in all, a very enjoyable and useful evening. Kudos to Rich Pierce, who spent 14 hours in the room setting up, recording, and breaking down equipment, and to the wonderful volunteers who helped man the book table and pack things up. Chris, Brian, and everyone else were super. A very profitable evening. The Lord truly blessed. And now...to sleep! :-)

00:10:56 - Category: Roman Catholicism - Link to this article -

From the Front Porch

06/09/2005 - James White

   While sitting on the front porch of a bed and breakfast in Mantova, Italy, I wrote (yes, with a pen...on a piece of paper...old school, I admit!) the following regarding tonight's debate. Please pray the gospel will be clearly heard tonight.

   It is an incontestable fact of Biblical revelation that the only normative means of forgiveness set forth in Scripture is through union with Christ in His substitutionary death upon Calvary's cross. And yet is it not the ultimate irony, the ultimate self-contradiction, that those who cry the loudest against God's sovereignty in the matter of personal salvation, who decry the great biblical truth of divine election, and who defend with every fiber the myth of human autonomy, are the very ones who would say that God would redeem men and women while leaving them unchanged, unregenerated, fully absorbed in their idolatrous worship, so that they awake in the after life to meet a God they have never known but will now ostensibly worship for eternity? And should it be said that they had in their ignorance been worshipping the true God all along, what a torturous manner of abusing language this is! God loves them enough to redeem them but not to send to them a Phillip? Surely God should have left the Ethiopian eunuch alone, for he was already one with a desire sufficient for salvation in Rome's modern view, but by sending Philip did God not risk the exercise of the eunuch's free will and the loss of his "saving ignorance"?

07:11:38 - Category: Roman Catholicism - Link to this article -

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