The following e-mail was sent to Ergun Caner, Emir Caner, Brent O’Donnell, Tom Ascol, and Rich Pierce at 3:28pm MST, June 13, 2006.
Greetings:
Allow me to state right up front that in light of the public nature of the debate and the issues that separate us, I will be posting all attempts at communication concurrently on my website.
On May 13th, 2006, I began adding Dr. O’Donnell’s e-mail address to the cc list of our communications. Since that time we have asked a number of direct questions of Dr. O’Donnell relating to the format that has been proposed by the Caners. We have asked for a bibliography of texts used at Liberty, and the rule book that Dr. O’Donnell would be using, so that we might be able to evaluate the format to see if it would provide sufficient interaction for a real debate to actually take place. And though my system has received return receipts from Dr. O’Donnell’s e-mail address for each of the e-mails sent to him, as of this date, a full month later, we have received no replies from Dr. O’Donnell.
I realize it is possible that there might be a few extreme reasons why Dr. O’Donnell has not engaged in any correspondence whatsoever on this issue in a full month now. It is possible there has been some tragedy in his family, a death or the like, that has taken him far away from any means of communication. It is possible he is in Nairobi doing missions work amongst tribal peoples where there is no electricity or access to the Internet. But barring these rather unlikely scenarios, it seems Dr. O’Donnell has simply chosen not to provide us with the kindness of even a short, “Busy until June X working on a book, won’t be able to respond till then…” type of e-mail.
This once again raises the very serious issue of Dr. O’Donnell’s willingness to function as moderator for this debate. Moderators must, by definition, be even handed and fair. Possibly the relationship that exists between Dr. O’Donnell and Dr. Ergun Caner, who is President of the Seminary, might be an insurmountable impediment to his taking on this role? Whatever the case may be, I simply cannot see any likely reason why our reasonable requests for a response from him on important issues would be met with silence for a full month. Could I ask for a response, please, as to why this is? And given that we have had to deal with the “silence” issue in the past, I will assume a lack of response by Tuesday, June 20th, is an indication that Dr. O’Donnell will not be working with us on this debate.
Thank you.
James>>>
Alpha and Omega Ministries is a Christian apologetics organization based in Phoenix, Arizona. James White, director, is a professor, having taught Greek, Systematic Theology, and various topics in the field of apologetics for numerous schools.