James White’s (Non)Response to my Sola Scriptura Arguments

Welcome to the Council of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.

Have you ever waited for the big reveal at the end of a movie or a book that just never showed up? Disappointing, right? Well, that’s how I felt listening to James White’s recent response to my episode that focused on sola scriptura and the issue of the Greek word theopneustos, often translated as God breathed. That’s what we’ll be talking about today here on the Council of Trent podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers apologist Trent Horn.

So in my previous episode I showed that Protestant apologists over rely on the Greek word theopneustos in making the case for sola scriptura in 2 Timothy 3:16. They assume it just means God breathed when other scholars have argued it can mean God breathing. They also assume if something is called theopneustos in the Apostolic Period that proves it is a divinely established, infallible rule of faith. But that assumption doesn’t hold up when we see that the word was used in the early church to refer to any spiritually beneficial writing, and the Jews used it to refer to anything that was divinely life giving. For more on that, check out my previous episode.

To put it simply, Protestants overstate their case in taking the fact that scripture is called theopneustos in 2 Timothy 3:16 to reach to the conclusion that scripture is unique in its ability to be an infallible rule of faith. And for anything else to be an infallible rule of faith, it must also be theopneustos. That was the argument I made.

So I was very interested to see James White’s response to it. And I was underwhelmed. In fact, the primary purpose of today’s episode is not to teach you how to refute an argument against a faith. It is to teach you how to spot when someone is using a non argument. It’s practice to learn how to look past bluster and rhetoric and see that a person has not refuted your case. So let’s get started.

Now in the video, White says there are other arguments for sola scriptura besides 2 Timothy 3:16. 2 Peter 1:20, Matthew 22, all of that. And I’m happy to deal with those, especially if White and I get to formally engage each other. More on that later. But I was really eager to hear White’s reply to tell me how we know theopneustos has the meaning he and other Protestant apologists say it has. God breathed. Superior authority to all other means of transmitting doctrine. But he never says how we know the word has this meaning. Not once. Instead, White claims that the alternative understanding of theopneustos I put forward can be ignored because it comes from a liberal Protestant scholar.

I don’t know what this author’s background is. He doesn’t seem to be a Catholic. He seems to be somewhat of a progressive liberal Protestant of some type, but I can’t find any more information about him. It’s about all he is done.

I just find it very odd that a study like this. A sort of one-off, little bit out in the woods, brand new, hasn’t really been reviewed, hasn’t made much of a splash. I wouldn’t have heard about it if Trent Horn hadn’t mentioned it. And yet all of a sudden in the video we’re about to look at Trent Horn says, “This is the death knell of sola scriptura.”

Now in his reply, White accuses me of not having read certain things, like the Protestant Scholar B.B. Warfields’s original scholarship on theopneustos that was published in the early 20th century. But I don’t think White watched my whole episode or he didn’t watch it carefully. Because at the end of that episode I addressed these objections he has already made after the Ortlund debate. I said in that episode that my research on the meaning of the theopneustos does not come only from Poirier. It also comes from scholars like Lee Martin McDonald who notes how the word theopneustos was used in the early church. Poirier is also helpful in providing a different interpretation of the ancient Greek documents that Warfield claims support his understanding of the word. But the documents, like the Sibylline Oracles, they’re there for anyone to examine and draw their own conclusion. This isn’t just the work of one scholar.

Protestant scholar Lee Martin McDonald in his book the Biblical canon writes, “There are in fact many examples of non-canonical authors who claimed or were acknowledged by others to have been filled or inspired by the spirit in their speaking or writing. The point is that the scriptures were not the only ancient writings that were believed to be inspired by God. Generally speaking, in the early church the common word for inspiration, theopneustos, was used not only in reference to the scriptures, Old Testament or New Testament, but also of individuals who spoke or wrote the truth of God.”

In a chapter he wrote for the anthology The Canon Debate, McDonald says, “The ancient church did not limit inspiration to the scriptures or even to literature alone.”

I also point out in the episode that you can’t arrive at White’s definition of theopneustos by merely saying the component parts form God breathed. That’s the root fallacy. That’s like saying lady killer means female murderer. And even if it does mean God breathed, how does White know that it’s used in an exclusive sense to mean something unique about scripture and theopneustos could not be used for non-biblical writings as McDonald’s shows happened in the early church?

White’s response to my argument dealing with root fallacy is pure bluster. Watch this clip and try to find his argument.

Must have this meaning because that’s what theos and pneuma mean. But that is what the Protestant scholar D.A. Carson called the root fallacy.

Now what he then did here. Now come on, Trent. He’s not… These Protestants, they’re just… It’s because it’s theos and pneuma and that’s…

Trent, I don’t believe you’ve actually read Warfield. I have. Decades ago. And I can read all of his languages. I can make my way. I’ve taught Greek, Hebrew. I’ve taken Latin. I’m not bad with German. [foreign language 00:06:29]. But I can read Warfield. And I can analyze Warfield, just as I can analyze Poirier.

And so what you’re doing here is you’re doing the… I’m going to refute the simplistic arguments and gain myself some credibility in the process. And yet all the people that you showed. We all read Carson a long time ago. I was teaching my students the basics of what Carson was saying in exegetical fallacies in the ’90s. So don’t go there unless you were teaching these things in the ’90s in your Greek classes, which I don’t think you were. Next one.

Did you hear a refutation of my claim that theopneustos’ meaning cannot be derived solely from its parts? Me neither.

White also at one point in addressing my summary of the theopneustos argument for sola scriptura says that what he really means is that in order to be an infallible rule of faith, something must be divinely established by God and that only applies to scripture.

More importantly, these apologists claim that if something is not theopneustos, it cannot be an infallible rule of faith for the church.

What we’re saying, obviously, is that an infallible rule of the faith of the church must be that which is divine in origin. It has to have God’s authority.

Of course, I could say the church is an infallible rule of faith because Jesus established the church. The church has the authority to bind and loose on earth as in heaven. Scripture says the pillar and foundation of truth is the church of the living God. But I bet White would say, “Yeah, but the church still isn’t theopneustos.” Or theopneustos as White pronounces it. That’s why I included this clip in my previous video.

Is your tradition theopneustos? Is your church theopneustos?

So White’s argument really hinges on theopneustos having a very narrow definition that’s not supported by the biblical text or the early patristic sources. It’s up to White to show that theopneustos has the meaning he says it has, and he doesn’t do that. He doesn’t examine the other sources like I did to see how early Jews and Christians use the word. Theopneustos only appears once in scripture. So that makes it hard to use scripture to find out exactly what the word means since, as I noted in my previous episode, scholars disagree about whether it is the passive God breathed or the act of God breathing. Is scripture something that God breathes into or something God breathes out? And if God does breathe out scripture, well, is this the kind of thing that can also be described of other things that God breathes out? Like how the word was used to describe inspired writings in the early church?

It’s on the point about theopneustos only appearing once in scripture that White engages in an ad hominem argument against me by saying that I just don’t understand New Testament Koine Greek so I’m just not capable of making a correct analysis of the word or Poirier’s scholarship. Which, as I said, was not the only scholarship I relied on. White makes a lot of hay out of the fact that in a Twitter post recently, and in my video, I referred to a word that only appears once in the New Testament as a haplax legomenon instead of by the correct term hapax legomenon.

Before I show White’s reply, compare how White acts to me to how I acted when I rebutted Mike Winger several years ago. In that video I noted that Winger mispronounced the word papacy and called it papacy instead. So note my response to Winger.

And basically the papacy. It exists now. Jesus institutes it and it’s in this passage. And a minister of the sheep. But what you notice is this. Whatever Jesus is doing here, this says nothing about a papacy. You would never read this if you didn’t know about the papacy. You’d never read the Bible and come up with that doctrine. It just would never happen. It would never occur to you.

One point. As I mention in my previous videos, don’t give Pastor Mike a hard time about papacy. Saying papacy instead of papacy. I pronounce things differently than a lot of other people. So that’s not a big deal here.

Now compare my response to Winger, to White’s response to me misspeaking and saying haplax legomenon instead of hapax legomenon.

And so yes. Theopneustos is a hapax legomenon. But when I realized that Trent didn’t… Wasn’t even familiar with the terminology. What that tells me is we’re not talking about someone who is in a position to actually critically analyze what Poirier’s argument is. Because if you don’t know hapax legomenon, you probably don’t read Greek. And if you don’t read Greek, you’re probably not using the TLG CD-ROM or now TLG website. You’re probably not familiar with Thesaurus Linguae Graecae. You probably have not done semantic studies in lexicography semantic domains. Familiar with lexicons that are based upon semantic domains. Things like that. You’re not in a position to be analyzing what Poirier is saying.

I’m not sure what White means when he says I can’t read Greek. I have studied Attic and Koine Greek, so I certainly can read Greek that has not been transliterated into English. I don’t have every element of Greek vocabulary memorized. And hapax is not one of the 300 major words that make up the New Testament.

But you can see my ability to handle Greek in this debate that I have with Richard Carrier where I quote Galatians 1:19 in Greek from memory. I was debating Carrier on the question of whether Jesus ever existed. And in that debate, Carrier was arguing about a particular detail of the Greek construction of Galatians 1:19 to make the case that James was not actually an apostle and brother of the Lord, which would be weird because Carrier says Jesus never existed. He claims James is just a random Christian, a brother in the Lord. So it hinges on the Greek words that are used here in Galatians 1:19 to describe James. And so here’s how I engaged Carrier in that clip and reference the Greek construction in that verse.

My response to that is the peer reviewed article Richard is citing is just one that was written back in the ’70s. It’s one. But the major translations do translate the passage. In Greek, I believe it says [foreign language 00:13:05]. So that would be but other of the apostles because it’s in the genitive. Other of. And it’s not a genitive of comparison, which Richard might try to argue it’s other than. It’s others of the apostles. [foreign language 00:13:23]. I saw not. [foreign language 00:13:26]. Except, which is an exceptionary clause. [foreign language 00:13:30] James, the brother of the Lord. And I just don’t find Dr. Carrier’s explanation plausible.

Second, prior to White’s recording of his episode, I posted multiple times in response to him on social media that I used hapax legomenon correctly in my 2017 book, The Case for Catholicism. I wrote, “I’m not sure why I misremembered hapax as haplax, but I have used the word correctly before. Here are two examples from my 2017 book, The Case for Catholicism. I would attribute my recent mistake to a mental slip. We all have them.” And you can see in this picture here where I use them in my book.

Finally, White’s critique reveals a huge inconsistency on his part. White’s claim is that if you don’t have a reading proficiency in Greek, if you aren’t someone who has taught Greek in college level courses like he has, then you can’t make an argument on what a particular Greek word means or doesn’t mean.

Now here’s the problem. White has written a book called What Every Christian Needs to Know About the Quran. He’s also debated Muslim apologists. And in the course of those debates, White made arguments related to the meaning of the Quranic text. And yet I’m confident James White does not have a proficiency in medieval Arabic anywhere close to the proficiency he has in Greek. He certainly can’t teach the subject and he has admitted in debates with Muslims that he has had to struggle through Arabic.

Having read the Quran numerous times, having taken advantage of early Tafsir literature and doing my best to try to understand the Quran in its language, I’ve learned just enough Arabic. I hobble along on my Hebrew basically to read through sections of the Quran in Arabic. And one of the things that caught me, and I don’t know if you’ve… How much Arabic you’ve studied. And my Arabic has become horrifically rusty unfortunately. But I did have a tutor for a number of years.

But here’s the thing. You don’t have to have a reading proficiency of the Arabic in the Quran in order to engage Islam. It helps, but it’s not necessary. And you don’t need a reading proficiency of Greek to engage the biblical text. It helps if you can read Greek without having to consult a dictionary. But as long as you’re familiar with the rules of grammar, essential vocabulary, and relevant resources like lexicons, you can do very good apologetic work with the original biblical texts. What matters is if you get the material right, not whether you’ve reached a certain level of expertise.

And in fact, White never says where I or Poirier or McDonald or anyone else has gotten our analysis of theopneustos wrong. Even if the word should not be translated in the active sense like God breathing, White and other Protestant apologists assume that the word connotes a unique authority to scripture alone. But I’ve showed that this is not how the word was used in the early church. Here’s how I framed their argument.

One argument I hear from Protestant apologists is that scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith for the church because it’s ontologically unique. As far as we know.

Exactly. That’s me being referenced there and that’s great.

Actually, I was thinking of Gavin Ortlund when I said that.

That scripture is ontologically unique in its nature. It’s because of a simple reason. Scripture is ontologically unique.

Sorry, James. There’s a new sheriff in town who’s getting more of my attention lately.

But to continue. One other argument White raises is that if theopneustos has an active meaning of God breathing, and so it refers to scripture giving divine life to readers rather than being breathed out by God, then why doesn’t the church say this? Isn’t it the Magisterium’s job to determine what the Bible means? Others have said in comments to my previous episode that theopneustos means inspired in a unique sense for scripture because that’s how the church uses the word in its biblical translations or magisterial documents.

First, the church rarely officially defines what a word in scripture means. It officially teaches doctrine, but it rarely says this word in scripture means X. It does that for presbuteros in James 5 to say this refers to priests and not merely to elders in the community, for example. But it doesn’t officially define many of the words that are used in biblical translations. Scholars have freedom to figure that out.

Second, the meaning of theological terms changes over time. The church currently uses theopneustos in a narrow sense. Like translating it inspired or saying it only properly applies to scripture. Dei Verbum speaks of the apostolic preaching, which is expressed in a special way in the inspired books. It was to be preserved by an unending succession of preachers until the end of time.

Sacred scripture contains the inspired word of God in a particular written form. Sacred tradition contains the word of God in an unwritten form that the church lives out in its practice of the faith. So it’s not inspired like scripture because it’s an unwritten form, but that doesn’t mean sacred tradition is not as authoritative as scripture or that the magisterium is not infallible. The teachings of the council of Jerusalem were just as binding on Christians in the first century when they existed in an unwritten form before they were written down in scripture years later.

But my point is that the way the church uses the word now does not mean that was how the word was used in the first few centuries of church history. Hebrews 1:3 for example says Christ is the exact representation of God’s nature or substance. In Greek, hypostasis. But by the fourth century, the word hypostasis was no longer the common Greek word for nature or substance. It had been replaced with the word ousia. All right? So that was the word that meant substance. So theologians in the fourth century said the Trinity was three hypostasis, persons, that share one ousia, substance. If you read this fourth century understanding of hypostasis back into Hebrews 1:3, it would say that Christ is the exact representation of God’s person. The person of the Father. Which could lead to the heresy that the Son and the Father are the same person, or modalism.

Now other words like sacrament, or mysterion in Greek. Heresy. Dogma. These words have changed meaning over time. So we can’t read the modern definition of those terms back into their uses in scripture and ancient documents. Just because the church recognizes scripture is unique because it’s inspired, does not prove 2 Timothy 3:16 is saying that about scripture.

We also need to study how the word theopneustos was used in the ancient church and in the ancient context in which these documents were written to find out what it meant in that context. So we have to do a word study. That’s what I did in the previous episode, drawing on McDonald and Poirier’s scholarship. And it’s something White just does not do in his reply to me to show that his meaning of the word is correct. He simply doesn’t do that.

I also pointed out that scripture never says it’s the only infallible rule of faith. And Protestant arguments that try to show this often engage in circular reasoning. Like saying Scripture is the only infallible rule of faith because there’s nothing beyond scripture that has the same level of authority. That’s saying the same thing twice. Scripture is the only infallible rule of faith, and no evidence is presented to prove that. It’s a circular argument. And here’s White’s response.

And when he talks about circularity. Let’s remember something. When it comes to a discussion of ultimate authorities, they have to be circular. Because you see an ultimate authority cannot appeal to an authority above it to verify its authority because then that’s no longer the ultimate authority. Scripture never says it’s the only infallible rule of faith. Of course, it never says anything about popes, cardinals, or Rome is the head of the church. Papal infallibility. But it does tell us that scripture is unique and beyond any use of the term tradition.

So keep your eye on the ball. Always keep your eye on the ball when listening to Trent Horn and Catholic Answers when they’re talking about sola scriptura. Because they will use one set of standards for sola scriptura and another set of standards for the infallibility of the church.

I do use two different standards. I use the correct standard of scripture tradition and the teaching authority of Christ’s church to determine doctrine. And I judge your system, James, by your standard. Sola scriptura. If you demand that the papacy and other doctrines be found explicitly in scripture, sola scriptura must be found there as well. And it’s not. And if it’s not found in scripture, that means it’s not true. Because if it were true, God would’ve revealed it in scripture and not required people to use things like invalid circular reasoning or arguments from ignorance to try to show that it’s true. Like saying Scripture’s the only infallible rule of faith because we don’t know of any other infallible rules. An argument from ignorance, which I’ve rebutted in previous episodes.

Now more could be said about this argument, but I hope to do that in person. White and I are actually in discussions with a pastor, a Protestant pastor in Houston, to do two debates actually. One where he defends sola scriptura and one where I defend purgatory. Now, I offered to actually defend apostolic succession. To positively defend an authority claim in counter to him positively defending an authority claim. But White said he didn’t like the topic of apostolic succession. Which is interesting because Gavin Ortlund has no problem with that topic. He’s debated it before. He said he’d be happy to debate me on it. So we’ll see. But we’re in talks. Hopefully sometime in February we will do a double header debate. One night we will do is sola scriptura true? The next night we’ll do something like is purgatory, the doctrine of purgatory, true?

So stay tuned to find out more about that. I have a lot of other debates coming up as well. But thank you guys so much and I hope that you have a very blessed day.

If you like today’s episode, become a premium subscriber at our Patreon page and get access to member only content. For more information, visit TrentHornPodcast.com.