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Title: Mary-Another Redeemer by James R. White ISBN: 0-7642-2102-7 Publisher: Bethany House Pub. Date: July, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 1.83 (36 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Disappointingly scant
Comment: In the past, James White's books have been a mishmash - several excellent works (KJV Only Controversy, Is the Mormon My Brother?) coupled with the mediocre or downright poor (Letters to a Mormon Elder, The Forgotten Trinity, The Fatal Flaw). Here, sadly, Dr. White falls into the latter category. The reader (Catholic or Protestant) hoping for a detailed Protestant critique of the Catholic position on Mary will be sorely disappointed. White is short on evidence and exegesis and long on claims. Surely, Evangelicalism has more to say about the Assumption and the Immaculate Conception than what Dr. White offers here. This book has the flavor of a work thrown together - a sloppy collection of shorter explanatory essays combined awkwardly with debating notes.
Just as surprisingly, the book is actually boring to read. White is an excellent writer (few people can make the intricasies of textual criticism interesting to the lay reader, as he did in the KJV Only Controversy). Nevertheless, this work is bland and its relatively few pages are tough to slough through.
My recommendation: keep looking for a more comprehensive and accurate articulation of Evangelical difficulties with Marian Dogma. This isn't it.
Rating: 1
Summary: Aquinas & Chesterton are phat; White's just a crappopotamus
Comment: Much here is from a review other comments here referred to:
Mr. White questioned on p. 41 when the idea of the Immaculate Conception first came into play. He then answered with a passage from p. 201 in Dr. Ludwig Ott's _Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma_ (1974 edition) to indicate the beginning of the twelfth century. But Dr. Ott on that very page indicated that the Fathers, both Greek and Latin, implicitly taught the Immaculate Conception in two fundamental notions: 1) Mary's most perfect purity and holiness; and 2) The similarity and contrast between Mary and Eve (Ott, _Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma_ (1974 edition), p. 201). Though a few of the Fathers disagreed with the first notion that the Virgin Mary was perfectly pure and holy, most accepted it. The era of the Fathers - the patristic age - ended in the West with the death of St. Isidore of Seville in 636 and in the East with the death of St. John Damascene in 749 (William Jurgens, _The Faith of the Early Fathers_ (vol. 1), p. x). I understand Dr. Ott to have meant that the beginning of the twelfth century was when the British monk Eadmer... advocated the Immaculate (passive) Conception of Mary... [and] wrote the first monograph on this subject (Ott, _Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma_ (1974 edition), p. 201). The Fathers would likely report that Mr. White plays neither well nor fair with others.
Though Mr. White pointed to Dr. Ott's _Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma_ to report a twelfth century emergence of the idea, Dr.
Ott quoted a fourth century passage of St. Ephrem to indicate belief in the Immaculate Conception in the patristic age. St.
Ephrem of Syria (c.306-373) wrote: "Mary and Eve, two people without guilt, two simple people, were identical" (Op. syr. II,
327, in Ott, _Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma_, p. 201). Around 370 in the Nisibene Hymns, Ephrem wrote: "Thou and thy mother
are the only ones who are totally beautiful in every respect; for in thee, O Lord, there is no spot, and in thy Mother no
stain" (Hymn 27, v. 8, in ibid.). So insistent was Ephrem on Mary's sinlessness that he is invoked as a supporter of the
Immaculate Conception (O'Carroll, _Theotokos_, p. 132). St. Epiphanius said Mary was "graced in every way" (Panarion, haer.
78, n. 24; G.C.S., 37, 474, in Lawrence P. Everett, C.SS. R., "Mary's Death and Bodily Assumption," in Juniper B. Carol,
O.F.M., ed., _Mariology_, vol. 2, The Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1957, p. 130). St. Ambrose was Bishop of Milan when between 387 and 388 he strikingly described Mary as "a Virgin not only undefiled but a Virgin whom grace has made inviolate, free of every stain of sin" (Jurgens, _The Faith of the Early Fathers_ (vol. 2), p. 166). There is no doubt that Ephrem, Epiphanius, Ambrose and many others believed in her freedom from personal sin. There is question, however, whether these expressions of Sts. Ephrem, Epiphanius and Ambrose are directly relevant to the Immaculate Conception.
Separately I mention St. Sophronius (died 638), Patriarch of Jerusalem, one of the last of the Fathers and one of the
greatest exponents of Mary's primacy of excellence. He almost stated the Immaculate Conception in western terms:
[start of quote from St. Sophronius] Others before you have flourished with outstanding holiness. But to none as to you has
the fullness of grace been given. None has been endowed with happiness as you, none adorned with holiness like yours, none
brought to such great magnificence as yours; no one was ever possessed 'beforehand' by purifying grace as were you... And
this deservedly, for no one came as close to God as you did; no one was enriched with God's gifts as you were; no one shared
God's grace as you did (St. Sophronius, In SS Deip. Annunt. 22 Patrologia Latina 87c, 3248, in O'Carroll, _Theotokos_, p. 329, "beforehand" italicized and ellipsis in O'Carroll). [end of quote]
Compare that with these words of Pope Pius IX's dogmatic decree on the Immaculate Conception pronounced in 1854, more than twelve centuries after St. Sophronius:
{start of quote from Pope Pius IX] "...the Blessed Virgin Mary, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace
and privilege of almighty God, and in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, Saviour of the human race, was preserved free from
every stain of original sin...[end of quote].
Readers never learn this from White. What they are told in this brief book, however, are enough falsehoods to baste an elephant. For penance, White should at least eat crow (humbly admit his mistakes). Phat chance or fat chance?
Rating: 2
Summary: Debate Junk: James White is all too eager
Comment: (Much of the matter below comes from an online review.)
Catholics and some others often tout Fr. John Henry Newman, later Cardinal Newman, as the great theologian of the nineteenth century, although I believe he preferred to think of himself as more of a historian of Christianity. In Part I, Chapter 17, of "Loss and Gain," he depicts a conversation among Protestants commenting on the deathbed conversion of Pope Sixtus XVI from Catholic to "believer." Fr. Newman was wry in that there has not been a Pope Sixtus XVI. (Nor a XV, XIV, XIII, XII, XI, X, IX, VIII, VII or VI.)
James White, eager to seize almost anything he believes useful in assailing "Rome" (as he too often describes Catholicism) proves himself all too eager for the task. In "Mary-Another Redeemer?" (p. 41), White proclaimed that S. Lewis Johnson summarized well how "Pope Sixtus VI in 1485... left the issue of the Immaculate Conception unresolved."
White, observe, not only transmitted an error of Dr. Johnson, but added one of his own: the Bishop of Rome in 1485 was not Pope Sixtus VI (read sixth) but Pope Innocent VIII (pope 1484-1492). Remember from above that although there was a Pope Sixtus V (read fifth) (pope 1585-1590), there has not yet been a Pope Sixtus VI (read sixth) (no wonder he left the issue unresolved). Dr. Johnson had identified a Pope Sixtus IV (read fourth), but gave 1485 - he died in 1484 - as the year in which he left the issue unresolved. White in "Mary-Another Redeemer?" then misidentified Sixtus IV (read fourth) as Sixtus VI (sixth). There is more, though. Pope Sixtus IV (pope 1471-1484) truly did have considerable say about the Immaculate Conception. Note that the reversal of IV and VI does not adequately account for these mistakes as 1485 came one year after the end of the papacy of Pope Sixtus IV. Moreover, Pope Sixtus IV, a Franciscan, approved Offices and Masses in honor of the Immaculate Conception, and by the Constitution "Grave nimis" (1482), which he repeated in 1483, declared that "the Holy Roman Church publicly and solemnly celebrates the feast of the Conception of the Immaculate and ever Virgin Mary" (Michael O'Carroll, C.S.Sp., "Theotokos: A Theological Encyclopedia of the Blessed Virgin Mary," The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota, 1982 p. 327). He also forbade charges of heresy, under the penalty of excommunication, against anyone on either side of the debate, for example, by the maculists against the immaculists, or by the immaculists against the maculists (ibid.). Thus Pope Sixtus IV resolved quite a lot. When confronted with his error at a debate on justification held on Long Island in 2000, White tried to dismiss his over-zealous blunder as a mere typographical error. But White cannot so easily excuse his sloppy history as a mere typographic blooper as he gives not only a mistaken date and a false name but also, more important, the wrong substance of the history.
White won't be mistaken for a modern day John Henry Newman, nor even a Cliff Clavin, the mailman from "Cheers," who delivers facts (albeit largely trivia) better than White. White is more along the lines of Newman, the mailman from "Seinfeld," and this book is (debate) junk mail. I give it two stars only because I'm reserving the single star for works comparable to those of Dave Hunt and because I can't award VI or XVI stars.
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Title: The Roman Catholic Controversy by James R. White ISBN: 1556618190 Publisher: Bethany House Pub. Date: July, 1996 List Price(USD): $14.99 |
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