Dear James White: Thanks for the applause. You left a few things out.

tried to get the word to Dr.* James White (Th.D., D.Min., etc., etc.) before he took to his Divid­ing Line web­cast to applaud me with a lit­er­al clap­ping of hands. Indeed I did; I sent this tweet to him and his pro­duc­er Rich Pierce on Feb­ru­ary 15. I includ­ed Mr. Pierce because the good Reformed apol­o­gist blocked me all the way back in Octo­ber of 2013 after I con­front­ed him on his utter refusal and inabil­i­ty to exegete the text of Eph­esians 4 in any mean­ing­ful way. Though Dr.* White has now appar­ent­ly con­clud­ed that I am one of the rare breed of Catholic apol­o­gists who deserves to be thanked for my hon­esty, I remain blocked. So it goes.

Here is what hap­pened. Back on Feb­ru­ary 9, I pub­lished my first blog arti­cle at the Nation­al Catholic Reg­is­ter. (I blog there now once a week. Check it out.) The arti­cle was called “We Need to Stop Say­ing That There are 33,000 Protes­tant Denom­i­na­tions.” And we do: The num­ber is much inflat­ed; and insist­ing upon it dis­tracts from the main point, which is the intrin­sic scan­dal of denom­i­na­tion­al­ism of itself, how­ev­er many of them there are. Argu­ing over a red her­ring, espe­cial­ly a false one, does noth­ing to advance the real apolo­getic argu­ment.

This arti­cle, by some means, came to the atten­tion of the good Dr.* White. And he sent out this tweet:

I would like to applaud and thank RC writer @ScottEricAlt for this arti­cle: https://t.co/QDkkSVqjl1 Now could EWTN’s hosts read it please?

— 𝔚𝔥𝔦𝔱𝔢𝔅𝔢𝔞𝔯𝔡 (@HwsEleutheroi) Feb­ru­ary 12, 2016

Now, one of the ironies to this was that, back on May 16, 2013, Dr.* White had said, in response to the very iden­ti­cal argu­ment on my part: “This is absurd on a lev­el that means there is no rea­son to ever talk about Scott Alt again. He has com­pletely made him­self unwor­thy of anyone’s even both­er­ing. And yet this is what slav­ery to Rome does.”

(N.B., this par­tic­u­lar Divid­ing Line pro­gram is appar­ent­ly no longer avail­able from Alpha & Omega Sophistries—he calls it “Min­istries.” Maybe Dr.* White has recant­ed. Who knows? I make the same argu­ment in 2016, and sud­den­ly Dr.* White can applaud and talk about Scott Alt again. Shaz­a­am.)

The oth­er irony is that I am by no means alone among Catholic apol­o­gists in dis­put­ing the 33,000 denom­i­na­tions fig­ure. The Nation­al Catholic Reg­is­ter just hap­pens to be a large plat­form. After all, it is owned by EWTN, which Dr.* White feels needs to be made aware of my arti­cle. They pay no atten­tion to what goes up on their Web sites.

The truth is, Ben­jamin Bax­ter, writ­ing at Catholic Lane on Jan­u­ary 8, 2014, also dis­put­ed the accu­ra­cy of the num­ber and said that Catholic apol­o­gists should not be cit­ing it.

And the truth is, Dave, writ­ing on his own blog, dis­put­ed the num­ber on Sep­tem­ber 4, 2004.

I tweet­ed these facts to Dr.* White and Mr. Pierce:

https://twitter.com/ScottEricAlt/statuses/699387979362656256

And yet three days lat­er, on Feb­ru­ary 18, Dr.* White, in prais­ing my arti­cle on the Divid­ing Line, made no men­tion of the oth­er ones. (The seg­ment starts just past 12:30 into the web­cast.)

What Dr.* White did do was to high­light his wery own long­stand­ing refu­ta­tion of the num­ber 33,000:

How far back do we have to go to find our doc­u­men­ta­tion of this real­i­ty on our Web site? I don’t remem­ber what the year was, but it’s been a long time. Prob­a­bly about a decade now.

In fact—for Mr. Arm­strong checked—the ear­li­est such arti­cle at Alpha & Omega Sophistries is dat­ed August 22, 2007. (Find it here.) And yet nowhere can I find Dr.* White acknowl­edg­ing that Mr. Arm­strong had reject­ed the num­ber a full three years before that.

In fact, as part of prais­ing me, Dr.* White took a swipe the whole lot of remain­ing Catholic apol­o­gists:

This utter­ly mean­ing­less num­ber has been repeat­ed over and over again, ad nau­se­am, on the Com­ing Home Net­work, by EWTN, by Tim Sta­ples, and the guy with the fun­ny hat who goes over to Israel [Steve Ray], and all sorts of folks like that. They just repeat it ad nau­se­am. And I can guar­an­tee you, Scott Eric Alt will hear them repeat­ing it over and over again in the future, too. It’s like reflex; they can’t stop. It’s so much a part of their DNA that I just don’t think they can stop. They will keep repeat­ing it; they real­ly will; they real­ly will.

But if Dr.* White wants to take note of Catholic apol­o­gists who reject the num­ber, and thank me, then he should devote a Divid­ing Line episode to thank­ing Ben­jamin Bax­ter and Dave Arm­strong, and not­ing also that Mr. Arm­strong beat him to it. While he is at it, he might say some good words for Patrick Madrid, who also not­ed that my arti­cle at the Reg­is­ter was cor­rect.

While he is at it, he might also spend some time dis­cussing Eph. 4:4, or John 17:21, or 1 Cor. 1:10, and explain­ing how denom­i­na­tion­al­ism can be jus­ti­fied what­ev­er the true num­ber of denom­i­na­tions. Dr.* White likes to avoid that ques­tion. But now that we are agreed to no longer claim 33,000 denom­i­na­tions, we should take up the real mat­ter. What of it, Dr.* White? Let us talk about Church uni­ty.

And while he is at it, he should also men­tion a few things that Protes­tant apol­o­gists should stop say­ing.

Protes­tant apol­o­gists should stop say­ing that Catholics wor­ship Mary. More­over, they should stop say­ing that Catholics believe in sola eccle­sia. Sec­on­dar­i­ly, they should stop say­ing that con­ver­sion to Catholi­cism is con­ver­sion to a Church and not to Christ. Sixth and last­ly, they should stop say­ing that Catholics believe in works sal­va­tion. Third­ly, they should stop mis­rep­re­sent­ing what John Hen­ry New­man’s Devel­op­ment of Doc­trine means. And to con­clude, they should stop inflat­ing the num­ber of deaths in the Cru­sades and Inqui­si­tion. I am will­ing to doc­u­ment the false­ness of all these claims, and many more like them.

If Catholics are going to give up some of their false apolo­get­ics argu­ments, then Protes­tants need to start doing the same.