Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Clean-up Begins

Readers may remember last year's posts about Gail Riplinger, and Riplinger's defender "The Puritan". Well, a few minutes ago the postman delivered to my door a copy of Cleaning-Up Hazardous Materials by Kirk DiVietro. Published by the Dean Burgon Society, this comes out of moderate King James Onlyism, and is warmly commended by none other than D.A. Waite, who has written the blurb on the back. He tells us that this books is needed for four reasons, "Because of the false view of inspiration," "Because of the false view of the King James Bible," "Because of the false view of lexicons and textual aids," and "Because of the correcting of pastors and other leaders."

DiVietro is quoted favourably by Riplinger, but he obviously does not agree with her! And quite right too! According to the author profile in the back of the book, Dr. DiVietro has relevant earned degrees. The fact that he is King James Only in a mild way is in some respects a help, as it means that he is a relatively sympathetic critic.

I am looking forward to reading this book of about 400 pages, which seems much better written than Riplinger - which is not hard! Much of what will be dealt with I suspect to be false arguments and logical fallacies. Plus He notes that Riplinger refers to Dr. Maurice Robinson (P. ii) as an editor of Berry's interlinear. Given that Berry's was published in the 1890s, I find that hard to believe (would you believe that he read it once?).

A lengthy appendix (Pp. 285-377) contains letters dealing with Riplinger's errors and dishonesty, as well as facsimiles of original documents and a table of corrections made to the original printed 1611 AV in later editions (mostly printing errors).

12 comments:

The Puritan said...

Looks like you are wrong again in an accusation of Riplinger lying. Look at this info:

http://www.fundamentalforums.com/1646814-post26.html

My how easily we mock and accuse a Christian because they are not lukewarm and man-fearing like the majority of the lot of Christians of our day...

Highland Host said...

My dear "Puritan", may I ask you what Biblical grounds there are for accusing an elder of sexual immorality because he disagrees with you?

You know what I mean. I refuse to engage with anything you say until you have explained this.

Secondly, please explain how my documentation of Riplinger's twisting Bishop Westcott's words does not prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Gail Riplinger is dishonest. As for the Maurice Robinson thing, I would not call it a lie. A mistake at best.

Highland Host said...

"Puritan". In case you have forgotten, this is the accusation or insinuation I refer to, in a comment from 11th October 200: "If I knew more about you I wouldn't be surprised to find out you are living sexually with a man. Or some other sin you want to keep in darkness. You love darkness, that is evident."

Now, I am an elder in a local church. This is a serious accusation, which you make entirely on the basis that I do not agree with you on the Bible version issue, and have dared to document Gail Riplinger's dishonest abuse of quotations. Unless you can justify this statement of yours, or retract it with an apology, I will not answer anything you say, and delete your subsequent comments.

The Puritan said...

I just showed you that you lied about Riplinger *again*, and you blow that off like it's no big deal.

My speculation about you if from experience. Usually, 9 times out of 10, when you find a self-identified Christian behaving as you are it is because you value something more than truth, and what you value you are keeping in the darkness, thus you hate the light.

You have a spirit in you to continually defend the devil's corruption of the Word of God, because you know as long at that foundation exists what you value more than truth and the authority of God will be protected from the light.

Now why not make at least a reference to this latest issue, i.e. you getting busted calling a Christian a liar based on nothing?

You'll probably just delete everything and run away though, won't you? What else can you do?

Highland Host said...

So, you refuse to apologise, and yet you want to call me on accusing Riplinger of lying about Maurice Robinson. No-where did I say she was lying, and I am more than willing to say that she was not at this point. I was repeating what D.A. Waite said. If he is a liar in your view, then take the matter up with him. There are two reasons a person may make a factually incorrect statement, the first is deliberate misrepresentation, the second is factual error. I had supposed that the Riplinger error pointed out by D.A. Waite was of the latter sort.

So, what you are saying is that because a man is not of your opinion, and dares to call Riplinger on lying about what Westcott said (see exhaustive documentation), you are justified in making vile insinuations about him? Where is this justified in the Bible?

Now, can you show how Riplinger's abuse of B.F. Westcott's words is honest? As in, how stringing sentence fragments from different books together to form entirely new sentences is a fair use of anyone's works? If a man is a false teacher, his words, taken as they stand, will condemn him.

Now, I do not delete and run away, certainly not in the face of a man who has written nothing at all on his own blog. The one occasion that material has been deleted from this blog for reasons other than being spam was in order to mend fellowship with a personal friend of mine. You, sir, are not a personal friend. You will not repent of your false accusations, and you now justify this from "personal experience". Did you not consider that I might be the tenth person? You know nothing about me, and as such have no business bringing any such accusation. Were you a member of a local church, I would contact them and advise that they put you under discipline. Whatever you theological disagreements with a man, you cannot bring such an accusation in a public forum without evidence.

The Puritan said...

You're pretending (another form of lying in this case) to take what I said more seriously than it was meant. For instance, I said: "If I knew more about you I wouldn't be surprised to find out you are living sexually with a man." That's not a direct accusation that you are living with a man. "If I knew more about you I wouldn't be surprised..." It's a way of saying that over and over again when one finds a self-identified Christian being so intent on defending bible versions with the authority of man in them rather than the authority of God one usually eventually finds out that person had a favorite sin they were protecting. A man living sexually with a man is a general example of just such a sin.

I also note that you refuse to give Riplinger the same courtesy you give the author of your new book, Mr. Divietro. When Gail mispeaks, it's a vicious, conscious lie; when your Mr. Divietro repeats a false claim regarding Gail Riplinger he's simply innocently repeating an factual error. It's gets the job done, though, doesn't it? It makes Gail Riplinger look dishonest or stupid or what have you. You are doing what God says He doesn't like to see: you are being a 'respecter of persons'. That is typical of worldings who are still living in darkness and valuing the things of the world.

Highland Host said...

My dear sir. How can you know that I am "pretending (another form of lying in this case) to take what I said more seriously than it was meant"? Would that not require you to know my thoughts, something only God can do? Oh, I'm not pretending, I'm deadly serious in taking it more seriously than it was meant, because it's totally irresponsible to throw around suggestions like that! If it is not an accusation, then it is an insinuation, and "oh, I wasn't that serious" is not a defence. Think about it, this is how gossip begins, and Christians ought not to engage in such behaviour.

I have never said that every case in which Mrs. Riplinger is factually incorrect is deliberate falsehood. For example, I have said that her misrepresentations about the Knights Templar are the result of ignorance, that her suggestion that Archbishop Trench chose to place an image that was in fact the publisher's logo on the title page of one of his books was due to ignorance, and that she was ignorant of the true character of the Shapira Strips, and therefore suggested that they were genuine when they contained a text radically different from the Massoretic. However, when a person constructs quotations from sentence fragments, as Riplinger does in NABV, that cannot be the result of ignorance - unless you are suggesting she was using someone else's work, in which case she lied when she said in public that she had read the books she cites. Perhaps Dr. DiVietro does have a personal bone to pick with Mrs. Riplinger. She was however very complimentary about him in HazMat, calling him "one true believer."

Not every factual error is a lie, since a lie presupposes the intent to deceive, and a person mis-reading a statement and then repeating what he THOUGHT it was saying is quite honest. The Light Brigade were ordered to chrage the Russian guns, and charged the wrong guns. Was their commander lying? No, he was mistaken. Riplinger confused the Medieval office of Master of the Temple in London with the modern post of the same name - two posts which have nothing in common but the name. Do I think she did so deliberately with the intent to deceive? No! Therefore it was not a lie but an error of fact, a mistake.

Let me be clear. Where possible, I have put factual errors in Riplinger's works down to ignorance and error without malice (in many cases it is quite obvious that this is the case). It is however quite acceptable in a book review to criticize a book for being poorly researched - but poor research is not a sin. It is ONLY where there is no possibility of this (namely in the falsified Westcott quotations in NABV) that I have ever outright said she is lying.

I ask again, what Biblical passages justify your making insinuations against an elder, and justify Riplinger's constructing false Westcott quotations from sentence fragments found in separate books?

Hiraeth said...

Personally, I think some 'examples' are disgusting, Puritan. Might I suggest a prolonged meditation of Philippians 4.8, or 1 Corinthians 13 as a corrective to your view that discernment consists in making revolting suggestions about people with whom you disagree. The reason the evangelical church is the butt of the unbelieving world's jokes is that too often we are at each other's throats with allegations and spleen of this sort: brothers, is what translation of the Bible a man reads a matter vital to his salvation?

And 'I didn't mean it seriously' is not an excuse. The world may think it's a very big thing to make hurtful and terrible accusations which leave a person's life in ruins (I write in this case from experience), but Christians should be above this sort of thing. In fact, anyone over the age of twelve ought to be above this sort of thing. Some sins are secret, and others are open, like the sin of slander.

It distresses me greatly when people behave like the worst sort of worldlings without thinking that the world expects a lot better of us as Christians. They hate us, but they expect us to behave in a Christian fashion. Makes no sense, I know, but...

The Puritan said...

The world can go to hell. It will. I don't walk on egg shells being obsequious to the demands of the world. I fear God alone. That means I don't fear man.

The issue is not translations, as you well know but continue to say. It is underlying manuscripts, and we see the damage the devil and his children have done and continue to do in successfully questioning the foundation of the Word of God which is inerrancy, God's preservation of His Word. You defend the devil's children and attack Christians. Then you call for civility and 'peace' among Christians. The old call of the devil, "Peace, peace, love, love..."

God always has His remnant, and His remnant know the pure and whole Word of God. No matter what the world thinks or what putative Christians demand.

The Puritan said...

You probably shouldn't engage me beyond this. You know my stance. I sense you may be somewhat of a fragile nature emotionally, perhaps mentally. I don't want to contribute to anything along those lines.

I simply refuse to compromise on the matter of Scripture. There is no middle ground there. So...

Hiraeth said...

Puritan. There is a world of difference between the offence of the Gospel and just being an unpleasant so and so. People are not brought into the church by unedifying squabbles. And most people, in my experience, can tell the difference. The message may be offensive, but the messenger ought not to be, if he can avoid it. To see what ought to characterise Christians see John's first epistle.

Apparently, my dear Puritan, you are allowed a free pass when it comes to tossing about allegations of immorality and mental illness. As it happens, the reason I am a little distressed by disgusting allegations such as the sort you apparently think you can throw about in fun is that I once had someone make just such an allegation against me 'in fun'. It was picked up and spread about to the extent where it was investigated (as it had to be) by my then employer, causing great distress at the time. I was cleared, for the quite simple reason that the allegations were quite impossible, but the memory of them still hurts. After all, how can someone be forgiven for a thing they didn't do?

But of course the person who first made the allegation 'wasn't serious'.

Perhaps now you realise my attitude on these things?

Highland Host said...

My dear "Puritan". You refuse to apologise, you cannot defend your actions Biblically. Jesus said "Blessed are ye when men say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake." No-where did he say anything along the lines of "if someone disagrees with you, you may insinuate all manner of evil falsely as long as it's not too serious." You and your ilk act as if you were alone th only true Christians in the world - to which I reply, act like Christians. Jude reminds us that Michael, contending with Satan, "durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, the Lord rebuke thee." I suggest we can all learn from the archangel here, and rather than disputing about which Bible to read, you ought to spend more time reading and studying it. What you said to me certainly counts as a "railing accusation."

Unless you repent and apologise for what you have said, there is simply no point in going on with this conversation. As Hiraeth has pointed out, what is merely a "railing accusation" must be taken seriously because unless it is rebuffed, someone might take it seriously. Whether meant seriously or not, it is a false accusation - and Christians ought never to make such things.

I only add that in 'Hazardous Materials" Riplinger thrown the original manuscripts under a bus and then maintains a theory of preservation in vernacular versions directly inspired by God. It was this that led Dr. DiVietro to write against her, as he believes God preserved the Word in Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew, the languages in which it was written.