Calvinist Flyswatter

Why was White mum on Riplinger?

JAMES WHITE, GAIL RIPLINGER,
& ETERNAL SONSHIP OF CHRIST

A few weeks ago, I noticed that James White was commenting on his past dealings with Gail Riplinger of the "King James Only" camp. At the time, I did not say anything about it; but now that the "Sonship" matter has surfaced once again in recent days, I thought readers of the Flyswatter who were not acquainted with the "goings on" in the early nineties might be interested in the following information.

So far as I know, we were the very first to call attention to what is probably Gail Riplinger's most significant heresy in her writings, including the first book, New Age Bible Versions, and her later two books, Which Bible Is God's Word, and Blind Guides.

As soon as we examined her first book, we noticed that Riplinger denied the Eternal Sonship of Christ (NABV, chapter 23, page 337).

We inquired of her about this via mail, and even phoned and talked with her pastor about it. But she would not discuss the matter by mail, and also the pastor did not indicate that he had any interest in the subject. Riplinger even chose to "refuse" any more correspondence from us.

Awhile after we had failed to get Riplinger to discuss the matter, we decided to publish an article in our Baptist Biblical Heritage magazine (April 1994), entitled "New Age Bible Versions" Authoress Denies "Begotten Son" Teaches Deity.

The article revealed that Riplinger believed the "incarnational sonship" theory and that "begotten" in John 1:14 was referring to the "flesh" of Christ rather than to His Deity as the Son of God. She was in agreement with her friend, Peter Ruckman, and possibly could have even imbibed her views from Ruckman's anti-Eternal Sonship writings.

In one of her subsequent books, Blind Guides (page 38), Riiplinger completely misappropriated material from Dr. Buchsel of Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, as if he agreed with her in her denial of the Eternal Sonship of Christ. The very opposite is the case (see Kittel's, page 741).

Buchsel affirms the very truth which is denied by Riplinger!

Buchsel says, "One should not refer the monogenes to the virgin birth of Jesus," for "In John the Lord is always the Son. Because He alone was God's Son before the foundation of the world . . . He is the only-begotten Son of God."

James White, to my knowledge, has never confronted and refuted Riplinger on her denial of Eternal Sonship, despite the fact he was dealing with her back in the 1990s after her book came out. But this was actually at the same time James regarded John MacArthur's teaching as "solid teaching," and of course at that time JMac held to the "incarnational sonship" view, as did Riplinger.

White's failure in regard to exposing Riplinger's view on Sonship is just another item which serves to cast suspicion upon White's later claim that he believed Eternal Sonship before MacArthur's later recantation in the late 1990s.

But if White had held to Eternal Sonship in 1993, why didn't he expose Riplinger's heterodoxy? Why has he never -- to our knowledge, at least -- exposed her heterodoxy?

Even after we published our exposure of Riplinger, James White still remained mum about her non-creedal view of the Son. Was it because he regarded this doctrine as a "non-essential" in Christianity?

Labels: James White

posted by Bob L. Ross @ 8:07 PM