Talk About Anti Catholic Bias

[RevDrNorth]

Tyndale Seminary recently won a court victory against the State to allow it to use the “term seminary”. The state had banned and fined it, Tyndale appealed with the help of a Christian civil rights group and won.

Tyndale is unaccredited and seems to offer a pretty good curriculum in terms of requiring languages such as Hebrew and Greek and so on. Thomas Ice, well known scholar is a graduate. So far…to each his own. Not all unaccredited schools are mills and so on. tyndale.edu/

But then…I read their course description for Roman Catholic Theology (Apol 2379). The texts are Roman Catholicism by Boettner; Two Babylons (Hislop); and the Cathechism of the Catholic Church.

Is not Boettner the one talked about here as so full of error and sloppy academics? Not sure about Hislop but the title seems like an indication of bias. Is it just me or are these compeltely unacceptable books to use for an academic course in Catholic theology. Using books such as this seems less about true research and more about indoctrination. Am I over reacting?

Rev North

 

[Pax]

You are not over reacting. Unfortunately, anyone that would use such materials as text books is doing so out of incredible ignorance.

 

[dbacks5439]

Hopefully the seminarians will read all three books and realize that the Catechism is the polar opposite of the first two books. Further, I hope they will see that the Catechism (written by the Church itself) is a much better source than books written by non-Catholics.

 

[RevDrNorth]

You are not over reacting. Unfortunately, anyone that would use such materials as text books is doing so out of incredible ignorance.

I think Boettner is the one I have seen mentioned here. The result is instead of being able to articulately counter Catholic Systematic theology you develop graduates who can successfully defeat strawmen of their own creation. That is sad.

If you want to study and compare Catholic Theology you need Catholic texts and protestant texts (example Grudem and comparable Catholic Systematic Theology). You then compare and contrast and articulate differences. If the criticisms of Boettner are accurate you bascially have students digesting a sligthly more academic version of Chick but no less full of errors and then propagating *knowledge *of RCC theology. That is sad and should be problematic for any instituion claiming to be academic.

Rev North

 

[Church_Militant]

Tyndale Seminary recently won a court victory against the State to allow it to use the “term seminary”. The state had banned and fined it, Tyndale appealed with the help of a Christian civil rights group and won.

Tyndale is unaccredited and seems to offer a pretty good curriculum in terms of requiring languages such as Hebrew and Greek and so on. Thomas Ice, well known scholar is a graduate. So far…to each his own. Not all unaccredited schools are mills and so on. tyndale.edu/

But then…I read their course description for Roman Catholic Theology (Apol 2379). The texts are Roman Catholicism by Boettner; Two Babylons (Hislop); and the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Is not Boettner the one talked about here as so full of error and sloppy academics? Not sure about Hislop but the title seems like an indication of bias. Is it just me or are these completely unacceptable books to use for an academic course in Catholic theology. Using books such as this seems less about true research and more about indoctrination. Am I over reacting?

Rev NorthIt looks like a better name for it would be *Anti-*Catholic Theology (Apol 2379)

There’s no way that that course will give their students anything but a biased propagandized view of our most holy faith. You can pretty well rest assured that that is one of the “assembly lines” for the next generation of a-C pulpit pounders.

You are not over reacting. Unfortunately, anyone that would use such materials as text books is doing so out of incredible ignorance

.Or straight up intent to teach a grossly distorted view of the Catholic faith.

Very possibly a combination of both, though the results will be the same.

 

[RevDrNorth]

Hopefully the seminarians will read all three books and realize that the Catechism is the polar opposite of the first two books. Further, I hope they will see that the Catechism (written by the Church itself) is a much better source than books written by non-Catholics.

I agree. I somehow think that any half way intelligent seminarian will see a vast gulf between the academic standards of those books with the Catechism in a league of its own.

Rev North

 

[tdgesq]

I’ve read Roman Catholicism and The Two Babylons. Of course, I’ve also read the CCC. As for the first two, they are really nothing other than unsubstantiated propaganda. Why they would ever be presented as reading at an institution of higher learning is beyond me. My evangelical buddies and I used to laugh at those books, and we were teenagers. What is found in the CCC won’t even address the amateurish arguments found in the other two, which love to speculate about the apocalypse and comparisons to pagan practices when it comes to Rome. Bizarre teaching practices at Tyndale.

 

[Church_Militant]

I’ve read Roman Catholicism and The Two Babylons. Of course, I’ve also read the CCC. As for the first two, they are really nothing other than unsubstantiated propaganda. Why they would ever be presented as reading at an institution of higher learning is beyond me. My evangelical buddies and I used to laugh at those books, and we were teenagers. What is found in the CCC won’t even address the amateurish arguments found in the other two, which love to speculate about the apocalypse and comparisons to pagan practices when it comes to Rome. Bizarre teaching practices at Tyndale.

Yep.

 

[zerocrossing]

If you want to study and compare Catholic Theology you need Catholic texts and protestant texts (example Grudem and comparable Catholic Systematic Theology). You then compare and contrast and articulate differences. If the criticisms of Boettner are accurate you bascially have students digesting a sligthly more academic version of Chick but no less full of errors and then propagating *knowledge *of RCC theology. That is sad and should be problematic for any instituion claiming to be academic.

Rev North

I think it depends on the professor’s intent in assigning the materials. For example, many years ago in a college literature course, I assigned both Hawthorne’s THE SCARLET LETTER and the ridiculous film starring Demi Moore. We examined both the text and the film, and I tried not to bias the class discussion.

The end result was that my students came to their own conclusions about the film - and those conclusions were almost exclusively negative. On the other hand, they loved the novel. And they ended up loving the novel on their own terms, not mine. In other words, they took ownership of the material.

If this professor is trying to do something similar - i.e. presenting anti-Catholic literature side-by-side with the official teachings of the Catholic Church in order to demonstrate the utter ludicrousness of anti-Catholic literature in a graphic way - then I would not have a problem with that. It’s basically the same thing as playing devil’s advocate - which is a valid method. If, however, the professor’s intent is to misrepresent Catholicism, then I have a very big problem with that.

 

[SpiritMeadow]

When I was in a Masters Program at Marygrove in Michigan, it was drilled into us that in writing we must always tell the reader who we were and where we were coming from. This is very difficult online. All I see are seminaries now, and “theological Colleges”…none of them turn out to be Catholic, most are baptists. It’s hard to uncover this, they sure don’t help up front, and none of the writings ever even mention which tradition they are in. It makes research very difficult. Guess Catholics will have to come up with a new name for themselves in education so you know when you getting some solid opinions.

 

[Pixie_Dust]

Anyone want to contact them and ask about their textbook selection?

Dear Sirs,

I was looking through your online catalog and notice that in a course you offer entitled “Roman Catholic Theology” you are using Loraine Boettner’s Roman Catholicism. What is your reason for using this historically inaccurate lousy excuse for literature?

Thank you and God Bless!

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Tyndale Seminary recently won a court victory against the State to allow it to use the “term seminary”. The state had banned and fined it, Tyndale appealed with the help of a Christian civil rights group and won.

Tyndale is unaccredited and seems to offer a pretty good curriculum in terms of requiring languages such as Hebrew and Greek and so on. Thomas Ice, well known scholar is a graduate. So far…to each his own. Not all unaccredited schools are mills and so on. tyndale.edu/

But then…I read their course description for Roman Catholic Theology (Apol 2379). The texts are Roman Catholicism by Boettner; Two Babylons (Hislop); and the Cathechism of the Catholic Church.

Is not Boettner the one talked about here as so full of error and sloppy academics? Not sure about Hislop but the title seems like an indication of bias. Is it just me or are these compeltely unacceptable books to use for an academic course in Catholic theology. Using books such as this seems less about true research and more about indoctrination. Am I over reacting?

Rev North

Hislop’s book is of no value - it may not have seemed so when he wrote it (it began life as a pamphlet in 1853), but his use of evidence from Assyria, which is essential to its argument, could be demolished by a reasonably intelligent first-year theology student. It needs to be seen in its own context, as well as in ours: it looks horrendous in hindsight, partly because he wrote it far too soon to be able to have a good idea of Assyrian religion - & since his case is that Catholicism (as it was in the 1850s) is a blend of Christianity with a supposed “Babylonian Mystery Religion”, that is a fatal weakness.​

In 1850, Assyrian religion was sufficiently obscure to be able to be seen as a sort of shadow-Catholicism - by 1900, that was no longer true, so the illusions had to change; so they did. TTB could probably not have been written after 1875 - the bibliography includes 270 items, only a handful of which are about the recent finds in Assyria; none of the editions of texts printed by 1863 (when the book achieved its final form) are quoted. This is comparable to trying to understand the Greek NT by reading a commentary that, just occasionally, quotes the Authorised Version of 1611. Far better books are available than TTB for those who want to known about ancient Assyria, written by scholars who know the texts at first-hand. Most people who use the book against the CC would not be able to read a line of Assyrian if their lives depended upon it; it is very misleading if used as a guide to Assyrian-Babylonian religion, but people quote it as a reliable source, because they do not know otherwise; all of us are at the mercy of our informants.

It has many faults, & is more interesting as an expression of Scottish Victorian Calvinist anti-Catholic polemic than as a source of reliable information; intellectually, it belongs to the beginning of the 19th century. It is almost an inversion of Newman’s “Essay on the Development of Doctrine”, which was published in 1845 - the books & their authors are mirror images, up to a point. (Newman began as an Evangelical, after all.) Both books have been immensely influential, both are manifestations of the Victorian interest in the past. In a way, TTB is as great a book as the “Essay on Development” or the “Origin of Species” - it’s just not a very nice sort of greatness

IOW - it is far more unreliable than anything by Boettner. Some of his books are good - the one on Catholicism is a dud because he had no understanding of Catholicism from within. Even so, he makes some good points. He is very helpful as a guide to the Calvinist understanding of predestination, because he was a member of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, so he was writing about a doctrine he knew from within.

 

[Janet_S]

Tyndale Seminary recently won a court victory against the State to allow it to use the “term seminary”. The state had banned and fined it, Tyndale appealed with the help of a Christian civil rights group and won.

Tyndale is unaccredited and seems to offer a pretty good curriculum in terms of requiring languages such as Hebrew and Greek and so on. Thomas Ice, well known scholar is a graduate. So far…to each his own. Not all unaccredited schools are mills and so on. tyndale.edu/

But then…I read their course description for Roman Catholic Theology (Apol 2379). The texts are Roman Catholicism by Boettner; Two Babylons (Hislop); and the Cathechism of the Catholic Church.

Is not Boettner the one talked about here as so full of error and sloppy academics? Not sure about Hislop but the title seems like an indication of bias. Is it just me or are these compeltely unacceptable books to use for an academic course in Catholic theology. Using books such as this seems less about true research and more about indoctrination. Am I over reacting?

Rev North

Here’s an article about Hislop’s book, The Two Babylons.

catholic.com/thisrock/2005/0505fea4.asp

I’m surprised they’re using Boettner’s and Hislop’s books. I didn’t think anybody took these books seriously anymore.

It’s good they’re using the Catechism, though.

 

[RevDrNorth]

Anyone want to contact them and ask about their textbook selection?

Dear Sirs,

I was looking through your online catalog and notice that in a course you offer entitled “Roman Catholic Theology” you are using Loraine Boettner’s Roman Catholicism. What is your reason for using this historically inaccurate lousy excuse for literature?

Thank you and God Bless!

You gave a good laugh! Not a bad idea.

I suppose as someone posted we could give them the benefit of the doubt that the seminary is simply presenting bias as contrasted with the truth about Catholicism in the Catechism. I am a little suspicious though.

Thanks for the link above to CA’s issues with Hyslop’s book.

Rev North

 

[BlestOne]

Just think… all those folks taking this class have to buy a Catechism right? So in effect they are supporting the church. Who benefits from the other book purchases? Aren’t these authors dead?

Always look on the bright side…since the CCC is the only legit book on the list… this is where the serious student will study from most… and if they are so led by the spirit… they will join us… so I guess we should send the school a thank you note for actually pointing their best students toward us.