Which way is he wobbling now?

False teachers come in many varieties. Some are more vain than evil. Some more dumb than consciously mischievous. Some more shallow and self-absorbed than in active rebellion to their Creator. It doesn't really matter because when you set yourself up as a teacher and leader of Christians and you are not teaching truth you are just as condemned as if you were playing the devil himself.

Here is some evidence that James White is not really very bright. That he is able to talk out of both sides of his mouth pretty much with no self-awareness he is doing it. That he is capable of veering pretty much any which way depending on how he feels any particular day. Here is a comment from one of his fellow Critical Text scholars that exposes White rather starkly. (Keep in mind White has recently attempted to move to the 'center' between the secular Critical Text scholars in academia and Reformed/Calvinist critics of those scholars and their corrupt manuscripts. The Reformed/Calvinists have recently reached something of a tipping point in cornering Critical Text cheerleaders like White who try to have it both ways: to claim they believe God preserved His Word but then also say that a God-preserved text doesn't exist (but is currently being 'discovered' by 'scholars'); to claim to be 'confessional' but to then disregard the confessions regarding the preservation of Scripture and to pretend that the reformers didn't use the Received Text in direct battle with the Romanists and their corrupt manuscripts which are the same manuscripts used by Critical Text scholars today.)

Here is the other contradiction (White has recently said New Testament Textual Criticism has veered into too secular territory when it attempts to give motives to nameless scribes):

Here's where I do not understand Dr. White at all: he objects that some text-critics are "mind-reading," and "Once you turn to speculation about what someone was thinking was back when, the entire field – including the original words and intentions of the authors -- becomes just so much 'speculation.'"

So assigning motives to nameless copyists is a bad speculative thing, right?

Where is the Dr. White who wrote the following: if you were a scribe who had memorized Eph. 1:2, when writing Colossians 1:2, "You start into verse 2 of chapter 1. "Grace to you and peace . . . ." "Ah, I know this one!" you think to yourself. And so you write out the whole phrase." And, "Perhaps you look back at the original you are copying and notice that it does not say "and the Lord Jesus Christ." "That is strange," you might think. "It /should/ say that! . . . I'll fix it." (see KJV-Only Controversy, p. 38.)

On pages 43-46, Dr. White states that the Byzantine Text "gives evidence of what might be called the 'expansion of piety.' That is, additions have been made to the text that flow from a desire to protect and reverence divine truths." He restates this on p. 196: "The later manuscripts show evidence of the "expansion of piety" that flowed from the understandable desire to maintain respect and reverence for the Lord Jesus." This concern to show proper reverence "was shared by a scribe working on a manuscript of the New Testament."

On p. 167, after stating that KJV-Onlyists object to the reading "Isaiah the prophet" in Mark 1:2 on the grounds that Mark /couldn't/ have written that because it would be a mistake, Dr. White writes, "It is quite certain that some scribes early on in the transmission of the text of the New Testament had the very same thought." No mind-reading here! And commenting on Luke 2:7, Dr. White wrote, "A scribe, undoubtedly zealous for orthodox doctrine," inserted the word "firstborn." No mind-reading here! I don't see how any consistency can be salvaged from a comparison of Dr. White's statement on his blog and the statements in his book. Perhaps he could clarify this.

Notice White is also a typical doctrinal 'wobbly.' "Hey, it looks like James White is beginning to see the truth! Oh, no, now he is mocking the Traditional Text that Christians gave their lives to defend. Oh, now he is separating from the secular Critical Text establishment! No, he's back to mocking 'Truly Reformed' who hold to a God-preserved, received Traditional Text." On and on. The vain, juvenile, and proud unregenerate will wobble all over the place (usually in the direction that will give them the most attention that particular day). In White's case, though, it's also his need to maneuver and to shore up his quickly eroding stronghold built on sand.