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Tuesday, January 13, 2009

"The book isn't good enough to be wrong. It's just stupid"

As seen from OrthodoxChristianity.net


Perry did an excellent job commenting on Morey's book.

Acolyte4236:
"Feel free to cite the review on Amazon to your heart's content.

I know Morey from when I worked at CRI from 1990-1992. He came in to the BAM show during one week from back east. I carted him around Orange County during his stay for a week or so. After my termination from CRI for whistle blowing, I kept in lose contact with Morey via Mike Stephens who after his termination from CRi for essentially the same reason, went to work for Morey as his program manager. Every few years there'd be another purge of employees by Hanagraaf and I would make the phone rounds letting other axed individuals know what was going on.

In any case, I got wind of Morey's book in December. It grew out of a series on CD he did. I wasn't going to pay 65 bucks to hear Morey trash talk Orthodoxy. I have been Orthodox for nearly ten years now. There is a lot I don't know. But I do have a good grasp on core theological concepts and the theological "mechanics" or the logic of Orthodox teaching. I wasn't going to listen to hours of Morey on Orthodoxy for 65 bucks. So when I heard about the book, 17 bucks was cheaper than 65 bucks.

Morey is sarcastic and caustic. Its an act. Just don't let him bully you and don't get offended. When he bellows, bellow back and usually he'll shut up, change the subject or run away, like brave sir robin claiming victory with his tail between his legs.

HWC I suspect is Stephen Macasil or some other toady of Morey's. They've beern going around to Orthodox venue's trolling.

Morey's book isn't worth reading. Perhaps it is worth writing a detailed refutation, just because the book is so entirely bad that it may ensnare some ignorant laymen, Protestant or Orthodox. Any Reformed person with half a brain will ignore it and probably read Letham or Fairbairn instead. And although they have significant defects (Fairbain advocates nestorianism, though he seems unaware of it, and Letham advocates Monothelitism, though he doesn't think he is, but he is nonetheless) they aren't anywhere near as bad as Morey's book.

Morey's book is filled with misquotations, ad hom's, non-sequiturs and fallacies of just about every kind imaginable. I suspect that he did not do the "research" but farmed it out to his toadies and then collected the notes and put the book together. A clean 20% of the sources are tracts and popular books-tracts from conciliar press, ya know the small ones from the Jack Sparks/Gilquist crowd and other pop books like the Orthodox Church from A-Z. There are a few scholarly works used like Russell and Pelikan's work on Icons, but they are so grossly misquoted and/or deployed in a misleading fashion as to make a 90 day Watchtower wonder blush.

Morey doesn't have that significant of a voice among Calvinists. Thats for a few basic reasons.Anyone among them with a brain knows his "scholarship" isn't. 2nd he's a reformed baptist and most Reformation folk are Presbys, Dead Dutchmen or Lutherans. Reformed Baptists are kind of like the hyper active kidn the family tolerates at family gatherings but just wishes that they would shut up or go away or get adopted. Morey has a little following, his books are pop and nothing serious.

The best way to deal with the book is to just chart the dishonest methodology. Arguing theology with these people is not a feasible option. First they are so filled with prejudice that they pretty much see you as the spawn of satan. You should have seen the look on their faces when I was out there in January and inserted myself into a conversation while they were talking about the "damnable doctrines" of Orthodoxy and told them I was Orthodox. So is kind of like arguing with any cultist, you have to discredit their authority first by that authority's dishonest behavior. You gotta take the Watchtower out of the Witness before you take the Witness out of the Watchtower. The same thing applies here with Morey's little cult. These people seriously think he is a major Reformed scholar. He isn't and no serious Reformed theologian alive today thinks so either. His work isn't published in peer reviewed venues and this book is self published, which says it all really. But damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead, as it were. Besides, his grasp of Orthodox theology, let alone basic teaching concerning God as well as philosophy and history are so bad, painfully so. So for example, around page 83 or so, if memory serves ( I don't have the bk handy at the moment) he has a chart which is supposed to illustrate how Aristotle posits a dichotomy between essence and form. Uhm, any of my first year students knows that this is false for two basic reasons. First, essence and form mean the SAME THING IN ARISTOTLE. uh, hello? 2nd, Aristotle has a substance/accident dialectic, not dichotomy. Its silly mistakes like these that show that Morey knows little if anything about philosophy or the history of thought.

The book isn't good enough to be wrong. It's just stupid"



The website of the link

His website



JNORM888

2 comments:

Tony said...

People need to insult when they have no real argument. If they had an argument, they wouldn't need to add so many "spoilers" to it.

Jnorm said...

True





JNORM888

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