Dave Hunt: The Man, The Myth, The Dishonesty

In the reformed communities, Dave Hunt's name has become synonymous with such terms and phrases as, misrepresentation, ad hominem, charicature, poor research, and dishonesty. This concensus stems largely from Dave Hunt's polemical work entitled, "What Love Is This?". This work hit the bookshelves in 2002 and almost immediately, James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries began the tedious task of documenting the errors that permeated the pages of "What Love Is This?" (hereafter referred to as WLIT). It wasn't long before Dave Hunt's own ministry began to lose revenue due to WLIT and eventually was forced into publishing the work himself thru his own ministry due to his publisher refusing to put out the second edition. Amazingly, Hunt has recently released a third edition of WLIT despite the fact that he is still being forced to self-publish the book.

Now, as mentioned above, James White has documented many gross errors contained within WLIT (both first and second editions) and others that have sprang from Dave Hunt's ministry and writing. Some examples of White's documentation are:

• Hunt's statement that Charles Spurgeon "unequivocally" denied limited atonement (see here)
• Hunt's endorsement of the New World Translation's rendering of Acts 13:48 (see here)
• Hunt's exegetical error on 1John 5:1 and the subsequent retraction of his statements in regards to the same in the second edition of WLIT (see here)
• Hunt blaming the refusal of his publisher to print the second edition of WLIT on some great "Calvinistic conspiracy" (see here)
• The now infamous "Hebrew original" of Acts 1-15 (see here)

After reading thru these examples coupled with listening to White's audio files, one wonders how anyone in their right mind could endorse Dave Hunt's work. Indeed, I was surprised to find an individual recently who not only bought WLIT, but was aggressively defending both Hunt and his book. And what's sad is that no matter how many times Hunt's errors are demonstrated, this individual believes Hunt to be right and everyone else to be wrong including Laurence Vance whose criticism on parts of WLIT was written off by this individual as being biased.

Also, this person at one point linked to a Q & A section of Hunt's site in which I found this interesting tidbit:

Sadly, with few exceptions, most of the Calvinists who write to me make similar unsupported charges. For example, see James White's response to my book, What Love Is This? -Dave Hunt

This statement was made in response to a letter Hunt receieved that was critical of his work in regards to Calvinism. The charges made against Hunt are similiar, if not identical to many of White's own criticisms of Hunt. Yet, Hunt says that not only are the charges unsupported, but White's charges are equally unsupported. Undoubtedly, Hunt is referring to White's open letter that was written and posted to White's site soon after WLIT was released. And as anyone can see, White's open letter (which is also linked above) is lengthy and full of documentation of White's charges. In light of this, I dare say that Hunt's statement above is a bold-faced lie. There simply is no other way of looking at it. For Hunt to dismiss White's open letter as "unsupported charges", is outright dishonesty on Hunt's part. It is precisely this, coupled with the documentation on James White's site, that justifies and strengthens the reformed community's opinion of Hunt and his work. And it is this sort of thing that is ignored and/or explained away by ardent supporters of Hunt such as the aforementioned individual. Indeed, since White's documentation shows Hunt to be immune to correction, can we really expect Hunt's supporters to be any different?