DEBATE: Does Inerrant Scripture Need an Infallible Tradition? (Gordon vs. Christie)

All right, welcome to the Council of Trent podcast. I'm your host, Catholic G's apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. Very special episode today. I have done over a dozen debates. I mean, I don't remember the full number, but I've done a fair number of debates, but this is the first debate that I'm a part of, but I'm just moderating. So, it's actually kind of fun, a little bit relaxing. And so, I'm, I'm ex- so I'm, I'm exciting for all of that. I apologize, so I might be a little bit rusty on things. I'm getting a little bit of an echo in my. We will, um, we'll keep going with all of this. Uh, let's just get right to the debaters. The debate is topic: "Do we need an infallible tradition to know scripture is inherent?" That is the debate that we're having. Let me bring on our debaters. Uh, we have Catholic Tim Gordon from Rules for Retrogrades, and we have Steve Christie, Protestant. So, as I said, the resolution is: "Do we need an infallible tradition to know scripture is inherent?" The format: 15-minute openings, seven and then four-minute rebuttal, 15-minute cross-examination, and then 20-minute audience Q&A. We'll be selecting questions out of the chat. I'll let you know when that comes up, and then five-minute closing statements. I'm going to let, uh, each of our guests introduce themselves. Tim Gordon will be taking the affirmative. So, Tim, can you just briefly introduce yourself to our audience?

Greetings, everyone. My name is Timothy J. Gordon. I am a YouTube podcaster, streamer, and I have, uh, a JD, a PhD, a master's degree. I've studied, uh, history, literature, philosophy, and law, and I'm working on a PhD slowly, uh, at one of America's great centers of Thomism. I'll undisclosed, but I'm, I'm excited to be here tonight. I've done over 10 public debates myself, and I've only moderated one, like Trent. Uh, I've only moderated one, and I'm enjoying being here. I, I'm very relaxed to be in this seat, and I enjoy it. I haven't done debates much over the last four years because I've been busy, uh, streaming on philosophy and theology, political theology, political philosophy, three times a week on my YouTube channel, Timothy Gordon. But thanks, everyone, for tuning in tonight to Council at Trent, and thanks to Steve Christie for being here, and thanks to Trent for putting it on. Okay, my turn. All right, Steve, go right ahead.

Okay, well, first of all, Trent, I want to thank you for moderating this debate. Um, I used to debate against you. It's actually nice, uh, to be, um, that you're the moderator. And, and again, Tim, I would like to thank you for agreeing to this debate. Um, I was actually raised Roman Catholic. I was raised in a very loving and devout Roman Catholic family. I was elected Treasurer to the Knights of the Altar of my local parish, which was a huge privilege and honor for a 13-year-old altar boy. And I graduated from a Catholic elementary, high school, and college, which is where I converted to being a Protestant towards the end of my college education in August 2004. I've written two Christian books, not really of us. Why Do Children of Christian Parents Abandon the Faith? and Why Protestant Bibles Are Smaller, which is the one people are more familiar with. Uh, I've been leading home Bible studies for nearly 16 years now. I was a chairman of the missions committee for three years at my previous church and a chaplain at the Silver Sneakers for three years at the YMCA. And I was a keynote speaker at the 500-year anniversary of the Protestant Reformation in October 2017 at First Baptist Church of Greater Toledo. I've spoken at several churches in Ohio, Michigan, and Romania, where my beloved wife, Lucia, is originally from. And I've been, uh, interviewed and debated the Canon and the Maran dogmas against, uh, some notable Catholics such as Gary Machuda, Trent Horn, uh, Dr. Robertson, Janice on both Catholic and Protestant shows such as Pints with Aquinas, Reason and Theology, Line of Fire with Dr. Michael Brown, Dr. Tony Costa, Reverend Anthony Rogers, and others. And I've been interviewed on both Christian and secular television, radio, newspapers. And my actual job is I work as a registered nurse, where I've been working in healthcare for nearly 28 years. I work with COVID patients, and I earned a Bachelor of Arts and Science and a Master's in Business Administration. And for those who want to contact me, you can contact me on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, or X, or whatever it's called now. A Born Again RN, same spelling that's on your screen. So, and again, thanks again, Tim. Thanks again, Trent.

All righty, thank you, Steve, for the introduction. Let's get started. So, Tim has the affirmative. Once, once again, to remind everyone, the question being debated tonight is: "Do we need an infallible tradition to know scripture is inherent?" So, Tim, you will have 15 minutes. Uh, Trent, are you gonna be, uh, are you gonna be giving us any warning call signs on the 15 minutes?

Try here. Sorry, let me jump back in. Uh, if you want a one-minute warning, I mean, I can do that, but I was just going to do time at, uh, at 15 minutes.

Okay. Yeah, I'll let you guys. I, if it's, if you're wrapping up a thought, I'll let you wrap it up.

All right, cool. So, should I begin?

So, go right ahead.

All right, thanks again, everybody, and thanks for being here, Steve. Thanks for putting it on, Trent. The call, the question tonight is, can we know scripture's inherency without recourse to infallible tradition? Can we know scripture's inherency without infallible tradition? So, it's an epistemic question. It's all about knowledge. The question is not about whether or not scripture, in its, for Catholic, 73 is books, are inherent, but whether we can know it. Out of the Western Canon of philosophy, the word "know" involves three elements. To know something, knowledge is, and this holds for mathematicians and theologians as well. To know involves knowledge being justified true belief. For to be knowledge, a proposition must be justified true belief. Working backwards, this means a belief obviously is, uh, an affirmed proposition in mind. It's, it's an idea, fixed, something we hold to and defend. True, we're not going to go into, we're not going to be epistemic sticklers. True means it's got to be propositionally valid truth claim. It's not false. Justified, this means that we have to be able to show our math. We have to be able to demonstrate the truth of our belief a priori. This means before someone shows us at the end that it's not true or that it is true, someone makes the demonstration. So, with a coin toss, for instance, just, just before we get into scripture, if someone flips the coin, I call heads, you call tails, and I get it right. I had a true belief. Somehow, I, let's say I believed I was, uh, Gnostic or something. I had a true belief, but it wasn't justified. I guessed correctly. I maybe I thought I'm Nostradamus. It's not justified, but I do meet two of the three elements. It's an unjustified true belief. Okay, so can we know scripture is inherent without an infallible authority? In this case, tradition showing us? I want to say before I get rolling that Catholics have something called the motives of credibility for scripture. Um, they're evidentiary. What any lawyer in the courtroom would say. Motives of credibility are evidentiary. They're probabilistic. Christ did miracles. The apostles, a little bit later on, did miracles through the power of God from Christ. The Gospel spread without technology in a miraculous way, through a period of martyrdom, it spread all over the Mediterranean. These are all motives of credibility. And some of those apostles wrote down the stories, and they did so inherently, inspired by the Holy Spirit. That's, oh, and by the way, the apostles that are writing down the stories did so in a non-precalculated way, but a concomitant way. There's a concomitance there. This is all a strong set of motives of credibility. But, but without an infallible promulgation, something that's dispositive, not merely evidentiary, um, we can't have certitude that scripture is inherent. So, the basic idea, what really animates everything I'm saying here tonight, is that we can't adduce infinitude, something that's perfect, utterly perfect, from finite premises. Just a fact. One can't adduce an infinite conclusion from finite premises. Now, let me, let me show you what I have here. I'm glad to have the whole screen. Um, it goes like this. I want to make sure you don't have a glare. Really, really, really basic flowchart, which I'm hoping will help to, uh, line this out. So, in the first place, I have the question: "Were the Bible's books written by a single author?" And this is, this is really how you, you demonstrate that Sola Scriptura is a violation of something called the principle of proportionate causation. What are the Bible's books written by a single author? Of course, there's only one Christian answer, which is no. As far as I know, no one's ever made this argument. No, the Bible is not single-authored. Um, therefore, is there a divinely inspired table of contents in any one of the 73 divinely inspired books of the Bible? There's only one Christian answer here. You can answer yes. So, we move to the third bracket. Um, the answer is no. There is no divinely inspired table of contents. So, we ask, "Can inherency be known without promulgation?" Can it be known? Remember, that's the main call of the question. It's an epistemic one. Can the, can the inherency of the scripture be known without promulgation? That means without it's a divine truth, inherency of scripture. Can people know the divine truth of the inherency of scripture without God communicating it? That's what I mean by promulgation. And of course, the answer is no. The, the Christian answer cannot be yes. This would be what, what Karl Barth, uh, says of, well, he thought natural theology was diabolical because it would be tantamount to a Christian knowing something that God sought not to communicate. Well, this would be that. If you know, we were to posit that inherency could be known without a promulgation by God, so it would also be a violation of the principle of proportionate causation. In, in a separate way, that's the big principle tonight, but we won't talk about that one. Um, so we have to answer no. Can an inherent promulgation be accomplished by a non-infallible promulgator? This is the last question tonight. Can an inherent promulgation be accomplished by a non-infallible promulgator? And the, the answer to this has to be no. Again, QED. Infallible authority is needed. I, I'll put that, that catastrophically, uh, uh, glared, glared visual back up in a second. It can't be yes, right? To say an inherent promulgation can be accomplished by a fallible promulgator is a violation of a first principle. A violation of a first principle means it can't exist. That first principle is called the principle of proportionate cause. Principle of proportionate cause, by the way, means you can't give what you don't have. Another way to say it is that a cause can't bequeath what it doesn't have. You can't posit, to restate it one more time, you can't posit an effect greater than its cause. Or, to put it most technically, whatever perfection exists in an effect must be found in the effective cause. This sounds fancy because it's a first principle. Really, it's foundational. Every Protestant who I've ever met posits Sola Scriptura seems to be foundational to their mode of thinking of the rule of faith. Every Protestant who posits Sola Scriptura posits an effect greater than its cause. This is a violation, a proportionate cause. Now, the perfection in scripture, all 73 books, all 35-ish authors, is inherency, which must be found in, not necessarily those 73 books written by 35 authors, about two books per author, not necessarily in the inspiration and the penning of those 73 books. No, but in the collation of the 73 books together. In order to know that all 73 books are inherent, you have to have an infallible collation. You have to have an infallible publication of those collated 73 texts. You have to have an infallible promulgation. Think of collation as, uh, grouping together all the, the correct books, which are 73 inherent minor books, into one super inherent book. Publication means you pull out any of the flaws or apocryphal ideas. And then promulgation, at the end, some authority which is infallible puts forward inherently this super book of inherent scripture. This all requires an infallible authority because it's multi-authored. If Jesus had written all 73 books, collated them, published them, promulgated them before he went to the cross, Sola Scriptura might be a dog that hunts, but it's absolutely a demonstrable fallacy due to the multi-authored nature of it. Now, back to, for a moment, a principle of proportionate cause. It's a first principle, also called a logical axiom. Logical axioms are so foundational that they cannot be denied. It's impossible for them to be denied. First principles are building blocks of propositions and arguments, meaning they're like the atom of propositions and arguments. Technically, you can't prove a first principle. The next best thing you can do is to, in a secondary sense, prove them by an Aristotelian principle called retorsion. So, the principle of non-contradiction, principle of the excluded middle, principle of proportionate cause are all first principles. And, um, any attempt to deny them through this idea of retorsion involves recurring to those said principles. So, make an analogy. If I were to assert, "There are no assertions," this is like a first principle, and I'd be contradicting it performatively. A performative contradiction is I'm adverting to the very principle I'm seeking to linguistically deny. I'm just showing you that there are first principles. By the way, as Christians, we're not voluntarists. The way the Muslims are. Voluntarists are folks who say that God's will precedes his intellect, meaning he could reverse the first principles. The definition of a voluntaristic God. You could make something exist and not exist at the same time. God could make, uh, rape good and bad at the same time. The Muslims always dabble in this. Christians reject it. Our God is non-voluntaristic, meaning he observes the first principles. So, an effect can't be greater than its cause. This applies to authorship. Holmes cannot be greater than Doyle. Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes is a fictitious creation. It can't be smarter than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator. Protestants will ask, "Is divine inspiration in the case of scripture a violation of this?" After all, the Gospel is bigger than the individual man, Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, or Paul. Um, no, it's not, because ultimately, the Holy Spirit inspired the text. But what we're talking about tonight with this 73-chapter inherent text called scripture, the super book, 73 books glued together, some more naturally than others, is, um, is really the collation, and the publication, and the promulgation of those books. How do you know what is scripture? So, 73 books, scripture involves 35 or so authors. Let's not quibble on the 73 books, is or the 35 authors, is tonight. Let's just use a number. Multiple authorship involves a process, a series of processes that single authorship doesn't. I already said, if Jesus wrote, collated, published, promulgated one book called scripture in his life, it would be the sole rule of faith. I'd be, maybe Sola Scriptura, at least ways, it wouldn't be a fallacious proposition. But, and once again, I won't even put this back up. Maybe you can read it, maybe you can't. "Were the Bible's books written by a single author?" No. So, "Is there a divinely inspired table of contents?" No. So, "Can inherency be known without promulgation?" No. "Can inherent promulgation be accomplished by a non-infallible promulgator?" The answer is simply no. QED. There must be an infallible authority who is the promulgator of that super, super book comprised of 73 inherent, uh, constituent books. Once again, Protestants may think, recall that inspiration in this one case means that effect can be greater than its cause. But really, the Holy Spirit's action, it's him, laen, inspiring individual authors of those 35 authors who wrote what we call scripture. That's the writing. That's the creation of the thing. And really, it's the, the author is the Holy Spirit of that which is greater than the human mind. So, we don't have to quibble about that. Multi-authorship includes it. And here's what I want to give you a heads-up for. Um, Protestants must always, God bless you guys, Steve, but you guys must always stretch toward a kind of mystical promulgation of scripture that's not quite a promulgation, but that really is, but it didn't happen in one time, so it's not really. That's what you're going to see, um, Steve doing tonight. Because if there's any promulgation in time, whether you call it an act of tradition or an act of one of the infallible acts of the Magisterium, Catholics actually believe it's a little bit of column A, a little bit of column B, then automatically you must admit that an effect can't be greater than its cause. If you posit then an effect can be greater than its cause, you know you're committing a logical fallacy. So, watch this. Is with every Protestant I've ever dialogued with on this question, they have to play the shell game of a promulgation that's somehow mystical enough not to be pinned down in time, whether the oral tradition or you call it Magisterium. An effect cannot be greater than its cause, or more specifically, more helpfully, whatever perfection exists in an effect must be found in the effective cause. You're not going to get around that. I'm not sure who's made this argument in a public debate before, but it is, uh, an argument that you can take to the bank. And I, I'm fascinated to hear what the response will be. All right, right at 15 minutes. Thank you, Tim, for that opening statement. Thanks. Uh, next up, we will have Steve Christie, who will give the negative statement. So, Steve, go right ahead.

Let me set the timer up actually again for you. Stage here, and then you may start here. Let me unmute you, and you may start whenever you like.

Thanks, Tim. Thanks, Trent. On his ex account, formerly Twitter, in his video on the epistemology of Sola Scriptura, Tim Gordon assumed promulgation of scripture must include having the entire Bible in order to be certain scripture is inherent. In his illustration, he states, "If you are missing even one scripture, like the Gospel of John, or even a single chapter of a scripture, or if you add one writing that is not scripture, like Huck Finn, then you don't have a Bible to promulgate, nor can you be certain scripture is inherent." But even if we discovered the Book of Esther, for instance, was not scripture, we could still be certain scripture itself is inherent. In his YouTube video, "Reasons You Never Heard on Why Protestantism Is Wrong," Tim insists after the time of Jesus and the apostles, this infallible tradition of the promulgation of scripture, quote, "had to be made over three centuries later because it hadn't been deemed inherent yet." Here, Tim is referring to the late fourth-century local councils of Rome, Hippo, and Carthage. Yet, the Fourth Session of the Council of Trent declared, quote, "The Holy Scripture, Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, first promulgated with His own mouth, the written books, then received from the apostles, have come down even to us, transmitted as it were hand to hand. All the books both of the Old and the New Testament, seeing God is the author of both." However, in 1966, Roman Catholic theologian and future Cardinal Yves Congar, who served on the Preparatory Theological Commission of Vatican II and the single most formative influence on this ecumenical council, wrote in his work, Tradition and Traditions, quote, "An official definitive list of inspired writings did not exist in the Catholic Church until the Council of Trent." Saint Jerome, a doctor of the Catholic Church, who was commissioned by Pope Damasus I to compile the Latin Vulgate, wrote in his prologue to Jeremiah, quote, "The book of Baruch we have omitted, which refers to the churches in the West, since the churches in the East did include Baruch in their smaller canons." Jerome was also a key member of the local Council of Rome convened by the same Pope, which also omitted Baruch from its enumerated canon. Saint Augustine, another doctor of the Church and Bishop of Hippo, declared in City of God, quote, "First Esdras is to be understood as prophesying of Christ." Here, Augustine is referring to the Guardsman story, which Catholic author Dave Armstrong affirmed includes two and a half chapters excluded in the canon list at the ecumenical Council of Trent. Yet, First Esdras was included in these two local councils. Augustine was a key member of. Moreover, the New Catholic Encyclopedia, published just one year after Vatican II concluded, pronounced, quote, "The Council of Trent definitely removed First Esdras from the canon." Furthermore, Catholic apologist Michael Lofton from Reason in Theology and Jimmy Akin and Trent Horn from Catholic Answers have conceded that it's possible that additional books could be added to the Trentine canon, quote, "Maybe after centuries, there may be more of a conscious awareness that God gave these scriptures in the deposit of faith, but they were reserved in the Eastern Church for some time, and now they become more aware in the universal Church." So, the question is, it's possible. So, using Tim's own arguments, since these local councils omitted a book that is scripture, Baruch, according to Trent, and included a book that includes two and a half chapters that isn't scripture, the Guardsman story from First Esdras, and it's possible there may be books missing from the canon that could be added later, then scripture is not promulgated, and the Catholic can't ever be certain that scripture is inherent. But as a Protestant, I can be certain scripture is errant without needing an infallible tradition. For example, when I won the spelling bee in elementary school, I spelled every word without error, but I did not do so infallibly, since I only got fifth place. When I advanced to city, if I say the sky is blue and it is, I said this without error, but I did not say this infallibly, because I could have said the sky is green. Even the apostles and prophets were not infallible unless they were declaring revelation from God, which was later recorded in scripture, since they were moved by the Holy Spirit. Dr. Richard Howe, former president of the International Society of Apologetics, stated, quote, "One cannot know what an error is unless they know what truth is." The correspondence theory of truth affirms a statement is true when it corresponds to reality. One way to be certain is to read scripture and then compare the claims of each book to the others. Justin Martyr, in his Dialogue with Trypho, wrote, quote, "I am entirely convinced that no scripture contradicts another." So, how could Justin be certain scripture was errant, or Clement of Rome from the first century, without the alleged promulgation of the entire Bible not taking place until two or three centuries later? One could also compare scripture to verifiable scientific and historical claims and the laws of logic to falsify that it is inherent. For example, renowned archaeologist and historian Sir William Ramsay wrote, quote, "Luke's historical accuracy, supported by archaeological evidence, provides credibility to his depiction of Jesus Christ and the accuracy of his writings. Luke is a historian of the first rank. Not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy. This author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians. The Book of Luke is unsurpassed in respect to his trustworthiness. Further study showed the Book of Acts could bear the most minute scrutiny as an authority for the facts of the Achaean world and that it was written with such judgment, skill, art, and position as truth as to be a model of historical statement." Another way to be certain is the Bible is inspired or God-breathed, then it must also be free from error. Pope Leo XIII declared in his encyclical Providentissimus Deus, quote, "Inspiration not only is essentially incompatible with error, but excludes and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible that God Himself, the Supreme Truth, can utter that which is not true. It follows that those who maintain that an error is possible in any genuine passage of the Sacred Scriptures, either pervert the Catholic notion of inspiration or make God the author of such error." Although we are not debating how we know the Bible is inspired, we can be certain of its inherency because it is inspired and therefore free from error. Titus 1:2 declares, "God cannot lie." Therefore, God's uttered word in His sacred writings cannot be an error. Fulfilled prophecy would also affirm scripture's inherency. Over 500 specific prophecies in scripture have been fulfilled, including over a hundred precise Old Testament prophecies of the coming Messiah, fulfilled in the God-man Jesus Christ, both in the New Testament and supported in contemporary extra-biblical writings such as First Clement and the Epistles of Ignatius. Since scripture is trustworthy in its inherent prophecies of the first coming of Christ, we can be certain of its trustworthiness of its prophecies of His second coming and other future prophecies yet to be fulfilled, without needing a subjective infallible tradition hundreds or even thousands of years later. Furthermore, scripture is not an object of declaration affirmed by human will or councils, but an artifact of revelation. In his Sermon 162c on the Apostle Paul to the Galatians, Saint Augustine wrote, quote, "Let us treat scripture like scripture, like God speaking. The canon has been established for the church. This is the function of the Holy Spirit. If I prove something reasonable by the clearest divine testimony, let him follow not me, but the divine scripture." The Council of Rome affirmed this, quote, "The scriptures which the church is founded on, not that the church gave us our Bible." J.I. Packer once said, quote, "The church no more gave us the canon than Sir Isaac Newton gave us the force of gravity." The Apostle Peter wrote in his Second Epistle, "For when Jesus received honor and glory from God the Father, such an utterance as this was made to Him by the Majestic Glory: 'This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.' And we ourselves heard this utterance made from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain. So, we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your heart. But notice, first of all, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God." Not only did Peter declare the scriptures are more sure, or more certain than even his experience with Christ at the Mount of Transfiguration, he also affirmed prophecy of scripture was spoke from God and moved or carried along by the Holy Spirit, which is its function and therefore inherent. Scripture affirms it is the very speech of God and asserts its own inherency. Deuteronomy 9:10: "The Lord gave Moses two tablets of stone, written by the finger of God, and on them were all the words which the Lord had spoken." Jesus, in Matthew 22:29-31, declared, "The scriptures have you not read what was spoken to you by God?" Hebrews 1:1: "God spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets." Psalm 12:6: "The words of the Lord are flawless." Psalm 19:7: "The law of the Lord is perfect." Proverbs 3:5: "Every word of God is pure." 2 Kings 17:27 and Hosea 8:12 declare the scriptures were written by God. The Bereans believed the scriptures were errant without a promulgated canon, since they examined the scriptures daily to see whether these things Paul and Silas were saying was true. And John 10:35: Jesus stated, "The scripture cannot be broken." William MacDonald, in his Believer's Bible Commentary, asserts, quote, "The Lord expressed His belief in the inspiration of the Old Testament scriptures as infallible writings which must be fulfilled." The MacArthur Study Bible agrees, Jesus' comment is, quote, "in affirmation of the absolute accuracy and authority of scripture." In Matthew 5:17-18, Jesus said, "Do not think I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled." M. MacDonald asserts, quote, "Jesus believed in the literal inspiration of the Bible." Which MacArthur adds, quote, "The Law and the Prophets speaks of the entirety of the Old Testament scriptures, which Christ was affirming the utter inherency and absolute authority of the Old Testament as the word of God down to the last jot and tittle." When the Apostle Paul wrote his Second Epistle to Timothy, he instructed him, quote, "Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." Dr. Jordan B. Cooper, professor of systematic theology and president of the American Lutheran Theological Seminary, stated, quote, "When we say the Bible is without error, we are saying that in the genre that the text itself is given in, it is without error, with considerations of what it is trying to communicate." Articles 8 and 18 of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy declare, quote, "We affirm that God, in His work of inspiration, utilized the distinctive personalities and literary styles of the writers whom He had chosen and prepared. We deny that God, in causing these writers to use the very words that He chose, overrode their personalities. We affirm that the text of scripture is to be interpreted by grammatical-historical exegesis, taking account of its literary forms and devices, and that scripture is to interpret scripture." For instance, if scripture is affirming history, then we can be certain it is inherent by falsifying its claim. If it is using poetry or hyperbole, then we can be certain the message being conveyed using this literary device is inherent. Jesus, standing before Pilate, stated, "Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice." And Pilate, looking at Jesus, stated, "What is truth?" And then immediately told the Jews, "I find no guilt in him." We hear God's voice in the perfect, flawless, pure scriptures when we read what was spoken by God, carried along by the Holy Spirit, which Jesus affirmed the night before: "Sanctify them in truth. Your word is truth." Lastly, the danger in depending on an alleged infallible tradition to be certain scripture is errant is that it's not falsifiable. In his same video, Tim admitted, quote, "In Roman Catholicism, we have three prongs of the stool. Two are superior, two are infallible and errant: scripture and tradition. One is non-infallible, that's the living Magisterium. Three prongs of the stool, two are longer legs, the third one is a little bit shorter." So, since tradition is older than the living Magisterium, how could the Church of antiquity be certain this tradition of the promulgation of scripture was truly infallible, and therefore the scriptures are indeed errant? Tim ends up refuting his own argument. So, yes, we can be certain that scripture was errant the moment it was penned, not just infallibly like God can, because scripture is a revelation from God, which even Pope Leo affirmed, without needing an alleged and subjective infallible tradition to tell us, despite Tim himself apparently needing one. As the late Dr. Norman Geisler put it, "The God who cannot err guided human beings who could, he so they would not err when they wrote the scriptures, which cannot err." And to quote from the top of my book, "The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever." Isaiah 40:8. Thank you.

You're muted. You've muted yourself. I didn't. Yeah, it's nice not having to, uh, be the one speaking. The, the very minimal times I have to speak, I can't even get it right. All right, Tim, you will now have time for a seven-minute rebuttal. You may begin whenever you like.

I'd love to do part of this, part of this call and response. I will donate part of my seven minutes to you, uh, Steve. Stephen, every single quote you just read out affirmed something. Not an issue that scripture is, in fact, inherent. That's lovely, because we can hold hands and sing Kumbaya. We agree scripture is inherent. You did not read one passage, and it, it was read, and you're responding to a different argument I've made against Sola Scriptura. So, I'd love to hear what your arguments are here tonight. Every single argument lacked an answer to the call of the question, which is: "How do we know what is scripture?" It's great that you said time and time and time again, you produced quotations which affirm scripture is inherent, scripture is errant. What we must do, because of the multi-authorship of scripture, what, what had to have been done in the 100s, 200s, 300s, was tell us, "Well, that's great, everything that scripture is inherent. Now, what's scripture?" Because a lot of things had been written. There's a Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of James. Um, by the way, quick, quick historical, boring historical point. There's a difference between apodictic certitude, 100% proper, and what's called, uh, substantial certitude. So, those local gatherings, local councils of Rome, Hippo, Carthage, that were happening, particularly leading to the fourth century, those afforded something called substantial certitude, meaning you know 90%, 99%, 99.1, better than 80/20, because they were local councils, right? It's the second highest level of our Magisterium. It's not perfectly infallible. Um, at Florence, much, much, much later, that's where, uh, the body of scripture would be dogmatically defined. That's where you get apodictic certitude. Now, you quoted an argument which is not mine here tonight, and they, um, it, it doesn't hold given my first statement. My argument goes like this: Even if you're, you're arguing about the 73rd text of scripture or the 35th author, you mentioned Baruch. I forget that. For any two authors of scriptural texts, for any two that you want to glue together, the principle of proportionate causality obtains. End story. How do you know these two go together? How do you know to join them together? How do you know for certain to join them together? All you did in that first set of responses that you read to us was simply say, in, in all candor, in all due respect, all you did was simply say, "Scripture inherent." Yes. "How do we know what scripture?" You read out Deuteronomy 9:10. Does it include a table of contents? Because I'm not quibbling with Deuteronomy 9:10. Would you be able to read Deuteronomy 9:10 really quickly, Steve? Or do you have it handy? Do you want I can. Well, normally, I mean, normally this would just be your time. Here you go. Right ahead. Sure. So, "The Lord gave me the two tablets on which God had written with His own finger all the words He had spoken to you from the heart of the fire when you assembled on the mountain." So, yes, I'm, I'm, Steve literally used this passage to assert that there's contradiction in my view. My simple view, which is the effect can't be greater than its cause. The inherency of scripture, because it's multi-authored, cannot have been given from a cause which did not itself have perfection in infallibility, inherency. So, I'm not saying for posterity that God did not give the two tablets on the mount. That's not what I'm saying. But yet, he used that to say to aver that there is some sort of contradiction in my view. Is there a table of contents in Deuteronomy 9:10 telling us, "Here are the 73," or, or however many you think there are, books of scripture? I know that's something we disagree about. For any two authors of scripture, for any two books of scripture that are glued together, that, that principle of collation, which goes into saying, "This is one super book," yes, it's inherent, but we need to figure out what is inerrant. It's not some technicality irrespective of his history. Everyone out there, note well: perfection in effect without perfection in cause. Scripture, a 73-book super book that's inherent without a perfection in its collation, publication, promulgation. How does this happen? It's a lingering question like a ghost that stalks the halls. Steve, how do we have a super book, multi-authored super book, 73 books, 35 authors? I'm going to stop repeating that. I know it's annoying. Um, that we know go together, because none of those inherent words in any of those constituent 73 texts tell us which books to join them with. I'm asking, to cry, to God, from the bottom of my heart, where was it revealed which books are inherent? You called it the article of revelation. Great. We agree about all that. Scripture is inherent. It's one of the things Protestants and Catholics affirm together. Where, oh where, was it revealed which books are inherent? Because you can't say, "I have a Bible," unless you know what books are in the Bible inherently. Also, you, this is a technical logical error. Sorry, the logician of me says petitio principii. You're begging the question when you said, "Of course, the law of the Lord is perfect." But Tim thinks the law of the Lord, scripture, the rule of faith, is not perfect. Um, he said, "Tim's wrong. Scripture can't be false. That's why we can talk about an effect that's greater than that's caused." No, once we know, remember the call of the question, once we know what scripture is, which constituent books go in that big book that have been glued together, we will agree together forever that they can't be false. We're not debating that whatever constitutes scripture is inherent. Steve, we're debating what constitutes scripture. I'm asking you, where was it revealed what books are inherent? You're saying you don't need a tradition to give at least substantial certitude or a Magisterium to give apodictic certitude as to what books are in the Bible. Where, where can we figure out what books are inherently in the Bible? Read me that scripture.

All right, to see it. Tim, thank you very much for your rebuttal. Uh, now we will bring up Steve Christie, and he is going to offer his first rebuttal. Steve, you have seven minutes. You may start whenever you like.

Okay, thanks. Um, one point I want to bring up is what the topic of the debate is versus what it actually isn't. The topic I of the debate is simply, is how can we know that scripture is inherent without an infallible interpreter or tradition? But what Tim is doing is that he's putting qualifications on the word "know." And this is the reason why I said that you can know something like the sky is blue or, uh, the other examples I gave in my opening statement, but not knowing it infallibly. For example, I can know from scripture that the Trinity is a Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that they are distinct persons within the Godhead, yet they're the same God. But I do not know the Trinity infallibly the way God does. I do not understand the concept of eternity past, but I do accept it because it is something that is taught in scripture. So, I can know it, but I cannot know infallibly. And neither can the Magisterium or anybody else. And anyone who claims that they can is not being truthful. Also, we are not debating about Sola Scriptura. We're not debating about how we know what books belong in the canon, or even what scripture is. Again, the topic, the debate is, can we know this scripture is inherent without an infallible interpreter? I'm not claiming to understand it infallibly, and that is not the topic of the debate. Um, he also mentioned about the Council of Florence. While the Council of Florence, that list, which is an ecumenical council, is not identical to Trent either, because it included First Esdras, which, as I mentioned during the, um, opening statement, that the book was removed from the Council of Trent. Also, I didn't only just quote scripture to affirm scripture. That would be a circular argument. I mentioned other ways that we can know scripture, which is affirmed by popes as well as historians like Sir Walter, or William Ramsay, that I mentioned earlier. Um, also, Tim did not actually answer how he can falsify that that you need an infallible tradition in order to declare scripture is errant. The Magisterium can claim this, but that's just a claim. So, he didn't address this in an opening statement, nor did he address this in his, in his rebuttal. Um, and what about the errors in the deuterocanonical books? Now, I know there's a disagreement about this, but there's a difference between a Bible difficulty, which at first seems difficult, which Peter even talks about, you know, Paul's writings, you know, being, uh, difficult to understand, but those are things that are reconcilable. But there are irreconcilable errors that even Catholics have acknowledged that they cannot reconcile, because they say the, some books say the exact opposite of what other books do, including books within themselves, like the books of Maccabees, and even the Greek additions to Esther, and even, uh, sources within the church age like the Glossa Ordinaria, called all of the books of the deuterocanon, including the Greek editions of Esther and Daniel, apocrypha, even cardinals, popes, and councils right up to the Council of Trent did not accept them as scriptures. Even doctrines of the church. And Tim said he didn't, uh, wanted to discuss a canon, but this, since this is part of his argument, the promulgation of the scriptures, which were introduced at the councils of Rome, Hippo, and Carthage, then this must be part of his argument. But as I stated in my opening statement, they were not identical with the later Council of Trent. So, how does that affect his argument? Um, let's see. And how can we know what inherency is? Um, sorry, I'm just trying to read my, my sloppy handwriting. Um, the way we know what inherency is, we have to first know what an error is. When I quoted that doctor earlier, uh, in my opening statement, we can only know what error is if we know what truth is. You know, so it does end up being a canon issue. Um, we would not need a divine table of contents. Even, uh, Dr. Michael Kruger, in his book, Canon Revisited, you know, said that this is not a Protestant argument, because even if there was a table of contents, you would need an infallible tradition or, or 28th book of the New Testament to tell us that that isn't, is inherent, and then you need another one and another one, and you end up getting an infinite regress. The problem that Tim has is that if infallible tradition, uh, tells us that scripture is errant, how can you falsify that? If you falsify this by a Magisterium, then the Magisterium, as Tim stated, comes much later. So, then how do you falsify the Magisterium apart from it saying so? Well, if you say because scripture gives the Magisterium that authority, then you're just arguing in a huge circle. Um, he mentioned about motives for credibility. Well, again, well, how does Tim know this happened infallibly? I've got about two minutes left. Even though this is a canon issue, it does address what we're talking about a little bit here, and it's part of Kruger's self-authenticated New Testament model. It's, and if you want more information about this, it comes from the YouTube channel Theological Wanderings, "The Canon Problem," check there. But what the canon does is that it guides and determines the direction of how a canon is to be authenticated. The canon is derived and applied from what is found in scripture. We have to remember that the apostles already had a canon in the first century. It was called the Old Testament. It was settled before the time of Christ. So, they had that to appeal to, as well as most of the New Testament. 20 out of the 27 books were considered part of the New Testament canon even in from the very beginning. Other ones like Hebrews, James, Second Peter, Jude, Revelation, they're either quoted or alluded to as scripture from First Clement, which was in the first century. So, First Clement did not need, um, an infallible tradition to tell him that this was errant. In fact, he said that scripture is inherent, and this is by the work of Dr. Steven Boyce, by the way. So, you got 25 out of the 27 books. So, when the early church was looking to, uh, to not, I don't want to say determine the New Testament canon, but in order to recognize what God had, um, inspired from eternity past, what the canon is, this is one of the things that they had done. They had applied for criteria from scripture as they're guiding their investigations. For instance, apostolicity. The apostles were the mouthpieces, after all. You know, who would they be? Who, who would it be to say what scripture was? Because the apostles and their close contemporaries were the ones that wrote scripture. And Orthodoxy, the way that God's revelation confirms itself, like in Deuteronomy 18, when it says the prophet's words were confirmed, uh, by inspired scripture, and this is how we know the Bereans tested, uh, Paul's teachings. And of course, widespread use. And this is something you see even Romans 3:2, when it says that the Jews were entrusted with oracles of God. And that's my time.

All right, Steve, thank you. Thank you very much for that first rebuttal. And now we will bring Tim back, and Tim, you will have four minutes for a second rebuttal. Let me unmute you here, and you may start whenever you like.

Okay, cool. So, to know is the oldest and, sorry, the operative definition of to know, how...

Can we know without, uh, an infallible tradition that scripture is inherent? I use the oldest and most applicable definition of "to know" in the Western tradition. It's over 3,000 years old. It's accepted by logicians, mathematicians, theologians, and philosophers. It's in Webster: knowledge is justified true belief. I did not, there are no accretions added to it. Justified true belief. Any lawyer will say that's an elemental approach to a definition. You have to have all three. It's not knowledge if it's justified belief but untrue. It's not knowledge if it's true belief but unjustified. Uh, it's, it's not knowledge if it's somehow justified and true but not a true belief of someone.

How do you, you asked how do you justify the 73-book, multi-authored Bible? Sorry, I, I'm asking. We, we both agree that scripture, when we say the word scripture, and we assume all of the load-bearing constituent parts, that is, how many books are in it, forget that, presume past it. We agree together that scripture is true belief. How do you justify, as a Protestant, a *sola scriptura* Protestant, the 73-book, multi-authored Bible is what constitutes that corpus of inherency? With, and this is the absurdity, it's a, it's actually a *reductio*. This is a formal *reductio*, Steve. Involved in your position, you're saying that without knowing certainly what scripture is, we might have a good sense of it, but without knowing it certainly, we can know that this term scripture is inherent without infallible tradition. It's a violation of the commutative property of arithmetic. This is literally, if I were to re-line this all out logically, use symbolic logic. You're saying without knowing certainly what scripture is, we can know scripture is inherent. How? If you don't know what scripture is, great. Use scripture, the word, as a placeholder and say whatever is in it is inherent, but we don't know what scripture is with certitude.

Um, you also said there's an infinite regression involved by self-justifying textual authentication or something like that. I agree there's an infinite regression posited by attempting to have text, which is, in effect, a produced book that's written, collated if it's got multiple authors, published, and promulgated, attempting to justify itself. An effect cannot be more perfect than its cause. So the infinite regression that you're saying, "Oh, well, there couldn't have been a table of contents." I'm agreeing with you. I, what I was actually asking is, are there any of the three, 73? Any of the 73 textual books in scripture that themselves include a table of contents? The answer is no. The answer is no.

Now, you asked, "How did," and this is a good, important historical question, "how the late 4th-century canon selection, regional councils, yield a later ecumenical council certitude?" That's a very good question. As I said before, we have a four or five level of certitude. Magisterium, the local councils are, are exercising what's essentially substantial certitude. It's an evidentiary process that, that Athanasius and those guys were going through at the end of the 4th century. There's a little, you ask, "How is there a little tweak?" Well, because ecumenical councils yield a dogmatic definition, apodictic certitude. This is what's in scripture. How did people have any kind of certitude up until a dogmatic definition at a council? Well, they had a substantial certitude. But the, is without knowing certainly what scripture is, we can't know which parts of scripture are errant. We can just say scripture is errant. But you're admitting you don't know what constitutes scripture. All right, Tim, thank you for that second rebuttal. And now we'll bring back Steve. Christie, Steve, you will, you will have four minutes for your second re-. You may begin.

Set this up here whenever you like. Again, focusing on the word "no." He says this is true belief, but again, the topic, the debate is not knowing whether or not scripture, what scripture is, but, and let alone knowing that scripture is inherent, infallibly, but rather if we know scripture is without error. And again, go back to my opening statement and explain ways that people, even the church, as far back as the first century, Clement of Rome, Justin Martyr, and others, knew that scripture was without error without having a preliminated canon. That didn't happen in the 4th century because those books were different. And I hate to tell Tim, but his whole argument is centered around canonicity because it is when he believes that the books are promulgated. But again, the problem is, these local 4th-century church councils contradicted not only each other, but they contradicted even ecumenical councils, and even ecumenical councils contradicted each other. For example, Second Nicaea, many Catholic apologists believe, um, affirmed the local councils of Rome, Hippo, and Carthage. The councils of Chalcedon had multiple different promulgations of scripture, and they, and they, they were all different. Florence was different from Second, um, Nicaea, and Trent. And Florence was not the same because, um, because Trent removed First Ezra. So his whole argument falls apart. Um, so Tim has involved the canon for his argument. He's also seems to be conflating canonicity and how we can know something is inspired versus inherency. This is all what this debate is about. It's not about inspiration. It's not about how we know what books are scripture. It's about whether or not we can know what they say is true or not. And we can do this without an infallible translator or tradition or magisterium. So it's not about what scripture is. And, and again, he's not addressing how he can know that tradition is infallible if he says it's from an infallible magisterium that affirms this. This doesn't take place even later. And yes, I quoted Tim directly from his YouTube videos. And if he says, "Well, scripture gives the magisterium and the church that authority," then he's just arguing in a circle. So in his opening statement and his rebuttal, he has, he has not been able to provide this. And the reason why I say we don't need a table of contents is because this isn't a Protestant argument. It's something that Catholics ask Protestants. But we don't need an argument to this. Um, so Tim's whole argument, not only is canonicity, but again, the ecumenical councils contradict each other. I mean, I've got about a minute or so left, uh, in my, in my rebuttal period, but I really, I'm, I'm about ready to concede it because Tim has not been able to demonstrate that we need an infallible tradition in order to know scripture is without error. He's talking about the word, uh, "no" as an, a, a "no" knowing like completely. But again, I can know that the sky is blue. I can know the concept of the Trinity. I can know the concept of eternity past and that God existed in eternity past. Do I know all these things infallibly? The way God does? No, I don't. But I can know all these things, including knowing that scripture is without error, simply by reading it, just as Justin Martyr did, uh, first, Clement of Rome did, and Christians throughout the church. And again, what does he do with the errors that cannot be reconciled in the promulgated um, canons of scripture in these late fourth-century church councils that are not just Bible difficulties, they cannot be reconciled? And this is something the greatest of Catholic theologians have not been able to do either. And with that, I'll just concede the rest of my time.

All right, thank you very much, Steve. Uh, now we're going to transition a little bit into the cross-examination period. So each debater is going to have 15 minutes to ask questions of his opponent. Uh, the one who is leading cross-examination is able to ask questions, direct the conversation, so they get to be in charge for 15 minutes, and then it'll switch and go to the other person. Before we go to that, though, a word from our sponsor. Our sponsor today is the Council of Trent Podcast. I'm so glad that everybody's here. I just want to let you know that we are about a little over a thousand subscribers away from 100, from reaching 100,000. I would love to get the little plaque behind me, uh, that would be so much fun. So if you guys just, if, if you're watching the debate right now, I mean, there's, we got nearly 500 people watching this debate. If you guys all jump in and we get a few other people, we could probably hit. Let's, let's get to 100,000 tonight, people. We can do that. So if you could subscribe, and then you can get all sorts of great content. We want to grow the channel, maybe do future debates like this as well. So, all right, I'm going to bring back our guests and I'm going to take myself out here in a second. I'll come back in when time is up. But Tim, because you had the affirmative, you will get to go first in the cross-examination. You will have 15 minutes to ask Steve any questions you like, and your time begins once I step out. Cool.

By, would never say Steve that scripture gives tradition its authority. I've never said that and I never would say it. Um, the authority comes from Christ and the Holy Spirit. I've said, of course, that, uh, tradition chronologically and, and in some sense, hagiologically precludes scripture. So I don't know where you got that from. I would ask you, how do you know to glue any two of these books of scripture together? That's a canonicity issue, and we are talking about inherency. No, that's not the top. It may, but no, off-topic. It's not off-topic. I'm, I'm asking you, how do you know you specifically, you know, scriptures in inherency? Tim, you specifically stated you do not want to talk about canon, even though it's a big part of your argument that we're talking about how we can know scripture is inerrant without an infallible tradition. Do you have a question for me about inherency? Right. I have a question for you. How do you know the inherency of individual books of the Bible? Well, if you listen to my opening statement, I explained just how even early church fathers like Justin Martyr and First Clement knew. They said simply by reading it, they could know without a preliminated canon because that didn't happen until the end of the 4th century. Like you did, they knew it was without error and without contradiction, without knowing it. They knew it by reading it. Sir William Ramsay also knew this by comparing it to, um, historical claims. And it turns out that the Gospel of Luke actually, um, corrected the historical claims of secular, um, um, people of history. In other words, the Gospel of Luke got it right, and the historians got it wrong. Hold on. All right, let me rephrase. I, and I'm not trying to use terms over that are obscure philosophical terms. Are you acquainted with the difference between sense and reference? Well, why don't you explain it? Muslims worship the one true God. Even Pope John Paul II said that. We'll know. I, I mean, lots of people say, "Well, yeah, they don't because that would be Jesus, right?" So they don't understand his Triune nature. They don't understand. They understand him in a voluntaristic way. I'm saying you're making the fallacy of mistaking sense and reference, marking sense for reference, uh, as it applies to scripture. In other words, you're saying the way I, the way I hear you tonight, you're saying, "I know scripture is an errant." I say, "Cool. Leave, leave that as something we agree about." I'm asking, when you're talking about scripture, what parts of it are an errant? You say the whole thing. And I say, "I know, but it's been authored by, by 35 authors." And how do you know which of them and which of their texts to glue together? It's a simple question. That's an issue of the canonist. Now, I will respond this way. Well, I'm asking it, though. I'm asking, and, and I'm going to answer this very briefly because it's a canon issue that's going to take much more than 15 minutes, which we're less than that now. But we, we know that there is a set canon before the time of Christ. These are the books that were laid up in the temple. They were laid up in the temple by the Sadducees, which Catholic apologists, even Trent Horn, has had believed that it only limited to the five books of Moses. But as right. But, but that is actually incorrect because even Roger Beckwith has shown evidence that they believed more than the five books of Moses. They actually believed in the same books that the Pharisees did, that, that, um, you know, that Protestants do today. And the Sadducees would not have laid books up in the temple that didn't belong there. In fact, you can go all the way back to Second Kings, and it says that the Torah, the five books of Moses, were laid up in the temple right next to the ark. And a later early church father says that we know that the deuterocanonical books are not scripture because they were not laid up next to the ark in the temple. So, sorry, in the first century, a first-century Jew like Paul or Jesus, um, before the Second Temple fell, there were competing conceptions of what constituted Tanakh, which goes to the very essence of which you're calling canonicity. Call. Hold on. Let me, let me get the question. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead. There's absolutely, there's absolutely dispute. You're, you're saying the Sadducees, citing some guy Beckwith, the Sadducees accepted more than just the Torah. They accepted the rest of the books of Tanakh. That's okay. That's Beckwith actually one of the premier and top scholars of the canon. He's at the level of Lee Martin McDonald, if not higher. I, I, okay, who cares? The, the point is this, what, how do you know that this, and it's, this is a minority jurisdiction view you're representing here, that the Pharisees and the Sadducees agreed about what books constituted Tanakh. Um, the, the majority jurisdiction says no, they did not. Sadducees didn't accept anything outside of Torah. But what on, what basis, on what authority, would they be able to identify what books are in Tanakh? It can't be greater than the Tanakh itself because that would be a violation of the principle of proportionate causality. So where, where, where are you drawing this, uh, equation from? Well, well, if you really want to know the, if you look at the scriptures that we agree on, the New Testament scriptures, Jesus himself affirmed the canon of the Pharisees, which is the same as, as the, um, as the Sadducees in passages like Matthew 23:35, Luke 11:50-51, Luke 16:29. He actually affirms that the Pharisees, uh, actually had the Old Testament scriptures. And even apologists like Gary Machuda and others, Trent Horn, William Albrecht, have all conceded that the Pharisees had the same books that Protestants have today, and Jesus is affirming that canon as scripture. Where was it revealed which books are inherent in the Old Testament? Let's do that. Well, well, that, well, that would be a little difficult to do because not all the Old Testament was written at once. But by the time, no, no, no, it would be difficult to do because of this first principle. It would be difficult to do because you'd be positing an effect greater than its cause. It's an impossibility. But just tell me any, even if it's approximate, give me this place where I can know in Old Testament and then in New Testament. We'll take them. Get, then, then we're gonna have to do a, a third one and say, how do we join the 46 plus the 27 books, Old Testament and New Testament, together? But let's start there. Where was it revealed which 46 or so Old Testament books are inherent and as such go together? Well, I don't believe that the 46 were inherent because that includes the deuterocanonical books that you realize as a Protestant, I only believe in a 39. And so where, where, where was it revealed for you, where the 39 Old Testament books? I'm getting to that. Again, if you, if you don't want to take, uh, Jesus's, um, testimony into account, or, or the Apostle Paul, then Matthew 23:35, Luke 11:50-51, and Luke 16:29, you look at, you can look up those verses later, or we can read. Yeah, I'll go to the next question. Read them out and we'll see. I, I, what I'm expecting from those three verses in order to answer the call of the question here tonight, how do you know that what constitutes scripture is an errant? In those three verses, it better be something tantamount to a table of contents, because together those 39 books, because we know the Jews of antiquity had only utilized 22 or 24 books, depending on whether or not Ruth and Judges and Jeremiah and Lamentations were meshed together or not. That's how you end up getting that the first time we see this number 22 is the Book of Jubilees. Before the time of Christ, the threefold division that the Jews have, the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings, is in the prelude, uh, to the Book of Sirach. And we know what those 22 books were because these are the books that Josephus, who is a Jewish historian at the end of the first century, said were laid up in the temple. And he gave the parameters, and he says the five books of Moses, he talks about the books of the prophets, he talks about the, the four poetic books. These are the books that were, let me finish. And then, um, and then he says that it was a time period from Moses to the death of Artaxerxes. And we know what these 22 books were because as early as the 2nd century, we have an enumerated list of Baba Bathra 14b, not just there, but in early Christian looks like, and Philo, and others, right up to the 8th century, that has the exact same 22 or 24 books. All right, all right. But all the specifics at a certain point become papering the listener under. I'm asking, do you receive Josephus's list of 22 as infallible? No, because that's not. Okay, so how do you, how do you adduce, because you do not have to. That's my whole argument, Tim. I do not have to know something infallibly to be true. I can know the Trinity is true without knowing it infallibly because, and I get that from scripture alone. So, the principle of proportionate causality is wrong then, according to you? No, no, because what my, Tim, I'm trying to explain my argument, and, and you keep, you keep jumping around to different topics because we're the only topic. The only topic is how we can know that scripture is an errant without infallible tradition. You're talking canonicity. No, no, I'm not talking canonicity. Let me read you. I'm talking about a per-, a perfection, argumentative perfection, which means apodictic certitude. That's what you, that's the vast claim that you make when you say, "I know scripture is inherent." I make it too. That's not what I'm saying. We both make it. Hold on. Wait, wait, wait. I'm not saying, you're saying I know scripture is an errant. Yeah, I aver this as well. Well, you just now, now you're in a conversation in a dialogue with yourself. Whatever perfection exists in scripture, I'm reading directly from the principle of proportionate causality. Sure. Whatever perfection exists in scripture, perfection means it's, it's unchanging, it's finished. We call inherency. There are no errors. This means that its cause, the cause of scripture, which is a process of inspiration, writing, collation, since there are multiple authors, you have to collate those authors together, publication, promulgation, it's cause must have that perfection as well. So the cause of script-, I've been very simple tonight. I'm driving at one point. I'm asking, how is the cause of that effect? Very, very simple and straightforward line of questions. How is the perfection absent from that, that effect in its cause? Because I'll be explaining, because you do not need to know something is without error, and we do not need to know something is scripture, knowing it infallibly. And that's the problem with the Catholic side because what do you do with the deuterocanonical books, which are claimed to be inherent, and they're not? They have irreconcilable errors, which is why even popes and cardinals and doctors of the church, right up to the Reformation, said this is not scripture, this does not belong in the canon. The infallible tradition is fallible. They were wrong. I'm sure we'll get to all this in in your, your argument. Grilling me? No, it's not my. You just contradicted yourself. I said, "Do you affirm the principle of proportionate causality?" Whatever perfection exists in an effect must be found in the cause. And here, just because we have a lot of different types of people listening tonight, the, uh, uh, perfection existing, hold on. The perfection existing in the effect is a, a work product, a book, a book that's comprised of 73 other books, co-authored by about 35 guys. Perfection means scriptural inherency. We agree about that much. Where we disagree is you say that there is not an inherency, uh, a, a simultaneous inherency, which is the, the perfection in the effect in the cause. And I said, "You just violated the principle of proportionate cause." And then you said, "No, I didn't." You just said, "We don't have to have it though." That's a contradiction. Explain that for me. I, I, I guess I don't know how else to say this other than the fact that we don't have, we can be certain what scripture is. We can be certain that it is without error without knowing it infallibly. And if, and if, and if you, I explain this numerous times to him. I explain it in my opening statement, in my rebuttal, and even in this cross-examination. I mean, I don't know what else to say. But that's a *reductio* though. Simply no. Simply reading. Then, then, then how did Clement of Rome and Justin Martyr know scripture did not have contradictions and didn't have a preliminated canon that, in fact, Clement of Rome, the New Testament wasn't even completed yet? Precisely. How did they know? Because they had something occurring to a substantial certitude. Right. This is why I gave you the coin toss. But they didn't have a, they didn't have a prima-. I don't want to argue with you now. Now I'm just, I'm, I'm steering the ship. You'll have your 15 minutes. Clement of Rome, and I'm also not under cross-ex. Ask me this in your 15 minutes. Sure. But they, they were right. They had a theory which was correct. Right. It ended up being correct. You're asking how can the substantial certitude of the local councils yield a firmer apodictic certitude in later councils once substantial certitude has firmed into apodictic certitude? That's literally how tradition worked over a course of 100 years and how the magisterium worked over the course of 2,000 years. But I'm asking you, you, I, I don't think you're of one mind on this. You're not. You're giving two answers. I don't think you're understanding what I'm saying. Well, the *reductio*. I don't, because you can't, you can't explicate a false logic. Steve, that means you're giving, you have a math problem that adds up, and you can't figure out why you're not getting the right answer at the bottom. The *reductio*. I guess, I guess I'm, I'm, I guess I'm wondering what you're saying the causes are. You're saying the cause of, you know, is the promulgation when the church got together and declared what books are scripture? Because of, because the authority that the Holy Spirit gives to, to the one Holy Catholic Church? Yes. But the Holy Spirit acts through the one Holy Catholic. And the Holy Spirit did not do that with the Catholic Church because the Catholic Church was wrong on the canon because it included the deuterocanon. Because, because the deuterocanon was in the later versions of the Septuagint, which was not in the version in Jesus's day. Okay, I'm, I'm going to come-. That's that's not correct. All right. We, um, I'll have to just, uh, jump in here now. We're at 15 minutes here. We got that. All right. Uh, now we're going to, hold on, sorry, let me get my watch back here. Now we're going to switch over. It'll be Steve's turn. Uh, there was a bit of, I know there was a bit of confusion. Some people were saying, "Well, what is the the topic?" I'm just going to read the question one more time so that it's fresh in everyone's minds as we continue, both in this part and then for the Q&A with the audience. The question for the debate is, "Do we need an infallible tradition to know scripture is inherent?" Tim is taking the affirmative, yes. Steve is taking the negative, no. Uh, Steve will now have 15 minutes to lead his cross-examination. And, uh, you guys, uh, definitely think of, uh, your questions by the way in the chat, because after cross-examination in 15 minutes, we're going to take audience Q&A for about 20 minutes. So, all right, Steve, once I leave, you will have 15 minutes to lead cross-examination with Tim. Okay. All right.

Tim, you stated in your YouTube video that the living magisterium is not as old as the infallible tradition from the late 4th century that declared scripture is inerrant, nor is it, meaning the living magisterium, necessarily infallible. There are examples where it's not always infallible. So how could a person back then be certain that that particular tradition was infallible, meaning the promulgation of scripture? Any Christian on the motives of credibility could be substantially certain, particularly in the first century. Right. These are, these are people that are were alive when Christ himself were alive and when the apostles were alive. So they're operating on a different epistemic framework than us, right? They, they had the motives of credibility. That's substantial certitude. I've often said I'd rather have been an apostle and witnessed these things myself or the friend of an apostle and witnessed Jesus's miracles themselves. It's a bit of a trade-off. It's a bit of an epistemic trade-off. I, those people who are alive a generation after or even the generation during Christ, they got to witness them without the dogmatic definitions as to what went into what comprises scripture. But didn't, but we trade off because I have the certitude of dogmatic definitions by the Holy Spirit acting through the church. And, but yet I didn't see it. It's 2,000 years old. How do you know the Holy, how do you know that the Holy Spirit was working through the Catholic Church to promulgate scripture? Because of the, the motives of credibility. The church. And how do, and how do you know that infallibly? Infallibly the church declares that, uh, scripture is an errant. Right. And, but, but what I'm saying is that, okay, let's assume that's true. Sure. Let's assume that that is true. How can you falsify that aside from the Catholic Church claiming that? Well, well, Christ himself said, "I found on you, Peter, the rock." There's an apostolic. How do you know Jesus said that? How do you know that that's inerrant in scripture since we haven't determined that scripture is inerrant yet? No, and that, that's where there are cross-fertilizing, cross-fertilizing motives of credibility that come from history itself. But so, so here's how it works. Uh, Suetonius, Josephus, all of the secular historians that affirm there is Jesus, he had a huge following. His followers, some of the motives of credibility we haven't even mentioned tonight. Christianity teaches the hardest set of doctrines. We agree on that. And yet he had this miraculously large following, even though it was the first world religion in the history of time, invoke martyrdom. So there's that. Take that leap of faith. I want to move on, Tim. I want to move on because I only got 12 minutes left. Um, and yet your argument was that no one could know that scripture was inherent until the promulgation of scripture at the end of the 4th century. A, that's not true because we have examples of Clement of Rome and, um, Justin Martyr. And B, the 4th-century church council that promulgated the canon was wrong when it came to the deuterocanon, and contradicted later ecumenical councils like Florence and Trent. I want to move on. Second Kings, hold on, hold on. Can I, can I respond? No, I'm asking. Substantial certitude, move to apodictic certitude with a dogmatic definition. That's very clear. Okay. Second Kings 22:8 records the book of the law, the Torah, uh, was laid up in the temple. Did the Old Testament Jews know the Torah laid up in the temple was inerrant despite not having a promulgated canon? No, which is why all of the Old Testament Jews argued over what constituted Tanakh. Now, I'm not talking about Tanakh, I'm talking the Torah. Did they know that the Torah, the, the book of the law, the Torah, did they know that was scripture? They knew it with what would be certitude, but not apodictic certitude. Did they know that it was hadn't been declared by the Holy Spirit yet? And yet they laid the book up in the temple next to the ark. And you're saying that that they don't know that, ified true belief? They had, they had a belief. It wound up being ratified chronologically later in time. You don't seem to understand this. They had a true belief which they had strong justification for. But if we go to my coin toss analysis, it hadn't, the hand hadn't been removed yet to reveal, "You are right, it is heads." They had a strong belief in it, though. Such a strong belief through the action of God in the Old Testament through the prophets that you could say it's a substantial certitude. I'm fully comfortable. So, so your answer is no. So why did St. John of Damascus assert in the 8th century that books like Sirach and Tobit, quote, "are virtuous and noble, but are not counted, nor were they placed in the ark, nor part of the 22 books of the Old Testament"? And Rufinus in AD 400, writing around the same time as these church councils, also affirmed this. Well, you're talking about private theological opinion. Okay. Well, that's not. Okay. Even if it's at the level of magisterium, what, what Protestants, the pitfall that you guys will fall into is you'll be talking about something that's a lower level magisterium that's not inherent. It's not even that second level that has been so crucial tonight, that's substantially certain, can be added to only by a dogmatic definition, which is what happened. And, and yet, and, and yet the Catechism of the Catholic Church states that the magisterium is at its highest in an ecumenical council. And yet you got the Council of Florence, the Second Nicaea, and the Council of Trent, all ecumenical councils, contradicting each other on what is scripture and therefore what's an errant. You know, where did, you're going to have to, you're going to have to enumerate that. You can't just leave that out there. They, they didn't. Second Nicaea affirmed the fourth-century councils of Hippo and Carthage, which had a different canon list than Florence. And then Florence had a different canon list because it had First Ezra, and, which is not the same as the book of Ezra. It was a different book, which had the Guardsman story in it, which was not included in the Council of Trent. In fact, um, the, the citation I gave in my opening statement, I affirmed that that the Council of Trent removed it specifically from the canon. That's the exact words, right? So the, the sense-reference difference gets you, gets you over, uh, the hump here. Okay. Sense-reference. Like, literally, as you move from Nicaea to, to, uh, Florence in time, there, there was nothing deleted in the canon. You, you add some. So there's, there's no contradiction there. As you go from Florence to Trent, then all of a sudden, sense-reference, uh, dichotomy explains this. Part was never conceived of by the, this part of this book was never conceived of by the church as an errant. And yet Second Nicaea, that affirmed those late fourth-century councils, added a book. And then from, uh, that Florence did, had, or Florence had, and then, uh, Trent actually removed a book that Florence had. But anyways, I want to move on. In your YouTube video on why your recent debate was canceled, you rejected the moratorium canon in the second century as certainty of the scripture, saying, quote, "One too many or one too few books in a Bible would be different from an errant scripture. It would be a different thing. A book with 20 chapters versus a book with 21 chapters cannot be called the same thing." Do you still hold to that? Uh, I would say that when you admitted earlier tonight that you don't know what scripture is completely, then we can't do an inherency on it, which is an analysis of what a thing is as a substance. Can we talk about scripture as one thing, or do we have to talk about it as 73 things, 70 things, 67 things? I'd ask you, well, from, well, is it one thing? It's actually, it's my time to ask you questions. You didn't really answer my question. So yes or no, is this still your position then? Well, depends whether you're asking whether or not, let me ask you a question. One thing or multiple? If, if one book has 20 chapters as opposed to 21 chapters, are you saying that that promulgation, that collection of books, is not inherent because it's a different thing? Yeah, like if it was written by one author, then, then it doesn't conform my analysis. If, if one Bible had the book of Baruch in it and another Bible did not have the book of Baruch or Revelation, even, or Esther, would you say that is a, that is the same thing, or it's not the same thing? Logically, they're not the same substance. Okay. Would you agree that there can only be one one correct? Tim, it's my turn to ask you questions. Considering, based on your answer, considering the ecumenical council Trent omitted the two and a half chapters from the Guardsman story in First Ezra that was included in the, listen, Hippo and Carthage, does this mean Trent was in error for omitting it? Or does it mean the promulgation of scripture did not occur in the late 4th century since it included a book and chapters excluded later at Trent? No, it doesn't mean that. So how can you reconcile the two, considering that they had, they had different canon lists that they claimed to be inspired scripture and therefore inherent? Via my question, I asked you, is are you talking about the substance of scripture as one thing or 73 different things involved in one composite thing? Essence in all of your questions. My question, my question is about the books themselves and the chapters themselves because you're saying even if you remove a, like for instance, okay, the Epistle of Jeremiah, the one chapter that's attached to the book of Baruch, um, you don't find that in the, you don't find Baruch in the Dead Sea Scrolls. It's, uh, the Epistle of Baruch is a separate writing. You don't find it in Origen's list. He mentions, um, Jeremiah, Lamentations, and he puts the epistle as an appendage to that. Doesn't mention Baruch. So this obviously would be a different thing according to your model. So anyways, I want to get into a variance issue. Does infallible tradition take into account variance? You're going to have to define. Sure. No, no. Fine. Um, and Council of Trent that says that these are all the books of the Old Testament that were passed down hand-to-hand in all its parts, meaning that you would have to include, uh, the, the Greek editions, Esther and Daniel, for instance. You know, you couldn't, you couldn't reject that and say that it's a Bible. So does that include variance? Does that include, like, for instance, differences between, um, Bibles and and translations? For example, in the New Catholic Version of the Bible that follows the Douay-Rheims, in Luke 6 and Acts 1, it describes Judas as the brother of James. And yet in The New American Bible, it describes him as Judas, the son of James. Right. As you, I, I mean, you're talking about transliteration now. Translation means there is some, both you and I together affirm that scriptural inherency means that there are some set, God-breathed, uh, corpus of propositions, Old Testament, New Testament, come, come together, that in all languages, in season, out of season, is inherently true. Now, because at one time, uh, this term, which really just means family member or relation, is translated "brother," and one time it's translated "son," "cousin" versus "brother" is a big one, with Jesus, that you think that this contradicts inherency? Okay. I, I got, I got 20 seconds left. I got one question left. How would you respond to Father Stephen De Young, who stated, quote, "Trent, that was the first place where the Old Testament canon was set out by Rome. So that was still a live debate in the West at the time of the Reformation. The list of canonical texts made by St. Athanasius of Constantinople in the 9th century says there were Christian churches that hadn't accepted the book of Revelation yet." I, I love that. It's a, it's a developmental morphology, right? We moved from first-century apostles had direct, uh, sense of Jesus, witnesses, miracles, their, uh, the next generation heard direct word of mouth from people they trusted, chain of evidence. By the time you get to the end of the 4th century, you're a few generations down, and you have substantial certitude by the generations of people at the local councils where it gets codified. It might take a thousand years, which I know strikes at the heart of Protestants, for this to be codified as apodictic, 100% certitude. But I, I believe that works, uh, the way history works. All right. And with that, uh, we've come now to audience Q&A. So, uh, hopefully I don't have to stall too long here. It always seemed easy whenever I was doing debates. It seemed like we would go up and Matt Frada had just instantly this list of questions to choose from. That guy, that guy is amazing. I don't know how he could do debates, listen to what you're saying, listen to the chat, and get everything together. So, uh, I couldn't do it. It's, uh, the Australians have to be quick-witted about them, or they'll get eaten by an alligator or a snake or other kinds of things that'll kill them down there. All right, let's take a look. I think we've got, we've got a few questions here. So let's see. Uh, here's a first question for Steve. And then, yeah, you can put "for Steve" or "for Tim" before your question, or you can write "for both," and we could ask, uh, both debaters. So I'll grab the first one here, then I'll, I'll find a few others. Uh, for Steve, "Do you think it could be possible for the Bible to become so corrupted or lost that people can no longer trust it, or do you think God has guided history so that this won't happen?" Yeah, before I answer that, do we have a time limit? Oh, yeah. Um, I don't know if we did settle this earlier, but I would normally what I like to do would be if a question is addressed to someone, they have two minutes to answer, okay? And the other person, if they would like to, can reply, and they have one minute to reply. Would that be fine for you guys? Yeah. Sorry, would you repeat that? That would you, we'll do, if someone asks you a question, you get two minutes to answer. The other person who has not asked the question gets a minute to reply if they want. Sure. All right. So two minutes for you, Steve. Uh, this question: "Do you think it could be possible for the Bible to become so corrupted or lost that people no longer trust it, or do you think God has guided history so that this won't happen?" Yeah, thanks for the question, Gen Z Cath. Like, no. Jesus actually promises us that not one jot nor tittle will pass from the law and the prophets until all is fulfilled. He promises this, and that's something, Tim's nodding, I think he would agree with me. So, no, I mean, he protects his word, you know. And even Peter makes a comment, this will, um, in his epistle, that this is going to take place. And, and we can know that the word is more sure, you know, until, uh, the Morning Star, referring to Jesus, rises. His heart, he's talking about the second coming at that point. And the other thing, as I mentioned during the debate, is that there were books laid up in the temple. We know what books those were. And the reason was because the Old Testament Jews, Pharisees, Sadducees, virtually everybody, um, knew what books those were. The Sadducees would not put up books in the temple that were not scripture. And so we know what books that they are. Um, and another thing too, is Tim would agree with me, is that Jesus built a church, and the church refers to every sinner that God redeems out of the earth and draws to his son to worship him, and then gathers together physically and locally in in local assemblies to worship. So the church will always be around because Jesus promised this. And the true church is going to know what scripture is. They're going to know what if it's an errant or not. This is done by illumination. I, and I quoted a little bit earlier, um, from, who was it? Um, the Theological Wanderings on YouTube, the Canon Problem, the Krueger self-authentication model. So, yeah, the church would never get corrupted to the point that they would, um, believe or, or, that the Bible would be corrupted. And this is part of the reason why I'm not Roman Catholic, because, uh, the Bible has been added to, it's been removed, books have been taken away, even in ecumenical councils. And, um, even Catholic theologians have conceded that books can be added to the Bible, uh, theoretically, that have never actually been in there, if they're from antiquity, like some of the books from the Eastern Orthodox Bible. Okay, Tim, would you like to reply? Do you have a one-minute reply? Sure. I, I mean, obviously, um, we have the promise from Jesus that the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against the church, which means, um, scripture and the infallible components of the magisterium. I, we know this as a proposition of truth. Um, I'm, I'm confused how, uh, according to the things Steve's offered here tonight, um, were to take as true the truth claims of scripture without, um, involving an infinite regression by self-justifying textual actualizations. But given, given that Jesus said that in scripture, and we know scripture is inherently true because of the authority given to the apostles who through tradition gave us the Bible, yes, I, I can tether my answer to something definite. I know those words of Jesus in the Bible are true. And Jesus says it really in three places that, uh, they'll be, they'll be true. We have to tether them to something that's certain, though. Okay.

Here is the next question. This one is for Tim. Uh, Tim, what do you answer to Steve's argument that Florence includes one more book that would be the Ecumenical Council of Florence includes one more book in, I guess, its canon list than the list at the Ecumenical Council of Trent? Uh, so the, the argument here is that the process is additive, not subtractive, and, uh, this is the development of canon in time. It can happen. It's easy. Okay. Are, have you, are, is that your answer?

Yeah, I mean, it's a simple historical question. It's an additive process. Okay.

Um, Steve, would you like a one-minute response?

Uh, yeah, real quickly. Um, I don't think Tim understood what I was saying because at Florence, it had a book in it that was not at Trent. So it wasn't additive, it was subtractive. In other words, Florence, an Ecumenical Council, which cannot, uh, is claiming this book that had a book that the Guardsman story, these two and a half chapters, they, incl, they were saying these are inspired, these are inherent. And then less than, than, you know, several centuries later, at the Council of, or a century later, at the Council of Trent, suddenly they say, this is not inspired writing. These two and a half chapters are not scripture. And so they remove this. And this is something that was written one year after the Ecumenical Council of Trent. So here's an example of removing an errant scripture in an Ecumenical Council, a chapter of a book, okay, not an entire book.

All right. We're, we're going to, I'm going to be firm here, actually, on this point because we talked about, well, this is, this is something I, I've had in, in previous debates. This has happened to me where I'm guilty of that. Yeah. Where I've held my tongue and, and it's happened to me. I've broken the rule here or there. But two minutes, then one minute, then, then nothing. But that's all, it's all good. I, I've done it myself. It's, uh, so let's, we got another question here. This one's for Steve. Uh, Steve, how is your position different from Mormons and Muslims who claim they know their sacred texts are inspired and infallible because they read it and know they are right?

Well, actually, Tim and, would probably agree with me on this part. Part of the reason is because these books, um, were, I, a lot of things that were written eyewitness, were written eyewitness by people who actually experienced them. For example, the five books of Moses were written by Moses. Moses was an eyewitness of the declaration that God had made. There were, there were, um, there were certain attributes, you know, of the Bible, like, um, uh, like eyewitness accounts, um, during a pro, during a period of, of miracles, like Elijah and Elisha and Jesus and the apostles. And it was written during a very specific period of time. And there are periods even in the Old Testament where there was no inspired writings because there were no miracles going on to validate these particular writings. And Jesus and the apostles actually saw Jesus rise from the dead. So they were, so, and another thing is, you have people like Jude affirming Peter's, um, epistles as scripture. You have Peter affirming Paul's, Paul's affirming Luke's. Now, it doesn't do that with all the scriptures, but this is a canon issue, and I don't have the time to go into it now. You take a look at Mormons. Mormons believe that Joseph Smith took these gold plates, which nobody saw. He translated the Book of Mormon, which nobody saw, and he claims the scripture. Muslims are basing on on Muhammad, the founder of Islam, who went into a cave that nobody witnessed, talked to an angel that nobody, he heard, and then he begins that tells him to dictate that there's no evidence of this. They're basing it on the authority of one person. The authority of the scriptures are based on the, the testimony of dozens, hundreds, even millions of people in the Old Testament that affirm that these scriptures were actually true. And these were in the Old Testament. These are books that were laid up in the temple. That's how we know that they're scripture.

Uh, Tim, would you like to respond?

Sure. Of course, I agree that eyewitness testimonies are better than non-eyewitness accounts. Secondhand stories are better than thirdhand stories. Where I disagree is that a fallible tradition, Apostolic tradition, could have produced an inherent series of stories. More specifically, that an infallible tradition could have collated together all the stories in an inherent way. It's both historically unbelievable and it's also a violent violation of the first principle. So, yes, eyewitness accounts are great. But how do you, years after, generations after, even centuries after, collate together in a perfectly accurate way, um, if you're a fallible authority, all of these inherent stories and know which ones are, know which ones are inherent? It just can't happen.

Okay. Uh, all right. Thank you for that response. Uh, here's the next one. It, it's a question related to you. It's not addressed to you, but I think it'll work for a question for you, Tim. Uh, question: Since Tim stated that pre-Nicene Christians, I'm assuming these are pre-Nicene Council Christians, had reasonable certainty about the inspired books, why can't Protestants say the same? Doesn't this concede the point?

Absolutely. Protestants can say the same, and they should. Thank the good grace of God that they can. Because they're getting Trinitarian baptism. They don't have the seven sacraments, which they need. Uh, Steve, come home to Rome, brother. You need, you need confession and the Eucharist. You need all seven. No, I have Christ. But, but Christ is the Eucharist. Praise be to God. But literally, you do have a Trinitarian formula baptism. And this is based, this is predicated on sub, precisely the sort of substantial certitude that comes from, by the end of the first century, there was already substantial certitude that there were four Gospels, many of the Pauline Epistles were, were knowable. That's why Protestants, in their blind man in the dark, groping and feeling, can come to so much cultural truth. That's why they're so much better than Catholics on issues like feminism, right? They oftentimes, even applying the sexual ethics in the wider culture, because they're, they're taking really seriously that one peg of the stool, oftentimes more seriously than Catholics. But it is, in, in a highly approximate way. They're groping and feeling from, "Hey, I think these are the basic books of the Bible. Most of these are all correct." The ones that they quibble on, that Luther, uh, chose to quibble on, tended to not be the heart of, none of them were the gospel. They tended to not be the heart of even, um, um, the epistolary Pauline texts. So they get a lot of truth from, you know, an 80/20 process. As anyone who's ever worked at a company knows, an 80/20 process is good. So, absolutely. You're just asking, can't substantial certitude get you most of the way? And it absolutely can. They just don't have, they don't have, they lack the aidic certitude that comes with knowing and trusting in, uh, the magisterial, magistracy. And they also totally lack the ability to justify their true belief, even in the places where their belief is true. They can't justify it.

All right. Uh, here is the next question. Do I respond to? Oh, yeah. Right. Yeah. Yes. Sorry. I apologize. Steve, you have one minute to respond.

Okay. Um, yeah, and this is the whole point is that you don't need an infallible tradition. You don't need an infallible, um, um, magisterium to know what scripture is, let alone it's not inspired. Again, since I have limited time, I encourage you to read the book, Canon Revisited, Dr. Michael Krueger, because he explains how the canon, um, is derived from applying what's found in scripture. Um, they, again, the church already had a Bible in the first century. It was called the Old Testament. They had 20 out of 27 books. They had more than that, um, by the time of the Moratorian fragment. And what it does is it actually guides and it shows how previous generations, particularly the Jews, knew what scripture was and what, and that it was errant. And this is where the idea of apostolicity, Orthodoxy, Antiquity, and widespread use comes from. It wasn't a tradition outside of scripture. It was actually applied to scripture. You know, and this is why the earliest lists are more closer or identical with Catholic Old Testaments and, um, the New Testaments, as opposed to the Catholic, which is until 1546.

Okay. This next question is very serious. Tim, it's for you. Uh, I just need a yes or no answer to it. It's very important. Uh, do you blow dry your hair sometimes?

Yeah.

Okay.

Uh, this next question. I like to reply to that. I have no hair to blow. So go ahead.

Uh, this next one is for Steve. Normally, I wouldn't allow it because it's coming from Tim, but I have a sneaking suspicion it's actually coming from somebody else, but I'm gonna allow it. Uh, could be from Mrs. Timothy J. Gordon. Is God Muslim-level voluntaristic? I.E., can he violate logical axioms?

Um, well, the Muslim God, Allah, certainly can violate because you see a lot of contradictions within Islam. The God of the Bible, the God of Christianity, can't. He can't, like, for instance, um, he can't produce a square circle, you know? That would, that would be illogical. But he is, he cannot violate his nature. You know, so, um, the, the God of the Bible cannot, um, be illogical. He can't violate logical axioms. And then one of the reasons I can't be Catholic is because when the catechism states that, um, that, or maybe it's from the Council Vatican II, I can't remember, but where it says that Muslims worship the true God, that's false because the one true God is Jesus Christ. You know, and, and you start seeing where even Ecumenical Councils contradict each other. But that's a whole different issue.

Uh, Tim, would you like to reply?

Absolutely. With regard to the text from Vatican II, that's not one of the four sacred constitutions. And absolutely Pius the Tenth affirmed the same. We, we trust him a lot more. That sense versus reference. Muslims absolutely do worship in totally false ways, in non-Trinitarian ways, a God they identify, they refer to as the God of the Old Testament, and he's the single God. So he can have absolutely 99% wrong properties, but they can use the same name. It's just we have equivocity dealt with as something called proper equivocity. That's all it is. It confounds a lot of Trad Catholics too. So you're in good company, Steve. You said God's non-voluntaristic. I agree. We're not Muslims. God can't violate, uh, any of the first principles. You agreed about the principle of non-contradiction. But you think, as you've said ample times here tonight, that he can't, can violate the principle of proportionate cause in terms of the ways that scripture is promulgated to us.

All right. This, so that question was for Steve. So to keep us switching back and forth, this next question is for Tim. Uh, would it be fair to say that, and there's, I'm assuming the abbreviations here, would it be fair to say that T, I'm guessing is tradition, tradition is the instrumental cause of infallible scripture, and God is the efficient cause? Can we know that tradition is infallible because God promised in scripture that he will preserve tradition? You have two minutes.

It's, this is actually a tricky question because we, we'd have to parse between the ontology and epistemology. And tell by the question. Remember, all scripture is is a series of propositions about what led to Jesus and then what Jesus did. True propositions. So scripture is true because it's true. When we're talking about the, the, um, the, the truth claims stood for by the propositions of scripture, all, whatever, 73 books. So it's true because it's true. What we've been debating here tonight, or I've been trying to, is how do we know that everything in the Bible is true, given that it's got all of these constituent books? So, yes, I like your characterization between instrumental cause and efficient cause. I mean, it's because Protestant, uh, uh, Providence, the will of God wants it to be true. What I've been trying to get out here tonight is, were the Bible's books written by a single author? No. Is there a divinely inspired table of contents? No. So can inherency be known without promulgation? No. So it's very simple. Ask your Protestant friends, can an inherent promulgation be accomplished by a non-infallible? These are five "no"s. There are five Solas, right, in some iterations of Protestantism, and there are five "no"s that all it takes to prove Sola Scriptura incorrect, fallacious. Absolutely. You can't answer yes as a Christian, whether you're Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox, to any of those things. And all it states is that yes, there's an instrumental causality involved by writers of scripture, and then the collation of all of those 35 writers of scripture involved in imparting to us so that we may know it, certainly the ontological truths of scripture.

Uh, Tim or Steve, would you like to reply?

Sure. If by tradition you're talking about the apostles that actually wrote scripture or the New Testament writers, um, yes, that is infallible. And scripture is inerrant because, as I stated in my opening statement, that the, uh, New Testament writers were moved or carried along by the Holy Spirit because scripture is breathed by God. But it doesn't follow that this would then extend to the later church councils, particularly the local councils, let alone the Ecumenical Councils. Um, and again, the whole point of this debate is that we can know scripture. We just can't know this infallibly. And just because the magisterium claims to know, know it infallibly, that is a claim that has not been able to be backed up. Tim has had, had to use circular reasoning. We're also not talking about Sola Scriptura, but all that is is that scripture alone is the only infallible revelation of God for Christian truth and morals. That, that's also what scripture is.

Okay. The next question. Uh, this question from a Protestant viewer, uh, for Jesus. The question is for Tim. Don't you need an infallible promulgation of sacred tradition and textual variance which don't exist? I'm guessing he's assuming the, doesn't exist, and he's probably talking about the infallible promulgation. Don't you need an infallible promulgation of sacred tradition and textual variance which doesn't exist to be consistent?

No, of course not. This is like when atheists ask, uh, the question of God the Creator. Well, all, all creation is contingent. Wouldn't God just be the top contingency in a line of contingent effects? The answer is no. He's, he's the necessary, uh, uh, cause of all of those contingent effects. That's very nicely analogous to what the church is. You know, why it's no longer just contingent in all of these lines of claims? The Apostolic tradition and the magisterium, which grows from it, and the scripture, which the church, uh, uh, promulgated, you know, three centuries in. No, because Jesus founded the church directly by himself. That's, that's why. So we have an oral tradition, which is not contingent. An oral tradition, which is premised ultimately by the miracles of Jesus, crowned by the resurrection of Jesus, accounted for even by secular historians. You have a church. If, if you believe there was a Christian Church, this is good news for Steve and all others out there. You can get around the, the gap in your own logic. If you believe, as Suetonius and Josephus says, that there was this sect of Jews turned Christians that evangelized Gentiles around the Mediterranean, and there was a church that was based on these, the real life of the real Jesus. That church, church infallibly has authority given to it by Jesus himself. Now, there's self-referentiality in there because the scriptures are the best and most specific accounts of that. But those scriptures are told of by multiple authors who, without collusion, are telling us concomitant things. Nevertheless, the church is the source of the collation of scripture, right? The church gave us scripture, not the other way around. Scripture doesn't give us the church. You only are, are approaching it that way because you're approaching it backwards. You think scripture gave us the church. Presumably, I'm thinking you, you sort of make the mistake that scripture also gave us Jesus because it gives accounts of him. It didn't.

All right. Uh, Steve, you have one minute to reply if you like.

Yeah. Um, well, he, Tim needs to go back and listen to my opening statement because a Council of Rome that he actually uses states that the scripture gave us the church, now that the church gave us the scripture. So, so he's actually disagreeing with the very councils that he's claiming promulgated the Bible. Also, this is the whole point. There's no list of, uh, there's no infallible list of infallible traditions. And that's why I asked, how do you know that tradition was truly infallible since the magisterium, Tim claims, end up occurring later? And regarding the, uh, variant, there's no infallible Catholic Bible. Just like Protestants, there are a lot of different Bibles and versions that are out there. The New Catholic Version follows the Du Reams, and yet both, both that one and the New American Bible were authorized by the, uh, Confraternity of Christian Doctrine and approved by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and the United States Catholic Conference. Um, and again, how does Tim know that Jesus, uh, founded the church? How does he know what's said is inerrant? He ends up arguing in in a circle without actually even realizing it. And again, what about, um, Trent removing First Esdras from the Council of Florence, which were both Ecumenical?

All right. And that will bring us to the close of our, um, see here, audience Q&A period. Now we will turn it over. Each debater will get a five-minute closing statement. And, and just a reminder, as a courteous professional courtesy and closing statements, one should not introduce new arguments. This is a good time to summarize the whole debate from your perspectives and what was covered. So, since Tim had the affirmative, he will go first in the closing statements. Let me just give him the stage. Tim, you will have five.

Thanks. And thanks, thanks to both of you, Trent and Stephen. The one, one quick error, it's, it's a relatively clerical thing, but the USCCB has no magisterial authority. Uh, you adverted to the Catholic Catechism, which has no magisterial authority. The USCCB and the, uh, other national bishops' conferences are there in a kind of advisory role. They can be wrong. They're wrong all the time, especially the catechism can have errors. Robert S. Jenkins has pointed out an error in in the catechism recently. So it's a synopsis of magisterium, but it itself is not magisterial. When we're, when Steve, you, it sounds pretentious to say Mr. Christie, so I'll just say, when Steve, you admitted that an infinite regression is involved by self-justifying textual authentication, I say, yes, that should be problematic to you. There is no infinite regression. There's no circularity to the reasoning. That the Council of Rome is not an Ecumenical Council, by the way, which is the only one that has, uh, magistracy at the level, at the first level that I've been talking about. Um, there is a kind of regression involved by using scripture to justify scripture, as I'm sure people in in the chat can figure out. I'm disapp, I'm, I'm a little disappointed that we couldn't get to this because in, in debates like this, when I, I'm just using logic, Steve's using, uh, the obscurities of history. I'm just saying, look, five questions, where do you differ with my, uh, conclusion? Were the Bible's books written by a single author? No. Typically, in debate, when, when one of the parties says this means a lot, the multi-authorship of the Bible, it would be good to not have paradigmatic impasse and to just have me harping away. This is really, really important that the Bible was not written by Jesus himself, all 73 books, and promulgated by Jesus right before he went to the cross. You can blow me off the way Steve has done tonight. And it's natural to have some paradigmatic impasse because he really wanted to get, get that out. I'm mad about the perceived disparities between the Council of Florence and the Council of Trent. That's all essentially all I've heard tonight. But if you take me at your word, dear listener, um, five questions: Were the Bible's books written by a single author? You know the answer is no. To whatever extent you place trust in me, know this is absolutely dispositive when you dialogue with your Protestant friends, because then you have to say, okay, it's not Christian belief to say, uh, the Bible's books were written by a single author like Jesus himself had promulgated. That didn't happen. Protestants don't believe so. Neither do Catholics. So, is there a divinely inspired table of contents that actually would not represent the same infinite regression that Steve said it would earlier? Because if you had it in one of the books he cited, uh, what did he cite? Deuteronomy, 9, 10, H, that, and all that had is two tablets. It recurred to two tablets, the Ten Commandments. That would not be an infinite regression. If any one of the 73 books of the Bible said, "By the way, here are the other 72 books that should be glued on to this one," then to whatever extent we placed credibility in the Bible, we would say there is a divinely inspired table of contents. But there isn't. That's not Christian belief. And none of the 73 books include that. That means collation is at the center of what we need to know that the Bible is inherent. We need to know all of its pieces are inherent. So, can inherency be known without God seeking to communicate it to us? I've called that promulgation tonight. The answer there is, of course, no. Inerrancy cannot be known without God seeking to communicate it to us. I don't see where Steve would have answered yes to any of these. God, we, we only know what God wants us to know, as Barth often points out. So, can an inherent promulgation be accomplished by a non-infallible promulgator? Steve here answers yes, de facto. He answers yes. I mean, I'm, I think he would say no because he knows the force of Socratic logic requires to answer no. An inherent promulgation can't be accomplished by writers to write 73 books. But how, the question is, how, if we take scripture as a whole to be true, then we have to know all of its parts are true. If we are to know all of its parts are true, we have to know which parts pertain to scripture, right? This is a violation of the principle of proportionate cause. Sorry, I didn't know it was over.

Okay. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much, Tim, for that closing statement. And then now we will turn it over to Steve for his closing statement. Steve, you have five minutes. Begin whenever you like.

Thank you, Trent, for moderating, and thank you, uh, Tim, for agreeing to do this debate. Um, I want to emphasize what I've been emphasizing throughout the whole debate, which is the topic is, do we need an infallible tradition to be certain that scripture is inerrant or without error? And what Tim has done is that he's jumped around talking about, well, what books are in the Bible? How do you know what books are the Bible? How do you know what is scripture? Everything then, what the actual topic is. And the topic is not how can we know it infallibly like God can, and nobody can, including the magisterium and the Catholic Church, but we can, can we be certain? And can a Christian prior to the first century be certain? And I gave examples of Clement and Justin Martyr, who lived in the first and second century. Suddenly, what Tim does and says, well, yeah, they can be certain because they're closer to the time of the Apostles. But he ends up refuting his own argument because he says they can't be certain without a promulgated scripture. This is Tim's words himself. Furthermore, Tim has not explained how he can be certain that that tradition is indeed inerrant, since he even conceded that the magisterium came later. So all it is is a tradition. Imagine you living back in the fourth century and saying, "This is our tradition." Well, how do you know it's infallible? Well, we don't have a magisterium yet. We can't appeal to scripture that Jesus, uh, built a church, because that's the very thing that we're trying to prove is inerrant. So, yes, it is end up being a circular reasoning, whether Tim wants to concede this or not. And regarding the Council of Rome, again, the Second Nicaea affirmed the canon list of Rome, Hippo, and Carthage. Second Nicaea was an Ecumenical Council, so it's affirming the books that were there and not there, meaning Baruch and, uh, First Esdras. Florence includes Baruch, which was not at Rome or Second Nicaea. Trent actually ends up including, uh, First Esdras, which was not in Florence. So you have Ecumenical Councils contradicting each other, which is where the magisterium, um, is. And he said that the Bible doesn't have one author. Yes, it does. It's the Holy Spirit. The Apostle Paul says that all scripture is God-breathed by the Holy Spirit, breathed from him. Yes, there are human authors, but just because there's human authors, we can't, that doesn't mean that we can't be certain that it is, um, that it's not without error. Again, reading scripture, fulfilled prophecy, comparing it to verifiable historical claims, just like, uh, Christians have done throughout the last two millennia. So the canon that Tim actually believes was promulgated and declared in the late fourth century in the West was clearly not that tradition of the fathers handed down to the Churches of Christ, which Refines, who was an early Church Father writing at the end of the fourth century, said that the tradition of the fathers that was handed down to the churches in the West were the books of the Hebrew Bible, and then he ends up listing the books, um, in the Deuterocanon, and said these books are not in the canon. Um, so fortunately, we don't need an infallible tradition to be certain that the scriptures are inerrant. And the reason why this is important for the, the reason why it's a big deal, it's not just about being inerrant, about being certain about it, but it is something that can affect your salvation. Because if you believe something is inerrant and it's not, then that gives, uh, that discredits the particular, um, church, uh, body or the tradition, as well as Christianity as a whole. Because again, what do you do with the, uh, books of the Bible, the Deuterocanon, that has irreconcilable errors, which the Ecumenical Council Trent says is inerrant, as well as being inspired? And these are errors that cannot be reconciled. And, and again, it can affect salvation because many of these books in the Deuterocanon say something that affects salvation. And yet, the Apostle Paul says that, but we can be certain that scripture is inerrant, specifically the 39 books of the Old Testament and the 27 books of the New Testament. And we can be assured of our salvation through the scripture, as the Apostle Paul wrote in his first epistle to the Corinthians, "Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I, uh, preach to you, which also you received, and which also you stand by, which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preach to you, unless you believe in vain. For I have delivered to you of the first importance, which I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose from the dead according to the scriptures. And to the Church of Rome, for whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance and encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope." So again, the title of the debate is, "Can we be be certain scripture is inerrant without an infallible tradition?" The answer is yes, just not infallibly. Only God can do that. Two seconds left.

Very good. Steve, thank you so much. We'll bring Tim back as well.

All right. Uh, okay. Well, thank you so much for everybody who watched. This was our very, our very first ever debate hosted on the Council of Trent. Well, it's the first debate hosted on the podcast where I'm not one of the debaters. So maybe we'll have some future ones as well. I think this is a very enjoyable experience. We had a lot of people tune in to watch. And like I said before, everybody watching, biggest favor to help out Council Trent right now, if you could get us to 100,000 subscribers, I'd be really happy. We're less than a thousand subscribers away to that, away from that goal. I would very much appreciate that. And if you like what we're doing here and want to help us to do more debates, dialogues, episodes, rebuttals, go support us at trentthornpodcast.com. I'll leave the last word for each of you, starting with Tim. Uh, just, uh, where can people go to access more of your materials? So, Tim, and then Steve.

No, Trent, thanks again. You did a really good job on your first moderated debate. It's, it's a lot less work than being in the debater chair. I've only, I can get used to it. It's fun. But yeah, it's fun. It's kind of, it's a bit like being a teacher on test day, where you just go in, pass out the test, and you're kind of just there, and you have to take the tests at the end. Um, it's, it's very much more enjoyable than teaching. Uh, people can find me on Timothy J. Gordon. My show is Rules for Retrogrades on YouTube. And I'm the author of four books: Catholic Republic, The Case for Patriarchy, Don't Go to College, and self-titled Rules for Retrogrades. But yeah, find me on YouTube. I, I've been doing lots of CED coverage, more like four shows a week rather than three during this, uh, devastating Senate in in Rome. So find me there. Thank you all. Thanks, Steve. God bless you, man.

And Steve.

Okay. Again, as Tim said, Trent did a great job for your first time moderating. So thank you for, um, asking me to participate in this day. And Tim, I know things can get heated during a debate, but I just want to let you know it's never anything personal. Thank you for agreeing, uh, to the debate and for doing this. I had a lot of fun, and I hope it was edifying to everybody that was out there. Um, as far as with me, I don't have any, I haven't written as many books as Tim has, and certainly not as many as, as Trent has. But the two that I have is Not Really of Us: Why Do Children of Christian Parents Abandon the Faith? This is actually my, my buddy Mike and his little, uh, daughter Olivia here. And this is very much more ecumenically friendlier, you know, than than this book, Why Protestant Bibles Are Smaller. But you can get both those on Amazon. Um, we were talking a lot about, um, um, Bible difficulties and and contradictions. If you want some information on that, um, there's a few, there, there's a couple of books, Demolishing Supposed Bible Contradictions by Ken Ham, Bodie Hodge, and, uh, Tim, uh, Caffey. I've actually got two books right here, upside down, first and second volume. The Big Book of Bible Difficulties by the late Norman Geisler and Dr. Thomas Howe. That I mentioned during the debate. Um, and k.org. I know he's a Protestant. Some Catholics don't like him, but if you don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, um, he has literally dozens of pages on Bible difficulties in the Hebrew Bible, in the New Testament. And he, what's nice is that he compares them side by side. Um, the last, and as far as the canon, other than my book, I would highly recommend Roger Beckwith, The Old Testament Canon, The New Testament Church. And again, if you want to get a hold of me, I'm on Twitter or X or whatever it's called now, Facebook, and YouTube, Born Again RN, which is, you only see part of it here, RN, because I'm a registered nurse.

All right. Thank you guys so much. Thank you, everyone, for watching. And we will have new episodes of the Council of Trent podcast debuting, uh, next Monday here on YouTube. But also, if you watch on YouTube, subscribe to the audio version so you can get Free-for-All Friday every Friday. We have a fun topical show there just for our audio podcast listeners. Thank you guys so much, and I hope everybody has a very blessed evening. God bless you both.

You too.