Audio only:
In this episode Trent moderates a live debate between Catholic apologist Tim Gordon and Protestant apologist Steve Christie on the following question: “Do we need an infallible tradition to know scripture is inerrant?”
Format:
15-minute opening statements
7-minute rebuttals
4-minute second rebuttals
15-minute cross examinations
20-minute audience Q+A
5-minute closing statements
Transcript:
Voiceover:
Welcome to the Council of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent:
All right, welcome to the Council of Trent podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers Apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. Very special episode today. I have done over a dozen debates. 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. It’s actually kind of fun, a little bit relaxing. 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’ll keep going with all of this. Let’s just get right to the debaters, the debate topics, I have this echo in here, I’ll fix this in my headphones. Do we need an infallible tradition to know scripture is inert? That is the debate that we’re having. Let me bring on our debaters. We have Catholic, Tim Gordon, Rules for Retrogrades, and we have Steve Christie, Protestant. As I said, the resolution is do we need an infallible tradition to know scripture is inerrant?
The format, 15 minute openings, seven, and then four minute rebuttals, 15 minute cross-examination, and then 20 minute audience Q&A. We’ll be selecting questions out of the chat, but I’ll let you know when that comes up, and then five minute closing statements. I’m going to let each of our guests introduce themselves. Tim Gordon will be taking the affirmative. Tim, can you just briefly introduce yourself to our audience?
Timothy:
Greetings, everyone. My name is Timothy J. Gordon. I am a YouTube podcaster, streamer, and I have a JD, a PHL, a master’s degree. I’ve studied history, literature, philosophy, and law, and I’m working on a PhD slowly at one of America’s great centers of Thomism. I’ll undisclose that, I’ll leave that undisclosed, but I’m excited to be here tonight. I’ve done over 10 public debates myself, and I’ve only moderated one. Like Trent, I’ve only moderated one, and I’m enjoying being here.
I am 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 streaming on philosophy and theology, political theology, political philosophy, three times a week on my YouTube channel, Timothy Gordon. Thanks, everyone, for tuning in tonight, to Councilor Trent, and thanks to Steve Christie for being here, and thanks to Trent for putting it on.
Trent:
All right. Steve, go right ahead.
Steve:
Okay. Well, first of all, Trent, I want to thank you for moderating this debate. I used to debate against you. It’s actually nice that you’re the moderator. Again, Tim, I would like to thank you for agreeing to this debate. 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.
I graduated from a Catholic elementary, high school, and college, which is where I converted to being Protestant towards the end of my college education of 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 one people are more familiar with it.
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. 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.
I’ve been interviewed and debated the Canon and the Marion Dogmas against some notable Catholics, such as Gary Michuta, Trent Horn, Dr. Robert Sungenis, 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. I’ve been interviewed on both Christian and secular television, radio, newspapers.
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’s in arts and science, and a master’s in business administration. 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. Again, thanks again, Tim. Thanks again, Trent.
Trent:
Alrighty. Thank you, Steve, for the introduction. Let’s get started. Tim has the affirmative. Once again, to remind everyone, the question being debated tonight is, do we need an infallible tradition to know scripture is inerrant? Tim, you will have 15 minutes.
Timothy:
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 is inerrancy without recourse to infallible tradition? Can we know scripture’s inerrancy without infallible tradition? It’s an epistemic question. It’s all about knowledge. The question is not about whether or not scripture, in its for Catholics, 73-ish books are inerrant, but whether we can know it.
Out of the western cannon 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 it to be knowledge, a proposition must be justified, true belief. Working backwards, this means a belief, obviously, is an affirmed proposition in mind. 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 priore, this means before someone shows us at the end that it’s not true or that it is true, someone makes the demonstration. With a coin toss, for instance, 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, let’s say I believed I was a gnostic or something, I had a true belief, but it wasn’t justified. I guessed correctly.
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 inerrant without an infallible authority, in this case, tradition? Join us. I want to say before I get rolling, that Catholics have something called the motives of credibility for scripture. They’re evidentiary. What any lawyer in a courtroom would say, motives of credibility are evidentiary, they’re probabilistic. Christ did miracles. The apostles, a little bit later on, did miracles through power they got 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 inerrantly, inspired by the Holy Spirit. 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 strong set of motives of credibility, but without an infallible promulgation, something that’s dispositive, not merely evidentiary, we can’t have certitude that scripture is inerrant.
The basic idea, what really animates everything I’m saying here tonight is that we can’t induce in finitude something that’s perfect, utterly perfect, from finite premises. Just a fact. One can’t deduce an infinite conclusion from finite premises. Now, let me show you what I have here. I’m glad to have the whole screen. It goes like this. I want to make sure you don’t have a glare. Really, really, really basic flow chart, which I’m hoping help to line this out. In the first place, I have the question, “Were the Bible’s books written by a single author?”
This is really how you demonstrate that Sola Scriptura is a violation of something called the principle of proportionate causation. Were 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. 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’t answer yes again, so we move to the third bracket.
The answer is no. There is no divinely inspired table of contents. We ask, “Can inerrancy be known without promulgation? Can it be known?” Remember, that’s the main call of the question. It’s an epistemic one. Can the inerrancy of the scripture be known without promulgation? That means it’s a divine truth, inerrancy of scripture. Can people know the divine truth of the inerrancy of scripture without God communicating it? That’s what I mean by promulgation. Of course, the answer is no. The Christian answer cannot be yes.
This would be what Carl Barth says of what 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 we were to pause it, that inerrancy could be known without a promulgation by God. It would also be a violation of the principle of proportionate causation in a separate way. That’s the big principle tonight, but we won’t talk about that one. We have to answer no. Can an inerrant promulgation be accomplished by a non-infallible promulgator? It’s our last question tonight.
Can an inerrant promulgation be accomplished by a non-infallible promulgator? The answer to this has to be no, again. QED, infallible authority is needed. I’ll put that catastrophically glared visual back up in a second. It can’t be yes, right? To say that an inerrant 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 pause it to restate it one more time. You can’t pause it in effect greater than its cause, or to put it most technically, whatever perfection exists in 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 in effect greater than its cause. This is a violation of proportionate cause. Now, the perfection in scripture, all 73 books, all 35-ish authors, is inerrancy, which must be found in not necessarily those 73 books written by 35 authors about two books per author, not necessarily in the inspiration in 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 inerrant, 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 grouping together all the correct books, which are 73 inerrant minor books into one super inerrant 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 inerrantly this Superbook of inerrant 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-author 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 any attempt to deny them through this idea of retorsion involves recurring to those said principles. 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 averting 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.
He could make something exist and not exist at the same time. God could make 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. An effect can’t be greater than its cause. This applies to authorship. Holmes cannot be greater than Doyle. Sherlock Holmes is a fictitious creation that 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.” No, it’s not because ultimately, the Holy Spirit inspired the text. What we’re talking about tonight with the 73 chapter inerrant text called scripture, the Superbook, 73 books glued together, some more naturally than others, is really the collation, and the publication, and the promulgation of those books. How do you know what is scripture?
73 book scripture involves 35 or so authors. Let’s not quibble on the 73 books-ish or the 35 authors-ish tonight. Let’s just use a number. Multiple authorship involves 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, [inaudible 00:17:22] maybe Sola Scriptura. Least ways, it wouldn’t be a fallacious proposition.
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. Is there a divinely inspired table of contents? No. Can inerrancy be known without promulgation? No. Can inerrant promulgation be accomplished by non-infallible promulgator? The answer is simply no. QED, there must be an infallible authority who is the promulgator of that Superbook comprised of 73 inerrant 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 Sitz im Leben, inspiring individual authors of those 35 authors who wrote what we call scripture. That’s the writing, that’s the creation of the thing. Really, it’s the author is the Holy Spirit of that which is greater than the human mind. We don’t have to quibble about that. Multi-authorship precludes it, and here’s what I want to give you a heads up for.
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 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 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 illogical fallacy. 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 you call it 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 an argument that you can take to the bank. I’m fascinated to hear what the response will be.
Trent:
All right, right at 15 minutes. Thank you, Tim, for that opening statement.
Timothy:
Thanks.
Trent:
Next up, we will have Steve Christie, who will give the negative statement. Steve, go right ahead. Let me set the timer up actually again for you from the stage here, and then you may start. Here, let me unmute you, and you may start whenever you like.
Steve:
Thanks, Tim. Thanks, Trent. On his X 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’s inerrant. 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 inerrant.”
Even if we discovered the book of Esther, for instance was not scripture, we could still be certain scripture itself is inerrant. 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 “Had to be made over three centuries later, because it hadn’t been deemed inerrant 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 had declared, “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, “An official definitive list of inspired writings did not exist in the Catholic Church until the Council of Trent.”
St. Jerome, a doctor of the Catholic Church, who is commissioned by Pope Damasus the First, to compile the Latin Vulgate, wrote in his prologue to Jeremiah, “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 cannons. 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, “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, “The Council Trent definitely removed first Esdras from the canon.” Furthermore, Catholic apologists, Michael Lofton, from Reason and Theology, and Jimmy Aiken and Trent Horn from Catholic Answers, have conceded that it’s possible that additional books could be added to the Trentine Canon, “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. The question is, it’s possible.”
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 inerrant.
As a Protestant I can be certain scripture scripture is inerrant 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 Christian Apologetics, stated, “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, “I am entirely convinced that no scripture contradicts another.” How could Justin be certain scripture was inerrant, 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 inerrant.
For example, renowned archeologist and historian, Sir William Ramsey, wrote, “Luke’s historical accuracy supported by archeological 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 studies showed The Book of Acts could bear the most minute scrutiny as an authority for the facts of the Aegean world, and that it was written with such judgment, skill, art, and precision, 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 the 13th declared his Encyclical Providentissimus Deus, “Inspiration not only is essentially incompatible with error, but excludes and rejects it is absolutely unnecessarily, 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 inerrancy because it is inspired, and therefore free from error. Titus 1-2 declares God cannot lie, therefore, God uttered in his sacred writings cannot be in error. Fulfilled prophecy would also affirm scripture is inerrancy. 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 named 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 inerrant 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 counsels, but an artifact of revelation.
In his sermon 162C on the Apostle Paul to the Galatians, Saint Augustine wrote, “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: “The scriptures which the church is founded on, not that the church gave us our Bible.”
J.I. Packer once said, “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. 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.”
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 move 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 inerrant. Scripture affirms it is the very speech of God, and asserts its own inerrancy.
Deuteronomy nine 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 and Matthew 22, 29 to 31 declared, “The scriptures have you not read, which 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 law are flawless.” Psalm 19-7, “The law of the Lord is perfect.” Proverbs 30 verse five, “Every word of God is pure.”
Second King 17-27 and Hosea 8-12 declared the scriptures were written by God. The Breans believed the scriptures were inerrant without a promulgated canon, since they examined the scriptures daily to see whether these things Paul and Silas were saying was true. In John 10-35, Jesus stated, “The scripture cannot be broken.” William McDonald in his Believer’s Bible Commentary asserts, “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, “An affirmation of the absolute accuracy and authority of scripture.” In Matthew Five, 17 to 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 surely, 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.” McDonald asserts, “Jesus believed in the literal inspiration of the Bible,” which MacArthur adds, “The law and the prophets speaks of the entirety of the Old Testament scriptures, which Christ was affirming the utter inerrancy 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, “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, “When we say the Bible is without error, we are saying that in the genre that the text itself is given it, it is without error with considerations of what it is trying to communicate.”
Articles eight and 18 of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy declares, “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 grammatico-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 inerrant 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 inerrant. Jesus standing before Pilate stated, “Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.” The 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…
PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:34:04]
Steve:
… God, carried along by the Holy Spirit, which Jesus affirmed the night before, sanctified them in the truth. “Your word is truth.”
Lastly, the danger in depending on an alleged infallible tradition to be certain scripture is inerrant is that it’s not falsifiable. In his same video, Tim admitted, “In Roman Catholicism, we have three prongs of the stool, two are superior, two are infallible and arrant 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 inerrant? Tim ends up refuting his own argument.
So yes, we can be certain that scripture was inerrant 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 err so they would not err when they wrote the scriptures which cannot err.” 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.
Trent:
All right, Tim, you will now have time for a seven-minute rebuttal. You may begin whenever you like.
Timothy:
All right. I’d love to do part of this call in response. I will donate part of my seven minutes to you. Steven, every single quote you just read out affirmed something not at issue, that scripture is in fact inerrant. That’s lovely because we can hold hands and sing kumbaya. We agree, scripture is inerrant. You did not read one passage… And it was read and you’re responding to it, 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 to the question, which is how do we know what is scripture? It’s great that you said time and time and time again, you produce quotations which affirm scripture is inerrant, scripture is inerrant. What we must do because of the multi-authorship of scripture, what had to have been done in the 100s, 200s, 300s, was tell us that’s great. Everything that’s scripture is inerrant. Now, what’s scripture? Because a lot of things had been written. There’s a Gospel of Thomas, a Gospel of James.
By the way, quick historical, boring historical point, there’s a difference between apodictic certitude, 100% proper, and what’s called at law, substantial certitude. So those local gatherings, local synods of Rome, Hippo Carthage that were happening, particularly leading to the fourth century, those afforded something called substantial certitude, meaning 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.At Florence much, much, much later, that’s where 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 it doesn’t hold given my first statement. My argument goes like this, even if you’re arguing about the 73rd text of scripture or the 35th author, you mentioned Baruch, forget that. 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 all candor and all due respect, all you did was simply say scriptures, inerrant. Yes, how do we know what’s 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?
Trent:
Well, normally.
Timothy:
I can do it. I’ll do it. It’s fine.
Trent:
Normally this would just be your time. Here you go right ahead.
Timothy:
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’re assembled on the mountain.” So yes, 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 inerrancy of scripture, because it’s multi-authored cannot have been given from a cause which did not itself have perfection, infallibility inerrancy. 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 avert that there’s some sort of contradiction in my view. Is there a table of contents in Deuteronomy 9:10 telling us here are the 73, 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 principle of collation, which goes into saying this is one superbook, yes, it’s an inerrant, but we need to figure out what is an inerrant. It’s not some technicality.
Irrespective of history, everyone out there note well, perfection in effect without perfection and cause, Scripture, a 73 book superbook, that’s inerrant 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 superbook multi-authored superbook, 73 books, 35 authors … I’m going to stop repeating that, I know it’s annoying … that we know go together because none of those inerrant words in any of those constituent 73 texts tell us which books to join them with. I’m asking, [inaudible 00:41:27], from the bottom of my heart, where was it revealed which books are inerrant? You called it the Article of Revelation. Great, we agree about all that. Scripture is inerrant. It’s one of the things Protestants and Catholics affirm together. Where oh where was it revealed which books are inerrant? Because you can’t say I have a Bible unless you know what books are in the Bible inherenly.
Also, this is a technical, logical error. Sorry, the logician of me says petitio principio. 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.” He said, “Tim’s wrong. Scripture can’t be false. That’s why we can talk about an effect that’s greater than its cause.” No, once we know, remember the call 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 inerrant, Steve, we’re debating what constitutes scripture. I’m asking you where was it revealed? What books are inerrant?
You are 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 oh where can we figure out what books are inherently in the Bible? Read me that scripture.
Trent:
All right. Tim, thank you very much for your rebuttal. Now we will bring up Steve Christie and he’s going to offer his first rebuttal. Steve, you have seven minutes. You may start whenever you like.
Steve:
Okay, thanks. One point I want to bring up is what the topic of the debate is versus what it actually isn’t. The topic of the debate is simply is, how can we know that scripture is inerrant without infallible interpreter or tradition? But what Tim is doing is that he’s putting qualifications on the word no, and this is the reason why I said that you can know something like the sky is blue or 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 the 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 scripture. We’re not debating about how we know what books belong in the canon or even what scripture is. Again, the topic of the debate is can we know the scripture is inerrant without an infallible interpreter? I’m not claiming to understand it infallibly, and that is not the topic of the debate.
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 Ezdra’s, which as I mentioned during the 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 Ramsey that I mentioned earlier.
Also, Tim did not actually answer how he can falsify that you need an infallible tradition in order to declare scripture is inerrant. 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 rebuttals.
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 Paul’s writings being 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 some books say the exact opposite of what other books do, including books within themselves like the books of MacAfee and even the Greek conditions to Esthers. And even sources within the church age, like the Glossa Ordinaria called all of the books of the Deuterocanonical, including the Greek conditions, Esther and Daniel Apocrypha, even Cardinals, popes and councils right up to the Council of Trent did not accept them as scriptures, even doctors of the church.
And Tim said he didn’t want to discuss a canon but 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 and how can we know what inerrancy is? Sorry, I’m just trying to read my sloppy handwriting.
The way we know what inerrancy is, we have to first know what error is when I quoted that doctor earlier in my opening statement. We can only know what error is if we know what truth is so it does end up being a canon issue.
We would not need a divine table of contents. Even Dr. Michael Krueger in his book Canon Revisited said that “This is not a Protestant argument because even if there was a table of content, you would need an infallible tradition or a 28th book of the New Testament to tell us that that is an errant, and then you’d need another one and another one and you end up getting infinite regress.” The problem that Tim has is that if infallible tradition tells us that scripture is inerrant, 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 its saying so. Well, if you say because scripture gives the magisterium that authority, then you’re just arguing in a huge circle.
He mentioned about motives or 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 Krueger’s self authenticated New Testament model. 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 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 an infallible tradition to tell him that this was inerrant In fact, he said that scripture isn’t inerrant. And this is by the work of Dr. Stephen Boyce by the way. So he got 25 out of 27 books. So when the early church was looking to not … I don’t want to say determine the New Testament canon, but in order to recognize what God had inspired from eternity past what the canon is.
This is one of the things that they had done. They had applied four criteria from scripture as they’re guiding their investigations. For instance, apostolicity, the apostles were the mouthpieces. After all, who would they be? 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 words were confirmed by inspired scripture.” And this is how we know the Bereans tested 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 the Oracles of God.” And that’s my time.
Trent:
All right, Steve, 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.
Timothy:
Okay, cool. So to know is the oldest … Sorry, the operative definition of to know, how can we know, without an infallible tradition that scripture is inerrant? I use the oldest and most applicable definition of to known in the western tradition. It’s over 3000 years old. It’s accepted by logicians, mathematicians, theologians, and philosophers. It’s in Webster. Knowledge is justified true belief. There’s 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. It’s not knowledge of it’s somehow justified then true, but not a true belief of someone.
You asked, how do you justify the 73 book multi-authored Bible? Sorry, I’m asking. 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 script to a Protestant, the 73 book, multi-authored Bible is what constitutes that corpus of inerrancy. And this is the absurdity, it’s actually a reduxio. This is a formal reduxio, 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 inerrant without infallible tradition. It’s a violation of the commutative property of arithmetic.
This is literally, if I were to line this all out logically, use symbolic logic, you’re saying without knowing certainly what scripture is, we can know scripture is inerrant. How, if you don’t know what scripture is, great, use scripture. The word is a placeholder and say whatever’s in it is inerrant, but we don’t know what scripture is with certitude.
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 multi 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. What I was actually asking is are there 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… This is a good, important historical question, had the late fourth century cannon 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 exercising what’s essentially substantial certitude. It’s an evidentiary process that avaricious and those guys were going through at the end of the fourth century. You asked. “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 point is, without knowing certainly what scripture is, we can’t know which parts of scripture are inerrant. We can just say scripture’s inerrant. But you’re admitting you don’t know what constitutes scripture.
Trent:
All right, Tim, thank you for that second rebuttal. And now we’ll bring back Steve Christie. Steve, you’ll have four minutes for your second rebuttal. You may begin… Set this up here … whenever you like.
Steve:
Again, focusing on the word no, he says this is true belief. But again, the topic, the debate is not knowing whether or not what scripture is, let alone knowing that scripture is inerrant infallibly, but rather if we know scripture is without error. And again, go back to my opening statement, I 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 promulgated gated canon. That didn’t happen in the fourth 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 fourth century church councils contradicted and not only each other, but they contradicted even ecumenical councils and even ecumenical councils contradicted each other. For example, Second Nicaea, many Catholic apologists affirmed the local councils of Rome, Hippo and Carthage. The Councils of Trullo had multiple different promulgations of scripture and they were all different. Florence was different from Second Nicaea and Trent and Florence were not the same because Trent removed First Ezdra, so his whole argument falls apart. So Tim has to involve the canon for his argument.
He also seems to be conflating canonicity and how we can know something is inspired versus an inerrancy. 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 to know we can know what they say is true or not. And we can do this without an infallible translate or tradition or magisterium. So it’s not about what scripture is. 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 rebuttals, he has not been able to provide this.
And the reason why I say we don’t need a table of content is because this isn’t a Protestant argument. It’s something that Catholics ask Protestants, but we don’t need in the table an argument to know this. 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 in my rebuttal period, but I really, 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 know, as in knowing 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, First Clement of Rome did and Christians throughout the church era.
And again, what does he do with the errors that cannot be reconciled in the promulgated cannons 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 either. And with that, I’ll just concede the rest of my time.
Trent:
All right, thank you very much Steve. Now we’re going to transition a little bit into cross-examination period. So each debater is going to have 15 minutes to ask questions of his opponent. 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 Trend Podcast. I’m so glad that everybody’s here and I just want to let you know that we are about a little over a thousand subscribers away from reaching a hundred thousand. I would love to get the little plaque behind me. That would be so much fun. So if you’re watching the debate right now, I mean 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 get to a hundred thousand 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’ll get to go first in the cross-examination. You’ll have 15 minutes to ask Steve any questions you like and your time begins once I step out.
Timothy:
Cool. I would never say, Steve, that scripture gives tradition its authority. I’ve never said that and I never would say it. The authority comes from Christ and the Holy Spirit. I’ve said of course, that tradition chronologically, and in some sense ontologically 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?
Steve:
That’s a canonicity issue. And we are talking about inerrancy, that’s not the topic.
Timothy:
Be that as it may but no-
Steve:
Off topic.
Timothy:
It’s not off topic. I’m asking you how do you know-
Steve:
You specifically said you present errancy. 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 inerrancy?
Timothy:
I have a question for you, how you know the inerrancy of individual books of the Bible?
Steve:
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 promulgated canon because that didn’t happen until the end of the fourth century like you did. They knew it was without error and without contradiction, without knowing it. They knew it by reading it. Sir William Ramsey also knew this by comparing it to historical claims and it turns out that the Gospel Luke actually corrected the historical claims of secular people of history. In other words, the Gospel Luke got it right and the historians got it wrong.
Timothy:
Hold on. All right, let me rephrase. And I’m not trying to use terms that are obscure philosophical terms. Are you acquainted with the difference between sense and reference?
Steve:
Well, why don’t you explain it?
Timothy:
The Muslims worship the one true God, even Phius the 10th said that we’ll know. I mean lots of people say, well-
Steve:
They don’t because that would be Jesus.
Timothy:
Right? So they don’t understand his trying nature, they understand him in a volunteeristic way.
Steve:
Yeah.
Timothy:
I’m saying you are making the fallacy of mistaking sense and reference, marking sense for reference, as it applies to scripture. In other words, you are saying the way I hear you tonight, you’re saying, I know scripture is inerrant. I say, cool, leave that as something we agree about. I’m asking you, when you’re talking about scripture, what parts of it are inerrant? You say the whole thing and I say, I know, but it’s been authored by 35 authors. And how do you know which of them and which of their texts to glue together? It’s a simple question.
Steve:
Well, that’s an issue of the canonicity. Now I will respond this way.
Timothy:
Well, I’m asking it though. I’m asking,
Steve:
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 were less than that now. But we know that there was 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 had believed that it only limited to the five books of Moses.
Timothy:
Right.
Steve:
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 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 that’s-
Timothy:
Sorry, a first century Jew like Paul or Jesus, before second temple fell, there were competing conceptions of what constituted Tanakh, which goes to the very essence, which you’re calling Canon.
Steve:
[inaudible 01:04:57].
Timothy:
Hold on, let me get the question.
Steve:
All right. Go ahead.
Timothy:
There’s absolutely dispute. You’re saying the Sadducees, citing some guy Beckwith, the Sadducees accepted more than just the Torah. They accepted the rest of the books that Tanakh. Okay, that’s
Steve:
Beckwith was actually one of the premier and top scholars of the canon. He’s at the level of Lee Mark McDonald, if not higher.
Timothy:
Okay, who cares. The point is this, how do you know that this, and this is a minority jurisdiction view you’re representing here that the Pharisees and the Sadducees agreed about what books constituted Tanakh. The majority jurisdiction says no, they did not. Sadducees didn’t accept anything outside of Torah. But 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 are you drawing this equation from?
Steve:
Well, if you really wanted to know, 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 the Sadducees in passages like Matthew 23:35, Luke 11:50:51, Luke 16:29. He actually affirms that the Pharisees 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.
Timothy:
Where was it revealed? Which books are inerrant in the Old Testament? Let’s do that.
Steve:
Well, that would be a little difficult to do because not all the Old Testament was written at once, but by the time-
Timothy:
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, and 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 together. Then we’re going to have to do 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 inerrant and as such go together?
Steve:
Well, I don’t believe that the 46 were inerrant because that includes the Deuterocanonical books that you realize as a Protestant that I only believe in a 39.
Timothy:
So where was it revealed for you, where the 39 Old Testament book?
Steve:
I’m getting to that. Again, if you don’t want to take Jesus’s testimony into account.
Timothy:
I do.
Steve:
Or the Apostle Paul, then Matthew 23:35, Luke 11:50-51, and Luke 16-29. You can look up those verses later. Or we could go-
Timothy:
No, read them now please. I’ll go to the next question, read them out and we’ll see… What I’m expecting-
PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [01:08:04]
Timothy:
Read them out, and we’ll see. 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 inerrant? In those three verses, it better be something tantamount to a table of contents. How do you know [inaudible 01:08:21] together those 39 books?
Steve:
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 a Book of Jubilees before the time of Christ, the threefold division that the Jews have. The law of the prophets and the writings is in the prelude 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 we’re laid up in the temple. He gave the parameters, and he says of the five books of Moses, he talks about the books of the prophets, he talks about the four poetic books. These are the books that were [inaudible 01:09:04]…
Let me finish. 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 second century we have an enumerated list of Bava Batra 14B, not just there, but in early Christian, looks like. And Philacius and others right up to the eighth century that has the exact same 22 or 24 books.
Timothy:
All right, but all the specifics at a certain point, become papering the listener under.
I’m asking do you receive Josephus, the list of 22, as infallible?
Steve:
No. Because that’s not my…
Timothy:
Okay, so how do you adieu…
Steve:
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 I get that from scripture alone.
Timothy:
So the principle of proportionate causality is wrong then, according to you?
Steve:
No. Tim, I’m trying to explain my argument and you keep jumping around to different topics, because we’re talking…
Timothy:
This is the only topic [inaudible 01:10:09].
Steve:
The only topic is how we can know that scripture is inerrant without an infallible tradition. You’re talking canonicity.
Timothy:
No, no, I’m not talking canonicity.
Let me read you. I’m talking about a perfection, argumentative perfection, which means apodictic certitude. That’s the vast claim that you make when you say, “I know scripture is inerrant.” I make it, too.
Steve:
That’s not what I’m saying.
Timothy:
We both make it… Hold on, wait, wait, wait.
Steve:
I’m not saying that.
Timothy:
You’re saying, “I know scripture is inerrant.”
Steve:
Yeah.
Timothy:
I’ve heard this as well. Now you’re in a dialogue with yourself. “Whatever perfection exists in scripture…”
I’m reading directly from the principle of proportionate causality.
Steve:
Sure.
Timothy:
“Whatever perfection exists in scripture…” Perfection means it’s unchanging, it’s finished, “We call an errancy.” There are no errors. “This means that its cause, the cause of scripture, which is the process of inspiration writing collation.” Since there are multiple authors, you have to collate those authors together, publication promulgation, “Its cause must have that perfection as well.
So the cause of script… I’ve been very simple today, I’m driving it 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 effect in its cause?
Steve:
Because…
Timothy:
[inaudible 01:11:42] be explaining.
Steve:
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 in errands and they’re not. They have irreconcilable errors, which is why even popes and cardinals and doctors as a 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.
Timothy:
I’m sure we’ll get to all this in your…
Steve:
That’s your argument.
Timothy:
Grilling me. No it’s not. 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 perfection existing in… Wait, hold on!
The perfection existing in the effect is a work product, a book, a book that’s comprised of 73 other books, co-authored by about 35 guys. Perfection means scriptural inerrancy. We agree about that much. Where we disagree is, you say that there is not an inerrancy, a simultaneous inerrancy, which is the perfection in the effect in the cause. And I said you just violated the principle 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.
Steve:
I guess I don’t know how else to say this other than the fact that we can be certain what scripture is. We can be certain that it is without error, without knowing it infallibly.
Timothy:
How?
Steve:
And if I explained this numerous times, Tim, I explained it in my opening statement in my rebuttals and even in this cross-examination. I mean I don’t know what else to say, but…
Timothy:
That’s a reduxio though.
Steve:
No, simply reading scripture. Then how did Clement of Rome and Justin Martyr know scripture did not have contradictions and didn’t have a promulgated canon? In fact, Clement of Rome, the New Testament wasn’t even completed yet.
Timothy:
Precise. How did they know? Because they had something accruing to a substantial certitude, right? This is why I gave you the coin toss.
Steve:
But they didn’t have a primal canon.
Timothy:
I don’t want to argue with you. Now, I’m steering the ship, you’ll have your 15 minutes. Clement of Rome and I’m also not under Cross X. Ask me this in your 15 minutes.
Steve:
Sure.
Timothy:
But 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 firma terra in later counsels, once substantial certitude has firmed into apodictic certitude?” That’s literally how tradition worked over a course of 100 years and how the magisterium has worked over the course of 2,000 years. But I’m asking you, I don’t think you’re of one mind on this, you’re not. You’re giving two answers.
Steve:
I don’t think you’re understanding what I’m saying.
Timothy:
Well the… I don’t because you can’t explicate a false logoi, Steve. That means 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. That’s all the reduction…
Steve:
I guess I’m wondering what you’re saying the cause is, are you saying the cause of is the promulgation when the church got together and declared what books are scripture? Because…
Timothy:
Authority but the Holy Spirit gives to the one holy Catholic Church.
Steve:
Yes, but I don’t believe the Holy Spirit.
Timothy:
The Holy Spirit acts through the one holy Catholic…
Steve:
And the Holy Spirit did not do that with the Catholic Church because a Catholic Church was wrong on the canon because it included the Deuterocanon. Because the Deuterocanon was in the later versions of the Septuagint, which was not in the version in Jesus’ day.
Timothy:
Okay, I’m going to come. That’s not correct.
Trent:
All right, we have to just jump in here now we’re at 15 minutes. Now we’re going to switch over. It’ll be Steve’s turn. There was bit of, I know there was a bit of confusion to people are saying, “Well what is 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 inerrant? Tim is taking the affirmative, yes. Steve is taking the negative, no. Steve will now have 15 minutes to lead his cross-examination and you guys definitely think of 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’ll have 15 minutes to lead cross examination with Tim.
Steve:
All right, Tim, you stated in your YouTube video that the living magisterium is not as old as the infallible tradition from the late fourth century, that declared scripture is inerrant, nor is it meaning the living magisterium necessarily infallible. There’s 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?
Timothy:
Any Christian on the motives of credibility could be substantially certain, particularly in the first century. These are people that 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 had the motives of credibility, that 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 witness Jesus’s miracles themselves. It’s a bit of a trade off. It’s a bit of an epistemic trade-off. Those people who were 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.
Steve:
But didn’t you-
Timothy:
But we trade off because I have the certitude of dogmatic definitions by the Holy Spirit acting through the church, but yet I didn’t see it. It’s 2,000 years old.
Steve:
How do you know that the Holy Spirit was working through the Catholic church to propagate scripture?
Timothy:
Because of the motives of credibility.
Steve:
And how do you know that infallibly?
Timothy:
Infallibly, the church declares that scripture is inerrant, right?
Steve:
But what I’m saying is that, okay, let’s assume that’s true. let’s assume that is true. How can you falsify that aside from the Catholic church claiming that?
Timothy:
Well Christ himself said, “I found [inaudible 00:10:56″].” Peter the rock. There’s an apostolic tradition rising out of that.
Steve:
How do you know Jesus said that? How do you know that that’s an errant scripture since we haven’t determined that scripture is inerrant yet?
Timothy:
No, that’s where there are cross fertilizing motives of credibility that come from history itself. So here’s how it works. Suetonius, Josephus, all of the secular historians that affirm there is Jesus. He had a huge following. 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 to invoke martyrdom. So there’s that. Once we take that leap of faith, then we’re talking about an easy move.
Steve:
Tim, I’m want to move on because I only got 12 minutes left. And yet your argument was that no one could know that scripture was inerrant until the promulgation of scripture at the end of the fourth century. A, that’s not true because we have examples of Clement of Rome and Justin Martyr and B, the fourth 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-
Timothy:
Oh, hold on, hold on. Can I respond to that?
Steve:
No, I’m asking-
Timothy:
Substantial certitude move to apodictic certitude with a dogmatic definition. It’s very clear.
Steve:
Okay, Second Kings 22:8 records the book of the law, the Torah, 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?
Timothy:
No. Which is why all of the Old Testament Jews argued over what constituted TaNaK.
Steve:
Now I’m not talking to TaNaK, I’m talking to Torah. Did they know that the Torah, the book of the law, the Torah, did they know that was scripture?
Timothy:
They knew with what would be 10?
Steve:
Did they know-
Timothy:
Substantial certitude but not apodictic certitude.
Steve:
Did they know that it was-
Timothy:
It hadn’t been declared by the Holy Spirit.
Steve:
And yet they laid the book up in the temple next to the Ark and you’re saying that they don’t know that?
Timothy:
Justified true belief. 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, 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 with that.
Steve:
So your answer is no. So why did St. John of Damascus assert in the eighth century that books like Sirich and Tolbut “Are virtuous and noble blood are not counted, nor were they placed in the Ark nor part of the 22 books of the Old Testament and Refinus in 8,400 writing around the same time as these church councils, also affirmed this?
Timothy:
Well, you’re talking about private theological opinion.
Steve:
Okay, well…
Timothy:
That’s not magisterial. Even if it’s at the level of magisterium, 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 inerrant. 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 with-
Steve:
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 inerrant.
Timothy:
You’re going to have to enumerate that. You can’t just leave that out there. They didn’t contradict.
Steve:
Second Nicaea affirm 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 Ezras, 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, the citation I gave in my opening statement, I affirmed that the Council of Trent removed it specifically from the canon. That’s the exact words.
Timothy:
Right. So the sense reference difference gets you over the hump here.
Steve:
Okay.
Timothy:
Sense reference. Literally, as you move from Nicaea to Florence in time, there was nothing deleted in the canon. You add some, so there’s no contradiction there. So you go from Florence to print, then all of a sudden sense reference dichotomy explains this part was never conceived of by this part of this book was never conceived of by the church as inerrant.
Steve:
And yet Second Nicaea that affirmed those light fourth century councils added a book and then that Florence had, and then 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 inerrancy in scripture saying, “One too many or one too few books in a Bible would be different from inerrant 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?
Timothy:
I would say that when you admitted earlier tonight that you don’t know what scripture is completely, then we can’t do an osiology 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?
Steve:
Well…
Timothy:
Is it one thing?
Steve:
Actually, it’s my time to ask you a question. You didn’t really answer my question. So yes or no? Is this still your position that-
Timothy:
Well, depends whether you’re asking whether or not.
Steve:
All right, let me ask you a question. If one book has 20 chapters as opposed to 21 chapters, are you saying that that promulgation, that collection of books is not in errant because it’s a different thing?
Timothy:
If it was written by one author, then it doesn’t conform to my analysis.
Steve:
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 the same thing or it’s not the same thing?
Timothy:
Ooziologically, they’re not the same substances. Would you agree that there can only be on correct-
Steve:
Tim, it’s my turn to ask you questions. Based on your answer, considering the ecumenical Council of Trent omitted the two and a half chapters from the Guardsman story and First Ezra that was included in the list, Hippo and Carthage, does this mean Trent was an error for omitting it or does it mean the promulgation of scripture did not occur in the late fourth century, since it included a book and chapters excluded later at Trent?
Timothy:
No, it doesn’t mean that.
Steve:
How can you reconcile the two, considering that they had different canon lists that they claim to be inspired scripture and therefore inerrant?
Timothy:
Via my question I asked you. Are you talking about the substance of scripture as one thing or 73 different things involved in one composite thing? That’s in essence in all of your questions.
Steve:
My question is about the books themselves and the chapters themselves. Because you’re saying even if you remove it- Like for instance, okay, the Epistle of Jeremiah, the one chapter that’s attached to the book of Baruch, you don’t find that, you don’t find Baruch in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Epistle of Baruch is a separate writing. You don’t find it in Origins list. He mentions Jeremiah Lamentations and he puts the epistles an appendage to that. It 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?
Timothy:
Well, I’m going to respond to your last point first, okay?
Steve:
Sure.
Timothy:
Because it’s important. Within one single authored text, constitutive text like Baruch, if later it’s discovered by scriptural scholarship or something that what was believed to be inerrant about the Book of Baruch was for some reason invalid, it had been authored by the author’s cultus or something like that, then it can be later taken out again, by sense reference dichotomy. That’s different from what I was asking and fundamentally what I was saying in that video. When you have a multi-author, super-text comprised of 73 texts, 35 authors, how do we know to collate them? How do we know that the collation was, it has to be inerrant. If it’s an inerrant book to be read inerrantly, and you’ve said repeatedly here tonight, you don’t know what scripture is completely.
Steve:
So if a Bible has 20 chapters as opposed to 21 chapters, then what do you do with books like First Ezras that was in those late fourth century councils affirmed by second Nicaea as scripture and therefore inerrant, but then Trent removes it and it was in the Council of Florence. In other words, Florence was affirming it. It’s not only scripture, but it’s inerrant. Florence is saying it’s not scripture, it’s not inerrant. What do you do?
Timothy:
I just answered that. You’re using chapter equivocally. If you’re talking about chapter, the chapters of one book of the Bible and then that can be taken out later, later scholarship. This Bible…
Steve:
Whoa, whoa. Are you saying that a book that is considered to be inspired scripture can be taken out later?
Timothy:
No, that’s not what I said. I said, I’ve said it four times, man. Once we decide that there is some mode of gluing together, multi-authored text in the Bible, you’re still not square on that. But once we decide that we can glue together the writings of some of the writings of the Old Testament with some of the writings of the New Testament with certitude, then we can know that the Bible is inerrant and more books through the process of canon selection, which gave us a substantial certitude and then the later dogmatic definitions which gave us an apodictic certitude, that process can be gradual. There is no issue with that. Now you’re thinking about chapters of individual books and…
Steve:
Well Tim, I want to move on. I quoted you word for word from your video, but I want to move on. Does infallible tradition take into account variance?
Timothy:
You’re going to have to define that.
Steve:
Sure. No, no, fine. The 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 the Greek conditions, Esther and Daniel, for instance. You couldn’t reject that and say that it’s a Bible. So does that include variance? Does that include, for instance, differences between bibles and translations? For example, in the new Catholic version of the Bible that follows the Douay-Rhheims in Luke six, in Acts one, it describes Judas as the brother of James, and yet in the New American Bible, it describes him as Judas, the son of James.
Timothy:
Right, I mean you’re talking about transliteration now. Transliteration means there is both you and I together affirm that scriptural and narrative means that there are some set God breathed corpus of propositions, Old Testament, New Testament come together, that in all languages in seasonality to season is inherently true. Now, because at one time 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 inerrancy?
Steve:
Okay, I got 20 seconds left. I got one question left. How would you respond to Father Steven Day Young who stated, “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 Saint Naciferus of Constantinople in the ninth century says there were Christian churches that hadn’t accepted the book of Revelation yet.”
Timothy:
I love that. It’s a developmental morphology, right? We moved from first century apostles had direct sense of Jesus witnesses miracles there. 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 fourth 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 hundred percent certitude, but I believe that works the way history works.
Trent:
All right, and with that, we’ve come now to audience Q&A, so 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 not Fraud had just instantly this list of questions to choose from.
Steve:
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 I couldn’t do it.
Trent:
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 him down there. All right, let’s take a look. I think we’ve got a few questions here. So let’s see.
Here’s the first question for Steve and then yeah, you can put for Steve, for Tim before your question, or you can write for both and we could ask both debaters. So I’ll grab the first one here, then I’ll find a few others. 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?
Steve:
Yeah, before I answer that, do we have a time limit?
Trent:
Oh yeah, I don’t know if we settled this earlier, but normally what I like to do would be if a question is addressed to someone, they have two minutes to answer 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?
Steve:
Yeah.
Timothy:
Sorry, would you repeat that?
Trent:
We’ll do, if someone asks you a question, you get two minutes to answer. The other person who was not asked the question gets a minute to reply if they want.
Timothy:
Sure.
Trent:
All right, so two minutes for you, Steve, 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?
Steve:
Yeah, thanks for the question, Gen Z Catholic. No, Jesus actually promises us that not one jot nor dittle will pass from the law and the prophets until all is fulfilled. He promises this and it’s something that Tim’s nodding, I think he would agree with me. So no, I mean he protects his word and even Peter makes a comment in his epistle that this is going to take place and we can know that the word is more sure until the morning star, referring to Jesus, rises his hearts. 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 book those were, and the reason was because the Old Testament Jews, Pharisees, Sadducees, virtually everybody, knew what book souls were. The Sadducees would not put up books in the temple that were not scripture. And so we know what books that they are.
Another thing too is Tim would agree with me, is that Jesus built the 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 local assemblies to worship. So the church will always be around because Jesus promised this, and the church is going to know what scripture is. They’re going to know if it’s inerrant or not. This is done by illumination. And I quoted a little bit earlier from, who was it, the Theological Wanderings on YouTube, the canon problem, the Kruger self-authentication model.
So yeah, the church would never get corrupted to the point that they would believe or that the Bible would be corrupted. And this is part of the reason why I’m not Roman Catholic, because the Bible has been added to, it’s been books have been taken away, even in ecumenical councils and even Catholic theologians have conceded that books can be added to the Bible theoretically, that have never actually been in there if they’re from antiquity, like some of the books from the Eastern Orthodox Bible.
Trent:
Okay. Tim, would you like to reply to any, have a moment to reply?
Timothy:
Sure. I mean, obviously we have the promise from Jesus that the gates of hell shall not prevail against the church, which means scripture and the infallible components of the magisterium. We know this as a proposition of truth. I’m confused how according to the thing Steve’s offered here tonight, we’re to take as true the truth claims of scripture without involving an infinite regression by self-justifying textual actualizations. But given that Jesus said that in scripture, and we know scripture is inerrantly true, because of the authority given to the apostles who through tradition gave us the Bible, yes, 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 they’ll be true. We have to tether them to something that’s certain though.
Trent:
Okay, here is the next question. This one is for Tim. 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 and I guess it’s canon list, than the list at the ecumenical Council of Trent.
Timothy:
So the argument here is that the process is additive, not subtractive, and this is the development of canon in time. It can happen, it’s easy.
Trent:
Okay. Is that your answer?
Timothy:
Yeah, I mean it’s a simple historical question. It’s an additive process.
Trent:
Okay. Steve, would you like a one-minute response?
Steve:
Yeah, real quickly, 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 err, is claiming this book that had book the Guardsman story, these two and a half chapters, they were saying, these are inspired, these are inerrant, and then less then several centuries later at the council 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 inerrant scripture in an ecumenical council.
Timothy:
A chapter of a book. Not an entire book.
Trent:
All right, I’m going to be firm here actually, on this point because-
Timothy:
We talked about,
Trent:
Well, this is something I’ve had in previous debates, this has happened to me where-
Steve:
I’m guilty of that.
Trent:
Where I’ve held my tongue and it’s happened to me. I’ve broken the rule here or there, but two minutes, then one minute, then nothing. But it’s all good. I’ve done it myself. We got another question here. This one’s for Steve. 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?
Steve:
Right? Well, actually, Tim would probably agree with beyond this. Part of the reason is because these books were a lot of things that were eyewitnessed by people who actually experienced them. For example, the five books of Moses were written by Moses. Moses was an eyewitness of the declarations that God had made. There were certain attributes of the Bible, like eyewitness accounts during a period of miracles, like Elijah in Elijah and Jesus and the Apostles, and there 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 the apostles actually saw Jesus rise from the dead. Another thing is you have people like Jude affirming Peter’s 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 Muhammad, the founder of Islam, who went into a cave that nobody witnessed, talked to a angel that nobody heard, and then 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 testimony of dozens, hundreds, even millions of people in the Old Testament that affirmed that these scriptures were actually true. And the Old Testament, these are books that were laid up in the temple. That’s how we know that their scripture.
Trent:
Tim, would you like to respond?
Timothy:
Sure. Of course I agree that eyewitness testimonies are better than non eyewitness accounts. Secondhand stories are better than third hand stories. Where I disagree is that a fallible tradition, apostolic tradition, could have produced inerrant series of stories. More specifically, that in a fallible tradition could have collated together all the stories.
PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [01:42:04]
Timothy:
… tradition could have collated together all the stories in an inerrant way. It’s both historically unbelievable. And it’s also a 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, if you’re a fallible authority, all of these inerrant stories, and know which ones are errant, know which ones are inerrant. It just can’t happen.
Trent:
Okay. All right. Thank you for that response.
Here’s the next one. 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.
A question, “Since Tim stated that pre-council Christians,” I’m assuming these are pre-ecumenical-council Christians, “had reasonable certainty about the inspired books, why can’t Protestants say the same? Doesn’t this concede the point?”
Timothy:
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. Steve, come home to Rome, brother. You need confession and the Eucharist. You need all seven-
Trent:
No. I have Christ.
Timothy:
But Christ is the Eucharist. Praise be God.
But literally, you do have a Trinitarian formula baptism. And this is predicated on 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 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. They’re oftentimes even applying the sexual ethics in the wider culture. Because they’re taking really seriously that one peg of the stool, oftentimes more seriously than Catholics. But it is 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 et al 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 the epistolary Pauline texts. So, they get a lot of truth from an 80/20 process, as anyone who’s ever worked at a company knows, an 80/20 process is good.
Absolutely, you’re just asking, can’t substantial certitude get you most of the way? And it absolutely can. They lack the apodictic certitude that comes with knowing and trusting in 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.
Trent:
All right.
Here is the next question.
Steve:
Do I respond to that?
Trent:
Oh, yeah, right. Yeah. Yes. Sorry. I apologize, Steve.
Steve, you have one minute to respond.
Steve:
Okay.
Yeah. And the whole point is that you don’t need an infallible tradition, you don’t need an infallible magisterium, to know what the Scripture is, let alone it’s not inspired. Again, since I have limited time, I’d encourage you to read the book, Canon Revisited, Dr Michael Kruger, because he explains how the canon is derived from applying what’s found in Scripture.
Again, the church already had a Bible in the first century. It was called the Old Testament. They had 20 out of the 27 books. They had more than that. By the time of the moratorium fragment. And what it does is, it actually guides, and it shows how previous generations, particularly the Jews, knew what Scripture was, and that it was inerrant. 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, and this is why the earliest lists are more closer or identical with Catholic Old Testaments and the New Testaments, as opposed to the Catholic, which is until 1546.
Trent:
Okay.
This next question is very serious. Tim, it’s for you. I just need a yes or no answer to it. It’s very important. “Do you blow dry your hair?”
Timothy:
Sometimes. Yeah.
Trent:
Okay.
Timothy:
This next question I’m going to [inaudible 01:46:45]
Steve:
I’d like to reply to that. I have no hair to blow. So, go ahead.
Trent:
Okay.
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 going to allow it.
Steve:
[inaudible 01:46:59].
Trent:
It could be from Mrs Timothy J Gordon, “Is God Muslim-level, voluntaristic, ie, can he violate logical axioms?”
Steve:
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 For instance, he can’t produce a square circle. That would be illogical. But he cannot violate his nature. The God of the Bible cannot be illogical. He can’t violate logical axioms.
And one of the reasons I can’t be Catholic is because, when the catechism states that, or maybe it’s from the council, Vatican Two, I can’t remember, but where it says that Muslims worship the true God, that’s false. Because the once your God is Jesus Christ. And you start seeing where even ecumenical councils contradict each other. But that’s a whole different issue.
Trent:
Tim, would you like to reply?
Timothy:
Absolutely.
With regard to the text from Vatican Two, that’s not one of four sacred constitutions. And absolutely, Pius the 10th affirmed the same thing. We trust him a lot more, that sense versus reference, Muslims absolutely do worship in totally false ways and non-triune ways. A God 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. We have equivocity dealt with as something called prosen 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 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 violate the principle of proportionate cause, in terms of the ways that Scripture is promulgated to us.
Trent:
All right. That question was for Steve, so to keep us switching back and forth, this next question is for Tim. “Would it be fair to say that,” I’m going to be 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.
Timothy:
This is actually a tricky question. Because we’d have to parse between the ontology and the epistemology entailed 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 truth claims stood for by the propositions of Scripture, all whatever, 73 books. 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. It’s true. Because Providence, the will of God, wants it to be true. What I’ve been trying to get at 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 inerrancy be known without promulgation? No.
It’s very simple. Ask your Protestant friends. Can an inerrant promulgation be accomplished by a non-infallible promulgator? The answer has to be, no. These are five, no’s. There are five solas, in some iterations of Protestantism. And there are five no’s that all it takes to prove forever, 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. 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.
Trent:
Okay. Steve, would you like to reply?
Steve:
Sure.
If by tradition, you’re talking about the apostles that actually wrote Scripture or the New Testament writers, yes, that is infallible, and Scripture is inerrant, because as I stated in my opening statement, that the 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.
And again, the whole point of this debate is that we can know Scripture, we just can’t know this infallibly. And just because of magisterium claims to know it infallibly, that is a claim that has not been able to be backed up. Tim has 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’s all sola scriptura is.
Trent:
Okay.
The next question. This question is from a Protestant viewer, AgoyforJesus. 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,” 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?”
Timothy:
No, of course not. This is like when atheists ask the question of God the Creator. Well, all creation is contingent, wouldn’t God just be the top contingency in a line of contingent effects? The answer is, no. He’s the necessary 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 promulgated three centuries in? No, because Jesus founded the Church directly by himself. 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 you believe there was a Christian Church, this is good news for Steve, and all others out there, you can get around 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 the real life of real Jesus, that 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. The Church gave us Scripture, not the other way around. Scripture doesn’t give us the Church. You only are approaching it that way because you’re approaching it backwards. You think Scripture gave us the Church. Presumably, I’m thinking you sort of make the mistake that Scripture also gave us Jesus, because it gave accounts of him. It didn’t.
Trent:
All right. Steve, you have one minute to reply if you like.
Steve:
Yeah.
Well, Tim needs to go back and listen to my opening statement, because the Council of Rome that he actually uses states that the Scripture gave us the Church, not that the Church gave us the Scripture. 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 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 variance, there’s no infallible Catholic Bible, just like Protestants. There’s a lot of different Bibles and versions that are out there. The new Catholic version follows the Douay-Rheims. And yet, both that one and the New American Bible were authorized by the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, and approved by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and the United States Catholic Conference.
And again, how does Tim know that Jesus founded the Church? How does he know what’s said as inerrancy ends up arguing in a circle without actually even realizing it. And again, what about Trent removing First Esdras from the Council of Florence, which were both ecumenical.
Trent:
All right. And that will bring us to the close of our, let’s see here, audience Q&A period. Now, we’ll turn it over. Each debater will get a five-minute closing statement. And just a reminder, as a professional courtesy in 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.
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-
Timothy:
Thanks. And thanks. Thanks to both of you, Trent and Steven.
One quick error. It’s a relatively clerical thing, but the US CCB has no magisterial authority. You averted to the Catholic catechism, which has no magisterial authority. US CCB and the other National Bishops Conferences are there in an advisory role. They can be wrong. They’re wrong all the time, especially the catechism can have errors. Robertson Genesis pointed out an error in the catechism, recently. So it’s a synopsis of magisterium, but it itself is not magisterial.
Steve, 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. The Council of Rome is not an ecumenical council, by the way, which is the only one that has magistracy at the first level that I’ve been talking about. There is a regression involved by using Scripture to justify Scripture, as I’m sure people in the Chat can figure out.
I’m a little disappointed that we couldn’t get to this, because in debates like this, when I’m just using logic, and Steve’s using the obscurities of history, I’m just saying, “Look. Five questions. Where do you differ with my conclusion? Were the Bible’s books written by a single author? No.” Typically, in debate, 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 that out. I’m mad about the perceived disparities between the Council of Florence and the Council of Trent. That’s essentially all I’ve heard tonight.
But if you take me at your word, dear listener, 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, no, 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 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, what did he cite, Deuteronomy 9:10. And all that had is two tablets. It recurred to two tablets, the 10 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 onto 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 inerrant. We need to know all of its pieces are inerrant. So, can inerrancy 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’ve answered, yes, to any of these. We only know what God wants us to know, as Carl Barth often points out.
So, can an inerrant promulgation be accomplished by a non-infallible promulgator? Steve here answers, yes. A defacto, he answers, yes. I think he would say, no, because he knows the force of Socratic logic requires to answer, no. An inerrant promulgation can’t be accomplished by a non-infallible promulgator. That’s not the case.
And you can’t say the Holy Spirit. Because the Holy Spirit inspired 35 writers to write 73 books. But the question is, 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. This is a violation of the principle of proportionate causality.
Sorry. I didn’t know I was over.
Trent:
Okay.
Timothy:
Thank you.
Trent:
Alrighty. 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.
Steve:
Thank you, Trent, for moderating. And thank you, Tim, for agreeing to do this debate.
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 in the Bible? How do you know what is Scripture?”, everything than 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 of the Catholic Church, but, “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. All it 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 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 First Esdras.
Florence includes Baruch, which was not at Rome or Second Nicaea. Trent actually ends up including First Esdras, which was not in Florence. So, you have ecumenical counsels contradicting each other, which is where the magisterium 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, that doesn’t mean that we can’t be certain that it is not without error. Again, reading Scripture, fulfilled prophecy, comparing it to verifiable historical claims, just like Christians have done throughout the last two millennium.
So, the canon, Tim actually believes, was promulgated and declared inerrant in the late fourth century in the West, was clearly not the tradition of the fathers handing down to the churches of Christ, which Rufinus, who’s 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 in the deuterocanon, and said, “These books are not in the canon.”
So, fortunately, we don’t need an infallible tradition to be certain that the Scriptures are inerrant. And the reason why this is a big deal, it’s not just 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 discredits the particular church body or the tradition, as well as Christianity as a whole.
Because again, what do you do with the books of the Bible, the deuterocanon, that has irreconcilable errors, which the ecumenical Council of Trent says is inerrant, as well as being inspired. And these are errors that cannot be reconciled. 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 New 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 of the Corinthians.
“Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel, which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved. If you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believe in vain, for I have delivered to you of the first importance which I also receive, 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 certain Scripture is inerrant without an infallible tradition?” The answer is, yes, just not infallibly. Only God can do that.
Trent:
Two seconds left. Very good, Steve. Thank you so much. We’ll bring Tim back, as well.
All right. Okay. Well, thank you, so much, for everybody who watched. This was our very first ever debate hosted on the Council of Trent podcast. Well, it’s the first debate hosted on the podcast where I’m not one of the debaters. 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 favorite to help out Council of 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 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 trenthornpodcast.com. I’ll leave a last word for each of you, starting with Tim, just where can people go to access more of your materials.
So, Tim, and then, Steve.
Timothy:
Trent, thanks again. You did a really good job on your first moderated debate. It’s a lot less work than being in the debater’s chair. I’ve only [inaudible 02:08:53].
Trent:
I can get used to it. It’s fun. But yeah.
Timothy:
No, it’s fun. 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 test at the end. It’s much more enjoyable than teaching.
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’ve been doing lots of Synod coverage, more like four shows a week rather than three, during this devastating synod in Rome. So, find me there. Thank you all. Thanks Steve. God bless you, men.
Trent:
And Steve?
Steve:
Okay. Again, as Tim said, Trent, did a great job for your first time moderating. Thank you for 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 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.
As far as with me, I haven’t written as many books as Tim has, and certainly not as many 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 buddy Mike and his little daughter Olivia, here. And this is very much more ecumenically friendlier than this book, Why Protestant Bibles are Smaller. But you can get both those on Amazon.
We were talking a lot about Bible difficulties and contradictions. If you want some information on that, there’s a few. There’s a couple of books. Demolishing Supposed Bible Contradictions by Ken Ham, Bodie Hodge, and Tim Chaffey. 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. And carm.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, he has literally dozens of pages on Bible difficulties in the Hebrew Bible in the New Testament. And what’s nice is that he compares them side by side. And as far as the canon, other than my book, I would highly recommend Roger Beckwith, the Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church. And again, you want to get ahold of me, I’m on Twitter or X, or whatever it’s called now, Facebook and YouTube. Bornagainrn, which you only see part of it here. RN, because I’m a registered nurse.
Trent:
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 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.
Voiceover:
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PART 4 OF 4 ENDS [02:12:08]