Appeal: aporia
From Jay Dyer vs Pastor P Debate Orthodoxy vs Protestantism, Sola Scriptura and Church History.
- #132035:30upheld Jay Dyer against Pastor P agonisma: aporia (+1)
The council upheld the call: Jay Dyer earned 1.2 points.
“… it's begging the question because you're saying that what agrees with the Old Testament, but if the Deuterocanon is part of the Old Testament, then that doesn't work.”
Diogenes: Pastor P's stated criterion for the canon — agreement with the Old Testament — presupposes the very contents of the Old Testament in dispute; he offers no way out, says twice they must agree to disagree, and changes the subject to what priests preach on Sunday.- Aristotle uphold: On the record: Jay Dyer's opening and consistent method has been internal critique pressing Pastor P for a non-circular justification of why Carthage's New Testament list is authoritative while its Old Testament/Deuterocanon ruling is rejected; this line is the culminating naming of the circularity in that sustained line of questioning. Read across the whole exchange (33:39–35:39), Pastor P retreats twice to "we're gonna have to agree to disagree," offers no principle distinguishing why Carthage binds him on the New Testament but not on the Old Testament/Deuterocanon it also affirms, and when Jay names the circularity directly at 35:30, Pastor P does not answer it at all but pivots entirely to an unrelated question about Sunday preaching schedules — and this specific circularity is never revisited or resolved for the rest of the debate, which is the functional equivalent of being brought to a dead end.
- Socrates uphold: Read blind, found "fallacy spotted", on the same ledger as the callout. Pastor P had just given "agrees with the Old Testament" as his criterion for accepting Carthage's New Testament canon while rejecting Carthage's inclusion of the Deuterocanon. Jay correctly points out that this criterion presupposes an answer to the very question in dispute — whether the Deuterocanon counts as part of the Old Testament — so applying it to exclude the Deuterocanon begs the question rather than settling it.
- Plato uphold: On the record: Pastor P has held throughout that Carthage is trustworthy because its decisions "agree with the Old Testament and the apostles," and when Jay shows this criterion is circular given the deuterocanon dispute, Pastor P departs from continuing that defense and instead changes the subject entirely, rather than admitting he cannot answer. Jay's distinguo-style objection ("it's begging the question... if the deuterocanon is part of the old, that doesn't work") does land: Pastor P's stated criterion (agreement with the Old Testament) cannot decide the dispute without already presupposing the Old Testament's contents, which is exactly what's contested. But Pastor P does not admit he has no answer — he pivots immediately to an unrelated question ("does your priest preach the deuterocanon every Sunday?"), abandoning the line of argument rather than conceding defeat on it. That is withdrawal-by-subject-change after refutation, not the opponent confessing a dead end.
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