Appeal: begging the question
From Jay Dyer vs Pastor P Debate Orthodoxy vs Protestantism, Sola Scriptura and Church History.
- #13701:08:52upheld Pastor P psogos: begging the question (+2)
The council upheld the call: Pastor P gave away 2 points.
“… as far as I'm concerned, we get into the word of God, and the one that agrees most with the word is correct.”
Diogenes: Asked how to adjudicate between two competing readings of the same book, he offers agreement with the word as the criterion — which is the disputed reading of the word itself, the identical circle now put to him by a third party.- Aristotle uphold: On the record: Pastor P's opening and consistent position is that the perfect written word of God, studied and let to "interpret itself," is the standard for adjudicating disputes; asked directly how two sincere readers arriving at different interpretations of that same text can be adjudicated, this line answers that the one who "agrees most with the word" is correct. The caller's question was precisely how to determine which interpretation of the text is correct when both parties are reading the same word of God and reaching different conclusions; answering that the correct interpretation is "the one that agrees most with the word" presupposes an already-settled reading of that same disputed word to serve as the measuring stick, which is exactly the circularity the caller immediately points out ("what we're trying to judge... is our own interpretations") — this mirrors the same begging-the-question structure already established elsewhere in the debate regarding the canon.
- Socrates uphold: Read blind, found "begging the question". Asked how to adjudicate between two people who read the same Bible and reach different (Protestant vs. Orthodox) conclusions, Pastor P answers that "the one that agrees most with the word is correct" — but determining which interpretation agrees with "the word" is precisely the disputed question, since both sides claim their reading is what the word says. The caller immediately names this circularity ("what we're trying to judge... is our own interpretations"), and it repeats the same move already made regarding the canon at 08:09 and 32:14.
- Plato uphold: On the record: Pastor P's standing defense throughout is that Scripture, being perfect, settles disputes, but whenever pressed on how to adjudicate between competing readings or canons he falls back on "agreement with the word" as the test — a circularity he has not resolved since it first surfaced with Jay, and this line simply repeats that same unresolved circle now put to him by a third party. A caller has just asked, for the second time, how to adjudicate between two sincere but different readings of Scripture (his own Orthodox understanding versus Pastor P's). Pastor P answers that "the one that agrees most with the word is correct" — but the word's correct meaning/content is precisely what the two competing interpretations disagree about, so this criterion presupposes an answer to the very question being asked. This is the same circular "agrees with the word of God" move already made and identified repeatedly earlier in the debate (e.g., in the Carthage/canon exchange), now recurring unchanged when a caller puts the identical adjudication problem to him directly.
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