Appeal: dodge
From Jay Dyer vs Pastor P Debate Orthodoxy vs Protestantism, Sola Scriptura and Church History.
- #14011:59:41upheld Pastor P psogos: dodge (+1) tempered from major to minor
The council upheld the call: Pastor P gave away 1 point.
“Again, I believe the apostle the god that god used the apostle Paul to sway them and that we don't and then thank god we don't have to be circumcised…”
Diogenes: Asked twice, and with the ruling specified for him, whether the Jerusalem Council's decision was infallible, he never answers yes or no — awkward for him either way, since he had already granted that Carthage was infallible.Herodotus (partly): Jay Dyer and Pastor P have no debate history together beyond this single November 2022 "Crucible" sola-scriptura debate, and no other public debates by Pastor P exist anywhere in search results — he is not a recurring figure on the debate circuit. Within this one transcript, however, the dodge is corroborated: minutes after refusing to say yes/no on the Jerusalem Council's infallibility to DJ, Pastor P similarly stonewalls caller Rachel's parallel question about pre-canon oral transmission, giving non-answers ("Maybe," "sometimes it's a Gideon bible in a motel drawer") until she has to answer her own question. So the specific accusation is borne out by this debate's own internal pattern, but there is no broader multi-debate history to escalate severity — this appears to be a one-off encounter, not a recidivist pattern across appearances. Sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5I7e9XmpovU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVnGaWrfIx8 https://jaydyer.substack.com/p/jay-dyer-debate-vs-pastor-p-bible-ff9
- Aristotle uphold: On the record: Pastor P's position, especially as it stood by this late point in the debate, includes the concession that Carthage's canon ruling was "infallible" (89:14) alongside his general Protestant claim that councils and churches "make mistakes"; DJ's question probes exactly this tension by asking whether the Jerusalem Council's ruling was likewise infallible. DJ asks the direct yes/no question "was the ruling of that council infallible?" at 118:44, gets a narrative non-answer, asks it again explicitly at 119:26, and even after Pastor P requests clarification on which specific ruling is meant and DJ supplies it, the quoted answer at 119:40 again only restates what the ruling meant (Gentiles needn't be circumcised) without ever saying yes or no to "infallible" — a direct question asked twice (three times counting the clarification) and never actually answered, with no presupposition of the question ever named or contested.
- Socrates uphold: Read blind, found "dodge". DJ Bolger asks directly, twice, whether the Jerusalem Council's ruling was infallible (118:49 and again at 119:26 after Pastor P sidestepped with a narrative answer). Here at 119:41 Pastor P again only restates the historical outcome — that Paul swayed the council and Gentiles don't need circumcision — without ever saying whether that ruling was in fact infallible, leaving the direct question unanswered a second time (which then lets the caller's next question proceed on an unconfirmed assumption).
- Plato uphold: On the record: Pastor P's standing framework allows some councils to be providentially "right," but he has never articulated a consistent rule for which; asked directly and specifically whether the Jerusalem Council's ruling was infallible, he twice answers with narrative/doctrinal content instead of the yes/no asked, leaving the underlying, oft-pressed question of his adjudicating principle unresolved yet again. DJ asks pointedly, "do you think the ruling of that council was infallible?" and then re-specifies the ruling ("that you don't have to be circumcised to be saved") when Pastor P asks for clarification — a direct question posed twice. Both times Pastor P answers only with a description of what happened at the council and the doctrinal content (Gentiles need not be circumcised), never saying "yes" or "no" to the infallibility question itself. This is a genuine dodge, made more evident by the fact that Pastor P had, minutes earlier at 89:14, been willing to call Carthage's canon decision "infallible" outright when pressed — showing he can give a direct yes/no on this exact predicate elsewhere, which makes the avoidance here a real evasion rather than simple inarticulacy.
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