Appeal: direct answer
From Jay Dyer vs Pastor P Debate Orthodoxy vs Protestantism, Sola Scriptura and Church History.
- #14032:14:44upheld Pastor P epainos: direct answer (+1)
The council upheld the call: Pastor P earned 1 point.
“I do believe it was infallible and I do believe that that God…”
Diogenes: Put to him again in writing, he now answers the Jerusalem Council question plainly that he had twice left unanswered on the call — even though the answer costs him, since it is a second infallible council outside Scripture.- Aristotle uphold: On the record: Pastor P's consistent stance has been that councils are fallible except when they "agree with the word" (as he argued for Carthage's New Testament canon); the called line does not depart from that framework since he is simply extending the same "God blessed/led them" reasoning to Jerusalem, but it does depart from his earlier evasive pattern on this specific question by finally giving DJ's twice-asked question a plain yes-or-no answer. DJ Bolger asked twice on-air whether the Jerusalem Council's ruling was "infallible," and both times Pastor P deflected into describing the content of the ruling (Gentiles need not be circumcised) rather than answering "infallible" or not. When the same question is put again in writing by a super-chat, he answers it plainly and without hedging ("I do believe it was infallible"), which is a genuine direct answer to the question actually asked, whichever channel it arrived through.
- Socrates overturn: Read blind, found "self-contradiction". Pastor P's whole thesis, stated in his opening, is that "the word of God is better than church councils. Churches... make mistakes... the word of God is perfect" — councils are fallible, only scripture is not. Yet here he flatly affirms the Jerusalem council's ruling "was infallible," echoing his earlier unacknowledged concession to Bible Believer that the Council of Carthage's canon decision was likewise "infallible" (which Bible Believer pointed out directly undercuts sola scriptura). He never reconciles how a council decision can be infallible while his founding premise is that only scripture, not councils, carries that status.
- Plato uphold: On the record: S1's pattern on this specific question had been evasive despite repeated direct questioning; this line departs from that pattern by giving the plain answer he had previously avoided, which is properly credited as a direct answer. DJ Bolger asked plainly three times (118:57, 119:26, 120:05) whether the Jerusalem Council's ruling was infallible, and each time S1 talked around Paul swaying the council or people being "prone to error" without ever saying yes or no; here, asked the same plain question again in a super chat, he finally answers directly "I do believe it was infallible."
- Thesmothetes uphold: By the rule: the speaker is judged against his own declared framework. Socrates's overturn rests on treating "I do believe it was infallible" as a self-contradiction of Pastor P's sola scriptura thesis, but Pastor P's own opening explicitly declared a framework that already allows for this: "some councils get it right and some get it wrong... I do thank God for the ones that got it right," naming Carthage and Nicaea as councils God "blessed." Affirming Jerusalem as another instance of a council getting it right is squarely inside that declared framework, not a departure from it, so the self-contradiction charge fails against his own stated terms. That leaves the quote as exactly what Aristotle and Plato found: a plain, unhedged answer to the question actually put to him ("do you believe the council of Jerusalem was infallible"), which is a direct answer regardless of whether the asker was DJ Bolger or a later chat questioner on the same live floor.
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