Appeal: dodge
From Jay Dyer vs Pedro from Crucible Debate: Sola Scriptura and Protestantism.
- #146045:57overturned Pedro psogos: dodge (+2)
The council overturned the call, so no points were given away.
“Well, I think the church is being guided by the holy spirit in its when that's the offering of the holy spirit.”
Diogenes: Asked repeatedly and in narrowing terms — "When did God tell the canon to the early church?", "Where is your evidence for the canon?", and finally about the first six centuries of debate over the list — he never supplies an answer, and unlike a framework objection he names no presupposition he denies and no prior question to settle.- Aristotle overturn: On the record: Pedro has held since the opening that the church is God's instrument, guided by the Holy Spirit, in producing and preserving scripture and its canon; the quoted line is a direct restatement of that standing position applied to the specific historical question asked, not an avoidance of it. Jay's narrowed question was, in effect, how the ontological/theopneustos answer squares with the historical fact that the church debated the canon over six centuries; Pedro's reply — that the church was guided by the Holy Spirit throughout that process — is a direct, if weak and question-begging, engagement with exactly that point, not silence or evasion. The weakness of the answer (assuming the very providential guidance in question) is already captured elsewhere in the record as begging-the-question/circularity callouts (e.g. 44:27, 63:42, 67:19); dodge requires the question to go unanswered, and here Pedro answers it the same way he answers it throughout the debate.
- Socrates overturn: Read blind, found nothing worth calling. Jay had just asked Pedro to confirm the historical fact that the church debated the canon over six centuries; Pedro's answer pivots to a claim about the Holy Spirit guiding the church rather than confirming or denying the historical point. It's an awkward, tangential first response, but this is the only time the question has been put so far (Jay immediately presses further), so it does not yet rise to a dodge, and the line itself asserts nothing precise enough to pin a named fallacy on.
- Plato uphold: On the record: Pedro's declared framework grounds the canon in God's sovereign decree rather than any historical criterion, but he has not, at this point, articulated that as an explicit denial of the presupposition behind Jay's historical question or named what must be settled first, so the retreat here reads as an unanswered repeated question rather than an argued framework objection. Jay's question narrows across several turns — "When did God tell the canon to the early church?", "Where is your evidence for the canon?", and finally "how does that answer... the church as a historical fact being the ones that debated in six centuries what the canon would be?" — a concrete historical/empirical question about the six-century process. Pedro's answer retreats to "the church is being guided by the holy spirit... we know that by the scriptures," which restates his sovereignty framework but neither engages the historical question nor names it as a disputed presupposition with something prior to be settled; Jay's follow-up ("you understand this is a question of post New Testament... first 600... I'm asking you about that time period") shows the specific historical question is still left unanswered when cross-examination time runs out.
- Thesmothetes overturn: By the rule: the speaker is judged against his own declared framework. Pedro's recorded framework since the opening is that the canon's identity rests on God's sovereign decree and the Spirit's guidance, with the church as mere instrument rather than an ecclesial criterion — precisely the content of the quoted line. Pressed on the six-century historical process, Pedro answers with exactly what his own declared position predicts: the Spirit guided the church throughout. That answer is weak and question-begging (already captured elsewhere in the record at 44:27, 63:42, 67:19), but a restatement of one's own standing framework applied to the question on the table is an answer judged by that framework, not silence or refusal, so the dodge label does not fit.
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