Appeal: direct answer
From Protestant vs. Orthodox: Scripture and Tradition (Gavin Ortlund + Stephen De Young).
- #16001:26:43upheld Gavin Ortlund epainos: direct answer (+2)
The council upheld the call: Gavin Ortlund earned 2 points.
“I would say that's a different kind of development... You have monotheism explicitly in the New Testament. You have, the father, the son, and the spirit linked in important contexts such as the the early baptismal formula... It's not perfectly understood, but it's there. Icon veneration seems to me to be different from that because I I I just don't see it there.”
Diogenes: Answering De Young's Trinity parallel, he supplies a criterion for distinguishing legitimate development from accretion — the seed material must be present in the apostolic deposit — and applies it to both cases.- Aristotle uphold: On the record: This is consistent with S2's standing framework since his opening remarks distinguishing legitimate doctrinal deduction/inference from scripture (permitted under sola scriptura) from later accretions lacking scriptural grounding; the answer here is an application of that same standard, not a new or shifting position. De Young explicitly posed the parity question (his Unitarian friend makes the same historical demand about the Trinity that Gavin makes about icon veneration), and Gavin directly answers by supplying a distinguishing criterion — presence of the doctrine's basic building blocks in the New Testament text itself — and applies it concretely to both the Trinity and icon veneration cases rather than deflecting.
- Socrates uphold: Read blind, found "direct answer". This directly answers the "concrete difference" challenge De Young posed earlier (why is Ortlund's rejection of Nicaea II different in kind from the Unitarian's rejection of Nicaea I): Ortlund states the criterion plainly — the Trinity has explicit New Testament building blocks (monotheism, the triadic baptismal formula, repeated affirmations of the Son's deity) that are merely clarified and defended by later councils, whereas he holds that icon veneration has no comparable scriptural seed to develop from. Whether or not the distinction ultimately persuades De Young, it is a substantive, checkable standard offered in response to the actual question, not an evasion of it.
- Plato uphold: On the record: S2's consistently held distinction (from the opening) is that scripture provides explicit "building blocks" for legitimate doctrine while later practices must be traced to apostolic-era warrant; this passage is a direct continuation of that standing criterion, now applied to rebut S3's just-made parallel between trinitarian development and icon veneration. S3 had just drawn a parallel implying icon veneration and trinitarian doctrine face the same evidentiary problem; while no question mark was used, this is Gavin's substantive engagement with that parallel, stating a clear criterion (explicit NT building blocks vs. absence thereof) and applying it to both cases — the reasoning is sound and on-topic even if "explicit argument" is the more precise label than "direct answer."
Appeal this callout
Appeals come only from the debaters themselves. Sign in with Google to start; you'll then prove which debater you are, once.