In this episode Trent moderates a live debate between Catholic apologist Tim Gordon and Protestant apologist Steve Christie on the following question: “Do we need an infallible tradition to know scripture is inerrant?”
Format:
15-minute opening statements
7-minute rebuttals
4-minute second rebuttals
15-minute cross examinations
20-minute audience Q+A
5-minute closing statements
Transcript:
Voiceover:
Welcome to the Council of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent:
All right, welcome to the Council of Trent podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers Apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. Very special episode today. I have done over a dozen debates. I don’t remember the full number, but I’ve done a fair number of debates, but this is the first debate that I’m a part of, but I’m just moderating. It’s actually kind of fun, a little bit relaxing. I’m exciting for all of that. I apologize, so I might be a little bit rusty on things. I’m getting a little bit of an echo in my…
We’ll keep going with all of this. Let’s just get right to the debaters, the debate topics, I have this echo in here, I’ll fix this in my headphones. Do we need an infallible tradition to know scripture is inert? That is the debate that we’re having. Let me bring on our debaters. We have Catholic, Tim Gordon, Rules for Retrogrades, and we have Steve Christie, Protestant. As I said, the resolution is do we need an infallible tradition to know scripture is inerrant?
The format, 15 minute openings, seven, and then four minute rebuttals, 15 minute cross-examination, and then 20 minute audience Q&A. We’ll be selecting questions out of the chat, but I’ll let you know when that comes up, and then five minute closing statements. I’m going to let each of our guests introduce themselves. Tim Gordon will be taking the affirmative. Tim, can you just briefly introduce yourself to our audience?
Timothy:
Greetings, everyone. My name is Timothy J. Gordon. I am a YouTube podcaster, streamer, and I have a JD, a PHL, a master’s degree. I’ve studied history, literature, philosophy, and law, and I’m working on a PhD slowly at one of America’s great centers of Thomism. I’ll undisclose that, I’ll leave that undisclosed, but I’m excited to be here tonight. I’ve done over 10 public debates myself, and I’ve only moderated one. Like Trent, I’ve only moderated one, and I’m enjoying being here.
I am very relaxed to be in this seat, and I enjoy it. I haven’t done debates much over the last four years because I’ve been busy streaming on philosophy and theology, political theology, political philosophy, three times a week on my YouTube channel, Timothy Gordon. Thanks, everyone, for tuning in tonight, to Councilor Trent, and thanks to Steve Christie for being here, and thanks to Trent for putting it on.
Trent:
All right. Steve, go right ahead.
Steve:
Okay. Well, first of all, Trent, I want to thank you for moderating this debate. I used to debate against you. It’s actually nice that you’re the moderator. Again, Tim, I would like to thank you for agreeing to this debate. I was actually raised Roman Catholic. I was raised in a very loving and devout Roman Catholic family. I was elected treasurer to the Knights of the Altar of my local parish, which was a huge privilege and honor for a 13-year-old altar boy.
I graduated from a Catholic elementary, high school, and college, which is where I converted to being Protestant towards the end of my college education of August, 2004. I’ve written two Christian books, Not Really of Us: Why do Children of Christian Parents Abandon the Faith, and Why Protestant Bibles Are Smaller, which is one people are more familiar with it.
I’ve been leading home bible studies for nearly 16 years now. I was a chairman of the missions committee for three years at my previous church, and a chaplain at the Silver Sneakers for three years at the YMCA. I was a keynote speaker at the 500-year anniversary of the Protestant Reformation in October, 2017 at First Baptist Church of Greater Toledo. I’ve spoken at several churches in Ohio, Michigan, and Romania, where my beloved wife, Lucia, is originally from.
I’ve been interviewed and debated the Canon and the Marion Dogmas against some notable Catholics, such as Gary Michuta, Trent Horn, Dr. Robert Sungenis, on both Catholic and Protestant shows, such as Pints with Aquinas, Reason and Theology, Line of Fire with Dr. Michael Brown, Dr. Tony Costa, Reverend Anthony Rogers, and others. I’ve been interviewed on both Christian and secular television, radio, newspapers.
My actual job is I work as a registered, nurse where I’ve been working in healthcare for nearly 28 years. I work with COVID patients, and I earned a bachelor’s in arts and science, and a master’s in business administration. For those who want to contact me, you can contact me on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, or X or whatever it’s called now, a Born Again RN, same spelling that’s on your screen. Again, thanks again, Tim. Thanks again, Trent.
Trent:
Alrighty. Thank you, Steve, for the introduction. Let’s get started. Tim has the affirmative. Once again, to remind everyone, the question being debated tonight is, do we need an infallible tradition to know scripture is inerrant? Tim, you will have 15 minutes.
Timothy:
All right. Thanks again, everybody, and thanks for being here, Steve. Thanks for putting it on. Trent, the call, the question tonight is can we know scripture is inerrancy without recourse to infallible tradition? Can we know scripture’s inerrancy without infallible tradition? It’s an epistemic question. It’s all about knowledge. The question is not about whether or not scripture, in its for Catholics, 73-ish books are inerrant, but whether we can know it.
Out of the western cannon of philosophy, the word know involves three elements. To know something, knowledge is, and this holds for mathematicians and theologians as well, to know involves knowledge being justified, true belief. For it to be knowledge, a proposition must be justified, true belief. Working backwards, this means a belief, obviously, is an affirmed proposition in mind. It’s an idea fixed, something we hold to and defend. True, we’re not going to go into, we’re not going to be epistemic sticklers. True means it’s got to be propositionally valid, truth claim. It’s not false.
Justified, this means that we have to be able to show our math. We have to be able to demonstrate the truth of our belief a priore, this means before someone shows us at the end that it’s not true or that it is true, someone makes the demonstration. With a coin toss, for instance, just before we get into scripture, if someone flips the coin, I call heads, you call tails, and I get it right, I had a true belief. Somehow, let’s say I believed I was a gnostic or something, I had a true belief, but it wasn’t justified. I guessed correctly.
I thought I’m Nostradamus, it’s not justified, but I do meet two of the three elements. It’s an unjustified, true belief. Okay, so can we know scripture is inerrant without an infallible authority, in this case, tradition? Join us. I want to say before I get rolling, that Catholics have something called the motives of credibility for scripture. They’re evidentiary. What any lawyer in a courtroom would say, motives of credibility are evidentiary, they’re probabilistic. Christ did miracles. The apostles, a little bit later on, did miracles through power they got from Christ.
The gospel spread without technology in a miraculous way. Through a period of martyrdom, it spread all over the Mediterranean. These are all motives of credibility, and some of those apostles wrote down the stories, and they did so inerrantly, inspired by the Holy Spirit. Oh, and by the way, the apostles that are writing down the stories did so in a non-precalculated way, but a concomitant way. There’s a concomitance there. This is all strong set of motives of credibility, but without an infallible promulgation, something that’s dispositive, not merely evidentiary, we can’t have certitude that scripture is inerrant.
The basic idea, what really animates everything I’m saying here tonight is that we can’t induce in finitude something that’s perfect, utterly perfect, from finite premises. Just a fact. One can’t deduce an infinite conclusion from finite premises. Now, let me show you what I have here. I’m glad to have the whole screen. It goes like this. I want to make sure you don’t have a glare. Really, really, really basic flow chart, which I’m hoping help to line this out. In the first place, I have the question, “Were the Bible’s books written by a single author?”
This is really how you demonstrate that Sola Scriptura is a violation of something called the principle of proportionate causation. Were the Bible’s books written by a single author? Of course, there’s only one Christian answer, which is no. As far as I know, no one’s ever made this argument. No, the Bible is not single authored. Therefore, is there a divinely inspired table of contents in any one of the 73 divinely inspired books of the Bible? There’s only one Christian answer here. You can’t answer yes again, so we move to the third bracket.
The answer is no. There is no divinely inspired table of contents. We ask, “Can inerrancy be known without promulgation? Can it be known?” Remember, that’s the main call of the question. It’s an epistemic one. Can the inerrancy of the scripture be known without promulgation? That means it’s a divine truth, inerrancy of scripture. Can people know the divine truth of the inerrancy of scripture without God communicating it? That’s what I mean by promulgation. Of course, the answer is no. The Christian answer cannot be yes.
This would be what Carl Barth says of what he thought natural theology was diabolical, because it would be tantamount to a Christian knowing something that God sought not to communicate. Well, this would be that if we were to pause it, that inerrancy could be known without a promulgation by God. It would also be a violation of the principle of proportionate causation in a separate way. That’s the big principle tonight, but we won’t talk about that one. We have to answer no. Can an inerrant promulgation be accomplished by a non-infallible promulgator? It’s our last question tonight.
Can an inerrant promulgation be accomplished by a non-infallible promulgator? The answer to this has to be no, again. QED, infallible authority is needed. I’ll put that catastrophically glared visual back up in a second. It can’t be yes, right? To say that an inerrant promulgation can be accomplished by a fallible promulgator is a violation of a first principle. A violation of a first principle means it can’t exist. That first principle is called the principle of proportionate cause.
Principle of proportionate cause, by the way, means you can’t give what you don’t have. Another way to say it is that a cause can’t bequeath what it doesn’t have. You can’t pause it to restate it one more time. You can’t pause it in effect greater than its cause, or to put it most technically, whatever perfection exists in effect must be found in the effective cause. This sounds fancy because it’s a first principle. Really, it’s foundational. Every Protestant who I’ve ever met, posits Sola Scriptura. Seems to be foundational to their mode of thinking of the rule of faith.
Every Protestant who posits Sola Scriptura posits in effect greater than its cause. This is a violation of proportionate cause. Now, the perfection in scripture, all 73 books, all 35-ish authors, is inerrancy, which must be found in not necessarily those 73 books written by 35 authors about two books per author, not necessarily in the inspiration in the penning of those 73 books, no, but in the collation of the 73 books together. In order to know that all 73 books are inerrant, you have to have an infallible collation.
You have to have an infallible publication of those collated 73 texts. You have to have an infallible promulgation. Think of collation as grouping together all the correct books, which are 73 inerrant minor books into one super inerrant book. Publication means you pull out any of the flaws or apocryphal ideas, and then promulgation at the end. Some authority which is infallible puts forward inerrantly this Superbook of inerrant scripture. This all requires an infallible authority because it’s multi-authored.
If Jesus had written all 73 books, collated them, published them, promulgated them before he went to the cross, Sola Scriptura might be a dog that hunts, but it’s absolutely a demonstrable fallacy due to the multi-author nature of it. Now, back to for a moment a principle of proportionate cause. It’s a first principle also called a logical axiom. Logical axioms are so foundational that they cannot be denied. It’s impossible for them to be denied. First principles are building blocks of propositions and arguments, meaning they’re like the atom of propositions and arguments.
Technically, you can’t prove a first principle. The next best thing you can do is to, in a secondary sense, prove them by an Aristotelian principle called retorsion, so the principle of non-contradiction, principle of the excluded middle, principle of proportionate cause are all first principles, and any attempt to deny them through this idea of retorsion involves recurring to those said principles. Make an analogy.
If I were to assert, there are no assertions, this is like a first principle, and I’d be contradicting it performatively. A performative contradiction is I’m averting to the very principle I’m seeking to linguistically deny. I’m just showing you that there are first principles. By the way, as Christians, we’re not voluntarists the way the Muslims are. Voluntarists are folks who say that God’s will precedes his intellect, meaning he could reverse the first principles, the definition of a voluntaristic God.
He could make something exist and not exist at the same time. God could make rape good and bad at the same time. The Muslims always dabble in this. Christians reject it. Our God is non-voluntaristic, meaning he observes the first principles. An effect can’t be greater than its cause. This applies to authorship. Holmes cannot be greater than Doyle. Sherlock Holmes is a fictitious creation that can’t be smarter than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator.
Protestants will ask, “Is divine inspiration, in the case of scripture, a violation of this? After all the gospel is bigger than the individual man, Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, or Paul.” No, it’s not because ultimately, the Holy Spirit inspired the text. What we’re talking about tonight with the 73 chapter inerrant text called scripture, the Superbook, 73 books glued together, some more naturally than others, is really the collation, and the publication, and the promulgation of those books. How do you know what is scripture?
73 book scripture involves 35 or so authors. Let’s not quibble on the 73 books-ish or the 35 authors-ish tonight. Let’s just use a number. Multiple authorship involves a series of processes that single authorship doesn’t. I already said, if Jesus wrote, collated, published promulgated one book called scripture in his life, it would be the sole rule of faith, [inaudible 00:17:22] maybe Sola Scriptura. Least ways, it wouldn’t be a fallacious proposition.
Once again, I won’t even put this back up. Maybe you can read it, maybe you can’t. Were the Bible’s books written by a single author? No. Is there a divinely inspired table of contents? No. Can inerrancy be known without promulgation? No. Can inerrant promulgation be accomplished by non-infallible promulgator? The answer is simply no. QED, there must be an infallible authority who is the promulgator of that Superbook comprised of 73 inerrant constituent books.
Once again, Protestants may think, recall, that inspiration in this one case means that effect can be greater than its cause, but really, the Holy Spirit’s action Sitz im Leben, inspiring individual authors of those 35 authors who wrote what we call scripture. That’s the writing, that’s the creation of the thing. Really, it’s the author is the Holy Spirit of that which is greater than the human mind. We don’t have to quibble about that. Multi-authorship precludes it, and here’s what I want to give you a heads up for.
Protestants must always, God bless you, guys, Steve, but you guys must always stretch toward a kind of mystical promulgation of scripture that’s not quite a promulgation, but that really is, but it didn’t happen in one time, so it’s not really. That’s what you’re going to see Steve doing tonight, because if there’s any promulgation in time, whether you call it an act of tradition or an act of one of the infallible acts of the magisterium, Catholics actually believe it’s a little bit of column A, a little column B, then automatically, you must admit that an effect can’t be greater than its cause.
If you posit, then an effect can be greater than its cause. You know you’re committing illogical fallacy. Watch this is with every Protestant I’ve ever dialogued with on this question, they have to play the shell game of a promulgation that’s somehow mystical enough not to be pinned down in time, whether you call it tradition or you call it magisterium. An effect cannot be greater than its cause, or more specifically more helpfully, whatever perfection exists in an effect must be found in the effective cause.
You’re not going to get around that. I’m not sure who’s made this argument in a public debate before, but it is an argument that you can take to the bank. I’m fascinated to hear what the response will be.
Trent:
All right, right at 15 minutes. Thank you, Tim, for that opening statement.
Timothy:
Thanks.
Trent:
Next up, we will have Steve Christie, who will give the negative statement. Steve, go right ahead. Let me set the timer up actually again for you from the stage here, and then you may start. Here, let me unmute you, and you may start whenever you like.
Steve:
Thanks, Tim. Thanks, Trent. On his X account, formerly Twitter, in his video on the epistemology of Sola Scriptura, Tim Gordon assumed promulgation of scripture must include having the entire Bible in order to be certain scripture’s inerrant. In his illustration, he states, “If you are missing even one scripture, like the Gospel of John, or even a single chapter of a scripture, or if you add one writing that is not scripture, like Huck Finn, then you don’t have a Bible to promulgate, nor can you be certain scripture is inerrant.”
Even if we discovered the book of Esther, for instance was not scripture, we could still be certain scripture itself is inerrant. In his YouTube video, “Reasons you never heard on why Protestantism is wrong,” Tim insists after the time of Jesus and the apostles, this infallible tradition of the promulgation of scripture “Had to be made over three centuries later, because it hadn’t been deemed inerrant yet.”
Here, Tim is referring to the late fourth century local councils of Rome, Hippo, and Carthage. Yet the fourth session of the Council of Trent had declared, “The holy scripture, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, first promulgated with his own mouth, ‘The written books then received from the apostles have come down even to us, transmitted as it were hand to hand, all the books, both of the Old and the New Testament, seeing God is the author of both.'”
However, in 1966, Roman Catholic theologian and Future Cardinal, Yves Congar, who served on the Preparatory Theological Commission of Vatican II, and the single most formative influence on this ecumenical council, wrote in his work, Tradition and Traditions, “An official definitive list of inspired writings did not exist in the Catholic Church until the Council of Trent.”
St. Jerome, a doctor of the Catholic Church, who is commissioned by Pope Damasus the First, to compile the Latin Vulgate, wrote in his prologue to Jeremiah, “The book of Baruch, we have omitted,” which refers to the churches in the west since the churches in the east did include Baruch in their smaller cannons. Jerome was also a key member of the local Council of Rome, convened by the same pope, which also omitted Baruch from its enumerated canon.
Saint Augustine, another doctor of the church and bishop of Hippo, declared in City of God, “First Esdras is to be understood as prophesying of Christ.” Here, Augustine is referring to the Guardsman story, which Catholic author, Dave Armstrong, affirmed includes two and a half chapters excluded in the Canon list at the Ecumenical Council of Trent, yet First Esdras was included in these two local councils Augustine was a key member of.
Moreover, the New Catholic Encyclopedia, published just one year after Vatican II concluded, pronounced, “The Council Trent definitely removed first Esdras from the canon.” Furthermore, Catholic apologists, Michael Lofton, from Reason and Theology, and Jimmy Aiken and Trent Horn from Catholic Answers, have conceded that it’s possible that additional books could be added to the Trentine Canon, “Maybe after centuries, there may be more of a conscious awareness that God gave these scriptures in the deposit... Read more on Catholic.com