Accurately Evaluating Debates

So how do you evaluate a debate, whether one that you attended, one that you watched online? How do you evaluate it? When someone asks, do you think you won that debate, I often wonder exactly what they think winning a debate would involve.

What are the parameters? What are the marks of winning or losing a debate? How do you analyze these things? Well, that's what I'd like to talk about today. This is the second time I've done this. We tried to do a dividing line a couple of days ago while I was in Atlanta.

I'm now in Mississippi and have some more dialogues that I'm going to be doing and things like that. And unfortunately, just on the technical end, things just fell apart. And not only did we not broadcast it, but it didn't get recorded either.

So I've already done this once, which is going to make it a little bit tougher, actually, because I'll be thinking, have I already said that? Because I know I said it once. And so I'll do my best. But we did a debate last Wednesday evening at the Atlanta Convention Center.

It was a pre-conference debate for the G3 conference held there in Atlanta. Very large, very, very large conference. We had about 1 ,300 people in attendance in the hall, plus I don't know how many watching online.

A very large number watching online, watching the live stream taking place. So it was well attended as far as that's concerned. But of course, these days, almost any event you do, you're recording it for future use online as long as the Internet remains free.

And in fact, I often get questions from people, comments from people about debates that were done 10, 20, coming up pretty soon, 30 years will be one possibility. And so that's really why we do these debates, is to make sure that they're recorded well.

And so you have to, as a debater, I have to have in mind, who am I debating for? I always have to keep in mind those television cameras are there and they are recording these. I guess we should call them video cameras.

It's not so much television anymore, is it? But the video cameras are there and they are recording this. And that is going to be really how the majority of people end up viewing this. And that's a bit of a problem because you have a group of people in front of you.

You have the individual you're debating. You want to proclaim truth, both the person that you're debating as well as to the audience. The audience is going to vary depending on whether you're in the majority or minority.

It's almost always a mixed audience. I suppose sometimes it's not, but it's almost always a mixed audience. And that dynamic exists there live that the people watching the video are not to be able to see.

They don't know who you've been talking to beforehand. They don't know anything about the mixture of the people in the audience, really. And interestingly enough, if someone's watching a debate 10 years later, they're very often not even aware of the influences, the things that have happened since then that might color their interpretation of what's being said.

So let's be honest. It's a situation that people in the past never faced as to exactly how to accurately analyze an interaction. And of course, these days, there is so rarely much in the way of meaningful interaction in our society between two sides, certainly not in the political realm.

The things we call debates in politics are nothing but fashion shows. They're not actually debates. And so there are so few debates today that the vast majority of people are not taught in school how to analyze, how to think logically, how to put your emotions in abeyance and actually try to listen to both sides fairly.

And so as a result, I will hear people commenting on debates and I'm really lost as to how they came to the conclusions that they did as to what side did well or didn't do well or even what the nature of the arguments were.

In fact, most of the time when I hear people analyzing a debate, from my opinion, they didn't even understand what the central argument of the debate was. And if you don't see what that is, how can you accurately analyze it, especially if you're looking at things that the two debaters weren't even focused upon?

So I'd like to look at the debate from Wednesday evening, and I'd like to utilize some of the occurrences and some of the argumentation presented by my opponent that evening, Trent Horn of Catholic Answers.

And I'd especially like to look at the Christian response to this particular debate. And ask the question, as you have, as maybe some of you have seen some of the responses, I've only seen a few, but I've been troubled by what I've seen because I have yet to see one that actually focused upon the real issues of the debate.

Sometimes when that happens, because the person just doesn't know how to analyze argumentation and things like that, sometimes it's due to bias. The vast majority of time it's due to bias, the vast majority of time.

When I walk into a debate, I know that on one side over here, there are going to be people on my side, they're not going to hear a word the other guy has to say. On his side, there are people who are not going to hear a word I have to say.

And if they review the debate, it's going to be just, well, either way, on either side, a debate from someone who really isn't hearing what's being said is going to be problematic at best. I'm debating for the people in the middle who can hear both sides and that I can influence and I can help and I can assist.

And their reviews should be more important to me. But even then, there's still the issue of how much do they really know about what the debate was supposed to be about. Some of you may recall, a number of years ago, we had a moderator for some of the Roman Catholic debates on Long Island by the name of Bill Shishko.

He's the pastor, was back then, I think he still is, pastor of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Franklin Square, Long Island. And he would instruct the audience, look, take an eight and a half by 11 sheet of paper or eight and a half by 14.

Someone told me recently they don't even make that size anymore, which I find strange. But anyways, take a piece of paper, put it landscape mode, draw a line down the middle.

Of it.

And as you listen to each side, write down the specific points that are being made on each side. And then when the other side gets their rebuttal period, mark off when they adequately respond to what that side said about this issue, that issue.

If they don't deal with an issue, you circle that. That doesn't mean the other side automatically loses. But the question is, why didn't they deal with that? Did they consider it a non-issue? They consider it not to be relevant, whatever it might be.

But use a flowchart, follow the arguments, write these things down. Don't just sit back and go, oh, that guy, I feel this way about this guy. I feel this way about that guy. You're not going to be able to accurately analyze something if you do it in that way.

And so I want to give some illustrations from the debate that was done on Wednesday evening. I don't have any audio or video. Well, there were a number of comments that were made by Trent Horne that I think eventually he's going to wish he hadn't made those comments.

At the end of the debate, when someone who believes in the immaculate conception, bodily assumption, papal infallibility, these kinds of things, when someone believes in that, tells an audience our theology needs to be based upon scripture, when he's denying sola scriptura and then tries to use sola scriptura in the debate, we'll see how well that flies a little bit later on when debating topics that clearly are based upon some form of alleged oral tradition that really can't be traced back to the apostles by any stretch of the imagination.

So we'll see how that goes. But I don't have the recordings right now. So all I can do is go through some of the main texts that I presented from scripture and say, this is what I said and this was Mr. Horne's response.

And as such, the careful person doing the flow chart is going to go, failed response here, failed response there. And once you get enough failed responses on one side of the ledger, you now have a basis for making a decision concerning how the debate actually went.

And so I think that's an important aspect of things. And so I'll try not to be overly long, but I think it is important to consider these.

Things.

And since this is fresh in my mind and fresh in other people's minds, and since certain comments have been made on the web, it would be useful to go, OK, such and such a person scored it this way. Why did they even make reference to this statement, this statement?

Because there were a number of places that were key. Though it was interesting that in talking, especially with my supporters, people who would be naturally inclined to believe that I bettered my opponent, the thing that they found most interesting and most compelling was not what I found to be most interesting.

And compelling.

For the majority of them, the thing that was mentioned to me over and over and over again was the first cross-examination, my cross-examination of Mr. Horne, which was pretty much focused upon one subject.

And in fact, there were a bunch of things. I have my notebook from the debate here, and I have a bunch of things. You see these circles here, it says QA. These are points I wanted to bring up in the question and answers.

See, there was one thing that I found somewhat odd, and that was Mr. Horne's debate was rather scripted. In other words, he took his computer to the podium each time and had stuff to use. I only have an opening presentation on my computer, and I don't see how I could have stuff for the rest of it because that depends upon what the other person says and the interaction that we're having.

And so I think the best way to do it is to, well, in fact, technically, you should only be asking questions about the subjects that have actually come up. And so that's why I derive my questions from the notes that I'm taking as the other person.

Is speaking.

And I mark them, and some I mark with like an asterisk. That's something I'm going to address in my rebuttal period. And sometimes QA, with a circle around it, raise this issue in the question and answer.

Period.

And that way it stays on what's actually been said in the debate. If you don't do that, then the debate just grows and grows and grows, and you start addressing all sorts of things that can never be addressed meaningfully by the other side because the time frames keep getting smaller and smaller.

In a debate like that, no one ever feels like anything's actually been accomplished because you're discussing completely different things by the end of the debate than you're supposed to be discussing at the beginning of the debate.

If you don't derive your material live during the debate itself, then it's just getting wider and wider and wider. If both sides try to do that, it's going to stay on the subject. And that shows respect for the audience because you're wanting to stay focused upon what's really why they're there and what they're supposed to be judging on as well.

So I think that's important. But what I was saying was, in that first Q &A, there were a number of questions I never got.

To.

And in fact, one of them that I saw later, I went, wow, I never got to that. It's shocking. But the reason for that was that in that first Q &A, a lot of people sensed there was a real gotcha moment there where Mr. Horn was struggling to try to express himself.

And there was a point where he started to stumble and stammer a bit. And I think it's because he saw the end result of the position he was taking. Specifically, I was honestly asking him questions because I couldn't tell what it was he was.

Saying.

What it was, was there are Roman Catholics. There have been all sorts of different views amongst Roman Catholics, between Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinians, Jesuits, blah, blah, blah, blah, about issues like predestination, election, the nature of these things, foreknowledge, all that kind of thing.

And there are some Roman Catholics who take the view that there are, that God elects a certain people, and then there's a subset of the elect that receive the gift of perseverance. But not all the elect do.

So this means you have true Christians who are not given the gift of perseverance, and they can lose their salvation. I sort of, I mentioned that in maybe for like five, six seconds in my opening statement.

So we'll deal with that if it comes up. His opening statement, he never gave any indication that that's what he believed. But then in the rebuttal, he made a statement that made it sound like that is exactly what he was saying.

And the only way to address this subject is to know which one is which, to know what position he's taking. So I was pressing him in the first cross-examination. In other words, I didn't just give one question on one subject, then another subject, and another subject.

I kept pressing him on the same topic because I didn't understand what he was saying. And I don't think anybody else did either. That's the point. And a lot of people interpreted that as a gotcha. When the reality was, I think Mr. Horne just realized, because I basically said to him, I said, okay, so as I was pushing, so there are people where their free will does not determine whether they are eternally saved.

They have been given the gift of perseverance, and they will persevere to final salvation. Is that what you're saying? So there are elect people given a gift of perseverance by God, and their salvation is fixed and certain.

Is that what you're saying? And I think he realized that if he said yes, then he's agreeing with me. And the only disagreement we have is whether there's such a thing as a true Christian who is not given the gift of perseverance, but that on the theoretical level that there are elect people given the gift of perseverance who without fail will receive salvation.

And I don't think he wanted to say that, though that's the only logical utilization of the idea of the gift of perseverance. And then in trying to push that, he sort of really got trapped in his own words because he at one point said, well, people that God foresees are going to love him and believe in him and continue in the faith.

It's like, okay, so God gives the gift of perseverance to people he foresees are going to believe and persevere. So why would he need to give them the gift of perseverance? And so a lot of people saw that as a failure on Trent Horn's part.

Some people saying he clearly had just never thought that through. I don't think it wasn't that he hadn't thought it through. I think it was that he was looking at it and trying to not say certain things that could be used in that particular debate.

But for me, that really wasn't the issue. I mean, okay, yeah, in that particular cross-examination, okay. And is that relevant to the thesis of the debate?

Yeah, yeah.

But I just didn't see that as the central issue. I had made a presentation. I had brought forth a number of texts. He later on talked about just a few texts, but that wasn't the case. And of course, the text I focused upon down through church history, people have recognized are these central texts that deal with these particular issues.

But I had made a presentation primarily based on John 6, John 10. Romans 8. And then I had added in the mechanism by which security is not illustrated, but made sure and God's justice is protected. And that is the concept of justification.

The imputation of Christ's righteousness to us, so on and so forth, which Rome has, Rome, of course, denies this. And this was central to the Reformation. And of course, if I believe what Trent Horne believes about predestination, if I believe what he believes about justification, the nature of the imputation of righteousness, I could never believe in the idea of eternal security, the preservation of the saints, because there's no basis for it.

But I had made positive arguments from those texts, and the careful reviewer of the debate is going to want to ask the question, when Mr. Horne responded to these texts, did he do so in a consistent and meaningfully exegetical fashion?

You know, in the same way, when I started talking about prescriptive and, you know, the prescriptive and decretal wills of God, prescriptive and descriptive in regards to how we view the warnings in Scripture, the commands in Scripture, enduring to the end, so on and so forth, you have to go, well, you know, which one has the best argument there in light of the totality of Scripture?

You have to go both directions. And I'll just be perfectly honest with you. If you analyze the answers that were given by Mr. Horne, especially on John 6, John 10, and Romans 8, not only are they inconsistent, there is no consistent hermeneutical thread through those responses.

They're contradictory to each other in the sense of the methodology that's used. But on an exegetical level, they are utterly indefensible. In fact, the last note that I made, the very last note down here at the bottom, in which would have been actually in his closing statement, was total capitulation on John 6, 44.

We'll get to that in a moment. But yeah, the arguments that were presented, if a person understands the process of meaningful exegesis, were exceptionally poor. And I have yet to see anyone who commented on it, even those who said he won, or Protestants who would say, well, it's pretty even, or I score it this way for Trent Horsham.

Not a one of them, or even, to be honest with you, the people on my side, have raised the central issues of the debate. And that should be what it's being judged on. Let's get into them. John 6, 37. There was a little bit of confusion on Mr. Horn's part because of the fact that he initially made the statement that John 6, 37 says that, conditionally, a person must be coming to Christ, and this becomes the condition.

And then he corrected himself because he was actually thinking about later on in John 6. And he was basing this upon my statement in my published works, drawn by the Father, Potter's Freedom. I think it was probably quoting from the Potter's Freedom, if I recall.

Where I emphasize the fact that in John chapter 6, saving faith is a present tense ongoing. The one coming to me. The one eating. The one drinking. The one believing. The one coming. The one looking, in John 6, 40.

And, of course, nowhere in any of those texts did I say, this is the condition that makes the other possible. I wasn't saying that Jesus can't save unless this condition is fulfilled on man's part. What I was saying is, this is what true saving faith looks like.

The work of the Spirit of God in a person's life is going to result in an ongoing persevering faith. So he was actually applying these things backwards. So you can't quote my works and say I was saying there was a condition that had to be fulfilled on man's part.

What I was saying is, when God does this work, the result is going to be this. So that was a bit of a misuse of my text. But all the Father gives me will come to me. And the one who comes to me, I will certainly not cast out.

In each one of these texts, what the Synergist does, and it's not just Trent Horne. One of my biggest desires in this debate was for non-Roman Catholic Synergists. Those who have abandoned the view of the deadness of man and sin, who have abandoned the view of God's kingly freedom in salvation, that these Synergists would recognize that, in reality, they are much closer to Rome than they are to me and they are to the Reformation.

As I said, they're paddling around out in the Tiber River, and they're pretty close to the eastern bank of the Tiber River, which is the bank closest to Rome, if you know where the Tiber River goes, and the Miltian Bridge and stuff like that.

So one of my desires was that that would come out, and man did it. I mean, if one of the goals for me was that Synergism would be seen for what it truly is and how it destroys grace. In fact, here's what I wrote.

A tremendous example of how Synergism destroys grace and God's ability to save. And as I think of a number of the Synergists out there, Baptist Synergists, so on and so forth, man, I hope they listen to that and realize I'm in the same camp.

I am on the exact same page as the Roman Catholics are on this issue, and I think that came out very, very clearly. So John 637, what was the response? Well, there's a conditional... Well, actually it comes later on.

There really wasn't any meaningful response to John 637. Instead, he moved to John 639, and this was, again, how any non-Roman Catholic could hear this explanation and not immediately put a big, huge red checkmark on their flow sheet that says, failed response, incoherent position, major category error, etc., etc., etc.

I can't begin to understand because this was bad. Remember what happened? Well, if you didn't... Obviously, if you haven't heard it yet, but again, we had... I was told at one point there were 20 ,000 people on the website that it was being streamed from, so a lot of people must have seen it.

Thousands of people, at the very minimum, have seen the debate already.

Um, what...

The position that was offered by Mr. Horn to these... Remember, Jesus says, I've come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. This is the will of him who sent me, that of all that he has given me, I lose none of it, but raise it up on the last day.

And I had pointed out the Son always does the will of the Father. The Son... It can never cross our mind that the Son would fail to do the will of the Father, that the Son always does what is pleasing to the Father, according to John chapter 8, as I recall.

And so I had made the argument that this is a specific will, regarding a specific people, that the neuter pronoun is used here because it's wrapping up all these individuals into one group, the elect given by the Father to the Son.

And so, how do you respond to that? Well, Trent Horn's response was to say, God's will is not always done, and it's God's will for the elect to never commit adultery, and yet the elect commit adultery.

Now, I just want you to think about that for a second. I want you to consider what's actually being said there, paralleling the non-perfected elect and their sins, and their imperfect fulfillment of the prescriptive will of God.

At one point, I pointed out that he was conflating the prescriptive and decretal wills of God, but we never got to expand upon that. And by the way, that's why I felt that this subject, which, by the way, he demanded to do.

We didn't suggest this subject. We wanted justification, sola scriptura, something along those lines. He insisted this is the only subject he would address. I think this subject is the end of a number of previous theological explorations and conclusions.

And so, if you just do this and you don't discuss all the rest of that, you're never going to really come to a conclusion because all these other things, you're never going to have enough time to develop them.

And so, we didn't get a chance to talk about what the difference between the prescriptive and decretal will of God is. In other words, when God says in his law, thou shalt not murder, and yet clearly in the decree of God, the death of Jesus Christ is a part of that decree.

You shall not steal, which includes slavery, selling someone, kidnapping, things like that. And yet, in Genesis 50, Joseph recognizes that his own being sold into slavery was a part of God's will, the decretal will, the prescriptive will.

Didn't even get a chance to expand upon that, and yet he conflated them all the time. And he's doing so here in John 6, 39, but in an amazing, amazing way. I mean, think about what's being said when you say, well, you know, God's will is not always done.

The elect sometimes sin, and it's God's desire that they not sin. So he changes the will of the father for the son in the salvation of God's people into something that's parallel with a desire on God's part in regards to sinful men.

Can anyone really accept that? Can anyone really accept that the son's fulfillment of the will of the father, the very reason the father sends him down from heaven, is just a desire that may or may not happen?

Seriously?

I mean, that is an abject theological and exegetical face plant. I have not heard a single person make a comment that, wow, I can't believe. Well, I heard people in general saying, wow, that was bad, bad eisegesis on his part.

So maybe that's what they're referring to. But the critics haven't seen a word. And if you've criticized that debate and you have not noted that, I can't even take you seriously. I mean, that was central.

It was central to my presentation. And so I'm the one carrying the positive burden of proving this. And my exegesis on this text was not even touched. And in fact, the attempt was extremely damaging to the other side.

If people are thinking clearly about what is being said. And that's where, you know, I just have to, look, I have to trust that the spirit of God will utilize these things as he sees fit. And I realize that exposing people to error will cause people who are not one of Christ's sheep to embrace error.

I get all of that. But I trust that God will use his word in the way that he chooses to do that. And sometimes it's for salvation. Sometimes it's for judgment. Just as we distribute tracts. Some of these tracts go out for salvation.

Many of them go out for judgment. Because they're either going to be torn up, thrown out, or a person reads them and is hardened in their rebellion against God. That's the nature of gospel proclamation.

That's what happens. So the John 6, 39 complete failure. Just a few verses later then. And this came up a little bit later in the debate. Because I hadn't spent much time on it. But he raised the issue.

I think it may have started to come up. It might have started to come up in rebuttals. Certainly came up in cross acts. And so it was there by the end. Jesus says, no one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him.

And I'll raise him up on the last day. And I had pointed out that his interpretation on John 6, 44. Basically what he said was, well, there's nothing here that says that all those who are drawn are raised up.

And I smiled. Because no one who's actually read John 6, 44 in the original language could ever say that. It is painfully obvious. So the one who sent me draws him. And I will raise him on the last day.

As I pointed out in either my closing statement or when I had some opportunity to do so. What Trenthorn did was, there's two words. Cago Anastasio. And I will raise up. See, in English it ends up, and I, when you get all these words.

It's just two words. And in that little gap between Elton and Cago, Trenthorn inserts the entire sacramental system of the Roman Catholic Church. Between those two words. That's eisegesis. All those, the very statement he made is directly opposite to the statement of the text.

Yes, everyone who's raised up was the ones who were drawn. It's the same hymn. I have never had anyone be able to argue from the text of John 6. They always have to run off someplace else. They can't stay here.

They can't do what you have to do to do serious eisegesis. They can't do it to prove that the hymn that is drawn is different than the hymn that is raised up. But every synergistic system, every synergistic system has to distinguish between those two.

They can't believe what's actually there in the text. Because it's against their theology. Which of course, what he was always saying about me. There was a lot of projection that went on by Mr. Horne at that point.

So there was no meaningful, in regards to John 6 .44. After he tried to say, well, there's nothing in there that says everyone who's drawn is raised up.

Yes, there is.

It's the same hymn. So then later on, he says, well, yeah, you know, you will be raised up if you, and I was writing this down. This isn't a quote, but it's as close as you can get. If you remain in that grace.

And so even though the point of John 6 from 37, well even before that, but through 44, is the power of God in salvation. God's ability to save. The role the Father and the Son in perfect unity and bringing about the salvation of God's people.

It's all this stuff. The synergist is always having to try to find a way to exalt man's power to the detriment of God. Because synergism is the way by which man controls the grace of God. It can be simplistic synergism or complex synergism.

The massive sacramental system of Rome. And every kind of spectrum in between. But synergism is how man controls the grace of God. And you can exalt the grace of God and say it's 99 of God. But as long as you got that 1%, it's what's in control.

And so you have people on both sides of the Tiber River.

Well, not both sides.

You've got the people paddling around the middle of the Tiber River. And people on the other side of the Tiber River in Rome. And what do they have to do? They have to ransack the scriptures. Looking for places where God tries to save somebody and fails.

I've watched quote-unquote Protestants. We've talked about certain synergists out there. Just over the past number of months on the dividing line. And they're ransacking the scriptures. Gotta find someplace where Jesus died for somebody that goes to hell.

We can't have a perfect atonement. It has to be conditional upon us. What a life. Ransacking the scriptures. Looking for places for Jesus to fail. And yet that's what you have here. You have to do it.

It's necessary to maintain synergism. These texts that talk about the inability of man and the power of God. The synergist turns to the power of man and the inability of God. Why didn't that come up? Why isn't there, you know, articles about did you see the amazing statement?

Yeah, elsewhere he made something. But I never saw anything of what James pointed out about how Christ's atonement is perfect. Like I said, once we got the recordings, I can just put together some of these and you're just left going.

Okay, all right. Pretty clear stuff. That's why I appreciated the debate. It wasn't, he wasn't trying to sugarcoat stuff. And that's good. I appreciate that. I mean, I find it frightening to ever have to be responsible for those statements.

But there you go.

There you go.

So there was the issues in John 6. And anybody doing the flow chart, analyzing arguments, is going to go the exegesis offered of John 6 by James White was consistent, exegetically sound, and never touched, never touched by Trenthorne.

Wasn't even close. I haven't seen that. If that does not appear in any meaningful attempted review, then it's not a meaningful review. But there's more. There's more. John chapter 10, verse 27. My sheep hear my voice.

I know them and they follow me. I cannot believe I did not ask the question. Mainly because, hey, I've never done a perfect debate. I didn't do good time control in the second cross-ex. I completely lost track of the time that was right there.

I could have glanced at it. I completely lost track of time in the second cross-ex. Because one of the key questions I wanted to ask Trenthorne was based on this text. And I had already raised it in John, in citing John chapter 10.

But I want to ask him, how is it in light of the personal reciprocal knowledge of the shepherd and the sheep? My sheep hear my voice.

I know them.

They follow me. Earlier in John 10, they know me. I know them, so on and so forth. In light of that, how can Jesus say to those that he casts away in Matthew chapter 25, who even said, Lord, Lord, did we not do all these things in your name?

How can you say to them, I never knew you? I think that's an excellent question that will bring light to the presuppositions that are being presented by the other side. And I didn't get to it. And that's my fault.

That was bad time management on my part. My sheep hear my voice.

I know them.