Response to Jay Dyer on Protestantism

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala and today

I have a returning guest. I think he I think I've already had him on twice. I think that twice so far and I've greatly enjoyed having him on.

Paul Facey. I have him on to kind of interact with, if you guys saw the thumbnail, I want him to interact with some of Jay Dyer's objections to Protestantism within the context of kind of an informal conversation.

If you guys are familiar with Jay, he's a popular Eastern Orthodox apologist and debater and he often has a segment on his channel where he just opens up the phone lines and a bunch of people call in, whether they're

Protestants or Catholics or whatever, and he interacts with them. Sometimes it's kind of just a generic like Q &A.

Other times people call in to debate him and things like that and so what we're gonna be doing here is we're gonna be playing a segment from his show where a

Protestant or Evangelical, I should say, whatever that means, okay, a

Evangelical Christian who fancies himself as a debater calls in and let's just say he doesn't do very well.

It is clear that Jay is dominating the conversation. I don't mean that in a negative way. I mean he obviously knows how to interact with some of these like pop

Protestant claims and objections and so I think he did from an Eastern Orthodox perspective,

I think he did a fine job just pushing back on really not very good points of response by the

Evangelical caller. So my goal here is to have

Paul interact with this discussion and hopefully teach our listeners here, our

Protestant listeners, how you might interact with an Eastern Orthodox person and how to have these kinds of conversations and interact with some of the claims and counterpoints that you might hear in these sorts of discussions.

I want to point this out before I invite Paul. This is not the best representative of the

Evangelical side by any means or we say the Protestant side, nor does give

Jay in this small clip an opportunity to unpack all of the details as to why he thinks

Eastern Orthodoxy is true. If you want to know why he thinks it's true and listen to his arguments, you guys can check that out on his own channel.

He's got a lot of videos that cover his own position, but for tonight I want to use this as an opportunity for Paul to interact in this specific context and hopefully it'll be informative as to how one might interact with a proponent of Eastern Orthodoxy.

But before we do that, I would like to remind people January 21st is this

Saturday. We are having the epic online Calvinism conference. I will be speaking on the topic of Calvinism vs.

Molinism. James White will be speaking on various problematic texts that come up within the

Calvinism debate. Scott Christensen, who authored two books, I don't remember the title off the top of my head, but they're excellent.

One's in defense of compatibilistic freedom and another one has to do with God and evil and suffering from a

Calvinist perspective. Dr. Guillaume Bignon is going to be covering the importance of analogies.

How do we use analogies properly when we're debating the issue of Calvinism with our non -Calvinist friends?

How do we respond to non -Calvinism? That means people are puppets, these sorts of things. Dr. Bignon is going to be presenting on that topic and Saiten Bruggenkade is going to be talking about the defense of Calvinism from the street -level approach when you have these sorts of discussions and debates, kind of like in regular conversation.

So if you want to sign up for that, that is on Saturday, January 21st from 1030 to 430, so it's a whole day thing with some breaks in between.

You can sign up for that on revealedapologetics .com. Click the Presup You drop -down menu and you could

RSVP your spot there. It's a way to support Revealed Apologetics and I think it really is going to be an epic conference where at the end you could interact with each of the speakers.

So that's January 21st. The last day to sign up for that is on Thursday by 1130 p .m.

So you want to make sure, if you're interested in that, you want to make sure you head over to the website and sign up. All right, well without further ado,

I would like to welcome my guest and Australian buddy, the other

Paul. How's it going, man? Going great, mate. It is a very fine early Australian afternoon, nice and sunny and we finally have a, at least where I am, a half -decent cool breeze because almost the whole summer it's been both hot and really muggy, which is bad.

But heat plus a breeze, best feeling ever. So it's going well so far. Excellent, very good.

Well, dude, I am so happy to have you back on. Every single time you've been on, I've learned so much and I've got positive feedback and so again,

I want to kind of give a shout out again to your channel. I'm not a huge channel, but my channel is larger than yours, so I'm gonna use my larger side of my channel to influence the people who listen to my channel to go over to your channel.

Even real quick, if you have to click away for two seconds, go to the other Paul YouTube channel and please, please, please subscribe.

I think it's very important what you're doing. Protestants need to be equipped with knowledge of church history and they need to be able to know how to respond to the claims of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy and related issues.

So highly recommend you guys go over to his channel and please subscribe. I want you guys to do me this favor.

I want to hear tomorrow from Paul in his Australian accent. Bro, I got a bunch of subscribers.

Thank you so much. I want to hear that because I think folks that are doing what he's doing need that support.

So please, please, please, please do that. All right, well now I'm gonna stop making your head big and we're gonna...

Hey, happy that I helped you learn and that you're promoting the heck out of me. Thank you so much. It means a lot.

Right, okay, well, well let's jump right in. So we're gonna be looking at a call -in to Jay's show and this person identifies themselves as an evangelical and of course we can, we know how

Eastern Orthodox folks and even Roman Catholics tend to view evangelicals and Protestants in a certain light and so I want people to keep that in mind because I think

Jay is going to do a good job pushing on the presuppositions of this caller and of course because this caller really is not equipped to interact with these issues from that perspective,

I don't think he does a very good job. So hopefully we can use this as kind of a sketch, if you will, not a sketch, but kind of just like a guideline as to how we should interact when having these kinds of conversations.

Does that make sense? Yep, makes plenty of sense. Absolutely necessary. All right, so let's, let's do this here.

So I'm gonna share this on the screen here and then we're gonna jump right in and now when this is playing

I won't be able to see you, Paul, but I will stop the video when I think it's worthy of stopping or I will listen for your voice.

You can let me know, hey, stop right there and then we'll stop, okay? Yep, sounds good.

All right, let's start. We actually like those, I like Synthwave, but nevertheless.

I mean, is it gonna be a bang? I don't know, you tell me. I'm not gonna lie, that's my favorite part.

Jay's face is so funny because he, I mean, it's just coming in randomly for him. He's like,

I have no idea. First thing, okay, I want to comment on a whole range of things, both on the argument side, the presupposition side and the rhetoric side and off the gate, oh my word, you don't, oh man, with any, when you're going against any competent informal debater, especially

Dyer, who is really, really good at controlling the conversation and making you look bad, you don't open up with hubris.

Unless you are also a God debater and can turn things around, which this guy, as people will say, is not.

He's literally a random guy. No offense to him, it's just observation. You don't, no, no, right off the gate, really bad move, really, really bad move.

Cause that's automatically, cause I've actually been in one or two of these open call things, like just mainly observing.

I actually called him once. But it's not just Jay and like one or two other people.

There's a, there's a bunch of people watching at the same time. And so when you open like that and you get diffused immediately right at the start, your reputation in the eyes of Jay and everybody watching, which is for other people watching is especially important because you're, maybe you won't convince

Dyer, but your aim is to convince other people. Your reputation just drops like right that within the, within the first 10 seconds, it's gone.

So don't do that, please just don't do that. That's the first thing. Well, you gotta love, you gotta love

Jay's laid back. Like he's just like, is it going to be a gang? He handles it smooth as well.

That's, that's a good thing. He's like, okay, sure. Like it's nothing. All right.

Okay. That's actually, that's actually helpful, even though we haven't gotten to any content yet. Here's step one when engaging anyone, not just in Eastern North America, don't come across as kind of a, a prideful kind of like, you know, you're coming off as looking down your nose, so to speak.

Right. Did you know I'm a debater? Yeah. Are you aware of this? Well, you did you, oh, is that what you saved me for last?

You're like, no. No, you're just in the cubo. All right.

Okay. I'm sorry. I apologize. I'm sure this person is really nice. I have no idea who this person is. This is a good example as to how not to start a conversation, but we're going to, we're going to continue.

Yep. Patients you gave about Protestant theology earlier. We can talk about natural theology or soteriology.

And you also mentioned issues with the biblical canon. So which of those would you like to discuss?

Let's, you pick whatever you want to talk about. It's, in open forum, we give you guys the floor so you can make whatever arguments you want.

All right. So, so the soteriology of the Protestant, we can start there.

We'll start there just because we have. All right. I'm going to stop right there. I think this is an important thing to keep in mind too.

And maybe you can kind of give folks advice. When you have the opportunity to speak with an

Eastern Orthodox person or a Roman Catholic person, where do you think is the appropriate place to start when the person opens it up to you to start wherever you want?

Surely it's not a coin toss. You should really know where to start so that you could have a meaningful discussion.

Yeah, that will, that will depend on the topic. I think if it's going to be, it's going to depend if you're going to try, if you want to have a debate on an external critique versus an internal critique.

So if it's going to be an internal critique, you could kind of like pick your poison, you know, it's like, Oh, well Orthodoxy, you guys claim this, like for the big, the big one today, especially you guys claim this about icon of Julia was always held by the fathers, but your own patristic testimony shows us wrong.

How do you make sense of that? Otherwise, though, if you're trying to attack, if you're trying to come externally and attack the system, like refute the system itself, really the only thing that's going to, that's going to be, that's going to be fruitful at all is the core foundation, the core foundational claims of authority itself, the authority of the alleged consensus of the fathers and various topics and emphasize alleged quite strongly.

The authority of so -called ecumenical councils with, with Romanists will be the papacy as well.

So on those core foundational claims that really do, they're the only ones that really matter in the ultimate sense.

And so if you're going to do an external debate, you don't, don't come in and say, Oh, Jay, you Orthodox, you guys believe that justifications by faith and work, but how do you explain

Paul saying this in Romans three and four, blah, blah, blah. And that can work to an extent just from arguing from the text.

Cause at least as far as from what I've seen with Jay, he doesn't, he doesn't often, in fact,

I don't think I have yet seen it from him. Going the whole epistemic nihilism thing, like, Oh, you, you can't even interpret the text without the church.

No, he's more common sense. See, that was a really good. I'm famous for that.

I am. I am very famous. Can you do that again? That was actually awesome. Yeah. So you're approaching the text from a, you're a silly, a

Protestant priest oppositions and it's a classical foundationalism. And yeah, I've gotten through, this is part of my claim to fame.

Yes. My, okay. Wow. Okay. That, that your cool points just, uh, just went up there. So, so now my, so some of my questions, so the caller wants to start with soteriology.

Do you think that's a, that's an appropriate place to start if you're talking with an Eastern Orthodox? To an extent.

So this is the external thing, like, um, with Dyer and with other Orthodox who take seriously that texts have meaning and they can be understood.

You can get to a degree, but eventually you'll reach a point where even if the most, even the most ideal thing where you totally demonstrate your case, just from the text alone, um, some

Orthodox possibly even Dyer himself would say, well, your, your interpretation is ultimately wrong because the church says otherwise.

So whatever arguments you bring, doesn't matter. The church says otherwise. And so that's ultimately where it could be futile.

It could, not all Orthodox are like that. I'm actually talking with an author who, who's taking that more seriously and may, um,

I won't spill any details, but may actually be reconsidering where he is because of direct issues of evidence and not just flouting all the church's authority.

So it can work, but an Orthodox or a Romanist or anyone from another tradition who knows what they're talking about, um, will eventually, whether later on or just right from the start, say, no, we have totally different presuppositions on what a correct interpretation is.

And so this debate will be fruitless. Um, so you're having a really, really big gamble if you start with a non foundational issue, if you're going for an external critique, otherwise in an internal critique though, you can go for almost anything if you can demonstrate an inconsistency, if that makes sense.

Yep. That makes perfect sense. Okay, let's, let's continue. I think the common like scripture and common history.

So I want to, I want to mention that and you, you inadvertently may or not realize this, but the word imputed is used about five times.

Yeah, but that doesn't mean that it means what you think it means. So, so yeah, do you know what the word, do you know what the word concept policy is?

Right, right. No, no, I'm not, I'm not making the word concept palace. No, I'm asking if you know what it is though. Yeah.

If the word means this has to mean this one thing in every context. So it's texts are interpreted, right?

So the fact that imputed is used does not mean that the classical Protestant definition of imputed righteousness is true.

And that flips around to you because it can be in the use that I'm using it. It can be that. It can't be that if you are okay.

I'll look at that. I'll briefly comment on that last bit where he talks about Trinity. He doesn't go into detail with that. So if you've got priest up things you want to mention about that, but otherwise

I'm here. Jay's right. Jay's totally in the right. Um, because the guy claimed he came up today like,

Oh, you, you reject imputed righteousness. But did you know that imputation is used five times in the new Testament, utterly debunked, destroyed

L take the code. Um, but, and, and then, uh, and Jay's like, well, that's a word concept policy.

And he's like, I know what it is. I didn't use a word concept policy. Yes, you did. Yes, you did. At least that was very much the trajectory of what you were doing.

Uh, don't do that. Don't do that. I genuinely do believe that an argument for imputation can be made, um, not entirely, but a good portion of it can be made from the very word use.

So like the keyword would be log hits on my, uh, I reckon, or I, uh, I consider something, or I count it one way.

Um, that argument can be made, but not merely because all that word is used. That's, that's, that's not going to work.

So Jay's totally right. Word concept fallacy. Uh, the guy did use it, even if he claimed he didn't.

Um, and then he did, and he did the weird, and he did the weird thing. Um, Jay said, um, Jay said, that's a word concept fallacy.

So just because the words you use for your position doesn't mean your position is right. And the guys, and then the guy replied, Oh, but it doesn't mean yours either.

So what? So Jay, that wasn't Jay's argument. Jay wasn't saying you're, you're using a word concept fallacy.

Therefore my interpretation of the word is correct. That's, that's not what he's doing. He wasn't going into his interpretation. He was just showing that yours is not automatically correct just because he uses a certain word that is translated as imputation in English.

Right. That's, that's, that's a big key thing as well. Cause Paul didn't write the word, literal word impute. He wrote the word, look, he's online.

There's translation involved. That's the problem. Um, so yeah, off the bat, very bad start, very bad start.

Um, and then I guess briefly comment, um, where Jay said it can't be imputation because that would be a denial of Trinity.

Um, not, I'm not fully, fully versed in this, all the specific nuances of how

Jay goes to those arguments. It is very much a precept based thing. He tries to argue from the logic of the

Trinity and the, the inter -Trinitarian life that certain Protestant, uh, certain

Protestant beliefs such as, uh, imputation and that are simply denied because otherwise they'll step into this heresy or that heresy.

Basically play the, basically spin the heresy wheel and then just pick out your heresy. That very common tactic, very common tactic in the author world.

Um, but to Jay's credit, he does try to demonstrate it, even though I think it is quite stretched a lot of the time.

Sure. Um, but yes, that's, uh, that's yeah, don't do that. Don't do word concept fallacy.

Jay's right here. Um, do you have anything to say? No, I think that's, uh, that's excellent. And I don't want to add too much cause then

I don't want to get bogged down with like presuppositionalism and stuff like that. I want to be able to kind of just interact with the conversation.

But, uh, if something pops out at me, maybe I'll, I'll share my thoughts, but, uh, let's continue. Well, let me explain to you why, because you, again, you misrepresented the way that I haven't misrepresented.

I was a Calvinist seminary student. There's nothing I misrepresented. Okay. Um, this is the first big from diet.

Okay. Um, you went to a, you went to a protestant Calvinist seminary.

You're trained there. Um, okay. Who cares? Right. Literally who cares that all that proves is that you have experienced these things.

You have interacted with these views. That's definitely no guarantee. They accurately representing them.

One can point to any number of people who are accredited or ordained or went to seminary, any field.

And they shockingly misrepresent things. Father perfect example, which the, um, online ortho bros love to go on about,

I haven't seen J Dyer specific responses to it, but many other authors in his sphere, um, father

Joshua Shooping, former Orthodox priest went to seminary, did long, a good long while as an

Orthodox priest. Um, so really further along the line than, than Dyer was, but in the Orthodox world, and yet many

Orthodox will very have very, very often, uh, impugned him with misrepresenting Eastern Orthodoxy and now pastor

Shooping, he can't just say, Oh, well, I was trained in a seminary. Therefore I'm right. And I'm, and I'm not misrepresenting things.

That's not, that's not how this works. That literally doesn't matter. You could, you could go all the way up to PhD level and still bungle even basic.

It's like the used to be, I used to be a Christian and be like, yeah, exactly. I used to be a Christian. And then they, yeah, exactly.

Exactly. Belief and be way, way off now, granted in defense of J there are other videos in his, uh, you know, on his channel where he explains why he doesn't hold to Calvinism, but then you need to be able to listen to his reasons and see if he's accurately representing it.

Um, and if his rebuttals, um, actually hold any water. So he has addressed these issues.

It's really an issue of whether, you know, you, you think he's handling the, uh, the issues correctly. Yeah, that's it.

That's, I haven't gone majorly deep into it, but at least, at least from certain things, I would say that, no, he's not representing things right.

There's a really, really good video on the channel, small guys, small guys channel. So, uh,

Hey, if he's watching this and he gets a nice sub boost, you're welcome. Uh, the Puritan posts, he made this big, like 15 minute response to J Dyer's a video, 10 reasons why

I'm not a Protestant and basically just thoroughly cut through a lot of it, whether it's statements of fact and claims that he would just refute from Dyer.

Um, I don't, uh, so either that or multiple instances of like misrepresentation or just not understanding the sources properly.

Um, so there, there is at least from, uh, from my seeing with that and with other things I have seen with Dyer where he does misunderstand things, but that's, that's immaterial to this.

Um, it's simply the claim that I went to a Calvinist or whatever seminary. Um, that doesn't mean anything that it doesn't, it doesn't.

But yes, as you say, he does try to demonstrate his understanding in other videos. So it's not like we're expecting him to do that here.

But yeah, that, that argument doesn't work. Um, yeah, that's what I'd say. All right. I already see a super chat coming in.

Um, I usually will kind of just put them on the screen right away and I really appreciate that. Thank you so much. Jay Athanasius towards the backend, but I do appreciate that.

I'll just put it up for now just to give him a shout out and then we'll address it later. So Jay Athanasius, thank you for your $10 super chat.

Thank you for your support. I really appreciate it, but we'll get to your question a little bit towards the backend. I hope you don't mind. Fun fact.

If you're not aware already in StreamYard, when you look in the comments on the side, you can put a star on them and that'll put them into a separate star thing on the side so that you don't have to scroll all the way back up.

They're just right there. Look at that. I've been using StreamYard and I am still a StreamYard rookie, but nevertheless, let's continue.

Goal Reformation, Doctrine of Imputation. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. I apologize. Evangelical Christianity, Biblical Christianity.

Okay. Well, how do you know that you're the Biblical Christianity? I mean, wouldn't the classical reformers have a better claim to that than you?

Well, we got to understand that the church is always - Stopping really fast here. Now, this is the first appearance of a very common tactic of very confident and skilled debaters, especially informal debaters like Dyer, where immediately take the reins of the conversation and ask you the question.

So it's not a debate anymore. It's an interrogation. Notice how this guy was wanting to come here.

He wanted to debate something like soteriology or whatever. And then Jay was like, no,

I went to this Calvinist seminary or whatever. So I understand the thing. And then the guy comes back. No, I'm not Calvinist.

I'm evangelical, which is no, please, please. Even that is hopelessly vague because there are

Calvinist evangelicals, there's Calvinist Arminians, there's Calvinist Pelagian, I mean, provisionists. So there's all these, that doesn't mean anything.

That really doesn't mean anything. So bad move by him. But what Jay ended up doing and what he does very frequently do is now he's seen the vagueness.

He has seen the weakness. He has smelled blood in the water. And then he immediately grabbed that and used that to now take hold and take the debate topic somewhere else.

So the guy wanted to debate soteriology. And then as soon as he said that really silly vagueness thing, rather than do what

I genuinely think would be the more honest thing to do and just say, maybe give like a snide comment, like that's vague, but okay, give you a case.

Instead, Jay took as an opportunity to say, oh, whoa, evangelical, but don't the reformed have better claim, have a better claim over than you of being the

Bible believing Protestants? Fair question. Very fair question. Because just saying you're an evangelical, what on earth does that mean?

But not what this guy wanted to debate. Now Jay has solidified, he has sunk his claws into debate and now he has taken control of it all.

And that will define everything else that comes to you. Right. And I think from a debating perspective, it is a shift of the topic, but they're not formally debating.

It's a phone call, but he did give the caller the option to pick a topic he wanted to discuss.

So you do have a subtle shift. And I think from a debate perspective, I think it's important to kind of learn something, what

Jay is doing, which I identify as a weakness, and now he's going to pound on it.

And there is an appropriate context, definitely for that. But of course, if you're debating something or discussing something, you want to stay on topic, you want to be careful.

And he gave the guy the impression, like if he didn't give that impression, fair enough. It's like, whoever's the, basically, it's mind makes right in these kinds of debates.

You can't say, oh, that's mean. Well, that's kind of normal, too bad in these kinds of informal settings. Exactly. Yeah.

He did give the guy impression, we can debate what you want. And then suddenly, bang,

Jay's taking control of it. All right, let's continue. Please interrupt formation.

It is always being reformed. Well, that's what you think, but I don't think that. I think that's a heresy.

Okay, so let's go to the common ground we have, which is the inspired scriptures. I don't think you have the right scriptures.

Yeah, I'm sorry? You don't have the right scriptures. What do you mean

I don't have the right scriptures? I don't believe you have the right canon of scripture, so you don't even have that. Do you believe in the 27 books of the

New Testament? I do, but I also believe in the Deuterocanon. Okay, well, we can leave out the Old Testament.

Let's deal with that. All right, let's stop. I mean, you said leave it. All right. Yeah. So again, furthering that thing, but also on the evangelical guy's side, he does not know who he's interacting with.

He does not know the depth of these issues. This is why I warned at the beginning, like with these kinds of things, you want to have, well,

I kind of alluded to it, but to make it more explicit, you want to have a grip on the foundational problems. You can't just come in and assume, hey,

Jay, let's go to our common ground, the holy scriptures. No, they, okay.

A bunch of the scriptures. I think Jay does go a bit overboard there. There is common ground. There is the majority of our canons, whatever ortho canon he holds to, because there is no single ortho canon, which

I think he, he doesn't really, well, other times he does bring that up, but then over here, he says you don't have the right canon implying that there is a single, the right one, which is weird.

And he says there is the Deuterocanon, which is not a thing like the, those extra books, some accepted more, some accepted less.

It's not a single collection, but whatever, whatever. Um, the, the problem, the evangelical guy does not know the fact that the foundational issues, he does not have a good grip on them.

He just assumed there was this common ground. And then now that Jay just came out and pointed out, I know we don't have this common ground, at least not to a big extent.

Now the guy's entire floor just got ripped out of under him. You can notice that the guy paused a little bit when

Jay gave that comeback. Uh, his entire, the floor, the rug's been pulled from right under him.

Now he is, uh, he, he, he made the mistake before from, uh, by giving into Jay's attempt to change the debate topic.

Um, that's an unfortunately very common thing for people who are inexperienced at dating, debating, dating, debating.

I've experienced it myself. Um, but an experienced guy would have been able to say, well, hang on, let's not change the topic.

Let's keep on task. And maybe they have a tussle on that, but whatever. But he already gave into that. So he kind of already, uh, gave

Jay the license and the implicit, okay, you control this. We'll go where you want. But now that's been fully set in.

Now that Jay has pulled out the very foundational rug, the guy wanted to try and, uh, rely on.

And so now he's just in, he's entirely beholden to the guy, Jay, who knows who appears,

I don't know the guy's knowledge, but he appears to just know orders of magnitude more than this other guy. Now Jay has just taken the reins entirely.

Um, it's, it's, it's the debate's done already. There's more to go, but it's, it's done at this point. And I have to point out just from, again,

I have to, uh, acknowledge this. I still think it's useful is the way that Jay carries himself, at least in this context, the confidence and what he says it almost the confidence actually made the caller apologize for something that you didn't have to, you know, he's like, well,

I went to Calvin is, oh, I'm sorry. Like you don't have to apologize, but there is, there is a, um,

Jay knows very much how to dominate both with content. Cause he's very familiar. He's very knowledgeable of these issues and the way he carries himself.

So from a debate perspective, you want to be able to recognize that in someone else, but also be careful not to allow that to take advantage of the fact that you still need to talk about the issues.

You don't want to be thrown off by how someone carries themselves. So I think it's useful to learn from and to make sure you avoid when you have conversations with someone who comes off with kind of an air of authority with, with respect to what they're talking about.

Yeah, that's it. Yeah. That's it. Let's see here. But, uh, I mean, I want to know what your epistemic principle is for knowing who determines what books go in the

Bible. Um, we would use, or I would use, I can't say we,

I would use textual criticism. No, we, so that there's not actually a

Protestant church. Well, we, most of us, majority of us would use textual criticism.

Why am I supposed to, how do you know to follow the majority on that? It's all arbitrary. Well, obviously.

Why is it obvious? I'm asking you why it's obvious. You're saying it's obvious. We all follow this. I'm asking you why. How is that not arbitrary?

Because God left us a divine artifact to be able to determine. That's begging the question that you have the right artifact.

I'm bringing that into question because that's a valid question.

Let me answer. Okay. And so hold on. You re you recognize that it was the reformers that you split from that decide.

Okay. Um, would you be able to like go back five seconds? So when we restart, because he started a new thought, which

I definitely want to five seconds. Let me see if I can do five seconds. You just need to hit like left on your keyboard, but yeah, classic

Mac user moment. Um, but anyway, we'll do it. We'll do it. That's good. That's fine. Don't don't play yet.

Don't play yet. Okay. I want to, I want to comment on this. Um, wow. Okay. Well, so Jay's taking the rug out from him and now the guy, um, he is, he is, he is working.

He clearly doesn't have notes in front of him, or he clearly doesn't have these things like settled in him, like good epistemic principles, which

Jay is absolutely right about that. Although he does say an epistemic principle, which I believe derives from his thing of like, you need a single authority to tell you something about the

Canon, which I think is totally off, but that's, uh, that'll come up later. Um, the guy, uh, is clearly working.

Um, he's, he's making his responses live. He doesn't have stuff prepared. And so he's just trying to scramble inside.

What do I say back? Uh, textual criticism, uh, which, okay. Historical method.

What he wants to say is we derive, uh, we utilize the evidence of history we have available.

Um, whether, whether we as persons or our church authorities above us, because they're both compatible submitting to a church authority, what they say.

Um, but also that those authorities ought to rely on the evidence of history and, uh, compiled together with good historical principles.

That's all he would need to say. Now, of course, Jay would try to get back to that, but that's really, that's just the good answer you need because it's true.

It's the true answer. And it's one that is demonstrably used, uh, for the entire church throughout. I, as an

Anglican, I do my own study of the Canon issues, of course, but I, as an Anglican submit to the

Canon lists given to me by my authorities above me, that is the 39 articles. Now it's a typical 66 book, uh,

Protestant Canon, but it does also include the deuterocanon as a deuterocanon, Western deuterocanon as accepted by, uh, by Rome.

Um, and so for a long while, I never, I never considered them Canon at all. But now that I'm under the

Anglican church, I have, I have like, okay, I'm in here now. I need to submit to that. Uh, so I can either do that or I can just jump ship, go somewhere else, which everybody is.

It's not unique for Protestants. Um, everyone individually makes the decision to either ascend to what their authority, even the alleged infallible authority says, uh, or they can choose to jump ship.

Everyone plays that game. It's no different for all of us. Um, so I've chosen to submit to that. Um, we can point to that.

That's, that's one kind of principle, but then more fundamentally it's the principles of historical method, um, with, uh, that that's coupled with the, uh, crafting a coherent historical narrative, drawing concrete conclusions from the evidence before us with a solid historical principles.

And there's a bunch of those. You would need to lay those out because even that can be a bit vague. Um, but point being that's what you need to do.

Not just textual criticism because textual criticism is one thing amongst a myriad of other, um, other procedures that you need to do in historical method.

Well, didn't Jay say, well, we don't do that. Is that, is that true?

I mean, our Eastern Orthodox understanding of scripture is not based on textual criticism, but that sounded odd when he says, well, we don't do that.

Yeah, that's, that's a really odd thing. I think what he's trying to get at is that we as individual authors, we don't just do our own text critical study and come up with our own, but maybe that's what he's alluding to.

Um, in which case, well, neither do most Protestants. We kind of just accept the Bible as we get. We trust authorities above us, whether it's our churches or our scholars or whatever.

Um, but if he did really mean, I don't, I don't know if he does, I don't want to think he does cause it would be really stupid if he did.

But if he did really mean that we Orthodoxy, we don't do text criticism period. Um, sorry, that that's bull.

That's actual bull. Like how did you get your Bible? It is through the work of, uh, of a whole tradition of scribes, uh, copying manuscripts, copying manuscripts faithfully, um, then going back to existing manuscripts and trying to piece together, uh, the best reading according to the good principles of textual criticism, um, all the way up to the present day.

Um, so you can have, for example, uh, the, the norm, as far as I'm aware, the normal base text of the new

Testament for Orthodoxy, or at least one of the main ones, uh, is the 1908 patriarchal text.

I think, um, it's not a critical text in the same way as the West where there's like the, the West tends to take, um, tends to take a why

Western scholarship tends to take a wide thing of like going to all the manuscripts and they tend to prioritize, uh, the much earlier manuscripts, even if they're, even if they're very few and far between.

Um, there's also a lot of, uh, Alexandrian manuscript priority as well. Patriarchal texts is more or less, um, it's kind of like a received text for Orthodoxy where they, they more or less take it from the

Byzantine manuscript tradition, but even in the Byzantine manuscript tradition, which the East also holds to, there is diversity in that.

And so there's still text critical work to go into that. So the mere, so, so yes, there is text criticism.

Everybody does that. Everyone's church authorities rely on textual criticism for the Bibles they have today.

The only question is whether you have good principles or bad principles. That's, that's the difference. Um, so yeah, again, that's only if J.

Dyer meant that I don't want to think he did. Um, but yeah, because it's not a small matter to,

I mean, I don't think he meant we don't do that, um, but it is an important issue.

Obviously everyone has to do textual criticism at some level. Um, all right, let's continue. Well, that's a valid question.

Let me answer that. Okay. And so hold on. You, you recognize that it was the reformers that you split from that decided to remove the deuterocanon, right?

No, no. See, this is a common misconception. No, it's not. No, it's not. No, it's not.

Yes, they did. You don't have it. So we at least have a principle for canonicity. You don't have that.

So this is the first blatant error from Dyer. Um, I don't honestly,

I don't know why he makes that, but no, the reformers didn't remove the deuterocanon. There was nothing with respect to the idea of a universally promulgated and enforced canon, which is typically what authors and Romanists mean in these debates, which is very misleading because that doesn't preclude the, um, that local churches and even individual church fathers could have their own perception of the canon.

Um, because there was no such universally promulgated canon in the West at the time.

Um, some try to argue the council of Florence did that, but the fact that Trent did that afterwards and that there were cardinals like Cardinal Cuyatin who would dispute them.

Um, there was no deuterocanon to remove, if that makes sense. This was open debate.

There was open debate on these issues all throughout the beginning of the church and with respect to the

West. Um, and if we assume a Romanist paradigm all the way up to the council of Trent, and so no, the reformers doing what they did and considering these books, we don't consider canonical because reasons

X, Y, and Z no different to anybody else around them. Everybody did that. Um, even if we grant that the deuterocanon was more widely accepted,

I haven't done a thorough historical study of that and nobody should make that claim unless they have done that, which

I suspect the vast majority of authors and Romanists who make that claim don't. Um, but I can, I think it's reasonable to suspect that most, if not all of the

Western deuterocanon would have been accepted in the West. Nonetheless, it was still something of open debate.

There was permissible debate about it. So no, when the reformers did what they did, there was nothing to remove. Um, so you're saying he's just factually false on that point.

Yeah. Factually false. Unless he wants to try and argue that, um, the council of Trent was authoritative in the

West, even though they're like totally separated from the East. If he, I don't know if he would go that way, but that's really the only way

I could see him trying to come back about that. Um, to which, to which I'd simply say, well then why we'd simply ask the question, why is that council of authority?

Why? Who cares? Who cares? So removing, they remove, so the reformers removed something from a canon that was made two days ago.

Okay. Who cares? That's not, that's not the question with the canon. The canon is what has been passed down from the beginning, from the apostles, not what did this authority decide now.

So if he was to go that route, I'd say that's silly, but otherwise I don't know how else he could do that. He's just, he's just, he's just actually wrong.

Totally factually wrong. That's the first big thing. And unfortunately this guy's just playing further and further into it because he doesn't, um, this evangelical guy, he just does not have a good grip of being able to, um, assert himself in debate and be able to take the reins back even to a partial degree.

He's just kind of going along with everything. Dyer says even things, and I know from experience, a really confident debater when he, uh, opponent, when he's controlling the conversation, you can even see when he makes really obvious errors that you can respond to, but you just somehow seize up and you don't.

Yeah, that's happened. I've, I've had that experience to me and that's almost certainly happening with this evangelical guy, uh, guy because he may say, cause he, he implies that he doesn't know that it wasn't as simple as the reformers took books out because it wasn't, but he's just seizing up and letting

Dyer control the whole thing. Um, so that's a big, big, big problem. It's, it's gone to crap already, but yeah.

Um, otherwise, yes. First big factual error by, by Dyer here. Okay. All right, let's continue. And by the way, the same textual scholars that you're going to appeal to ended up deconstructing the whole text.

They, they went towards higher criticism. So you're just basically picking the textual scholars that are conservative that agree with you and your presupposition.

So how is that a principle for knowing? Okay, so that's not really, really quickly. Um, I had to stop so many times here cause he says a lot of things really quickly.

Um, this is another tactic really, and this is where it gets a bit more dishonest, but it's still a mark of like really skilled informal debating.

Um, Dyer is making the other guy's argument for him. Notice how the guy up to this point, he didn't even want to debate that first.

He wanted to go into soteriology. Um, but then Dyer brought onto this issue and then before the guy could even make it, the guy mentions textual criticism.

Okay, cool. But like still, he hasn't brought up his specific arguments of like, why does textual criticism? Well, he hasn't been allowed to.

He hasn't been allowed to cause he hasn't been allowed to yet. He hasn't. And yet Dyer immediately assumes that he's just going to say,

Oh, well, this scholar says this, this scholar says that. And so he says, well, you're going to say this when he, when he doesn't.

And that's, that's actually exactly what I experienced when I did one call in myself with Dyer. Um, when he assumed,

Oh, well, you're going to say this about soloscripture, you're going to say this and that. And I just said, um, no, I'm not, I'm not going to say that. And he's like,

Oh, but that's, that's what's happened. That's what's happening here. It's really, really bad.

And the guy's letting it happen. He is letting Dyer make his arguments for him and then defending the arguments, which he hasn't even made.

Maybe, maybe the guy was just going to say, Oh, well, this scholar says this, this scholar says that not a guarantee though. Um, cause otherwise he may have just said, well, as this scholar shows, not that this scholar himself has authority, but the evidence he produces gives reasons

X, Y, and Z. And according to good principles of, of, of textual criticism, um, here's the conclusion.

Um, Dyer, we don't know what argument he's going to make, but Dyer made it for him. That's the, that's the big problem.

Big, big, big problem. Um, and the guy's letting it happen. And that's where it gets into the more dishonest territory because what are you arguing against?

When you're in a debate, you are arguing against an opponent who is making his own arguments. When you make, when you make his arguments for him, you are now almost certainly really by definition attacking a straw man.

You are literally building your opponent and then attacking that. So that's, that's another big, big problem here.

Okay. All right. Thank you for that. Let's continue. The principle, the principle is we can, when we go back in time throughout history, closer and closer to the time of we or you, there is no way you said there's not a way there's only

Okay. We have to examine you. You keep saying we, you and I know

I'm not part of your church. Okay. So I want to ask a question here. So, um, this is an interesting move by Jay here where, when the evangelical says we, he's already,

Jay's already capitalizing on the fact that he thinks that non Orthodox or Roman Catholics don't have a church.

Like there is no, there is no church. What are you talking about? Right. Um, how would you respond to, how would you respond to that?

Yeah, I think I would say this is potentially another example of the straw man being a big straw man.

Um, because just from listening to what this guy is saying, when he's saying we need to do this, we need to do that. Um, he is not, he is not presupposing that they're all united as one hunky dory thing.

Um, he is simply, it's a very simple way of saying, well, we as individuals engaged in intellectual discourse and investigation, we need to do this.

That's what he's, that's what I very highly suspect he's going to do. And if you want to be charitable, you probably should prefer that.

But Jay has just immediately taken that as way where we, we, we're not together. We're not one church. I've got a church. You don't have a church.

Irrelevant question. It really isn't a irrelevant question. And then he'll go on though. He'll go on to try and justify and say, well, where's your epistemic principle, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But it's just assertions. It's just raw assertions. Um, it's, it's kind of like, if I was to say, uh, if I was just to run up to you, you just casually made the statement.

You just looked at the, you just looked at the ground on the road and it was, and it was wet. You were inside. You didn't know what's happening, but you look at the ground on the road, it's wet.

And you say to yourself, huh, it must've just rained recently. And then someone just runs up to you and saying, uh, uh, do you see, uh, do you see a blue car over there?

If you don't know where that, if there's a blue car there, how do you know that it rained? It's like, what on earth does that have to do with what

I said? It's like, does that make sense? It's just a totally nonsensical standard.

You just assert without argument. And unfortunately this happens a lot more sometimes, sometimes of Romanist, but much more often in my observation with, uh, with authors where they'll just assert,

Oh, but you don't have this. So how, where's your episode where what you don't have this. So you can't do anything. And they just assume that you need this alleged principle they talk about in order to do anything.

They just assert it. They just assume it, uh, without argument. And, uh, again, a really, a, a well -controlled and self -asserting guy would be able to pick that up and say, no, no, justify that.

I don't need that. You tell me why I need to do that. Um, well, again, a well, a well -learned debater wouldn't have even gone to this situation in the first place, but at this point, a well -learned debater would not start the conversation.

So you saved me for last. Real, Oh man, that's just,

Oh yeah, that's it. But yeah, an experienced guy would have said, you're asserting that I need this, prove it, prove that I need it.

Why do I need it? Who said that I need it? Um, but either way, that's all from the misunderstanding of the guy, what the guy's meaning by saying we, and Jay's just kind of, but he's basically going the full on Karl Popper peronic skeptical.

Oh, how do you know this? How do you know that? Just, just gish galloping with questions. That's, that is the, that is the radical skeptical tactic taken by a number of anti -Protestant apologetic apologists just gish gallop with questions.

And before the guy can even give a full answer, you say, Oh, but, but, but this, how would he know this? All right. That's right. There's a key point.

Now I'm not confident that the caller could give adequate responses to each, but what we are seeing is that even if he could, he is not even being given the opportunity to kind of expand on his thoughts.

And I see multiple topics being brought into the discussion that aren't necessarily part of what they were originally talking about.

So, um, exactly. Exactly. Let's continue. Church.

You're not part of my church. I'm asking for your epistemic principle for knowing canonicity. What is it?

History. That's a meaningless statement. History. Whose history?

What historians? What church fathers? Well, again, we would have to be able to accumulate the data.

We, we sift through the data and see what's the most. So you don't have a church. You leave the canon up to a bunch of academics.

And in the Protestant Reformation, when the canon was left up to academics, where did that lead? How did that go?

Okay. Another point where Jay is totally right. History. What a meaningless statement.

Absolutely true. Absolutely true. Anyone with even a lick of experience with study into historiography and, uh, well, historiography, historical scholarship will know just how precarious the thing is.

Let me just grab while you're grabbing it. The caller does not have a grasp on the importance of presuppositions.

Exactly. And that's someone who is a master at recognizing. Oh yeah.

That's, um, that, that is the one really good benefit. I think with Jay Dyer as, um, shall we say a spicy of a personality as, as he is, as, uh, as cheeky as it can be with his debate tactics, put it nicely.

He does a good job at emphasizing that, Hey, you need to know your presuppositions. Now, whether he actually argues on presuppositions well, um, whether his tactics are honest, whether his actual standards are consistent or even workable.

Another question, fact that he's emphasizing this stuff. That's good. Uh, one really good book I recommend is the killing of history by Keith Winshett.

Let me just, uh, remove this from the screen so people can see it. So excellent book, the killing of history,

Keith Winshett, or how literary critics and social theorists are murdering our past. Um, and this is just one example of, it was just one debate, one example of one debate in historiography.

He's this, this book, excellent book. He's an Australian historian. So I have a special affinity for him. Um, really sharp knows what he's talking about.

Very controversial because there's the whole, um, there's like, there's the whole social activism regarding the history of indigenous here in Australia.

And he's very much on the unpopular side of that. But this book, this is a whole book basically dedicated to, um, explaining and like deconstructing, uh, post -modernist, uh, historic historiography, uh, their presuppositions on history.

And it gets really detailed, really thorough. It even goes into issues, which, um, which

Jay Dyer himself likes to go on about where he talks about how, like, there's no such thing as a neutral standpoint. Everything is theory -laden, very much true.

Winshuttle himself will go into that. He will say that's true. All, all theorizing is theory -laden, but then he'll also argue that mere observations of reality are not theory -laden.

Like whether you're the example he'll bring up, whether you're a Galilean or a Ptolemaic cosmology holder, if you look up in the sky and see that there's moons orbiting

Jupiter, it's not, it's not gonna, whatever theory you hold, the observation is going to be the same.

But that's just one example, because why I bring this up is because there are tomes, there are entire tomes on historical presuppositions, historical standards, historical method.

Um, so simply to say, oh, we do history and we sift through the data is utterly meaningless because everybody, all the way from logical positivists down to post -modern, post -modernist literary critics, everyone does that.

Everyone looks at history. It's like, how do you know evolution's true? Science.

Exactly. Science. What method? What are you doing? That doesn't really tell us anything.

And the point I want to make is that, look, let's go, again, anyone can say it.

We do history. Jay is totally right about that. Anybody can do history. It's a meaningless statement.

Get read up on historical method, historical presuppositions before you do any of this. But anyway, let's, let's keep going.

All right. Thanks. Yeah. It can go one of two ways. How did it go in the Reformation? Well, we know that the 27 books were absolutely solid.

I'm asking you about what happened in the tradition of textual criticism after the Reformation in terms of Luther's descendants.

What happened in Tubingen? What happened in those, in Wittenberg, in those, those universities? Where did they go with textuals?

I know they started taking things out. I understand that. And they didn't just do that. They went in the direction of higher criticism and they deconstructed the whole text because they lost the principle of authority, the church, which you don't have.

No, but you have that backwards because in the Protestant... No, you have it backwards. You don't have a church.

You just said there's not a we. Um, okay. So that's another big thing, big problem with, oh, they lost the principle, the church.

Therefore they started deconstructing things. Um, actually just before I get to that, um, what should we call it?

Well, the actual, the actual historical question, oh, look, Luther's descendants, look what they did. Um, at best, hyper simplistic, if not actually backwards, because that is a very common meme.

The Reformation came, they lost the principle of the church, and therefore, oh, look, all this chaos and bad stuff, whatever.

Um, problem is very underappreciated, but actually, uh, it is very much, uh, is a very arguable position that the fundamental fermentation of the enlightenment, uh, was in part, if not largely at the hands of the counter -reformers because the counter -reformers, a very common tactic they would do was basically revive

Greek skepticism, Pyrrhonic skepticism in order to poke holes. Cause the Protestants were going left, right, and center.

Here's what the, here's what Holy scripture says. He's what history says that, that so forth and so on and so forth. Lots of arguments, lots of debates happening.

Eventually these counter -reformers end up going, oh, look at that. There's these Greek skeptics here and they just poke holes in people's certainty and epistemology.

And so that's, that's what a lot of the counter -reformers would do, whether it be Montaigne, uh, de Sales, a lot of them, you name it.

And, uh, there's a really, really, really good paper, um, by Richard Popkin. If you just look up his name,

Richard Popkin, um, enlightenment counter -reformers, I forgot the exact name of the paper. Um, he basically argues that, that the counter -reformers were a key element in kick -starting the enlightenment, uh, because they provided, they revived skeptical epistemology, poking holes in, uh, in worldview and uncertainty.

And eventually, uh, key enlightenment figures like Voltaire would take advantage of that to go against the faith entirely.

Um, so no, this is a very at best hyper simplistic thing. Um, but even then he's simply at best here.

Um, he probably does go into more detail elsewhere, but at best here he is doing a post hoc ergo propter hoc.

Oh, look, this happened after, therefore it's at the cause of the counter -reformers. Well, how do you know that? How do you know that unless you actually thoroughly studied the historical sources, construct a coherent historical narrative with good principles of historiography.

Maybe he's done that somewhere. I've never seen that from him. And even when he does go into certain into detail and historical topics,

I don't see him do that well, in my opinion. Um, and so that's all that argument is, is all you would need to say,

Oh, look after Luther, these guys started doing this. I just need to say, where's the causation. How do you know they caused it?

Okay. Oh, look, they, the, the skeptic guys happened afterwards after the reformation. So what, how do you know that was actually at, that was actually caused by the principles of the reformation, which by the way, they did not lose the principle of the church.

Any reading of the classical reformers would show you, yes, they rely on the authority of the witness, the church for, for example, the

Canon read Martin Chemnitz, his own statements in the examination, the counselor Trent, where he gives seven different definitions of the word tradition in order to demonstrate that when the

Romanist apologists of his day said, Oh look, this church father said tradition, it doesn't automatically mean what they think it does.

Uh, his second definition of tradition is the Canon of scripture, which he says we do reverently receive.

So actually, yes, the reformers classical reformers did maintain the principle of the church as a key epistemic authority for determining, for example, what the scripture was.

And likewise for even the text of scripture itself, this is actually brought up in the, uh, in James White's recent debate by, with, um,

Peter Van something, I forgot his name. Um, I thought, I thought James White was on the floor on that when the guy tried using

Beazian vision and probability theory. Oh dear. Yeah, no, that was my,

I think, look, I think James White cleaned the floor of that debate. But what the other guy did point out is that there were, um, there were classical

Protestants who did appeal to the tradition of the church, uh, for their text.

Um, quite erroneously in my opinion, because the King James version, it's not perfect. The translators didn't think that.

Um, but no point being the reformers did always hold onto the principle of the witness of the church for many issues, including this.

And so it's not enough for Jay or other ortho bros to simply say, um, to simply say, oh, they lost the principle of the church and all these bad things.

You actually have to demonstrate historical causation. It's not enough to simply assert that. Um, so that's, that's what

I say about that. Okay. Thank you for that. Let's see here. There's just, I, it's you, you are the church.

You don't have a church. You, you can't even tell me what the canon is. You said, leave it up to scholars. No, you can't.

You said history. You said history. Are you the same dude that was in here like three months ago saying all the same stuff?

So you're the same idiot that came in. You lose this debate every time and you can't, you don't make an argument.

You say the same dumb stuff every time. That's the third time this guy has come saying the exact same thing.

And this guy, all he ever does is repeat. We look to history, we look to textual scholars.

And then I asked him his epistemic principles for why that's the thing that we do. And he just repeats it again. Literally the dumbest

Protestant I've ever argued. Notice it's the same argument you deal with the Atheists. It's just this.

Does it go like more downhill from here? I think, I think this is actually,

I think maybe like 30 seconds or a minute more, they kind of finish up the discussion about it. But then after this, they kind of go onto the topic of Darwinism.

So if you want to go for another 30 seconds, maybe. Yeah. Let's, let's let it, let's finish it off and you can let me know when to stop.

We just do this. We all know this. It's just this. It's like, dude. Oh my gosh.

And if he hadn't, this is actually the fourth time. This is actually the fourth time that that dude has done the exact same thing.

And then he acts like, like I know who he is. Did you wait for it because of me? Because you knew I'm a Protestant apologist.

You're a random gray profile. I have no idea who you are. No, I didn't wait for you. By the way, it's still open forum.

Now I'm hyped up, but I mean, I'm not going to make the same dumb argument as the guy. You are, and I quote, a random gray profile.

Like it says like the gray circle with the little emoji. Like I have no idea. Oh man.

Oh man, Jay. Okay. Look, whatever his intellectual faults one might have,

Jay is an excellent entertainer. He really is. Dude, you're just a gray profile.

Oh my goodness. Oh dear. That's basically it.

And on the overall Jay is in the right. This guy didn't give any solid epistemic principles or anything.

Jay likes to say principle singular because he's coming from the priest opposition that you need a single principle in the church to make an authoritative statement about the canon.

Key contention there, I would not grant that at all. But otherwise, the overall point, you need epistemic principles.

You can't just say, oh, we'll do history or we sift through the data. He's totally right on that. And that is the ultimate, that is one of two ultimate warnings

I have for Prots who want to engage, whether it's Jay Dyer or some other experienced or confident personality from the other traditions.

Two things. One, know what you're talking about. Don't just, why are you debating in the first place?

Well, actually no, three things. One, why are you debating in the first place? Why are you going there? Because you don't need to. It's not like, oh no, if I fail to debate

Jay Dyer, Protestantism is going to collapse. These debates have been going on well before him and they're going to keep going after him.

No single personality is like, oh, if I don't address him, it's game over. Who cares? It's not about the personality.

It's about the arguments being made. The same argument being put forward by Jay Dyer is as effective or ineffective when it's put forward by a random babushka from the local

Russian Orthodox church. It doesn't, it doesn't matter who's making it. The argument itself is what matters. But, so why are you debating?

Are you going, do you want to go there to actually persuade the opponent himself or you want to persuade the audience?

Because that's going to, that's going to depend, that's going to affect how you're going to actually behave in the debate. What kind of tactics are you going to use?

What are you going to say? But then the other, the second thing is, the other second thing now is know what you're talking about.

Actually know the subject matter, have an authentic study of it and not just read a few articles on like,

I don't know, gut questions or from like James White, no offense to Dr. White, but even he would say, don't just read what

I write. Look at the sources, go do the authentic study yourself. Do authentic academic level study on these issues so that you have an authentic understanding yourself.

And then after that, make sure you have a good handle, a good self assertion, self confidence so that you can know to take the reins when you need to and have good rhetorical training because you can know everything.

You can have, you can have like an entire booklet of excellent notes, excellent arguments, evidence, but if you don't have rhetorical skill, it's going to be for naught.

Because unfortunately how it very often does happen with personalities like Dyer and other very confident personalities, really, really of all traditions, but phenomenologically speaking very often with the authors is that the debates are ultimately, ultimately come down to personality very often and not to the actual substance.

Substance will be had, there will be substance arguments brought out, but it's very often overshadowed by the controlling, by one or two controlling personalities within.

And because the other guy just can't hold his own. That's why the debate with Trent Horne that he had was actually pretty good for Horne in particular because Horne's much more experienced in these things.

So even when Dyer tried to interrupt him, he was like, Jay, Jay. It was a formal debate too.

So Jay couldn't do everything he would have tried to do. But even then, if you, if the, if the rhetorical skill and the personalities are really imbalanced on both sides, substance is going to go out the window.

It really will. And that's unfortunately what happened here, even though substantially Jay did bring up some good points and he also made some blunders, but in the end that didn't matter because he controlled the whole thing.

He was, he had rhetorical control. I think it's important to ask the question also, is calling in a show the best way to debate this?

Exactly. Exactly. That was going to get. I get told all the time, Eli, you should call in the atheist experience.

I'm like, no, why? I can get shut down in two seconds and then

I get hung up on and then I could just be bad mouthed and it just looks like I just face planted. I pick my battles and I choose to speak on things that I, I am knowledgeable about.

That's, that's why I wouldn't debate Jay Dyer because he's much more knowledgeable about these topics. But I do like to learn about them and hear what he has to say.

And when he's got, when he's not, when it's not this kind of informal discussion and it's kind of a formal debate,

I do learn a lot from Trent Horn and someone like Jay because they, they do know their stuff to the point where they're properly, at least representing their own perspective, even though I have disagreement, but I don't,

I wouldn't be very careful choosing my battles. We can't fight them all.

Those were the exact words I was going to say to sum it all up. Choose your battles. Right.

Don't have to go into every debate that comes up. Even, even if that means looking bad in front of other people, even if you made a silly promise to debate a guy at this time, at this place, and then you realize after the fact, oh crap,

I'm really not prepared for this. And then you just, you have to bow out. Even if as a result, the really uncharitable people watching on say, oh boo, you're, you're a coward.

You're backing out or whatever. Who cares what they think isn't going to change anything. Oh no, this group of ortho bros think

I'm a coward. Oh no, Protestantism is destroyed. Let's pack it up boys. Who cares?

They're, they're voicing an opinion on the internet. They're chanting one time and it's going to be forgotten the next day when the next fad comes about.

But what's not forgotten is when you accept a debate you're not prepared for. Oh yeah. And that's going to be, you're going to turn into a meme.

They're going to do an auto -tune song. That will eventually be forgotten, but it's going to take much longer.

So just don't do that. Know that you know why you're trying to get into these things. You're trying to, whether you're trying to persuade people, trying to persuade the opposition, or even just to train yourself, even if it's just for that, know why you're going into it.

And if you know that you're not prepared, don't. Nothing's going to change, especially from a perspective where God already has set forth who his sheep are and who's going to be saved, right?

You're just an instrument. Okay. So don't act like the salvation of the world is on your shoulders if you do or don't debate somebody.

Okay. That's not how it's going to work. God's going to have his purposes. He's going to win in the end. Obviously that doesn't mean neglected duties because he does use you as an instrument, but in a small insignificant online debate, that's ultimately not going to change anything on the diocesan or geopolitical level.

Don't fret. Be prepared, prepare yourself. And if you're not, don't do it. Right. I agree.

Now this is perfect. We're at the one hour and five minute mark. Let's try to go through the questions. I need to go.

I mean, there's some colorful, some colorful comments. I'll try to skip over those.

Yes. The classic ortho bro Christian charity in the comments today. Yeah, no, we'll skip over those.

I'm not down for those here. Skip over those. So skip over like 90 % of the chat. All right.

Yeah, I don't want to, I don't want to, well, let's go through the super chat first. There we go. Let's do that. We'll do that one first. So Jay Athanasius, once again, thank you for your $9 and 99 cents super chat.

Really appreciate it. Jay likes to complain about Protestant beliefs secretly being completely unrelated heresy.

I don't know what that means. I'm surprised he's never dealt with transubstantiation patently violating the essence energy distinction.

Are you familiar with what he's, what he's getting at? Not the latter one. I can maybe see what he's going with that, but I haven't seen that argument before.

That'd be very interesting. Um, but the first bit, oh yeah. Um, not just Dyer, but the ortho bro sphere in general and even, um, other certain

Romanist apologists, not as common though. They'll play the heresy spin, spin the wheel. They'll have their little game show wheel at the back with all these heresies listed on it.

It's like, oh look, this Protestant says this thing, let's spin the wheel boys. And it's like, oh look, a

Protestantism, uh, imputation is, uh, it's an historian. Uh, it's Aryan. They do that a lot.

Now, of course they weren't just just say that they try to justify it. Dyer does try to do it and it ends up looking very silly in the process.

Uh, it's just throwing out names of heresies. They do. It's a very, very, very common tactic and very often, um, comes from a misunderstanding of, uh, classical

Protestant belief, whether in general or from the specific traditions. Uh, again, that video I referenced earlier by Puritan posts, his 50 minute response to Dyer, he kind of shows one or two examples of those misunderstandings and just saying, oh, heresy, heresy.

Um, so yeah, it's, it's a common tactic and it's silly. It's so silly. Uh, go, go threat or goth threat says

Jay is a strong presuppositionalist. Um, now completely apart from whether it is consistent for an

Eastern Orthodox person to use presuppositionalism, what one would argue that it comes from a, a, a particularly reformed theological perspective.

Um, apart from that, um, this is very important to note that Jay is a presuppositionalist or identifies as a presuppositionalist and there are people who argue along those lines.

And so this is why if you're going to interact with an Eastern Orthodox person who is kind of presuppositional, you must be what

Cornelius Van Til says, epistemologically self -conscious. You need to be aware of your own epistemological foundations, your own metaphysical foundations and your ethical foundation so that you don't discuss your metaphysical and epistemological foundations like a jerk.

All of us, all of those three pillars of world, you need to be consistent with one another. Um, that means our conduct as well, but you want to be able to identify presuppositions and know what your presuppositions are.

Otherwise you are not equipped to engage with someone who is themselves epistemologically self -conscious.

You need to be very careful with that. Um, that's my two bit there. Let's see here. Um, do, do, do, do, do.

Sorry, I have to like scroll down. Oh, good. Bear with me.

Do you have any jokes? Um, get to avoid the lot of conversation going on, which is good.

I'm just trying to find the questions. I'll recommend again, the killing of history by Keith Winshuttle in case anyone didn't have, didn't catch it before.

Epic book, uh, totally dismantles a lot of postmodernist historiography gives good principles of history itself.

Um, another interesting one, which I got a little bit ago and I'm still reading through it, a short book by Gerald Bray and Anglican, how the church fathers read the

Bible. Um, basically a short overview of the various trends of biblical interpretation, um, throughout the patristic period.

Very, very good and interesting introduction, not comprehensive. So this can't be your end of it. Um, but otherwise a good, a good starting point on those issues.

Um, also the infallibility of the church, which is a book collection of a bunch of lectures by Reverend George Salmon, 19th century, basically a, a thorough, um, to a degree, it involves a lot of epistemology and presuppositions as well.

Basically a very thorough critique of the foundations of Romanism, um, the papacy, the magisterium, what it means to have certainty, um, all these big issues, very, very far thorough, very in depth deals with patristic testimony on certain issues as well.

Um, one really good part of it, uh, that I had, and I have like my own little, um, digital database that's just full of like citations and quotes from books in that.

So they're just like at the ready, I can get them right when I need them. One of them that I manually typed down is a section where he says, look, anything we know, like the, the, one of the things that points to the uselessness of extra biblical tradition, um, as Rome concedes of it is how everything we know, for example, about the life of Christ, all the fathers got it.

Almost all the fathers except for like the super, super early ones like Papias and that got it from the new Testament from the gospels.

Otherwise, apart from those super early guys, everyone's relying on the gospels. Um, the tradition, the tradition of Rome couldn't tell us, uh, the sacred tradition, so -called couldn't tell us with certainty, um, how long the ministry of Christ was, um, uh, whatchamacallit, how long the ministry of Christ was, all these other extra biblical teachings or extra, uh, written teachings, like oral teachings that were never written down.

Um, basically demonstrating, look, there's key gaps that we could get info from, and yet the tradition just happens not to preserve it.

And it just demonstrates that no, even the fathers, they didn't rely on this extra biblical tradition that gives extra propositions outside of Holy Scripture.

They were all fundamentally reliant on Holy Scripture. Okay. Christmas tree asks, uh, would other

Paul be willing to debate Jay Dyer? Is that something? No. Okay. No, I don't think it would be fruitful.

Okay. Um, uh, Godthread says something here. Jay has been refusing to do debates with reformed

Christians and will only do it via Twitter spaces, which he can kick you from at his leisure. I don't think that's true.

Um, just to kind of come to his defense. I had some, uh, interaction with him back in the day on Instagram, um, trying to set up a debate with a reformed

Christian and he was more than happy to do it. Um, but it kind of fell through for reasons I don't, don't need to get into, but, um,

I don't think that he refuses to do it. Um, so I don't think that, I don't think that's fair. Um, just letting you know that, uh, let's see here.

Uh, let's see. I wish people preface their question with question, uh, or, or at least that people would focus enough to actually give questions and not just debate.

What are they uh, conversation and debate in the chat. So that's good. It just makes it a pain in the, in the neck for me to look and find questions.

And then of course, when you skip a question, I get a message from someone. Why are you, why'd you delete my question? Why did you, it's like, okay, uh, let's see here.

I'm so sorry. I will say that it's true. He does accept debates on other platforms and that he has, um,

I think at present he does very, very often try really hard to push debates to happen on his platform.

Okay. Um, so he doesn't categorically rule it out, but he does very strongly try to push for that from, from what I've seen. Okay. Uh, someone is saying they would be entertained with a debate between Jay Dyer and Tom jump that actually already happened.

Did it? Oh yes. And it was a complete dumpster fire. If you want, you know, giggles, it didn't go very well.

Um, they're both very interesting. It's, it was in, I was interested to see kind of those two personnel. I've, I've debated

Tom before. Um, and we had a nice respectful conversation, but this particular debate did not go well and it kind of went, was it entertaining?

I mean, if you want to engage in the carnal, in the carnal pleasures, does it satisfy my carnal flesh?

Yes. I know. I know what I'm looking into in the background once I play scar.

If you want to satisfy your carnal flesh. Yes, it is. It is very, and I say this entertaining.

So if you like that kind of like cringe, like you're, you're, um, you're kind of secret little pleasure of like, sometimes

I just like to watch debates that are dumpster fires. I know it's wrong. And I know that they're not conducting themselves the way, but I really like to see that kind of stuff.

Yes. It's that kind of that kind of debate, unfortunately. Um, but yeah, there you go. Uh, let's see here.

Uh, let's see. There's some debate here. I'm so sorry. I thought there'd be more questions.

A lot of people watching. We have almost 80 people. Yeah. But not a lot of questions.

This is a, okay. That's a fake question. Any of my viewers here who haven't, who haven't subbed to revealed apologetics do it now.

It's actually pretty great. I listen to his stuff in the background very often when I'm gaming, even very good, very substantial stuff.

Well, I appreciate that. The sire says what topics are best to discuss with orthodox?

Like, why don't you give us kind of like a shotgun approach of topics that would be worthwhile bringing up in a discussion?

Yeah. The most ultimate worthwhile one is our authorities for defining the faith. Um, is it just the

Holy scripture? Is it scripture plus some amorphous undefinable tradition? Um, or perhaps supplemented by the decrees of ecumenical councils, ecumenical councils authoritative in what way do they bind the conscience of all believers in a similar way that scripture does?

Um, what's the history of development of ecumenical councils, those questions that get to the heart of it, things where, um, where you can at least try to establish a common ground of historical standards or at minimum, um, point out, see what their base historical standards are and try to point that out.

Um, that's the ultimate one that's worthwhile. Otherwise you can try internal things like, um, the icon debate is a really big one.

I do think that is their very weakest case. Cause one could say, Hey, look, you hold to the consensus of the fathers.

But then if we look in patristic history, there's zero evidence of iconodolia and not mere silence, but positive attestation to the silence.

Um, there's plenty of fathers who give arguments, um, often against, uh, pagan images.

That's true, but using arguments and presuppositions that would also falsify iconodolia.

Um, if not some fathers who were just outright, totally iconoclastic, like no images, period, um, super, super common, uh, to the point where it's, it's very much, we can demonstrate the certainty.

I would argue that iconodolia was an innovation and thus the fundamental claims of the Eastern church, uh, well,

East and West, but Eastern is a particularly big about it. Um, with the second council and I see that this is an apostolic practice, uh, is false

Romanists, uh, to their credit, they try to slap some Newman on it and say, Hey, look, we, we grant, this is a practice that evolved with time.

So cool. We grant. And so I'm just like, cool. Okay, fair enough. Um, I don't see how you can be consistent with that because there is the principle of Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi.

And I think all of those would point that to Romanists as well for the people who don't know Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, the law of prayers, law of faith.

Um, it's the concept that our practice and our faith is one of the same. And so, uh, all those may, may say, uh, that to have one of the same faith, we need the one, the same apostolic practice, which is why they would say that iconodolia must have been an apostolic practice.

At least, at least many of them would. Um, and so I would argue that on that principle,

Romanists are inconsistent, but otherwise, nonetheless, I'd say that's a very strong topic. If you want to really get the heat going, it's a big one happening right now between, uh, my friend,

Craig Trulia, and also my friend, Dr. Gavin Ortland. Um, it's getting a bit heated more than I'd like, but it's still ongoing.

Um, so yeah, it's, it's definitely a hot topic. That's one you can do any, almost any topic, but just as long as you can set the terms of the discussion and debate, because when you don't do that, you can get muddled into like going off into secondary things and it just goes weird.

Right. Um, if, if folks are interested, I mean, we have a lot of people listening in here. Um, I actually have other episodes where we covered

Eastern Orthodoxy. I actually interviewed, um, Hank Hanegraaff. Um, we had a nice long discussion, actually one of my favorite discussions

I've ever had, not necessarily the interview, although that went very well. I actually went over to CRI's headquarters and spend,

I think like four hours in Hank Hanegraaff's office just chatting about theology, Protestantism, Orthodoxy, and it was awesome.

So, really respectful conversation. And then I had Dr. Tony Costa come back twice to respond to that discussion.

So you can kind of get a full now granted, um, Hank Hanegraaff isn't, isn't an authority, but we talk about topics that are relevant and I think would be useful for instructive purposes.

So, um, I understand that he's not, you know, obviously the expert and he admits as much. So, um, but I still think it's useful.

And Tony Costa also came back on to talk about the Orthodoxy of Orthodoxy.

So you want to check out, um, Is Eastern Orthodoxy Orthodox? And so all of those videos, my

Hank Hanegraaff interview, the two followup Tony Costa interviews, and the Is Orthodoxy Orthodox interview is all in the links in the description of this video.

So if you want to check those out, um, and get your, your fill of Eastern Orthodoxy, uh, if that's a topic that interests you, you can check that out.

All right, now we're getting to some of the questions, uh, that are prefaced with questions. So, so Sire also asks, are you familiar with Dyer's argument against Protestant Christology and penal substitutionary atonement?

Yeah, bits and pieces of it. Um, not enough. Cause again, I like to be very thorough these things.

And so, um, a lot of people would think like, Oh, look, I'll watch a few like one or two videos or read one or two books and something.

And Oh, now I can comment on this stuff. I don't like that. I like to be extremely thorough. And so I have seen some of these arguments and that stuff.

I do have ideas about it, but I prefer not to comment unless the circumstance justifies it.

I prefer not to comment on these things, but just to give a kind of a basic thing, it's basically the heresy windspin wheel, like,

Oh, it's Nestorianism. Oh, it's this and that involves misunderstandings, reformed theology, like saying that the father damned the son, which is not true.

Um, but those are just, those are basically like basic preliminary thoughts, not like final.

So take it as that. All right. Thank you for that. Joshua Tanis says, uh, other than veneration of icons, what is one of the weakest points biblically?

Ooh, that is a good question. I'm honestly, look, I am very, I am so confident on the issues of, um, of divine election and, and monogist soteriology, which the, which the authors really, really strongly like to go against and, and actually, well, penal substitution as well.

Um, but I'd otherwise say that, I don't know if it's the second most, but it's certainly another really strong one where I think, look, the whole, the, the witness of Holy scripture is very clear regarding divine election and, and monogistic soteriology.

I just don't think the East can, can cope with it. Well. Um, so that issue, uh,

I would say one that's not appreciated enough, something I'm really wanting to start pioneering more.

I've done a little bit of it, but I want to do more explicit stuff. Um, just how we know that the ecumenical council, um, the concept of the ecumenical council was an imperial product and not to say,

Oh, Constantine created Christianity. Not that, but the very concept of ecumenical council wasn't, wasn't the product of an emperor who had practical concerns with the unity of the church.

It wasn't something established by Christ. And so I would argue that, look, such a thing cannot be in itself binding on the conscience of Christians.

Um, because this was not something instituted by Christ himself. And of course, many arguments can be had on that, but I think it's something that should be pressed a lot more, especially when you consider the history of such councils, like a good book

I've got is and it's legacy by Louis as a Y I E S. So as Nicaea and its legacy, he does a detailed history of the councils between Nicaea and the second ecumenical council at Constantinople.

There was multiple councils between them. Um, it was basically, it wasn't just, Oh, look, he's not see it's this big ecumenical council.

Everyone now agrees we have to be bound by it. Um, no, that wasn't a given. It was, it was, it almost functioned like a council in a normative sense where like, yeah, try to be an official body, but they didn't seem to be this pretense of like,

Oh, look, because we reached the status of something called an ecumenical council, we are automatically binding on the faithful merely because it says so that doesn't seem to be the concept because you have many other bishops.

You have other, well, other emperors. Um, I don't know if it was one or two others. I think it was mainly the one after Constantine.

I think I'm going to recollect that they, they would deny and I see, and they'd say, no, we want to do our own thing.

And so they would hold counter councils at a reminem Sirmium and actually Constantinople.

The real first, the council of Constantinople wasn't three 60. And those councils were anti nice thing. Um, and those are three councils, three really big councils, uh, before the second council of content, uh, of, uh, second ecumenical council point being, um, it's very precarious.

There wasn't this idea of a universally binding, um, at least not automatically council at the beginning.

It was clearly a development, um, not something of apostolic constitution. That's something that needs to be exploited more.

I think. Okay. All right. Thank you for that. Uh, Arthur bear asks, why is orthodoxy wrong?

And what ways can we reach our orthodox? Uh, I suppose with their friends, with the truth, with truth and love.

The first question is like, well, I mean, bring out the laundry list. You know, we could, we could say so many things while orthodoxy is wrong.

But I guess if you want the most fundamental answer, it would be that they propose a message and a system that Christ in the apostles did not establish.

That's the ultimate answer. You can point to like, Oh, they're wrong because icons or they're wrong because essence energy is whatever you think about that.

Or they're wrong because councils, but the ultimate, the ultimate answer that undergirds all that is, well, they assert things as definitional, which

Christ and the apostles did not. That's, that would be the ultimate answer. The second one. Good question.

Um, emulate the example of Christ basically, um, who was, who would be gracious and loving and respectful, but also stern with matters of truth, especially with people of higher authority.

Um, he wouldn't shy away from being blunt. And yet at the same time, it was all ultimately done, um, out of a spirit of love in wanting to reach these people in wanting to see them change.

And that's how I, that's how I deal that. I'm very close friends with a good number, a lot of very trad

Roman Catholics in my, in my area. Um, and we give each other crap for our views all the time.

And yet we're still friends because I can actually, I can actually engage them where they are, be a good friend, be a loving

Christian towards them. Um, and likewise, I don't know anywhere near as many Orthodox in real life, but online,

I'm friends with a good number of Orthodox. I'm good friends with Craig Trulia. We do collabs all the time. I'm making a documentary for him.

So we're, we're close friends. We, we, we do stuff together and I can, even though we have such, such fundamental disagreements where even we could get heated arguments and yet I can still maintain like,

Hey, he's a friend. Let's be respectful. And we want to avoid too, that when you talk about the orthosphere, it's a particular flavor of Orthodox that is not characteristic or essential to Orthodoxy itself.

There are kind, yeah, loving, and that's not the same thing. I know, I know ortho bros will say, well, you just, you know, like, you know, he's such a ninny.

There's nothing wrong with, listen, there is a clear difference between what we see in scripture and how many of the people within the orthosphere actually conduct themselves.

Stop trying to justify being a jerk, speak the truth in love, engage the arguments.

There's no need to call people, you know, retarded, idiot, stupid, right?

I mean, again, are those the, if it's, is, is there ever a context to use language like that? I suppose, but it's not really helping in terms of communicating what you want to communicate and not all

Orthodox do that. So I think one way that we can reach people with truth and love is not return the favor when people engage in that kind of thing.

And again, that is not, I wouldn't even say that's not even most Orthodox. That's just the, the interesting brand of Orthodoxy that we see in various places online.

So don't return the favor. You don't have to accept every debate or conversation if someone's acting that way.

And it's, it's actually getting in the way of clear communication, just back off, you know, don't, don't get sucked into it.

So, all right. Um, uh, the, I can't say that name. I, well, nevermind.

Just going to try to just read your question. Okay. Do you think that Augustine's letter 82 section seven is a good passage, a good passage to cite for the key basis upon which we received certain writings as canon?

I have not read that, so I can't tell you. Okay. All right. That's fine. Or maybe there's something I'm thinking of.

Maybe it is that, but I'm not, I'm not certain. So I couldn't tell you until I read it. I do, I do know, maybe, maybe it is in there, but I do know that Augustine talks about the canon being closed, um, which is basically an evisceration of like, cause

I know Dyer has claimed like, oh, the canon was closed in like the seven hundreds or whatever, uh, in his top 10 reasons, not be a

Protestant. Um, and yet we have church fathers who are citing things as scripture, giving canon lists, which presupposes that at least in their mind, there is a closed canon.

So that view is thoroughly unpatriotic. Um, that's what I'd say about that. Okay. All right.

Matt Schneider says, what do you guys think of Prosper of Aquitaine? He's an

Eastern Orthodox Saint, but he sounds like a confessional Lutheran, a pupil of St. Augustine. I was listening to Dr.

Cooper, his second part response to Dr. Layton Flowers on some of the semi -Pelagianism and Pelagianism and Cooper talked a lot about Prosper of Aquitaine and did argue that point.

I haven't read Prosper myself though, so I, I can't, I can't say anything about it. Okay. Um, Gotthard asks, what do you guys think of Jay's anti -Augustine stance, original sin?

The Orthodox seem to be split between those who love Augustine and those who consider him essentially a Saint in name only.

Yeah, that's a real, that is a really funny situation. I mean, look, any Orthos, whether it's Jay or whoever, who like to throw a lot of crap at Augustine, look, they're just clearly inconsistent with what their own church says, but maybe it's coming out of a genuine, a genuine tension, potentially even contradiction of holding someone who's a

Saint and yet who holds such blatantly wrong views like Augustine. That's why, for example,

Orthos will argue day in, day out that certain writings from Epiphanius, for example,

Epiphanius of Salamis, which seemed very clearly iconoclastic, they'll argue day and night that they're inauthentic because they just couldn't imagine one of their own

Saints being an iconoclast, a condemned heresy, even though in theory they could technically accept that, but it seems like they have such a fundamentalism of the

Saints that at least in their worldview, in an Orthobro worldview, it just can't be the case.

So I'd just say it's just a really weird stance. All right, thank you for that. That's the last one that I see.

I apologize if I miss any questions, and this is a good place to wrap it up as we are one hour and 28 minutes.

I think we covered a lot. Well, you covered a lot. Let me say we. I'm just nodding my head and be like, hey, that's a great point, and laughing at your

Jay Dyer impression, which I'm still impressed. That's really good. You know what I was going to say, where's your epistemic principle?

Where's your church? You don't have the church. Yeah, Eli, why are you calling yourself a priest up? You can't justify it. Yeah, give me an answer.

That's too good, bro. Yeah, you can't give an answer because he's a stupid Protestant, doesn't know what he's talking about, doesn't have the noose, doesn't have the front of him.

He doesn't have the noose. You don't have the noose.

Listen, I would love to see a debate between you and Jay Dyer, but you debate doing your impression of him.

That would be so confusing. That would be hilarious.

I have had the temptation, I was literally thinking today of potentially calling into, whether it's a

Catholic apologist, an orthopologist, whoever, calling into a live show and just being Jay. It's just so good.

That's hilarious. Oh my goodness. All right. Okay. Well, on that note, once again,

I'd like to encourage folks to go over to the other Paul's YouTube channel. If you like what he has to say and subscribe, he's got a lot more of that on his channel.

If you are looking to support Revealed Apologetics, if you like what we're doing in terms of our guests and the topics, and if you're into presuppositional apologetics, things like that, please consider signing up for the

Epic Online Calvinism Conference with myself, Dr. James White, Dr. Guillaume Bignon, Saiten Bruggenkade, and Scott Christensen.

That is January 21st from 1030 to 430 in the afternoon.

Okay. It is going to be an all day thing, truly an epic conference where you'll be able to interact with the speakers at the end during a

Q and A. It's going to be a lot of fun. I've done this already with the Epic Online Presupp Conference and it was excellent.

So highly recommend. It will be awesome, but it's also a good way to support Revealed Apologetics.

Head over to Revealed Apologetics .com, press the Presupp U dropdown button and RSVP your ticket.

So that's a really useful way to help me out as I'm trying to raise some money so that I could afford to do what

I do and put the time that I need to do the things that I do. So I just wanted to throw that out there.

Well, lastly, thank you so much, Paul, for not only your response and your answering questions, but also for those book suggestions.

I think one of the things that we want to really help people is not just give them this video resource, but also give them some homework or what can they do to kind of dive deeper.

So as you guys rewatch this video, check out those books. I'm sure they're available on Amazon or something, probably for an ungodly expensive price, but it doesn't hurt.