Is Sola Scriptura True? (Anthony Rogers vs. Trent Horn)

In this episode Trent shares his recent debate with Anthony Rogers on the issue of sola scriptura hosted by TGT.

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Marlon (Host of “The Gospel Truth”) (00:00:00):

Today’s debate is concerning Sola scriptura. The format is 20 minute openings, 15 minute rebuttals. We go cross examination. It’ll be a total of 30 minutes. Both parties will get 15 minutes each to ask questions with a 20 minute q and a, and then the closing will be a seven minute closing after the q and a. So that should prompt you guys to get your questions in early. All right? Make sure you get the index cards. You might want to grab ’em now so you can write your questions down while you’re listening to the debate and we’re going to have after the q and a seven minute closings. Good to go. Anthony, you’re up for your 20 minute opening.

Anthony Rogers (00:00:38):

Good evening. I want to begin by giving all praise and thanks to the Lord Jesus Christ who loved me and gave himself for me. I also want to thank Marlon for organizing this event, Trent, for engaging me on this topic and all of you for giving us your year this evening. The word of God is and always has been an existential threat to Satan’s kingdom and so also to any individual or group that seeks to seed itself in the place of God and bind the consciences of men with doctrines and duties that cannot be proven to come from God. Economic historian Jacob Rubin has written that there is a very strong connection between towns that adopted the reformation and those that had a printing press, which is just to say those towns that had a copy of the Bible as an heir of the reformation.

(00:01:39):

The position I’ll be defending in this debate is that found in the classic creeds and confessions of the Reformation summarized as follows, scripture as the word of the self-contained triune God is his self-authenticating, inspired, revelatory word, which is as such inert, sufficient and clear so that it may as by divine design it was intended to function as the ultimate or final norm and regulator of all Christian faith in practice. Well first then scripture is self-authenticating. Cardinal Stanislas, a member of the body that produced the decrees and anathema filled cannons of the Council of Trent, not Trent’s YouTube page. And so a representative of the spirit that animated that Counter Reformation counsel infamously said the scriptures have only as much force as the fables of esop if destitute of the authority of the Catholic church, Thomas Stapleton, a Catholic theologian and Controversialist, much loved by Pope Clement VIII who made him an honorary pate said one must not believe God as he speaks in his written word unless the authoritative judgment of the Pope stands in between.

(00:02:57):

Although Catholics have learned express this idea in less overtly scandalous ways, the same view is still heard from Catholics today. Carl Keating, the founder of Catholic Answers Trent’s organization, said the same church that authenticates the Bible that establishes inspiration is the authority set up by Christ to interpret his word. The upshot of such statements is that according to Rome and her apologists, in order for God’s word to be authenticated, he needs his papers stamped by popes and bishops. He needs their nihill, abad, and imp perimeter. Well, in stark contrast to this, we maintain that the triune God, the author of scripture is self-contained. He has all life and glory in and of himself and doesn’t stand in need of any creature as self-contained. God is self-referencing, which is to say he speaks with self-authenticating authority. When Moses asked God for his name, the Lord identified himself in terms of himself as his own reference point.

(00:03:56):

I am who I am. He didn’t look outside of himself to declare who he is or point Moses beyond his self testimony to some creature or body of men analogously. When God swears he swears by himself there being none greater by whom he could swear, God can’t deny himself and is the ultimate authority. He always speaks with ultimate authority, self-authenticating authority. Accordingly, when the prophet spoke from God, they prefaced and followed their utterances saying thus sayeth the Lord, the true God is his own notary. He stamps his own papers. Jesus and the apostles taught the same thing as the great I am incarnate. Jesus, the eternal word of the Father spoke with self attesting authority. Hundreds of times Jesus fronted or prefaced his words with his own solemn declaration, ratifying their truth. Amen. Amen. I say to you, because Jesus spoke with such unprecedented authority suspending the truth of all his declarations on the mere fact that he said them, the people reacted at every turn.

(00:05:01):

Never has any man spoke like this. Where did this man get this authority? Well, that’s a good bit better, although it still falls short of faith. Then the response of the religious leaders when Jesus said, for example, I am the light of the world, the Jewish leaders replied, you testify concerning yourself. Your testimony is not true. In other words, they were saying your word needs our approval. It is our magisterium that declares such matters. We authenticate what’s from God to this. Jesus replied, I am he who testifies about myself and my father who sent me also testifies about me. He went on to say to those who rejected his self-authenticating testimony and that of the Father by saying neither me nor my father, if you knew me, you would know my father. Also anyone then who does not hear this magisterium that of the Father and the son and devolve all their confidence upon their, but instead hearkens to the voice of another does not know the Father and the son in the same context, Jesus also said, he who is of God hears the words of God for this reason you do not hear them because you are not of God.

(00:06:12):

Later when speaking to Pilate, Jesus said, he who is of the truth hears my voice. This word then is self-authenticating and it imposes itself upon those who are of the truth. Second scripture is inspired and therefore inert and infallible. The uniform teaching of the prophets and the apostles is that God is the origin or source of holy scripture. Moses the fountain head of the prophetic tradition, the written law said that man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God a statement the Lord Jesus repeated When making an end of Satan’s temptations, it is written Satan man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God in the writings of the prophets who followed in the wake of Moses. We see the same thing in the kipi of their writings and so indicating how we’re to view their contents.

(00:07:05):

We frequently read expressions such as the word. The Lord came to Ezekiel, to Hosea, to Joel, to Jonah, to Micah, to Zephaniah. All such expressions indicate and underscore that scripture originates with God and is conveyed to his chosen instruments who then under his mighty hand superintendent by his spirit passed on us what they received from him. The apostle Peter expressed it this way, prophecy did not have its origin in the will of man, but holy men spoke from God as they were born along by the Holy Spirit. In the context he’s talking about written scripture, the Lord Jesus taught this same view of scripture When he said that, David spoke the words of Psalm one 10 in the spirit and when he quoted Psalm 82 as God’s word to the people of old which could therefore not be broken, the apostles were consciously aware that the same spirit of inspiration at work in the prophets was also at work in them according to the promise of Christ, such that what they put down in writing was his inspired word.

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In second Corinthians, Paul contrasts the words of merely human wisdom with those given through the apostles by the spirit. In the same context, he says that the spiritual man, the renewed man, a person born of the spirit receives the words given by the spirit later in the same epistle. And note this well, Paul said if anyone thinks he’s a prophet or spiritual, that is a spiritual man, let him acknowledge that the things I’m writing to you are the Lord’s commandment. That is his authoritative word. Paul goes on to say in the same section, very next sentence, if anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized speaking in harmony with Paul and in fact on behalf of the entire apostolic college, John wrote, we are from God. He who knows God listens to us. He who is not from God does not listen to us.

(00:08:57):

By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error because this word is from God who is truth itself. It is in the very nature of the case altogether true without any darkness or error. That’s why David could say the entirety, the sum of your word is truth because God’s word is truth and is full of glorious promises from God. Even the great promise to David concerning his greater son, David could say you have magnified your word above your name. That is God’s word surpasses all the other tokens or ways by which he has made himself known. In concert with this, Jesus said, sanctify them by your truth. Your word is truth. Paul told Timothy accurately handle the word of truth. The word being from God who is truth is therefore without lies, without errors. John said, no lies of the truth.

(00:09:45):

Well scripture’s the truth, therefore there is no lie in this word. Third scripture is materially sufficient. Although Catholics today are of two minds regarding whether or not scripture tells us everything we need to know regarding what we are to believe, how we’re to worship and live before God. With some saying it is sufficient, some saying it isn’t sufficient. Both parties saying this is what the magisterium teaches of Rome. We can be thankful that nevertheless scripture itself is not of two minds on this topic. According to scripture, there isn’t anything a Christian must believe requisite to salvation, nothing he must do in worshiping God a right nothing he must do in living before God. That is not taught in scripture either expressly or biological inference. David said the law of the Lord is perfect converting the soul. Speaking of this sufficiency, Micah also tells us he has shown you, oh man, what is good and what the Lord requires of you.

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He’s shown you. Micah says, in written scripture, Paul said to him, who is able to establish you according to my gospel, which he calls the mystery. He says, it is now manifested and by the scriptures of the prophet, according to the commandment of the eternal God, it has been made known to all the nations leading to the obedience of the faith. Paul saying the faith is already there in the Old Testament. How much more than also in the new, if the previous scriptures contained the sufficiency of the faith and so must we say the New Testament, all the more John said of the things recorded in his account, these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ and believing you may have life in his name. To Timothy Paul said From infancy, you’ve known the holy scriptures, the sacred writings which are able to make you wise unto salvation.

(00:11:25):

And Peter says, his divine power has given us everything pertaining to life and godliness, and he says this, divine power is given to believers through the true knowledge of him, a knowledge they have of him through the precious and magnificent promises, his ins, script rated promises, promises that Peter says he is reminding the church of in this very epistle so scripture is sufficient to convert the soul, to make one wise into salvation, to communicate the whole faith and for everything pertaining to life and godliness. Fourth scripture is formally sufficient, meaning it is sufficiently clear. James Gibbons once the bishop of Baltimore who eventually became a cardinal in the Roman church said, we must conclude that the scriptures alone cannot be a sufficient guide and rule of faith because they are not of themselves clear and intelligible even in the matters of the highest importance by what she means.

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Things like the doctrine of the trinity or that were saved by grace through faith in Christ apart from works, these things are not clear in scripture expressing the same sentiment. Catholics since the Reformation have said things like scripture is a mute book, a dead letter, a wax nose, an idol and inactive word. Again, I don’t think they would as openly say that today, but this is the underlying view of Rome. According to them, scripture doesn’t speak, it doesn’t explain itself. It is insufficient to communicate the words of life and salvation to the contrary. In scripture we have not only what God spoke but that in which he still speaks. God is still speaking in this word. This word is full of life, light and saving power through Moses. The Lord declared this word is not an idol word for you. Indeed it is your life through the prophet Jeremiah, the Lord said is not my word like fire declares the Lord and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces.

(00:13:16):

Jesus said The words I’ve spoken to you are spirit and they are life. Stephen, in Acts seven said that Moses received living oracles to pass on to you. How could it be otherwise? God’s word and the spirit who gave it the spirit who works by and with the word in the hearts of men brings about new life creates the saving graces of faith and repentance. Paul says, faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God and so on because this word is full of life, light and saving power, it is clear light is by very definition that which illuminates makes clear it comes to and gets through to God’s people, those born of the spirit. Moses said this word is not too difficult for you nor out of reach. That is it’s clear and accessible and Jeremiah 42, the prophet said the word of warning which he delivered to the people from God was clear.

(00:14:05):

The prophet Ezekiel is told to be a watchman on the wall and warned people otherwise their blood would be on his head as he spoke to speak garbled words in havoc. Two, the prophet is told, record the vision, put it on tablets and make it clear so that the one who reads it may run. You can read it while running and understand it. The whole reason for God giving his word through the prophets was to communicate to his people, which means he communicated he wanted to be heard, he wanted to be understood the Lord Jesus and the apostles also taught the clarity of the word of God, which doesn’t mean of course that blind men can’t fail to see the light and its receive its illumination. In John 10, the religious leader said to Jesus, if you’re the Christ, tell us clearly this is the question of our debate.

(00:14:47):

Is Jesus clear to this? Jesus didn’t reply. You don’t understand word. It’s unclear and that’s because there’s no Pope standing in between us. Rather in response to their statement, Jesus said, I did tell you and you didn’t believe. He went on to say, you don’t believe because you’re not my sheep, not because my word’s unclear. If a blind man doesn’t see the light, there’s nothing wrong with the light. It’s something wrong with his eyes. The same. Jesus repeatedly upgraded the religious leaders for their failure to believe the truth. Rhetorically asking, have you never read the implication? The upshot is if you’ve read it then you’d understand it. The fact that you don’t understand it means either you haven’t read or you are blind. Certainly there are parts of scripture that are harder to understand than others, but on the whole scripture is clear and the occasional hard things can be understood by comparing scripture with scripture.

(00:15:38):

Fifth, scripture is the ultimate norm in regulator because scripture is the inspired the self-authenticating in errant sufficient and clear word of God. It can and by divine design was given to function as the ultimate norm and regulator of all Christian faith and practice. Everything is to be held to the standard of this word. All preaching and teaching must be according to and come from the scriptures. Now to be sure when God raised up the prophets and the apostles, he first put his words in their mouths and directed them to preach orally to the people and people were to harken to what they heard immediately from them or those proximate to them, but scripture is clear how the word was to be preserved for and conveyed to distant generations. The Lord said to Moses, write this in the book as a memorial. That is so that it might serve as a record, a reminder to future generations.

(00:16:31):

The Lord reiterates the point several times over to Moses saying in another place, take this book of the law and place it beside the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God. Sow that it may remain there as a witness against you. The prophets after Moses are told the same thing to Isaiah, the Lord said go write it on a tablet before them and inscribe it on a scroll so that it may serve in the time to come as a witness forever. Likewise, David in the Psalm said, this will be written for the generations to come so that a people yet to be created may praise the Lord. This is why Jesus up upgraded the religious leaders for while they should have clung to the written word alone, they claim to be in possession of traditions, oral teachings from God through Moses that were not written down and Jesus said thereby they had nullified the word of God for the sake of their traditions.

(00:17:20):

The apostles followed suit. Paul said to the Romans that what was written the four time was written for our instruction what was written about Abraham. He says the same thing to the Corinthians After quoting the law, he says, for our sake it was written referring to what happened to the Exodus generation Paul. Paul said these things happen to them as an example and were written for our instruction in Acts, Peter said that Moses received living oracles to pass on to you. It was this word long after was originally given the written word that served as the sole norm. Accordingly, when the apostles preached and taught, they always did so from the scriptures. They did not pass on anything that could not be demonstrated from the scriptures. Acts eight, Philip opened his mouth in beginning from this scripture, he preached Jesus to him elsewhere. In Acts it says, according to Paul’s custom, he went to them and for three Sabbath reasoned with them from the scriptures.

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This is what Paul’s doing orally not saying anything but what’s already in the scriptures the same. Speaking of Apollo, a mighty man in the scriptures, it says he powerfully refuted the Jews in public demonstrating from the scriptures that Jesus was the Christ. Yes, the apostles and early Christian evangelists and deacons preached and taught orally just like the prophets, but they always did so from the scriptures, neither speaking contrary to them nor going beyond them. Toward the end of the book of Acts, after decades of preaching orally, Paul said to King Agrippa, having obtained help from God, I stand to this day testifying to small and great stating nothing but what Moses and the prophets said was going to take place. Recognizing and operating on this principle, the Jews in Berea contrary to those in Thessalonika who rejected Paul and what he preached to them from the scriptures.

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It says these were more noble minded than those in Thessalonika, for they received the word with great eagerness examining the scriptures to see whether these things were so. This is God’s modus operandi, his established pattern of communicating his truth to future generations and just like in God’s prior dealings with his people, the Lord always consistent with himself moved the apostles to write by his spirit what they preached from the scriptures so that it together with the old could function in perpetuity as the reminder, the objective standard by which all things were to be measured. In Peter’s final epistle, he tells the recipients that he is writing in light of his impending death, employing all diligence for that reason so that at any time after my departure, you will be able to call these things to mind. How is the word of the apostles to function? How in the future are we to have access to this word and know it? It’s by the written

Marlon (Host of “The Gospel Truth”) (00:20:06):

Scripture. One minute.

Anthony Rogers (00:20:07):

This was God’s pattern in the Old Testament through Moses, through Isaiah, through Jeremiah. It is a consistent pattern in unbroken pattern. There’s no indication that this changed or turned around. The apostles preached and then they committed it to writing and they call the church to imitate their examples. They call the church to say nothing but what is found in the scriptures. Everything is to be according to the scriptures. From the scriptures. Nothing can be contrary to it or beyond it. This word is sufficient. This word is clear, this word is er. This word gives life. No other word is like this word and this is why the world throughout human history has always been opposed. This word in countless different ways, countless different groups, kings and princes and others have always attacked this word because as soon as you could get people off of this word, then you can make them submit to all sorts of things. This is the program of cults. This is the program of every group that has another agenda than God’s agenda. I’ll conclude with that.

Marlon (Host of “The Gospel Truth”) (00:21:17):

Alright, thank you for that. Now we have a 20 minute open the statement from tr Horn.

Trent Horn (00:21:21):

Thank you guys so much. Thank you Marlon for hosting me. Anthony, thank you for participating. Thank you guys for being really welcoming to me. I’ve met, I think the majority of people here are Protestant, but I think a lot of Protestants came up to me today and said I was their favorite Catholic apologist. So don’t tell my colleagues Joe Hess Meyer and Jimmy Aiken. We’ll keep that, we’ll keep that between us. So I think you could tell in Anthony’s opening statement, he certainly is a pastor, I’m not a pastor, so he gave a wonderful sermon with lots and lots of Bible verses, but kind of an unclear argument as to how they prove all of the elements of solo scriptura. So I want to break that down and show that there are no good reasons to believe this doctrine is true and many reasons to believe that it’s false and I’m really grateful by the way that Anthony is defending what the Westminster confession of faith says about scripture.

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So here’s what it says. This is his position, the whole council of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory. Man, salvation faith in life is either expressly set down in scripture or by good necessary consequence may be deduced from scripture unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the spirit or traditions of men. This is called the sufficiency of scripture. By the way, the line or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from scripture was omitted from the London Baptist 1689 confession if you had Baptist here, it was changed to or necessarily contained in holy scripture to avoid logical entailments like infant baptism which Presbyterians believe in. Of course, all this begs the question, whose definition of solas scriptura is correct because the Bible certainly doesn’t say which or provide any definition of its own because the Bible doesn’t teach soul of scriptura.

(00:23:00):

Indeed, if God wants us to know. So of scriptura is true means according to an’s position the Bible needs to teach that soul of scriptura is true and if it doesn’t, his position is false. Next Westminster says those things which are necessary to be known, believed and observed for salvation or so clearly propounded and opened in someplace of scripture or other that not only the learned but the unlearned in a due use of the ordinary means may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them. This is also known as the perspicuity of scripture which says what we must believe for salvation is deduced from scripture. Now I agree there are some essential doctrines like that Jesus is the Messiah or that salvation comes through Christ that are very clear in scripture, but consider these other questions. If I gravely sin, do I need to restore my saving relationship with God or can salvation never be lost?

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Which actions are gravely, sinful and which are not? Is baptism the ordinary means of salvation for infants? Is a Catholic church a Christian denomination or does it preach a false unsavable gospel? For many people salvation, they need to know how to answer these questions, but there’s widespread disagreement on these questions among Protestants. Think about the important theological questions that were debated here this weekend at this conference. Do those who disagreed with each other here on stage was one correct and the other is just spiritually blind and can’t see what the scripture clearly says, or were they people of goodwill who disagree about a document that’s not entirely clear on those issues? I think the latter is the more charitable interpretation of all the great guests who joined us at this conference. So going on, Westminster says, the infallible rule of interpretation is the scripture itself.

(00:24:41):

The only infallible rule of faith are the scriptures. That’s the claim. But that can’t be true in the history of the Christian faith because in the first century, the Council of Jerusalem was an infallible rule of faith that decreed for Christians and its decrees were infallibly binding long before they were recorded. In the 15th chapter of the acts of the apostles in the Old Testament, a prophet’s unwritten proclamations were infallible rules of faith. And in the New Testament the preaching of the apostles was an infallible rule of faith. That’s why Paul said in first Estonians two 13, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is the word of God. Paul reaffirms this in his second letter to the Thessalonians Stand firm hold to the traditions which you were taught by us either by word of mouth or by letter.

(00:25:34):

In fact, the Bible never uses the term word of God to refer to a written human document. It is always used to refer to an orally proclaimed message about God from a prophet, an apostle or from God himself. And I think that was the biggest problem in Anthony’s opening statement is he quoted scripture a lot about the word of God and I agree the word of God is our highest authority. We don’t disagree about that or we disagree, is that he thinks the word of God is only contained in the written word and the Bible is very clear. The word of God exists in the unwritten word and we have to logically deduce it’s in the written word. The Protestant apologist, James White who’s also here with us at the conference yesterday, he says, Protestants do not assert that sola scriptura is a valid concept during times of revelation.

(00:26:21):

How could it be since the rule of faith to which it points was at that very time coming into being? But the Westminster confession of faith says that when it comes to scripture unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the spirit or traditions of men. So that means sola scriptura could not have been true in the Testament because then prophets could never have added to God’s revelation. So scripture could not have been true during the time of the New Testament authors because then the apostles could have never added to scripture. If they did, then there could have been no new teachings. So to prove so scripture is true, Anthony has to cite a scripture passage which teaches that at some point in the future from the biblical author’s perspective, all doctrine would be confined to the written word alone and no new public revelation would be given because at the time the biblical authors are writing, there was public revelation and it was not confined to the written word alone.

(00:27:20):

But there is no scripture passage which says this. So soul s scriptura is false. Alright, lemme break down my case against soul s scriptura into three arguments. Here’s the first one. This is the problem of defining scripture. First, the proposition, the 66 books in the Protestant Bible are the soul infallible rule of faith for the church. That itself is an infallible rule of faith. This proposition is not in scripture, therefore an infallible rule of faith exists outside of scripture. Therefore, sola s scriptura is false. Now, Anthony agrees with premise one that the proposition about the 66 books of the Bible is an infallible rule. It’s not just true, it’s infallible be true. It can’t possibly be false, but this proposition is not in scripture. So how do we know that it’s true? Anthony might say, well, scripture self authenticates that it’s scripture and the church isn’t needed, but he hasn’t given evidence for that and how could it be self-authenticating?

(00:28:11):

In the early church, all the church fathers agreed that God existed because God is self-evident He self authenticates his existence. You could say. But the early church fathers did not agree on what books belonged in the New Testament. They had serious doubts about Second Peter, James second and third John and Revelation. Revelation is not even in the canon list of Gregory of Naus or serial of Jerusalem so much for being self-authenticating. So where did Anthony get this infallible proposition about divine revelation? Look, if he’s honest, he’ll admit the reason he believes in the 27 books in the New Testament. The reason I think many people here believe that is because he and you and I trust Christians who came before us who said these books were scripture and those Christians trusted Christians before them, et cetera, et cetera, which shows infallible rules of faith can be transmitted in unwritten means apart from written means, and that in itself disproves soul of scriptura, which says the only infallible rule of faith is the written word of scripture.

(00:29:11):

Alright, so we’ll probably cover the canon a little bit later. I’d love to hear Anthony’s explanation of how he knows this infallible rule of faith outside of scripture is true. Here’s my second argument, the absence of Sola s scriptura in scripture. Alright, in order for Anthony’s position to be correct, not only does scripture have to tell us what scripture is for solas scriptura to be true, you have to know what the scriptura is. Scripture has to tell us as the Westminster confession says that the whole council of God is found in human writings in a way that even the unlearned can understand its essential elements. But there is absolutely no scripture verse that says this. Instead, two Peter three 16 says, there are things in Paul’s letters that are difficult to understand which the unlearned and unstable misunderstand. It does not say that they maliciously distort scripture.

(00:30:04):

It says Scripture in Paul’s letters is so difficult to understand. The unlearned misunderstand its essential teachings, not just a tangential point because it says in two Peter three 16 they do this to their own destruction. Now, none of the scripture verses Anthony cited in his opening statement came anywhere close to establishing Westminster’s definition of a self-authenticating only infallible rule. That’s all sufficient, formally sufficient and perspicuous in matters of essential doctrine. None of them came close. And I would encourage you do not judge a debate on who cited scripture more than the other person when studying the Bible. It is not about the quantity of verses, it’s the quality of verses and more importantly of the argument that uses them, one must pay attention to and I’ll respond to more of those that he put forward in his opening in my rebuttal. But right now I’m just going to give a general reply to some commonly cited verses in defense of solas scriptura.

(00:30:59):

So Jesus appealing to scripture to show Satan or the Pharisees that they were an error that doesn’t prove so of scriptura. I appeal to scripture all the time to debate heretics, but that doesn’t mean that I believe in solas scriptura. So likewise, when Jesus told the Pharisees that their tradition about donating money to the temple was a tradition of men, that doesn’t prove soul of scriptura because Mark seven in Matthew 15 never mentioned the word scripture. Jesus says the Pharisees contradicted the word of God and what was the word of God? It was the orally proclaimed words that God spoke to Moses in Exodus 20. That’s why the textual variance of Matthew 15, six say You have made void the law of God or the commandment of God rather than the word of God. Because I said in scripture the phrase word of God is never used to refer to a written document.

(00:31:51):

A written document might record what God or Moses spoke the word of God proceeding from their mouths. But it does not say this scroll or this writing is the word of God. Now, Luke’s saying the berean searched the scriptures daily to confirm Paul’s message that doesn’t prove souls script Torah either. Luke says the berean were noble because they didn’t riot against Paul like the Thessalonians, not because they only believed what was in scripture alone, they were noble because they searched the scriptures daily. They loved the scriptures and they were open to hearing from God’s apostle, but they still had to trust Paul’s new message as the word of God that they received. And we see in one Thessalonians two 13, Paul commends them for receiving his spoken words as the word of God, which shows the word of God is not confined only to the scriptures.

(00:32:37):

And so Sola scriptura is other verses that are cited. St. Paul telling the Corinthians, Anthony obliquely referenced this verse telling the Corinthians to not go beyond what is written in First Corinthians four six. Don’t go beyond what is written. That is an incredibly vague verse. If you took it literally, if the Corinthians took first Corinthians four, six, literally don’t go beyond what is written. Well, they’d have to throw away second Corinthians because you can’t go beyond what has been written to them. Once again, the problem of soul scriptura not being true during apostolic times. And in my third argument you’ll see how that becomes a problem for Anthony’s position and scholars aren’t even sure what that verse means. It prior refers to Paul’s saying that the Corinthians should imitate him in the same way that children trace letters in order to imitate that which they are learning.

(00:33:23):

And Paul calls himself a father to the Corinthians, so that would make use of his analogy very well. Finally, we have two Timothy three 16 is a very common one to cite scripture. The claim that all scripture is inspired. Yeah, it does use the word theto. Scripture is inspired, but as the Baptist scholar Lee Martin McDonald writes, there is no evidence that the early church confined inspiration to an already past apostolic age or even to a collection of sacred writings in the early church. The writings of church fathers ecumenical councils, even epitaphs were called thetas. So they were called that. But that doesn’t mean that word then entails something as an infallible rule of faith. That’s an assumption that’s being made later, not what the authors are speaking at that time. Moreover, two Timothy three 16 that we often render all scripture is inspired. There’s a genuine translation issue here in SFAs.

(00:34:17):

It can be translated. Every scripture is inspired. Now if that means every scripture gives spiritual life, so it is helpful, as Paul says the Greek word Alamos, it’s helpful. I agree all S is helpful in giving believers spiritual life and teaching them what God wants them to know, but it does not follow them that scripture, every scripture is inspired and that every scripture is an infallible, completely sufficient rule of faith. That can’t be true of every scripture. If it were, that means that all you need was the letter of Philamon or the epistle to the Hebrews. We certainly don’t need that. We need everything that God has revealed in his word, but we must not operate with the assumption that the word of God is restricted to the written word alone. Because in the time of the prophets and the time of the apostles, the word of God was both unwritten and written and it’s Anthony’s burden tonight to prove it was eventually restricted to the written word alone.

(00:35:13):

He can’t just assume that. So he needs to prove it. And that gets me to my third argument. The early Christians did not believe in sola scriptura. So scripture had to become if it was not true, as James White says, if sola script Torah was not true during the time the New Testament was being written, it had to become true or normative at a later time. But where is the evidence that here is my argument, if sola scriptura were true, it would be binding upon God’s people. Sola scriptura was never binding upon God’s people. Therefore sola scriptura is false. So how could we know? Anthony needs to prove that an unwritten and written word of God would eventually be consolidated only to the written word of God. So we’d have to look backwards or forwards. We could look in the New Testament. Maybe the apostles or Jesus said this would happen in the future.

(00:36:05):

They don’t say that. In fact, Jesus far from teaching soul a scriptura during his earthly ministry, Jesus never told anyone to write. Jesus never told anyone to write anything down at all in his earthly ministry. Think about that for a minute. The apostles never say in their writings that scripture would become the only infallible rule of faith and that the whole council of God would be found there. Instead, as Paul says in one Timothy three 15, the Church of the Living God is the pillar and foundation of truth. So nothing pointing forwards. Well, maybe the early Christians can say, we received this from the apostles and we live by the written word of God alone. They look backwards. We don’t find that either. Ignatius of Antioch in 81 0 7 never cites the New Testament as scripture, but he tells his audience to follow the bishop as Jesus Christ follows.

(00:36:50):

The Father Clement of Roman, the first century did not call the New Testament scripture or the word of God, but he said in the first century, the apostles chose successors to carry on their work. In fact, the apostles Creed, one of the earliest creeds in the church’s history, mentions the Holy Catholic church but not scripture. According to then renowned Lutheran scholar, Yass of pelican in the anti Nic church, pre Nic church. There was no notion of solo scriptura. Let’s see here. Alright, so we have no evidence then that solo scriptura began during this early period. Do we have no evidence of the first century? No church fathers in the second century? I would love to hear Anthony, maybe in his rebuttal period he could say, oh, well here’s some church fathers who said it happened in the second century. Maybe he’ll cite IUs saying, we’ve learned from none others the plan of our salvation than those through whom the gospels come down to us.

(00:37:45):

Right? We’ve learned from none other than the apostles. But IUs is very clear that God’s revelation is not confined to the written word alone. Because in the next chapter after that verse, IUs says to heretics, we refer them to that tradition which originates from the apostles, which is preserved by means of the succession of presbyters in the churches. IUs condemned heretics saying they believe in neither scripture or tradition. In fact, that’s why IUs says in the second century, how should it be if the apostles themselves had not left us writings? Would it not be necessary to follow the course of the tradition which they handed down? So if so, s scriptura did not start in the second century, which we know is the case because no early Christian this period lived under a rule like sola scriptura. Then sola scriptura never started at all, and so it’s not a doctrine that comes from God.

(00:38:33):

It’s a doctrine that comes from a manmade tradition. Now, Anthony might cite later church fathers St. Augustine aac, where they talk about scripture being sufficient and they praise scripture. I do believe I do not. I will not mention bad or dumb things Protestants have said in the past, even though Anthony has chosen to mention bad or dumb things that Catholics have said in the past, I believe as scripture it is the word of God. It is the lamp unto my life. I love the word of God. When I converted and became Christian in high school, I read Acts testimony about Saul’s conversion over and over and over again, but I was also like the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts eight, that Philip comes up to him and he says, I don’t understand what I’m reading. Well, how can I understand it unless someone shows me? Alright, so moving all this, oh, and if he does cite Augustine and Athanasius, I think that would be very humorous by the way to say, oh, these men in the early church followed Sola scriptura.

(00:39:28):

Did they say Augustine who said that after death believers undergo penne purgatory. That’s where we get the word purgatory from Augustine who said he would never attribute sins to the blessed Virgin Mary who believed Augustine himself, who said I would not. Anthony made a big deal about Catholics saying they won’t believe in the Bible without the church. Well, Augustine said, I would not believe in the gospels if I was not first moved by the authority of the Catholic church. Alright, so to pull everything together, Protestant apologists love to pepper Catholics with questions like, where’s the Pope in the Bible? Where’s the mass in the Bible? Read my book case for Catholicism to find out, but they demand Catholics prove all their doctrines according to a manmade tradition of Sola scriptura. Fine. Well, I demand that Anthony prove his doctrine by his own standard. So here are my questions.

(00:40:17):

Where does the Bible say a 66 book? Collection of writings are an infallible rule of faith. Where does it say anonymous writings like Hebrews or something like Mark, which is not written by an apostle or cited by the apostles is inspired scripture. Where does the Bible say everything God wants us to believe is found in scripture? Where does the Bible say all public revelation would cease at some point in the future? That’s a fun debate with your cessationist friends or continuation. We might have a little bit of a disagreement right here in a theological rumble later over that where does the Bible say all divine revelation? Would one day be confined to the written word and where did the early Christians in the first 300 years of church history say, divine revelation once existed in the unwritten form and written forms, but now it’s contained in the scriptures alone to be the only infallible rule of faith. I think you’ll see that Anthony’s inability to answer these questions will show that sola scriptura is false. So thank you very much.

Marlon (Host of “The Gospel Truth”) (00:41:22):

Now we have rebuttal rounds. Anthony, you’re up for your 15 minute rebuttal.

Anthony Rogers (00:41:26):

Thank you, Trent. Well, I want to roundly agree with one thing that Trent said just a moment ago. Trent said, quote, Catholics have said some pretty dumb things. That’s true. Notably though, the person that I quoted was Cardinal Stanis lass, an attendee of the Council of Trent, that council that anathema Protestants for believing that scripture is God’s self-sufficient word that is sufficient to communicate to us life and salvation. Trent has said even in this debate, scripture is not self-authenticating. He’s echoing Stanislaus hos though he doesn’t put it as colorfully as hosts did. Remember that’s the guy who said that scripture is as authoritative, less or without authority as Aesop’s fables without the Catholic church. That’s one of the members of the Council of Trent that gave them their doctrine of scripture. Yes, Catholics have said some pretty dumb things. Catholic bishops who gave them their theology, he said, scripture’s not self-authenticating.

(00:42:34):

He said, Anthony didn’t give any evidence for this. Well, that’s one fine way to try and refute somebody. Just pretend they didn’t give you an argument. I repeatedly gave you arguments. The God of scripture is self-contained. He speaks with self attesting authority. When God spoke to Moses, Moses didn’t say, how do I know this is your word? Where’s the Pope to tell me? He didn’t say, oh God, I can’t possibly know this unless I have the popes. In perimeter, Moses heard the voice of God. If your mother calls you on the phone, do you have to farm out to the question to somebody else? How do I know that’s my mother on the phone? This is the God of the universe. You don’t think he can speak to his creatures in such a way that his word gets through to them and the fact of the matter is if the word does not get through, there’s not any problem in that word.

(00:43:23):

There’s a problem in the individual. Of course, a blind man can’t see it. Am I supposed to put out my own eyes because a blind man can’t see it? He can’t hear this word. Am I supposed to stab my ears because somebody else can’t hear it? I hear the voice of my savior in these words. I don’t need a pope to tell me, especially when that Pope is going to tell me that scripture says something different. That’s the whole goal here. Yes, scripture is self-authenticating. It’s light. Your word is light, a lamp to my feet, a light to my path. Paul says explicitly in Ephesians five, light manifests itself. Well, if light manifests itself and God’s word is light, then it manifests itself. Don’t tell me. I didn’t prove that from scripture. Jesus said to Pilate, he said, those who are of the truth hear my voice.

(00:44:12):

They hear my voice. His word is self-authenticating, and John eight, I pointed out that Jesus said, this is my testimony. They say, oh, it’s not true. It’s not true. It’s not self-authenticating. Jesus said, well then you don’t belong to us. You don’t know the Father. You don’t know me. This is the true magisterium you must listen to. Don’t sell your soul and your brain to somebody else. He says that scripture doesn’t teach. It seems to me, I might’ve misunderstood this. Maybe I’m thinking of a past debate, but it seemed to me like he was suggesting that scripture doesn’t teach its own inspiration and inerrancy the statements about Second Timothy three, which I didn’t bring up, I don’t think He mentioned that it’s life giving instead of saying inspired, but by the way, the Latin Vulgate says, inspired and according to the Council of Trent. That’s the authentic version.

(00:45:03):

That’s to be used in public disputations. This is a public disputation, so it is inspired, but that isn’t the verse I appeal to. There are numerous texts that say these words are from God. That’s what it means to be inspired. They proceed from God. God gave this word and we are to therefore listen to it, harken to it. Why would anybody want to do otherwise? There’s no win here. There’s no win going to somebody else and listening to what they say when you have the words of the living God. He says, scripture’s not materially sufficient. Anthony can’t just assert this in these sorts of things by lens. What was I doing up here? All of this is just ignoring what I said. Perhaps it was so that he didn’t have to give an answer so that I don’t get another chance to respond to him.

(00:45:45):

He gets another rebuttal after this. I don’t get an opportunity to respond to that, but let me remind you so that if he repeats this again, you know it’s not true. Scripture’s not materially sufficient. How many passages did I cite to show this? John tells us that he wrote so that we may believe that Jesus is the Christ in believing you have life in his name. You can have life in his name because of the word that John gave us, and if that word sufficient how much more the rest of scripture. Of course, scripture sufficient. It’s sufficient at every stage at which God gives it. When God gave the law to Moses, it was sufficient for the people of God. Sure, there was going to be additional revelation, additional revelation that would be in Scriptured, but at every stage it was sufficient. Moses said, this word is your life.

(00:46:29):

It’s not an idol word. You’re to live by this word. He was told to write it down so that people would know it. This word is sufficient to give you life. Don’t hear somebody telling you otherwise. Don’t hear somebody else saying, has God said, this is what got us into this whole mess. Scripture is materially sufficient. Peter tells us that in it we have all that we need for life and godliness. Micah says he’s shown you, oh man, what you must do. You don’t know what to do. You don’t know how to live before God. He has shown you, he has shown you. You have it in the scriptures, Paul told Timothy, you have known from infancy the sacred writings which are able to make you wise for salvation wise, for is that not sufficient at least for life, salvation, so everything for life in godliness for conversion, scripture converts the soul.

(00:47:23):

Yes, I indeed prove the material sufficiency of scripture. As for formal sufficiency, Trent said a number of about how people disagree over the word of God. Nothing about the claim that scripture is objectively clear is undermined by the fact that some people do not acknowledge what it says for one reason or another, scripture’s full of explanations for this. There are all kinds of reasons why people come to different conclusions, but I’ll give you the major overarching theoretical reason. The principle reason why people come to different interpretations. It’s because people aren’t really going by sola scriptura. Look at the sex and the cults that litter the landscapes, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Mormons, the Christadelphians, the other Unitarians that were here, they all harken to the voice of others. They all listen to other voices telling them what this word says. My favorite judge on television always says, am I supposed to believe you or my lying eyes when she’s looking at the objective evidence and somebody’s telling her otherwise?

(00:48:23):

That’s the question. Are we supposed to believe somebody else when they say Jesus is not God? The Trinity’s not true? Are we supposed to believe what God says in his word? Yeah. When Roman Catholics say the scripture’s not formally sufficient, he brought up issues like the question of the subjects of baptism, infants or adults only and so forth, but he didn’t really tell you the real things that they start objecting to. They will tell you that the trinity is not clear In scripture, I have a litany of quotes from Catholic scholars including Catholic answers, people who have said the Trinity is not clear in scripture. The true God is not clearly revealed as triune in scripture. I’ll debate somebody any day of the week on that. I have. In fact, of course, these things are taught in scripture. There are all kinds of reasons why people fail to believe what scripture says, and sometimes it can be true even of people who are Christians, good faith that we have to grow and there’s all kinds of stuff that has to happen.

(00:49:21):

Well, he said that scripture is not the norm and regulator of faith in practice and so forth because after all different things were being taught orally and then things were coming along later. I already anticipated this in my opening statement. That’s why I hope you carry this forward when you’re listening to his rebuttal, I pointed out that God’s modus operandi in scripture is to put forth his word, put it into the mouths of his prophets who preached it and then command them to commit it to writing. Trent, by the way, says Jesus never commanded his apostles to write, go read the book of Revelation, write. How many times does it appear there? Yes. Jesus commanded his apostles to write, and by the way, do you think that there are a bunch of rogue individuals? They’re the apostles of Christ where they out there? I got this fancy idea that I’m going to put these things down in writing.

(00:50:09):

Hopefully the Lord will be pleased with this. Is that the kind of apostles that Jesus raised up and sent? Of course they wrote scripture. Then they certainly must have done so at the impulse of God’s spirit and that’s exactly what scripture says. The apostles say this, they spoke by the spirit. Paul says, what writing to you is the Lord’s commandment? So is Paul violating no command of Christ or something like that when he writes the Lord’s commandment, these are absurdities. I think he points out that the apostles talk about oral tradition. I already anticipated that. There’s no question, but the apostles first of all always preached from the scriptures. I quoted Acts eight, acts 17, acts 26. Trent said that for example, I mean some of these things just honestly astound me. He said in Acts 17, what Paul’s commending them for is not because they’re going by scripture alone, but because they didn’t riot.

(00:51:00):

Where does it say that in the text? It doesn’t say that anywhere in the text. Here’s what the text says. These were more noble minded than those in theca for they received the word with great eagerness examining the scriptures daily to see whether these things were so That’s what the text says, but guess what happened? You heard somebody add something to the text. I don’t know if that’s from the magisterium or not, but that’s what happens when you don’t go by scriptural alone, and by the way, even Christians who are committed to the principle of scriptural alone can do that inadvertently. That’s another reason why people can come up with some different interpretations. Well, he said my argument was unclear. Well, the only thing that was unclear is apparently what Trent heard from me. I made very clear what I believe. Scripture is the self-authenticating word of God.

(00:51:47):

It is inspired in errant, sufficient materially and formally, and it is the sole Norman regulator of Christian faith and practice. He points out, well, there’s somebody else that has a different definition. Okay, debate that person. I’m debating today and I’ve given arguments and I want something better than simply. Oh, he didn’t say this. He didn’t say that one. I did say it. He says, the word of God is never used to refer to scripture. I find this astounding too. He says that Jesus in Matthew 15, when he undermines the Pharisees, the religious leaders appeal to their traditions. He says, Jesus isn’t quoting scripture. Here is the word of God. He says, there’s even a textual variant here. First of all, the textual variant is not preferred by scholars. That’s just sort of a red herring. But secondly, I mean he says he’s quoting the oral law that was given by God, the 10 Commandments.

(00:52:37):

I don’t think he read the text very well. Here’s what it says in verse four. God said, honor your father and mother. That’s the 10 commandments, and he who speaks evil of father or mother is to be put to death. That wasn’t put on the tablets. That is part of written scripture alone. That’s how it’s come down to us, and it is this, that Jesus calls the word of God. You say, whoever says to his father or mother, whatever I have that would be help has been given by God. He’s not to honor father and mother. By this, you invalidate the word of God for the sake of your tradition. Yes, it does refer to written scripture. The same thing is true in John 10. Jesus said, it’s written in your law. I said, you are Gods if he called them Gods to whom the word of God came, do you say of him whom the father sanctified and said, unto the world, I’m blaspheming.

(00:53:25):

He calls the scriptures the word of God right there explicitly. This is found all over the place. You could only possibly miss it if you’ve got the Pope’s glasses on. If the Pope is interposing himself between you and your God. Don’t let somebody do this. The living God deserves to be heard. He’s the only one, the ultimate one that deserves to be heard. Listen to him. There’s no statement. Listen to somebody else. In the ultimate sense, he says a number of things as well, questions. I’m happy to address these things in cross-examination. That’s the proper place to deal with them. He asked questions about the canon of scripture, the alleged absence of Sola s Scriptura in scripture. This just begs the question, by the way, his three arguments. He says, you need to define scripture. We could deal with that in the cross examination. How do we know the 66 books?

(00:54:16):

Happy to do it. In fact, I wanted to debate his colleague before this Johs Meyer on the cannon. Something happened with that debate. I’ll leave it at that, but he says there’s an absence of Solas scriptura in scripture. Only if you ignore all the arguments I gave. He said the early Christians did not believe in Solas scriptura. Well, let’s assume for a second that it’s the case. What does Paul say in scripture? He says, let God be true. Even if it makes every man a liar. That’s the proper response of a Christian. Now, I’m not conceding that the early fathers lock stock and barrel held to some other authority outside of scripture that was equal to or superior than it, but nevertheless, it’s simply a fact. If Sola scriptura is true, then it’s true because of the standard of scripture, not because of some other standard.

(00:55:08):

I just begs the question against Sola scriptura, but I happen to believe the early fathers did believe in sola scriptura. We could talk about that. He said, in fact, I’ll mention one. He mentioned EU says, if the apostles had not left us anything in writing, wouldn’t it be necessary to go to the churches, the apostolic churches? Notice? I mean he’s saying go to the apostolic churches for the truth. First of all, I think the churches were preaching the truth. I don’t have any problem with that, but notice what RNA says. It’s conditional. What would we have to do if it had been the case that God had not left us writings if it had been the case? Good news, folks. It is not the case. God has spoken. God has given us his word. God’s word is self-authenticating. God’s word is inspired. God’s word is an errand.

(00:55:59):

God’s word is sufficient for life and godliness believe this word. Don’t let anybody get you off of this word. Again, as I said, that’s what got the whole human race into this predicament. There would be no Pope or controversy even between Protestants and Catholics. If somebody had not said at one point has God said, and if that person was not insinuating that you can’t believe truth and falsehood unless it’s verified by me, the true in living God speaks to his creatures. He speaks clearly. He is to be hearkened to and obeyed. And remember what Jesus said in talking about the self-authenticating nature of scripture. He who is of the truth. Here’s my voice. If somebody doesn’t hear that voice, they’re not of the truth.

Marlon (Host of “The Gospel Truth”) (00:56:51):

Thank you for that. We now have 15 minute rebuttal from Trent Horn.

Trent Horn (00:56:57):

Well, this is fun, isn’t it? All right, let’s address, Anthony brought up a lot of points and I will do my best to address all of them. Notice a consistent pattern in his presentation that he will attribute to me a position that I denigrate the word of God or I don’t trust the word of God. We are not debating the trustworthiness of the word of God. We are debating whether the word of God is confined to the written word alone, even appealing back to Genesis, the Book of Genesis has God said, and we don’t trust God. What does that have to do with soul scriptura? It’s not like God wrote that down on a piece of paper for Adam and Eve to read. He spoke it to them because the spoken word of God, the unwritten word of God has the same binding power as the written word of God.

(00:57:45):

And that’s what we see through the Old Testament and the New Testament and in the early church fathers, Anthony has the burden of showing that’s not the case and he certainly hasn’t done that. So I’m going to go back through. We’ll go through, remember my three arguments. My first argument was dealing with the canon of scripture, the problem of defining scripture, which I think is the most fatal flaw in this entire argument, to say that you’re going to believe in scripture alone, but how do we know what is and isn’t scripture? That is a huge problem, and I think it’s very unfortunate that Anthony is choosing to wait to address my first and most important argument for cross-examination when that should be dealt with in the rebuttal period, which is what that is for. Tell me what’s wrong with that argument. The 66 books in the Protestant Bible are the so infallible rule of faith for the church.

(00:58:30):

That’s an infallible rule of faith. Where is that in scripture? It’s not in scripture. Anywhere. God would, if God wants to read to us, if scripture has the whole council of God, something like that would be in there. Or at the very least, you know what scripture would say. Here’s how you can know what human writings are. Scripture and are not scripture. Scripture doesn’t say that Scripture is self-authenticating. That’s how does scripture say that? No, Anthony has had to pull that from different verses where people can identify not scripture, but when God speaks to them. Moses knew it was God because the bush was on fire and it’s not being consumed. Jesus’ spoken words could be heard by his sheep. There’s nothing here about scripture that Anthony is importing it to others. In fact, it’s incredibly ironic, by the way, his main objection to say, well, this canon is scripture.

(00:59:22):

It’s inspired scripture because it says so. This circular argument. I feel like I’m not debating Anthony. I feel like I’m debating Jake, our Muslim debater who is here with us though even Jake and I were talking before this. He said, well, we believe in the Quran, not just Theran alone. We understand the Islamic tradition and even he says, I don’t see how soul of S scriptural will get off the ground in that respect. But this idea, this circular reasoning, well, it’s inspired because it says so. That’s what people will defend the Quran, they’ll defend the Book of Mormon. That is a huge problem. Why these books and the fact that it’s self-authenticating. I also remember I gave an argument, not just a undercutting, I gave a reason to doubt that scripture is self-authenticating in the way that Anthony thinks it’s self authenticating. Because as I said in the early church, if scripture were self-authenticating, how come there were doubts about many of the books of scripture?

(01:00:12):

How come books like Revelation don’t appear in some canon lists? You even have Martin Luther threatening to throw the letter of James into a fire because he believes it’s not really the writings of an apostle. He didn’t end up going that far, but he had very many serious doubts about that and even other New Testament books that really cuts against the claim itself authenticating, as I said before, the early church universally recognize Jesus is the Messiah. God exists. God is triune. So we can see there’s things that are self-evident, but the canon of scripture was certainly not self-evident for them and it would not become coalesced until we have the councils of Carthage and hippo in the fourth century. So I think here, so I would say that my argument from the problem of defining scripture that still stands soul s script, Torah absolutely cannot get off the ground If you have an infallible rule of faith that defines what the canon is, or you could say, well, the canon could be wrong.

(01:01:07):

It’s fallible. If you want to go that route, then you’re going to have people who could deny Hebrews because it’s anonymous who deny mark because it’s not written by an apostle or cited by apostles. I don’t think you want to go down that road. A few other points were brought up though I do have a few things that he said here. When Jesus never told anybody to write anything down, I spoke very clearly. I had the qualifier during his earthly ministry. I’m well aware in Revelation where Jesus says to write these down. That’s why I qualified. It said during his earthly ministry, he didn’t tell anyone to write anything down, which should be somewhat problematic if you believe in so scriptura when it comes to eu. Deus believe in so scriptura. Well, if he did, why in against heresies 3.3 0.3 in that section of against heresies.

(01:01:52):

Does Iranis say it’s the duty of every church to agree not with scripture, but with the Church of Rome, which is the most preeminent and ancient of the churches, kind of offers someone who believes in soul of scripture to say this is the standard you all need to agree with. At which further underscores my third argument, which is that the early Christians people, they didn’t practice sola scriptura and I didn’t see any rebuttal here, any proof from, we didn’t see any citations from church fathers, from early Christians. Maybe we’ll have to deal with that in cross examination. I’m not sure, but that should really startle you, right? If God, the whole council of God, and by the way you brought up the point about material sufficiency of scripture, I don’t deny the scripture is materially sufficient. Scripture has everything it needs for me to do theology in the same way.

(01:02:42):

Home Depot has everything I need to build a house, but if I tried to build a house or everything at Home Depot, you’d probably die in a fire trap very quickly. I don’t know what I’m doing when I try to put all of it together. And the same is said of scripture. It has everything we need to believe. You can believe that as a Catholic, which by the way, there’s not a Catholic Protestant debate. Anyone up here could be poking holes and see there’s a problem with this doctrine, but you need to know how to put all of it together. Speaking of Ieu, by the way, IEU, when he said about heretics, he used a very interesting illustration against heresies. Anthony’s been saying, well, you need souls scriptura because the heretics, they always want to go beyond scripture. That’s how we know what the heretics.

(01:03:19):

Now you want to know what heretics do they twist scripture. How many times have you talked to a Jehovah’s witness at your door and all they did was really tried to turn scripture into a pretzel. Think about the debate on the trinity and unitarianism of God that you saw here earlier. What was going on? One person was expounding scripture correctly, which I know might be ironic for me to say that about James White. We’ve clashed in the past, but James has got good stuff on the Trinity. I love it. I got the forgotten Trinity. I should have brought it with him and sign it too. So I got to find James later and the other person was twisting scripture. So IUs says and against heresies that the heretics, what they do is like how you could have a mosaic like different colored stones and let’s say it makes the image of a king, a handsome king just as a vandal takes these stones and rearranges them to look like a fox instead of the king heretics.

(01:04:08):

Take the words of scripture and rearrange them to mean something different. That’s always been the essence of heresy is to take the scripture and say, well, it actually means this. That’s why Saint Jerome, in his letter to the luciferians, he said, the essence of scripture is not the letter but the meaning and that is the problem. When you say scripture interprets scripture, a book cannot interpret itself, especially when that book was written within the context of an apostolic community to be able to give meaning to it. And then when the apostles die, we see, as I cited in my opening statement, the early Christians did not say, oh, we just follow the Bible. They did not have a concept of the Bible. They were still discerning what is and isn’t scripture. But they knew follow the bishop as Jesus Christ follows the Father, Ignatius 1 0 7, James, he’s quite happy to quote how someone like Ignatius of Antioch received the apostolic truth that Jesus is God.

(01:05:06):

Amen. But then Ignatius didn’t receive the other truth that’s being defended here tonight that sola scriptura is true. Scripture is the only infallible, all sufficient, completely perspicuous rule of faith. He didn’t receive that. He said to people, if you want the truth, follow the bishop as Jesus Christ follows. The Father do nothing apart from him. Let’s see. We had other things here. Yeah, the other examples that are given. He said the apostles only preached that which was in scripture. Really? Where’s the evidence for that? In Second Thessalonians chapter two, Paul talks about the Thessalonians. He says, by word of mouth or by letter. And he says to them in Second Thessalonians chapter two, do you not remember what I told you about who is restraining the man of lawlessness from acting? Now go to a Bible commentary and you’ll find something interesting, interesting in Second Thessalonians.

(01:05:53):

Two Bible scholars don’t know what Paul is referring to. There’s six or seven candidates for the power or force that is restraining the man of lawlessness. Maybe it’s the Roman empire, maybe it’s angelic power. We don’t know. He told the Thessalonians that, but he didn’t write it down for the rest of us. He just reminded them that he told them that. So it is not true that the apostles only preach what was in scripture or that scripture contains everything that they preached or all of Revelation was confined to the written word. It doesn’t say anything like that. Other things he said that I’m wrong about saying that scripture does not call itself the word of God. The things that he referenced are not references the word of God. John chapter 10, when Jesus says he’s talking about the word of God came to them. That’s a reference back to Psalm 82, which is a reference and there’s different ways of interpreting what’s going on in Psalm 82.

(01:06:44):

Is it God speaking to the judges of Israel or the more common interpretation that this is about God and the divine counsel speaking to the angelic hosts. So Jesus doesn’t comment on who it is. He just says, when the word of God came to them, he said, ye Gods, the word of God was not a scripture. God didn’t give them. He didn’t give the divine counsel or the judges a written text. He spoke to them. Just like when we see in all the Old Testament, the word of God came to this prophet. The word of the Lord came to him. It was spoken orally. There’s no reference here to scripture being the word of God. It just says that scripture records the word of God being given. So we have a lot of assumptions here. We have a lot of assumptions, but we don’t have an argument to prove these really important points that scripture is the only infallible rule of faith that the whole council of God everything necessary for faith in life.

(01:07:34):

See, I thought there was a little bait and switch here too. He was going on and on about material sufficiency. We can agree on that. He has to prove formal sufficiency, not just the scripture has everything we need to believe, but that scripture is perspicuous about the whole council of God. Everything for faith and life is in scripture and that the learned and unlearned can access it through ordinary means as the Westminster confession says. But if that’s true, whole council of God, faith and life, doesn’t God want us to know if election is conditional or unconditional debate we had right before this? Doesn’t God want us to know whether the ordinary means he was downplaying infant baptism? I think it’s a really big question, which also it’s not just about Presbyterians and Baptists. What about Lutherans and Anglicans who say that through baptism a baby is spiritually regenerated and that takes away original sin.

(01:08:25):

So the ordinary means of getting your baby to heaven is baptizing him. That’s really important. That would fall under something essential for salvation. And the Protestant community is hopelessly divided on that. What about the Eucharist? Is it just a memorial or is it as Lutherans would say, Christ is sacramental union. The bread and wine are, Jesus is in the bread and wine. So much so that receiving the bread and wine takes away sin. The reformers at Marburg could not. Luther really wanted swingley to come around on that, but they couldn’t. So I get really concerned about this particular defense of soul of scriptura, which I appreciate by the way. A lot of Protestants will say, well, scripture’s just the one infallible rule of faith. It’s a very narrow definition. When you’re under attack, it’s nice to have a narrow target and then you go living your life under sole s scriptura with a wide target.

(01:09:23):

The whole council of God, all sufficient perspicuous. Okay, well, I’m glad that he is defending the wider target and I appreciate that. But then that really does lead to a problem to explain if it is perspicuous and it’s clear, especially on these really important issues, why do people not get it? And the answer seems to be if you don’t get it, if you don’t agree with the Presbyterian Church of America on important doctrines, you must be spiritually blind. I don’t think you’re spiritually blind. I think you may have made a mistake. I think all of us, when you do theology, it’s easy to misunderstand things. I know that. I know it’s easy to misunderstand scripture because Peter tells us that in two Peter three 16, there are things in Paul’s letters difficult to understand, which those who are ungrounded misunderstand to their own destruction.

(01:10:10):

Let’s see here. Do we have, but you’ll notice a lot of the things that he said. It’s not talking about soul of scriptura. It’s very lofty praise. Moses received living oracles. Right? God spoke to him. It’s not a written word. I of course believe that scripture is the written word of God, but he has the burden of proving it’s only that and he can’t do that. Let’s see, do I have anything else? Oh, about self authentication? Well, Jesus authenticated. He was self-authenticating. Actually, what did Jesus say in John 10 28? Even though you do not believe me, believe the works that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am the Father, Jesus didn’t expect people just to take his word for it. He proved it. A lot of times people ask me when they give me grief about the Old Testament, they’ll say, how can you believe in a God who slaughtered children, who drown the world, who did all of these awful things?

(01:11:00):

And an atheist, this is by the way, free, apologetic, tit for everybody here because we can agree on this one. You answer that in 30 seconds here. All these bad things, the Old Testament, how do you believe that? And I tell them, Hey, look, I may not understand all, but Jesus believed in it and I’m going to trust the guy I walked out of his own grave, so that’s good enough for me. So Jesus authenticated himself through his works. He said, you don’t believe me. At least believe the works. And much the same way though scripture does not try to authenticate itself the words of scripture. They do not say that they authenticate themselves in this way. The early Christians, which I would really challenge Anthony, maybe we’ll get into that here and cross, I don’t know. But they clung to the church. Christ established the church that Jesus said the gates of hell would not prevail against to guide believers and that they would not be left orphans with just a written document, but with a church to be able to explain its meaning and bring all people in salvation to Jesus Christ. So thank you very much.

Marlon (Host of “The Gospel Truth”) (01:12:00):

Alright, thank you guys for those opening and rebuttals. So now we’re about to jump into the cross-examination portion of this debate, and it’ll be 15 minutes each for each party in the cross-examination to ask questions. Please remember that the 20 minute q and a is right after the cross-examination. So if you have yet to get your question in, get it in because I’ll be collecting the questions here soon. So let’s get into it. Alright, about to call you Dr. Anthony Rogers.

Anthony Rogers (01:12:25):

I’ll take that.

Marlon (Host of “The Gospel Truth”) (01:12:26):

Yeah. Anthony Rogers, you’re up first for your 15 minute cross-examination, Trent Horn.

Anthony Rogers (01:12:32):

Okay, a moment ago, Trent, you said you don’t deny that scripture is materially sufficient. Correct? We can agree on that.

Trent Horn (01:12:41):

Yeah, we can say that it’s a position that’s a valid one that can be held that scripture contains everything we need for salvation. Either an explicit or an implicit form,

Anthony Rogers (01:12:52):

Including the canon, the scripture.

Trent Horn (01:12:55):

Oh, that it’s materially there.

Anthony Rogers (01:12:56):

Yeah.

Trent Horn (01:12:57):

Well, I don’t think you necessarily need to have the canon of scripture for salvation if you have a universal and living magisterium that teaches you what you need to know to be saved.

Anthony Rogers (01:13:07):

So you’re restricting material sufficiency to salvation. Is that the qualification?

Trent Horn (01:13:13):

Yeah, that would be, I think that’s one way to be able to put it. There’s different positions that are held on material sufficiency.

Anthony Rogers (01:13:20):

So you don’t hold that Scripture is materially sufficient with respect to other doctrines of the faith?

Trent Horn (01:13:26):

Well, no, I don’t think every single doctrine of the faith is going to be found in scripture. For example, one doctrine of the faith is that the Council of Nyia was a legitimate ecumenical counsel, and so we ought to believe the ene creed and that certainly is not in scripture.

Anthony Rogers (01:13:41):

Well, that assumes Catholicism. Of course. I don’t think that’s a doctrine of the faith I

Trent Horn (01:13:45):

Accept. I believe the ene creed.

Anthony Rogers (01:13:47):

Yeah, I accept the ene creed, but there’s nothing about the acceptance of that that makes the acceptance of it a doctrine. But so you would say scripture is not really materially sufficient just with respect to salvation, very limited scope, not that wide scope kind of thing that I was doing earlier.

Trent Horn (01:14:04):

Yeah, it’s a position that could be held. I’m not necessarily committing to something for the purpose of this cross-examination. What I believe about scripture is irrelevant to the resolution of the debate, which is that scripture’s the only infallible rule of face,

Anthony Rogers (01:14:16):

But you’re micing arguments against the sufficiency of scripture that assumes a position. So what I’m trying to get at is what do you mean by materials? Because if I’m going to have to respond to your objections and I need to know what it is you’re conceding when you say material sufficiency and what it is you’re not conceding.

Trent Horn (01:14:34):

Yeah. One can hold that what is necessary to believe for salvation is found either explicitly or implicitly in scripture. Don’t have to believe in order to be saved. You don’t have to believe that. Well, I guess I’ll let you continue.

Anthony Rogers (01:14:54):

I shouldn’t ask. So I’m just thinking when you said it, and I’ve heard you say it in the past, it just seemed to me like you were conceding the material sufficiency of scripture, what reformed people mean. But what you deny is formal sufficiency. Absolutely. And the reason that,

Trent Horn (01:15:09):

Yeah, I don’t think scripture interprets scripture. I deny

Anthony Rogers (01:15:11):

That We’ll get to that. But the reason I have a problem with all that is because you kept saying things that assume scripture’s not materially sufficient, doesn’t tell us what’s restraining. The man of lawlessness doesn’t tell us the canon of scripture.

Trent Horn (01:15:25):

I don’t think you have to know who is restraining the man of lawlessness to be saved.

Anthony Rogers (01:15:28):

I don’t think that either. But I didn’t realize you seriously attenuate what you mean by material sufficiency. I think the fathers clearly meant more than simply that it contains what we need to know for salvation. It contains all the doctrines of the faith. Okay. But you said the problem with JWS and groups like that is not that they have something else besides scripture, but they twist scripture. Why do they twist scripture and how do they twist scripture? Well, they get it wrong, but what is it operative? What’s operative in their activity of misinterpreting the

Trent Horn (01:16:02):

Scriptures? They make either a cognitive or a moral error depending on the person who is reading the text and they don’t arrive at its true

Anthony Rogers (01:16:09):

Media. And what’s the source of that cognitive error? I think you know the

Trent Horn (01:16:13):

Answer. It would be the noic effects of sin. In other words, sin makes us stupid.

Anthony Rogers (01:16:18):

The answer is they hold to the primacy of the Watchtower Bible and track society.

Trent Horn (01:16:24):

They don’t believe the watchtower is infallible though

Anthony Rogers (01:16:26):

They certainly believe. They

Trent Horn (01:16:27):

Believe the

Anthony Rogers (01:16:27):

Watchtower watchtower is authoritative.

Trent Horn (01:16:30):

Yes. They believe it’s authoritative. Just like Protestants believe that their creeds and confessional histories are authoritative.

Anthony Rogers (01:16:34):

They believe the Watchtower Bible and track society is moved by God’s spirit. They’re the anointed class that’s built into their doctrine, but in any case

Trent Horn (01:16:43):

Have to, they can’t say it’s infallible. That’s their way to get around all the time. The watchtower Hass been wrong about the world ending.

Anthony Rogers (01:16:49):

Okay, so you don’t think the doctrine of, so I’ve got to deal with them a lot. You don’t think the doctrine of so scriptura is taught in the Fathers

Trent Horn (01:16:55):

Right? I don’t believe that the fathers, there’s my argument was that the church did not operate under sola scriptura as a binding rule of faith. It is possible that there were some Christians who held to that error. But I’m saying that Christians did not operate under this rule. It was not binding. The Fathers would be a witness for us to know how Christians operated, what their authority was during that time.

Anthony Rogers (01:17:21):

Okay, so in this book, I’m sure you’re familiar with it, you had ’em on your show. This is Casey Cho’s book, the Obscurity of Scripture. Here’s what Casey Chalk says, no friend of the reformation, he’s writing as a Roman Catholic. He says Luther’s theory, remember what Trent just said a moment ago, Luther’s theory that the clearer verses will interpret the obscure ones Scripture interpret scripture had ancient pedigree. The Augustinian monk Luther could find validation for this thesis and none other than the inspiration for his religious order. Saint Augustine, according to chalk, early fathers like Augustine most certainly did believe that scripture interpret scripture. So what is your response to that?

Trent Horn (01:18:07):

Yeah, I do not believe, I agree with you that the early Christians didn’t just only listen to what the church said to follow for doctrine. They were deeply steeped in scripture, which is why we can believe, for example, that Augustine who was deeply steeped in scripture that his beliefs in purgatory sinlessness of Mary propitiatory sacrifice of the mass are certainly biblical. But he did believe that there were scriptures that can interpret other scriptures, but it’s the idea that it’s all you need is scripture. He certainly didn’t believe that. For example, when one part Augustine says about that Adam was saved because the church celebrates the feast day of Adam and Eve, Saint Adam and Eve, that they’re in heaven. There are things like this as much people believe from whatever source it was handed down to the church. Although the authority of the canonical scriptures cannot be brought forward as speaking expressly in its support.

Anthony Rogers (01:18:58):

Okay, so you range beyond the issue that I’m zeroing in on, which is the issue of

Trent Horn (01:19:02):

I agree with you.

Anthony Rogers (01:19:03):

Yeah. Scripture interprets scripture

Trent Horn (01:19:04):

In some cases. Yes.

Anthony Rogers (01:19:06):

Well does

Trent Horn (01:19:08):

We can’t rely for everything.

Anthony Rogers (01:19:09):

Does Augustine, whether he’s consistent with himself, and I’m sure you could bring up examples of him just like anybody else being inconsistent, did Augustine actually teach that scripture interprets scripture? Not just an isolated passage here or there, but as a rule, scripture interprets itself?

Trent Horn (01:19:24):

No. If you put the phrase bluntly, scripture interprets scripture in the sense that there are passages we may not know. Understand there’s other passages that illuminate them. That is true. But if you take the wider view when you say scripture, interpret scripture so that scripture is the only rule of faith, we need to understand scripture. We don’t need any other authority beyond scripture to properly understand it, then I would say no. The fathers did not believe that. In fact, there’s an evangelical scholar, Keith Ward, Timothy Ward. He says in general the fathers assert the material sufficiency of scripture, but deny its formal sufficiency.

Anthony Rogers (01:20:06):

Now, I could easily quote a litany of Catholic scholars saying that in fact the fathers did. But my point

Trent Horn (01:20:14):

Here is, but they still understood that the church had an infallible authority. It was another authority you had. Ambrose said that you cannot flee from the rule of faith that’s been given at Nice. For example,

Anthony Rogers (01:20:24):

That doesn’t prove that the magisterium is infallible.

Trent Horn (01:20:27):

Yeah, it says that this is our ancient tradition that one must hold to.

Anthony Rogers (01:20:31):

Yeah, and I hold to that, but that’s not the same thing as saying that the magisterium is infallible. Okay, but let’s move on. You said that Acts seven, when Stephen said Moses received living oracles, you said that’s referring to oral preaching or teaching. But what Steven says there is he received living Oracles to pass on to us. Do you believe that Christians in the first century or Jews had the oral law passed down outside of written scripture? Or was Steven actually referring to written scripture?

Trent Horn (01:21:10):

No, they had the word of God that had been given to Moses that was transmitted to them through tradition, but also what was written down in the Torah.

Anthony Rogers (01:21:17):

So the Jews had, in addition to the written scriptures and oral law that way they were to follow?

Trent Horn (01:21:23):

No, they had an oral tradition also that people would teach people by word of mouth.

Anthony Rogers (01:21:28):

But that’s equivocating on the word tradition. When you use the word tradition relevant to the Roman doctrine over against Solas scriptura, you mean something that’s equal in authority description, not just a history of interpretation.

Trent Horn (01:21:38):

No, no. They also had a tradition of how to interpret the word of God that had been given. That was the central point of the core bond dispute in Mark seven and Matthew 15. The problem there was that the Pharisees had overly interpreted a passage in the book of numbers that says a vow cannot be broken. And so if one gives to the temple instead of one’s parents, you have to do that. Jesus says, no. What takes precedent over numbers here is what God said in Exodus and what Moses orally proclaimed in Deuteronomy 27 that you should honor your parents and not curse them.

Anthony Rogers (01:22:11):

So you’re saying that the Jews merely thought that what they were propounding as doctrines was just their history of interpretation, their way of interpreting scripture and not actually something handed down by God through Moses orally

Trent Horn (01:22:25):

What had been handed down is that they had a particular kind of understanding of scripture that was the tradition of men that Jesus was upgrading. In Mark seven,

Anthony Rogers (01:22:35):

Jesus called it the traditions of men. Right? But did the Pharisees think it was a tradition of

Trent Horn (01:22:40):

Men? No, the Pharisees had misidentified. They had attributed a label, the tradition of God to tradition of men because it’s quite possible for people to identify a counterfeit unwritten word of God as the word of God. Just like it’s possible for people to identify a counterfeit scripture, much like we have the apocryphal works in the early church, or you have early Christians thinking that Enoch was scripture. So people can misinterpret and think that a tradition is the unwritten word of God and be wrong. But that doesn’t take away from the fact there are authentic unwritten words of God that are sacred tradition like the canon of scripture itself or that there’s counterfeit written words of God doesn’t take away there’s authentic written words of God.

Anthony Rogers (01:23:24):

Okay, let’s move on. So do you think the early church fathers taught the self-authenticating nature of scripture?

Trent Horn (01:23:32):

I think that they taught that scripture had elements to it that one could identify. So it was not merely the fact that the church arbitrarily decreed what scripture is, but the scripture has markers to it. But that’s not necessarily you can apply to every single scripture. It’s not like we would say the letter to Philamon has some kind of outstanding amazing quality to it that just screams that it’s scripture or second and third John, for example, Augustine understanding the nature of scripture, it does have its own internal elements to interpret itself in some respect. He says, if when attention is given to a passage, it shall appear to be uncertain in what way it ought to be punctuated or pronounced. Let the reader consult the rule of faith which he has gathered from the plainer passages of scripture and from the authority of the church. So he puts both on those platforms in order to yield the truth that scripture can teach us. But scripture has its limits. The church is able to step in where scripture is limited in that way to give us the whole council of God.

Anthony Rogers (01:24:31):

Well, that goes beyond Augustine. And of course Protestants accept the authority of the church. We just don’t think it has magisterial authority. It has ministerial authority. But you mentioned Augustine. Augustine said in a sermon, let us treat scripture like scripture, like God speaking, don’t let’s look there for man going wrong. It’s not for nothing. You see that the canon has been established for the church. This is the function of the Holy Spirit. This is just another way of saying that scripture is self-authenticating. But here’s another example, and this one is quite conspicuous. This is from ESUs of esa. He says, for us the sufficient demonstration of the souls and mortality is the teaching of holy scripture, which is self-authenticating because inspired by God. So do you believe that all the books, whether we agree on the limits of the canon, you would at least agree All the 66 books are part of the canon, right?

Trent Horn (01:25:27):

Yeah.

Anthony Rogers (01:25:28):

They are part of divine scripture. Yeah. So here’s the logic of ESUs of am messa Esa. He said the holy scripture is self-authenticating because inspired of God, which means logically, if Philemon is an inspired part of scripture, it is self-authenticating. That sounds like one giant circular

Trent Horn (01:25:51):

Argument.

Anthony Rogers (01:25:51):

You could call it circular, but notice you’re objecting to ESUs of esa. My point here, but I

Trent Horn (01:25:57):

Also don’t think

Anthony Rogers (01:25:57):

The church

Trent Horn (01:25:57):

Fathers are infallible.

Anthony Rogers (01:25:59):

Well, I don’t either. I don’t either. But you’re the one that’s making so much of the church Father,

Trent Horn (01:26:03):

With all due respect, what I’m making of is the fact that the church was understood to have its particular authority beyond scripture in an infallible way. For example, when Augustine refuted the dontist. So I agree with you. There are things like the immortality of the soul that fathers Reina said this as well.

Anthony Rogers (01:26:18):

He doesn’t limit it to the immortality of the soul,

Trent Horn (01:26:20):

But it

Anthony Rogers (01:26:20):

Says because they’re inspired of God.

Trent Horn (01:26:22):

But there are other issues like what arose with the Aryan controversy. The Aryans had their list of scriptures also, which is why Augustine said to the Dus, the truth of this question has been placed beyond dispute by the investigation and decree of a plenary counsel and St. Vincent of Lorenz, who was Augustine’s contemporary said by the decree and authority of a council, the rule of the church’s faith may be settled. They certainly didn’t see it as just having some kind of merely ministerial authority or something like that.

Anthony Rogers (01:26:50):

Oh, I think that’s perfectly consistent with ministerial authority. If something is grounded on scripture and demonstrable from scripture, which is always how these councils were conducted, then they can apply to it the certain.

Trent Horn (01:27:00):

But they understood there was one universal church that can settle it for everyone, not an untold number of denominations that I’ll hope people will buy into their definition.

Anthony Rogers (01:27:09):

Well,

Anthony Rogers (01:27:11):

That’s the claim, but that’s what they believed. So back to the self-authenticating nature of scripture. So when not only ESUs of Odessa, but here’s one from Clement of Alexandria, he says He who believeth then the divine scriptures with sure judgment receives in the voice of God who bestowed the scripture, A demonstration that cannot be impugned. Faith then is not established by demonstration proofs. Plus then are those who have believed, even though they haven’t seen this is, I mean I could go on and on quoting a litany of

Trent Horn (01:27:49):

Fathers. So can I

Anthony Rogers (01:27:50):

Not on this issue.

Trent Horn (01:27:51):

Are you sure?

Anthony Rogers (01:27:52):

Yeah, I’m absolutely

Trent Horn (01:27:53):

Sure. We have negative 16 seconds to find out. For example, Clement of Alexandria also says by way of demonstration by the scriptures themselves, how the heresies failed, how in the truth alone and in the ancient church is both the exact knowledge and truly best said at first principles. And Clement used the church in order to condemn the Qo DeAmon heresy about when Christians need to celebrate Easter, which is certainly not found in scripture.

Marlon (Host of “The Gospel Truth”) (01:28:17):

Well, alright, that’s time right there. That’s time. Anthony’s about to go back in. Got to go back in. Alright. Right now we’ll have our 15 minute cross examination of Trent Horn to Rogers.

Anthony Rogers (01:28:34):

Be nice.

Trent Horn (01:28:36):

I’ve been very nice. We’re having so much fun. Let’s see here. Alright, does the Bible say anywhere that a 66 book collection of writings is an infallible rule of faith?

Anthony Rogers (01:28:52):

So the reason I didn’t address that in the opening statement is because as you surely know, this is a large question. I have a very definite answer to this, but it’s not the sort of thing that’s easily done in two minutes. And I think you can respect that there are all sorts of questions.

Trent Horn (01:29:06):

Would’ve been nice to share that in your 15 minute rebuttal.

Anthony Rogers (01:29:09):

I had a whole bunch of other errors you made to address, but my position is that scripture does indicate what belongs to it and it would take some time to work this out. But let me give you the beginning of an answer to some of this. When you look at the text of scripture, we don’t notice certain things in our English translations that are actually there in the Hebrew. And so for example, the Book of Exodus begins, the Elmos Jews will usually just say La Shamo, which means these are the names, but it actually begins with amo, which is a connective, and it always means this belongs to something that comes prior to it. So you already have, this is just a small indicator, an internal indicator that this belongs to something else, this sort of thing. And a whole host of other things, numerous scholars with respect to the can of scripture have been pointing out in recent years what’s called the seams of scripture. How the endings and beginnings of various books are so weaved together that it’s indicating this book is preceded or followed by that book. And so my point is just that this sort of thing, when there’s time sufficient time to explicate, it is a internal way of determining the book of scripture. That’s why, for example, just think of the law of Moses. We think of it as five books, but nobody ever in scripture refers to it as five

Trent Horn (01:30:30):

Books. Let’s go back to the New Testament then. So what at the beginning and end of third, John tells us this is inspired scripture rather than what you might find at the beginning and end of the diday.

Anthony Rogers (01:30:40):

First. I didn’t say that’s the only way. So limiting how I know third John, I think you said Third John. Third

Trent Horn (01:30:46):

John. Yeah.

Anthony Rogers (01:30:47):

Limiting it to third John isn’t re reputation of me. But one of the things I would observe here is that third John is one of the general epistles or Catholic epistles and canonical scholars have observed that significantly. It begins with James and it ends with Jude, the two brothers of Christ. And in between you have the writings of Peter and John and this order is given, for example, when Paul talks in Galatians, he talks about the pillars of the church and he mentions them in this very order. Obviously there’s a whole lot more that needs to be said. I’m just pointing out to you that at least in principle, I think these things can be proven from scripture.

Trent Horn (01:31:25):

No, I’m saying how do we know that? Does scripture say the canon of scripture, the inspired writings God gave us are X? There is no verse that says that,

Anthony Rogers (01:31:36):

But that’s not a refuation of Sola Scriptura

Anthony Rogers (01:31:40):

Is Sola Scriptura the statement that everything that we believe is an expressly stated. You mentioned it

Trent Horn (01:31:46):

Earlier that the whole counsel of God.

Anthony Rogers (01:31:48):

Yeah, but you mentioned it earlier. You said a difference in the Westminster confession of faith and the Baptist confession is that we believe in it could be

Trent Horn (01:31:54):

Logically inference.

Anthony Rogers (01:31:55):

Okay.

Trent Horn (01:31:56):

And what I’m trying to find is any stream of logic here. Alright, let me get other factual questions on the ground. Does the Bible, is there a verse that gives a criteria to distinguish inspired writings from uninspired ones?

Anthony Rogers (01:32:10):

There’s all kinds of criteria. One criteria would be Deuteronomy 13, Deuteronomy 18 in the law of Moses. Moses says, if somebody comes along and preaches to you another God calls you to believe in him. That’s not

Trent Horn (01:32:23):

A true prophet God. Okay, so as long as it doesn’t have heresy, it’s scripture.

Anthony Rogers (01:32:27):

No, that’s not what I’m saying. You said give you a text of scripture that enables us to identify things. This is part of it. Obviously there’s a whole lot more that

Trent Horn (01:32:34):

Tells us what’s not scripture, not what is right.

Anthony Rogers (01:32:36):

Okay. I said what is, so it also take for example Moses statement in Deuteronomy 18. God is going to send a prophet in the future like me, listen to him. This is a forward projecting statement that enables us to identify

Trent Horn (01:32:52):

So we can know what scripture is because God will appoint someone to orally tell you.

Anthony Rogers (01:32:57):

That’s not what I said.

Trent Horn (01:32:59):

God will send a prophet like me Listen to him.

Anthony Rogers (01:33:02):

Yeah, listen to him. But you think that listen is necessarily an oral activity.

Trent Horn (01:33:08):

Isn’t that what we’re doing right now?

Anthony Rogers (01:33:09):

Yeah, but is the word, are you seriously saying the word listen always refers to something that’s oral?

Trent Horn (01:33:14):

Listen, it does most of the time. But what I’m saying is it’s not confined to the written word alone.

Anthony Rogers (01:33:20):

 The apostles say listen to the prophets.

Trent Horn (01:33:21):

So what you’re saying here is, are

Anthony Rogers (01:33:23):

You listening to their oral Words?

Trent Horn (01:33:24):

So what you’re saying though is that you need a written that Deuteronomy 18 is saying that a prophet will tell you what is scripture. They’ll either write it down or say it.

Anthony Rogers (01:33:34):

No, no, no. I’m saying if you look at Deuteronomy 18, by the way, Jake’s here listening closely. It says Deuteronomy 18, it says that God is going to raise up for the people in the future. A prophet like him in there to listen to him. And anybody who doesn’t will be cut off from God’s people. That means when this figure comes, he’s already been preauthorized by Moses. That’s why Jesus could say repeatedly if you believed Moses, and

Trent Horn (01:34:00):

Here’s my question. Here’s my question. Has this figure come and told us what the can of scripture is?

Anthony Rogers (01:34:06):

Well yeah. He says Listen to the law of Moses. If you believe Moses, you’d believe me.

Trent Horn (01:34:09):

That’s part of the canon. Who is this person?

Anthony Rogers (01:34:11):

He’s called Jesus Christ.

Trent Horn (01:34:13):

And where did he give us the entire canon of the New Testament?

Anthony Rogers (01:34:15):

Well, you’re asking now about the canon of the New Testament, but I’m pointing out how you originally were asking, you’ve done a bait and switcher. You were originally asking if we have any kind of principles that enable us to ferret out true scripture from false scripture. When I

Trent Horn (01:34:28):

Say canon, it’s 66

Anthony Rogers (01:34:29):

Books. What I’m pointing out is that scripture does have ways by which it enables us to isolate certain things out from other things as the word of God. And one of the things that it does is it points to this future figure the Lord Jesus Christ and says everybody’s to listen to him. That Jesus said the law of Moses’ scripture. He said the prophets are scripture. He said the writings are scripture.

Trent Horn (01:34:51):

So

Anthony Rogers (01:34:51):

We have the canon of the Old Testament from Jesus. That same Jesus said that he was going to inspire his apostles and they were going to speak his words and anybody who listened to them would be listening to him. Anybody who didn’t listen to them was not listening to him

Trent Horn (01:35:04):

During his earthly ministry. Did he tell the apostles to write anything down?

Anthony Rogers (01:35:09):

But did they write it down during his earthly ministry or after?

Trent Horn (01:35:12):

No, I said the question is during do we have a record of Jesus during his earthly ministry telling the apostles to write anything down in the present or the future?

Anthony Rogers (01:35:22):

But I don’t understand how it’s relevant if he said it after he ascended into heaven. Everything was written after Jesus ascended into

Trent Horn (01:35:29):

Heaven. He told one person, John, to write something down in the book around heaven.

Anthony Rogers (01:35:31):

And you think the rest of them were just doing their own thing.

Trent Horn (01:35:33):

I’m asking you to prove your conclusion that Jesus gave us sola scriptura and you have not done.

Anthony Rogers (01:35:40):

Now you’re saying sola scriptura, but you were asking the command to write. He commanded John to write. I would say by analogy he commanded the others to write because they weren’t their own men. They weren’t autonomous, they weren’t making up their own religion. They were following Jesus.

Trent Horn (01:35:54):

But you don’t have any demand of Jesus doing this.

Anthony Rogers (01:35:56):

I have a logical inference, which is part of Sola scriptura.

Trent Horn (01:36:00):

We’ll get to other logical inferences for sure. In fact, maybe we’ve got time for that.

Anthony Rogers (01:36:04):

You’ve got time.

Trent Horn (01:36:05):

Yeah. Okay. So as a pastor in the Presbyterian church in America, do you agree with this statement from the Westminster confession of faith, not only those that do actually profess faith in and obedience under Christ, but also the infants of one or both believing parents are to be baptized?

Anthony Rogers (01:36:23):

Yes.

Trent Horn (01:36:23):

Okay. Do you agree with the next statement in the Westminster confession it be a great sin to contend or neglect this ordinance?

Anthony Rogers (01:36:31):

Yes.

Trent Horn (01:36:32):

Okay. Audience participation time. How many of you here in the audience believe in the doctrine of Sola scriptura? Raise your hand. Now. Keep your hand raised. How many of you agree with that statement from Westminster that it is a great sin to not baptize a baby? Keep your hand raised. If you agree, let the record show we’ve got a lot of hands that went down the vast majority in this very room with us.

Anthony Rogers (01:37:01):

Let’s have a baptism debate.

Trent Horn (01:37:03):

Well, no. The debate that I have is alright. So why can’t they logically deduce this truth from perspicuous scripture?

Anthony Rogers (01:37:16):

Well, okay. So there are any number of things as I pointed out, that could account for why somebody sees something differently here. Oh yeah. But when I look at scripture and read what it says and logically to do certain things, it’s clear to me that it does say to baptize your children. Yeah. But when somebody else comes to a different conclusion, do you deny that upbringing could have anything to do with impinging How they’re reading scripture?

Trent Horn (01:37:49):

Does scripture record an infant ever being baptized?

Anthony Rogers (01:37:52):

Yeah, it speaks of household

Trent Horn (01:37:53):

Baptism. No, I said does it explicitly record an infant baptized?

Anthony Rogers (01:37:57):

So throughout the Old Testament, God told his people to apply the covenant sign to their household, which included infants. If a household includes an infant than it is to be baptized. We have numerous instances in the New Testament of household baptisms, which necessarily entails if there was a child in that house, it would’ve been baptized.

Trent Horn (01:38:16):

Do you think scripture is clear enough that people can use ordinary means to deduce the sins God wants them to avoid?

Anthony Rogers (01:38:27):

Yes.

Trent Horn (01:38:28):

Then how do you explain the fact that almost everybody here can’t avoid the sin of not baptizing their baby

Anthony Rogers (01:38:33):

Thetic effects of sin?

Trent Horn (01:38:35):

So sin made them all stupid.

Anthony Rogers (01:38:37):

You say it made them all stupid. You were the one who said a moment ago that noetic effects of sin are a reality. So are you saying everybody’s stupid? That’s not a fair

Trent Horn (01:38:46):

Response. But what I’m not saying though is that scripture is clear enough that even the unlearned can come to these saving truths on their own.

Anthony Rogers (01:38:54):

You are claiming that what I’m asking now you said it’s a saving truth when the Westminster confession says it’s a great sin, it’s not saying those who don’t baptize their children are damned fine. This isn’t the Council of

Trent Horn (01:39:06):

Trent. No. The whole council of God, the whole council of God would want us to

Anthony Rogers (01:39:10):

Concern all things necessary for man’s own salvation, faith and life are part the either expressly stated in scripture or by good and

Trent Horn (01:39:17):

Necessary

Anthony Rogers (01:39:18):

Consequence can be deduced from scripture.

Trent Horn (01:39:19):

Does God want us to avoid great sins?

Anthony Rogers (01:39:21):

Yes.

Trent Horn (01:39:22):

Okay.

Anthony Rogers (01:39:23):

Is

Trent Horn (01:39:23):

Scripture

Anthony Rogers (01:39:24):

Like worshiping creature?

Trent Horn (01:39:24):

Is scripture clear enough to help us avoid great sins?

Anthony Rogers (01:39:28):

Yes.

Trent Horn (01:39:29):

But not for everybody here who doesn’t agree about the sin of Williams

Anthony Rogers (01:39:32):

And baptism. You’re imp executing somebody else’s failure to the word of God, which is illicit. The fact that somebody else fails to accurately understand something doesn’t prove that thing itself is not clear. What happens if somebody has cataracts and they can’t see certain things? Is the object itself objectively unclear? Are

Trent Horn (01:39:51):

You saying they’re spiritually blind?

Anthony Rogers (01:39:53):

A cataract doesn’t necessitate that they’re absolutely blind.

Trent Horn (01:39:57):

They’re spiritually. Mr. Magoo.

Anthony Rogers (01:40:00):

Yeah, there are some Mr. Magoos. I think we’d all grant that.

Trent Horn (01:40:03):

Alright, lemme do another. Lemme go to another question. Hold lot. It’s my turn to have fun here. Alright, can a Christian? Okay. Does the Bible contain? So God wants us to know the whole council of God, everything necessary faith in life. I think you would agree there are doctrines you might call essential and ones we can disagree in good faith about.

Anthony Rogers (01:40:21):

Right.

Trent Horn (01:40:22):

Okay. Does the Bible contain a list of essential doctrines?

Anthony Rogers (01:40:26):

I don’t know where all this list stuff comes from. That’s not how the Bible operates. It has, I

Trent Horn (01:40:30):

Love the list of Jesus’s ancestors in Matthew. It’s a

Anthony Rogers (01:40:33):

Really great, so there’s not a chapter in the Bible or even in, if you look at Roman Catholic decals and cyclicals or other things, just lists everything. Does the Bible give? Go ahead. So scripture has a way of indicating things that are essential. One Corinthians 15, Paul said this, I delivered to you as of first importance. Does that sound like he’s telling you this is an essential? Jesus said in John eight, if you do not believe that I am, you’ll die in your sins. Does that sound like an essential

Trent Horn (01:41:01):

Then here’s my question. What is the way that scripture has to reveal something is an essential doctrine?

Anthony Rogers (01:41:08):

If you don’t believe this, you’ll die in your sins.

Trent Horn (01:41:10):

It’s

Anthony Rogers (01:41:10):

One way.

Trent Horn (01:41:11):

So a doctrine is not essential to believe if it doesn’t have that qualifier in the scripture.

Anthony Rogers (01:41:16):

No, no. You’re trying to flatten everything to one thing as though when Jesus said, if you don’t believe that I am, you’ll die in your sins. That’s one way of saying it’s essential. When he says in one Corinthians 15, this I delivered to you as a first importance. That’s another way of saying it’s essential. And these aren’t the only ways, these are only examples. So scripture does have a way of demarcating those things that are essential from those things that people can disagree on. Look at Romans 14 where Paul talks about brothers having differences and how to handle those differences. Or one Corinthians eight through 10 how to deal with the weaker brother. Scripture very clearly does demarcate those things that are essential from those things that aren’t. And so I really don’t think this line of argument is a good one against sola scriptura.

Trent Horn (01:41:56):

Do Protestants agree on these essential doctrines?

Anthony Rogers (01:41:59):

Yeah, by and large of course. I mean, what’s an essential doctrine that Protestants don’t agree on, they would say is essential. That I would say is saying

Trent Horn (01:42:07):

That the ordinary means of providing salvation to an infant is by baptizing him.

Anthony Rogers (01:42:11):

No, you said the ordinary means of providing salvation. Where does the Westminster confession say

Trent Horn (01:42:16):

No? I’m saying Protestants like Lutherans and Anglicans will disagree with you on that.

Anthony Rogers (01:42:19):

But they don’t disagree on the material issue when it comes to sofie, when they say baptism and they speak of it as a saving ordinance, they’re thinking of it in the sense of a confirming or ceiling. They’re not saying that it itself is the grounds of salvation. They’re not saying that it’s the instrumental cause of salvation.

Trent Horn (01:42:40):

They do disagree and Protestants disagree. You’ll have Protestants who will not baptize their babies at all. Protestants in your church will baptize them to dedicate them as part of a covenant community and Protestants who will baptize them to remit original sin so that they can be saved. That’s a clear difference about an issue of

Anthony Rogers (01:42:58):

Salvation. Do you think that Presbyterians who disagree with Baptists over the fact that they don’t baptize their children, think their children are going to hell?

Trent Horn (01:43:04):

No. That’s why I brought up Lutherans and Anglicans about baptismal regeneration.

Anthony Rogers (01:43:07):

Okay. The other examples were irrelevant.

Trent Horn (01:43:09):

No, I’m showing there’s disagreement there and there’s disagreement about the core issues. Let me give you, let’s try some other examples then.

Anthony Rogers (01:43:16):

You got 25 seconds.

Trent Horn (01:43:17):

Alright, just tell me, so the Bible is clear about faith in life. If someone in your church wanted to hire a surrogate, a woman rents out a womb for a baby so they can use IVF, would you say that’s

Anthony Rogers (01:43:29):

Sinful? Wait, say that again.

Trent Horn (01:43:32):

Surrogacy hiring a woman to carry your in vitro embryos to be born surrogacy. That Catholic church condemns that as a sin, but this was invented thousands of years after scripture. I think it’s a grave sin. Does scripture anywhere say that something like this would be a gravely sinful thing to do?

Anthony Rogers (01:43:50):

Well we would to look at the principles of scripture and see if we can deduce anything with respect to that. And then of course as a person committed to so scripture, I believe we can, that’s a big issue in your time and we’re out of time.

Marlon (Host of “The Gospel Truth”) (01:44:00):

That’s fine. Alright. Good job guys. Fantastic. Let’s get another round of applause for the debaters. I’ve had a fantastic debate and a very, very satisfying and so now we’re transitioning to our 20 minute q and a. They’ll now follow up with a seven minute closing by each party. And so the way this q and a is going to work out is that both of you will get one minute each to respond to the question and then the person the question was initially for gets an additional 30 seconds to respond after the other person responds. Hopefully you understand that,

Trent Horn (01:44:48):

Right? We’ll figure it out.

Marlon (Host of “The Gospel Truth”) (01:44:49):

Yeah, we’ll figure it out. I’ve been messing that up all day, Trent. So people have been getting on me about it, but it’s all good. Alright, so the first question we have here is for, let me get my timer before I start. How long is this period? 20 minutes. Okay. Yeah. Let me get my timer real quick so we don’t

Anthony Rogers (01:45:07):

Go over it. So I need a coffee in 30 minutes.

Marlon (Host of “The Gospel Truth”) (01:45:12):

Alright. Alright. So our first question is for Trent. How did the councils who canonize the Bible know the canon? If they appeal to external criteria? Protestants can too. If God revealed it to them, then you have to affirm that Catholic church receives new public ongoing revelation.

Trent Horn (01:45:34):

So the church does not determine the canon of scripture. God determines the canon of scripture when he inspires each sacred author to write. But the church also did not foully discover the cannon as either the church has the power to authoritatively declare the cannon of scripture going all the way back to Matthew 16 where Jesus says, he tells to Peter and then he tells the other apostles, you have the power to bind and loose. What you bind on Earth is bound in heaven. What you loose on Earth is loose in heaven, giving them authority to be able to teach and proclaim. So the church is able to authoritatively declare and it does this authority of declaration through varying mean different levels of authority. So we see this authoritatively declared at regional councils at Hippo and Carthage in the fourth century when there’s, as I said earlier, there was disputes about the canon in the early church, especially about second Peter, second and third John, the book of Revelation, Hebrews.

(01:46:35):

So it was able to teach authoritatively through these regional councils, and they do that by looking at things like apostolic authorship, reception by the church. So there are external factors that are considered, but there’s no rigorous set of external factors that says, oh, it’s just these and these alone. The Holy Spirit also guides the church in teaching true doctrine to the faithful. And then this was reaffirmed infallibly at the Councils of Florence and Trent at the latter end of the Middle Ages. So the church is able to authoritatively declare in making its judgments. It relies on things like apostolic authorship reception in the Christian community, but especially things like the sense of the faithful, how the faithful received this, even if some church fathers had doubts here or there. So there’s external markers, but it was never reduced just to external markers to reverse engineer. You cannot go back through church history and say, oh, these are the markers we use in order to determine what is and what is in scripture. Rather, the church is guided by the Holy Spirit and looking at all of this evidence and been given and given by the apostles in order to reach the correct truth of the matter.

Anthony Rogers (01:47:47):

Alright, Anthony, one question real quickly. Was that one minute?

Trent Horn (01:47:50):

Yeah, I was wondering if the timer’s not on there.

Anthony Rogers (01:47:53):

Oh shoot. Yeah,

Trent Horn (01:47:55):

So even I was think in my head

Anthony Rogers (01:47:57):

It felt a long minute. I don’t mean that I need to or anything like that. I just wanted to know. I’ll use a

Trent Horn (01:48:05):

Stopwatch here.

Anthony Rogers (01:48:05):

I just wanted to know that I had some sense of time. Yeah,

Marlon (Host of “The Gospel Truth”) (01:48:09):

Anthony, go ahead. Go ahead, go ahead. You going to text me later and give me a hard time? Anthony Cole down.

Anthony Rogers (01:48:14):

No, no, that’s fine. So the question was on what basis does Rome infallibly determine or declare scripture to be scripture that these books are scripture? And I think this sounds something to me like a youth aro dilemma, right? If the church is determining it based on some inherent qualities, well then the church isn’t needed. Other people can recognize those inherent qualities. On the other hand, if the church is actually determining it, well then the church could have determined something else to be scripture, right? So I do think that’s a real dilemma and I don’t think what Trent said answers it. In fact, here’s something interesting about the Council of Trent, which is the council of the Roman Catholic Church that is considered by them, not us ecumenical that spoke to the canon of scripture. If you look at the Catholic Encyclopedia, for example, it’s the Council of Trent that you have the first ecumenical counsel to decide this matter.

(01:49:06):

Out of the 800 bishops that existed in the Catholic church at that time, only 55 were present for the session that determined the canon of scripture and get this only about, and I don’t remember the exact breakdown here, but around 25 people voted for Rome’s cannon out of the 55 present. That’s not even a majority, and that’s because many people have stained. So for the entire Christian Church throughout all of human history, you had a piddling number of bishops. Even for those that existed at the time determining the canon. And remember the kind of people who were determining the canon of scripture are those who said it has about as much force and authority as Aesop’s fables apart from us. You’re going to trust that.

Marlon (Host of “The Gospel Truth”) (01:49:51):

Alright, 30 seconds, 30 seconds.

Trent Horn (01:49:55):

I would say that the church is able to teach authoritatively and declare it’s able to draw from scripture. The church certainly drew from scripture and drew from external criteria in order to determine things like the deity of Christ or other things like Christ’s human nature that he has as a human and a divine will. That’s something that’s not very clear in scripture, but is a heresy that was condemned at later ecumenical councils. But it’s not just the external factors, it’s saying different people can look at the external factors, but this is the declaration that cannot be gainsaid anymore. The argument is done infallible teachings are definitive de fee brought to an end and there has to be one final authority to bring the discussion to an end.

Anthony Rogers (01:50:35):

Alright, this question for Anthony, that timer’s throwing me that looked like 45 seconds.

Marlon (Host of “The Gospel Truth”) (01:50:42):

Alright, this question for Anthony. We just watched two Protestants argue election from scripture and reach incompatible conclusions without a mechanism for adjudication. What prevents the outcome from becoming more fragmentation? At point? Does the Bible is the final authority become? My interpretation of the Bible is the authority.

Anthony Rogers (01:51:08):

Yeah. So just because sola scriptura is true doesn’t mean everybody’s going to agree on things. That’s not even true in the Roman Catholic alternative to Solas scriptura. They point these things out so that they say you have to accept this view that’ll solve the problem. Well guess what? Catholics end up writing books called Confusion in the Kingdom, subtitled How Progressive Catholicism is bringing Harm and Scandal to the Church. This is a book written by Trent Horn. He’s talking about scandal. He even refers to certain things as heresy and Danville and so forth. In here, Rome’s alternative hasn’t solved this alleged problem that if it undermines so scriptura, it’s a two-edged sword. It undermines the Roman Catholic view. The problem isn’t that people disagree and therefore soul scripture is false. It’s that somebody’s just not listening to the text of scripture. That doesn’t mean that they’re terrible people or non-Christians.

(01:52:07):

People can disagree on issues. There are disagreements in the Bible. Why do you think the apostles are writing a epistles and who are they writing to? By the way, the apostles with their oral tradition. How did oral tradition do in the days of the apostles? People were disagreeing all over the place. So they happily wrote scripture. Look at one Corinthians. What’s Paul doing? He’s writing a scripture because of these knuckleheads, these Mr. Magoos are all bouncing into each other like a bunch of keystone cops, right? But by the way, notice there’s a fundamental difference in how Paul responds to the Corinthians who are acting like a bunch of Rugrats and how he responded to the Galatians, you stupid Galatians, whose Bewitched you? These were people that were corrupting the and essential. So scripture’s very clear on, well, am I done?

Marlon (Host of “The Gospel Truth”) (01:52:50):

Yeah, just letting it go on. I’m trying to let you know. Alright, tr

Trent Horn (01:52:57):

The problem here is we don’t claim that the church and it’s teaching is as perspicuous as the Westminster Confession claims that scripture is perspicuous. I would just say the Catholic church’s teachings are clearer than many of the teachings that we might find in scripture, especially on issues today because we have a living teaching authority that can say, oh, you didn’t get it. Here it is again. So we’re able to have that, and I don’t think you want to start talking about liberalism in the Catholic church. I wrote that book. Yes. It’s unfortunate when we have a priest might celebrate a pride mass and say, just say speak in oblique references. But that’s certainly not like the Presbyterian Church of the USA, which your denomination broke off from in 1973. That’s a much larger one that will have a female pastor married to another woman preaching about abortion. We don’t have that in the Catholic church, so let’s not throw stones in liberal houses though. I’m grateful you’re in the conservative breakaway.

Anthony Rogers (01:53:55):

So you’re actually 30 seconds. Yeah, you’re actually wrong. My church didn’t break away from the P-C-U-S-A. The PCA is from the southern church that has nothing to do with the northern church, which ordains homosexuals and the like. And by the way, you want to talk about them being especially bad? I guess we shouldn’t. Well, anyway, I was going to go somewhere else with that. But in this book, Trent talked, I mean these aren’t just minor differences now. He says the creeds and confessions of Rome are clearer. But even in this debate, Trent isn’t clear on what these actual position is. Look at material sufficiency. Oh, we could believe this. We could believe that. That’s just a moving target, right? That doesn’t seem to me like it’s clear. We have a very clear position on solas scriptura. It’s materially sufficient. What is material sufficiency according to Rome? We don’t know. Nobody knows.

Trent Horn (01:54:50):

Alright,

Anthony Rogers (01:54:51):

It’s

Trent Horn (01:54:51):

Fine. Oh, do I get 30 seconds?

Anthony Rogers (01:54:53):

No,

Marlon (Host of “The Gospel Truth”) (01:54:53):

That was my 30. That was his 30 seconds.

Trent Horn (01:54:55):

Oh, that was his

Marlon (Host of “The Gospel Truth”) (01:54:55):

30 seconds. Yeah, yeah, that was his 30 seconds. See, we’re all confused.

Trent Horn (01:54:58):

If it’s just one and one and it’s three, you lose track.

Marlon (Host of “The Gospel Truth”) (01:55:01):

So it’s one and one. And then if the question was for you Trent, you get 30 more seconds to respond.

Trent Horn (01:55:07):

Okay? Okay. It’s not, it is not lived out in practice.

Anthony Rogers (01:55:16):

Only if it was about salvation.

Marlon (Host of “The Gospel Truth”) (01:55:21):

Alright, this question is for Trent. According to two Timothy three 16 to 17, the S scripture is equipped the man of God for every good work. If scripture equips us for every good work, why do we need tradition and magisterium? What other good works are tradition and the magisterium needed for

Trent Horn (01:55:42):

First I say that Paul and second Timothy is referring to the Old Testament here. So if you want to stretch it too far, you could say, oh, well all you need is the Old Testament to be able to do every good work. And that’s certainly not the case if you’re going to proclaim Christian doctrine. But if you speak about scripture in the broader sense here, you are taking that phrase every good work and stretching it too much. In two Timothy 2 21, Paul tells Timothy, you’ll be a vessel for noble use. If you stay away from bad influences, just stay away from bad influences. You’ll be ready for every good work. Pon, ARAG, gun and agathon. So there in second Timothy two, it says you’ll be ready for every good work. If you just stay away from bad influences, it doesn’t follow. That’s all you need in order to do the Christian life. A letter of James, it says, if we grow in the virtues of patience, it will perfect and endurance. It says, if you grow in endurance in James four, it will perfect and complete you, but you don’t only need patience. Scripture equips us for many good works. But scripture for example, as we’ve seen in this debate, it doesn’t tell us what is and isn’t scripture beyond kind of a vague, trust me, bro. It’s there,

Marlon (Host of “The Gospel Truth”) (01:56:46):

Anthony.

Anthony Rogers (01:56:47):

Yeah, you all heard that from me, trust me bro. Or did you hear me quote scripture after scripture so much so that Trent had to say it’s not how many verses you quote, it’s the quality. So certainly I quoted scripture, I demonstrated my point, and these sorts of things are just throwaway lines that hopefully will do more than they actually can. Well, Trent says that when Paul says all scriptures inspired of God, he’s just talking about the Old Testament. Well read the whole context. I used to think that, and I think there are a lot of Protestants who think that, but just reading the context, notice what Paul says to Timothy. This is Paul’s final epistle to Timothy, his last written letter to Timothy, and he says that from infancy known the holy scriptures. And then he says, these scriptures are able to make him wisen to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

(01:57:34):

Christ Jesus. This presupposes that he was acquainted with New Testament scripture. And that same Paul says that other things are scripture. He refers to Luke whose praise is in the gospel throughout the churches, meaning he’s praised for the gospel that he wrote in one Timothy five. He quotes Luke’s gospel as scripture two Peter three, the verse he kept quoting about Paul’s writings being unclear. It says, Paul’s writings are scripture. And by the way, it doesn’t say all of Paul’s writings or most of Paul’s writings, it says some things in Paul’s writings, some doesn’t mean all and it doesn’t mean most. And therefore, if some things are unclear, most of it is clear. And how do you determine those things that aren’t clear? Well by interpreting scripture with scripture.

Marlon (Host of “The Gospel Truth”) (01:58:14):

Alright, Trent, 30 seconds.

Trent Horn (01:58:15):

Yeah, I’m not saying all of scripture is unclear. You get 99% of scripture can be clear. But to kill a soul, you only need 0.1% of scripture to be unclear, to go onto a heresy to your own damnation. That’s the problem. It’s not that it isn’t clear, it’s certainly clear in many places I affirm that about Jesus being the Messiah. Faith in Christ leads to salvation, but to the finer points of theology that are debated and it’s not just academic nerd stuff. There are things where even if scripture, even if it’s just a handful of passage, even just a handful of passages is all it takes for somebody to fall down the rabbit hole of heresy. Unless you have an authority beyond scripture to say you’re free to interpret scripture, you just can’t cross this theological guardrail and soul scripture doesn’t provide that.

Marlon (Host of “The Gospel Truth”) (01:59:00):

Alright, this question’s for Anthony. If your canon comes from fallible history, how do you have infallible scripture? How do you know? Epistle to the Hebrews is inspired, but first epistle of Clement isn’t.

Anthony Rogers (01:59:16):

Can you read that again?

Marlon (Host of “The Gospel Truth”) (01:59:18):

If your canon comes from infallible history, how do you have infallible scripture? How do you know epistle to the Hebrews is inspired, but first epistle of Clement is not.

Anthony Rogers (01:59:29):

Yeah, this question presupposes that. I think our knowledge of the canon comes from fallible history. Now admittedly, I haven’t had enough time to explicate my full position on how we can demonstrate the canon from scripture, but I have at least stated my conviction that you can demonstrate the canon from scripture. And where this a canon debate, I have an opportunity to lay that case out fully. I do believe that there are internal ways of determining what belongs to the canon of scripture. And by the way, there’s a fallacy that’s going on here as well where it assumes that what we first have is this infallible list and then we gather up those books. That’s not how it worked. We have these infallible books and we derive the list from that, right? It’s kind of like asking, saying we have first have a 13 miracle or 13 parables of Jesus.

(02:00:16):

Now we got to go and find those parables. No, we say 13 parables because that’s what we have, right? It’s derived from what we have. So the relevant question is how do we look at these books and recognize that they are scripture and I’m arguing that they have inherent qualities that demonstrate them to be the word of God. Scripture is light, light manifests itself. These words have self convincing power. I was in a jail cell when this word of God came into it and pierced my soul to believe unto its salvation. I didn’t need a pope, I didn’t need a magisterium. I didn’t need somebody cutting me off.

Marlon (Host of “The Gospel Truth”) (02:01:00):

Alright, Trent, you got it for one minute.

Trent Horn (02:01:02):

I will amend my cheeky description of Anthony’s definition of we can know these books are scripture, that they have inherent qualities. The inherent qualities were not revealed tonight. So I said that it was essentially a case of trust me, bro, they’re there. The only quality I’ve seen, rather I’d like to give another term. He’s essentially appealing to what would be a burning in the bosom that when you read this, it convicts you. I’ve heard lots of people say stuff like that. I’ve heard people who are in jail read the Quran and it does that to them or the book of Mormon or Christian science. So lots of people make that claim. We have still throughout this debate, and maybe Anthony can make a video after debate and go through the whole thing and I’ll happily engage that material too. But that doesn’t answer the question. If you believe in sola scriptura, you have to know what the scriptura is and the scriptura doesn’t tell us that. And we have not gotten any list of the qualities in the scriptura that answers that crucial question.

Anthony Rogers (02:02:00):

Please tell me I have 30 seconds, 30 seconds.

(02:02:03):

Trent said, this sounds like a book of Mormon burning in the bosom sort of thing. Listen to Luke 24, then their eyes were open and they recognized him and he vanished from their sight. They said to one another, were not our hearts burning within us while he was speaking to us on the road while he was explaining the scriptures to us. Now, with all due respect, that’s not the same thing as the self-authenticating nature of scripture. This refers to why somebody will accept that word which is self-authenticating. It’s because of the operation of the spirit in the heart. So you’re conflating things objectively. I’m saying this word is from God. The sun is shining whether anybody recognizes it or not, but it’s because God gives people eyes that they can see the sun. The same thing is true spiritually. The light is shining. This is God’s light and those whose hearts he operates on experience it to the saving of their soul. And yes, it’s called a burning in their heart. That’s not Mormonism though, by the way. I wish I could say more.

Marlon (Host of “The Gospel Truth”) (02:03:00):

Alright, this question’s for Trent Eastern Orthodox. Likewise say that revelation came from outside of scripture, yet Rome disagrees with various EO doctrines. How are we to judge between Rome and Greece, if not by scripture? And would that not entail scripture is the final norm and regulator?

Trent Horn (02:03:24):

No, because we can look to see where has the church that Christ established remained in continuity throughout history. I think another problem with solo scriptura is we will hear lip service being paid. Oh, well, we believe the church is an authority. It’s just not an infallible authority. But under solo scriptura, the church and Protestantism cannot be an authority. Are you going to listen to every Lutheran Anglican Methodist and a Baptist Mennonite, P-C-A-P-C-U-S-A pastor who has multiple conflicting definitions about so many topics? The church becomes a moot point. Really, it can’t serve if the church, here’s the thing, if the church is just the invisible bond of all true Christians, it can’t guide you in any way. Or if the church is just the denomination that is the most correct, then we’ve got a lot of people here who aren’t in the church and don’t even know it. So I think that that’s a really big problem there, that it’s not just scripture. We have to look where is the church? What body has the best claim to being the historical continuation of that church that Christ established? And I would say that it is the Catholic church. You want to get into the nitty gritty historics of Catholic versus Orthodox. My friend Eric Ybarra has a great book on that so that there is nitty gritty, but it’s very clear and very different from something that happened 500 years ago.

Anthony Rogers (02:04:44):

Anthony, I do have to say that clock loves train. So the question was how do you adjudicate between the o claim that it is the true church of Christ conveying to us authentic tradition? And Trent’s answer is we have to find continuity. But guess what? According to Rome, the way you determine what the authentic tradition is is by the Pope, which is entirely circular. Then how do we know that this is the true church? Well, we got to look for continuity. How do we know what continuity is by the Pope? Why should we listen to the Pope? Well, because that’s what the continuing teaching of the church is. How do we know that’s the continuing teaching of the church? Because the Pope says that this doesn’t solve the problem. He said something earlier about self authentication being circular. That’s circular. The sun shining and you seeing it is not circular, it’s self evidencing. Just like logic is self evidencing and so forth. I’ll conclude with that.

Trent Horn (02:05:41):

I believe Jesus when he said, I will establish my church on the rock of Peter and the gates of hell will not prevail against it, that that church still exists to this day. It is visible, enduring, hierarchical, and capable of teaching believers universally. So one would then try to use a historical investigation to see which church body today has the best claim of being that same church or the continuation of that church from 2000 years ago. I would say yeah, it might be a bit closer between Orthodox and Catholics, but between Protestantism, the comparison’s not even

Marlon (Host of “The Gospel Truth”) (02:06:14):

Close. Alright, thank you guys. That concludes the q and a. Alright, we are going to jump into our closing remarks, closing after the closing guys. They’re going to be sending in a cleanup crew to get things ready. They do have service tomorrow morning. So I ask that everyone, as soon as we are done here that you begin to exit out. I know we want to hang out, take pictures, but we do have to close the doors rather quickly. So once everything’s closed up, we close out the conference. Then you guys, if you guys don’t mind, head right towards the doors. So with that said, Anthony, you’re up for your seven minute closing.

Anthony Rogers (02:07:06):

Okay? I hope that clock is seven minutes. Trent style. You had fun

Trent Horn (02:07:14):

With time too,

Anthony Rogers (02:07:16):

I’m just suggesting. Well, I want to thank all of you again for coming out tonight. I want to thank Trent. It’s been lively. I don’t think he expected anything less than a knockdown drag out though. I will also register my sentiment that I do think that Trent is if not the best, certainly one of the best. I only say maybe not because I don’t think I know every Roman Catholic apologist. There might be one out there. But I do want to thank Trent this evening for this debate. I relish this opportunity to speak to you on this topic. These are momentous issues on this turn. Incredibly important matters. This is a momentous issue. Can you trust the text of scripture to convey to you the truth of God sufficiently to the saving of your soul? I have argued tonight that you can, these words have been written so that you may believe in believing have life in his name.

(02:08:07):

You can have life in his name by believing in this word. Is it there clearly? Well, that’s the whole assumption of the statement. These things have been written so that you may believe not so, that you may not understand and then have to cast a ballot for somebody to interpret it. And by the way, there’s no papal office in scripture. There’s not even an option to seek out a pope at this point in history. All that stuff is being read into text like Matthew 16. But in this debate, one of the important things has been whether or not scripture is self-authenticating. He said, well, why can’t a Muslim and a Mormon say the same thing? Well, their books are not self-authenticating. They’re self refuting. The God of Islam and Mormonism can’t speak with self-authenticating authority because the God of Islam and Mormonism is not self-contained.

(02:08:51):

That was the whole point about my opening about self authentication. This God has all life and glory in and of himself and so can speak self-referential. He can swear by himself. There’s none greater by whom he could swear. Go look at the Quran, ask Jake afterwards. Does the God of the quranics swear exclusively by himself? No. Why not? Because he’s not self-contained. He swears repeatedly by everything under the sun, including the sun is the book of Mormon, is the God of Mormon is himself contained? Absolutely not. The God of Mormonism is a man that lives on a star near the planet. Kob. You think that being self attesting, self-authenticating, nothing could be before further from the truth. And that’s why all this talk about burning in the bom and so forth has nothing to do with what scripture’s talking about and what I’m talking about today.

(02:09:40):

This word is self-authenticating. It is life and you can believe it. You could bank on it. And of course there are going to be things that you have to work at to understand. It’s not like God didn’t want us to work at things. One of the things Augustine used to say is the clear stuff’s there so that buy it, we may be fed, have salvation and so forth. And then there are other things there that God put so that we would have something to do in a sense. I don’t mean to think he meant it in a flippant way, he’s just saying that to exercise us, we’re to be workmen who are diligent, who don’t need to be ashamed. So this word is generally clear. There are some things that require work and some of those issues are things like baptism. So all my Baptist friends here today, you need to work harder and I need to do better getting the word out to my fellow Presbyterian brothers and sisters to turn up to these things so that more hands can be up when Trent does the audience stuff.

(02:10:34):

But the main thing I’m trying to convey to you though is that you could trust this word. You don’t need a pope to interpose himself between you and your God. God didn’t make you through a pope. Why does he need to speak to you through a pope? God doesn’t save you through a pope. Well, I guess some popes would say You’re not saved unless you’re in submission to the Pope. I forget which Pope it was who said apart from submission to him the pontiff that there is no salvation. But this word is clear. You can believe it, you can bank on it. And the whole reason for trying to get somebody off of it is precisely, of course people can twist this word, but it’s a whole lot easier once you’re saying you got to listen to what I’m telling you, this word says Right.

(02:11:17):

Once you do that well then you might as well start your own group, your own faith church. You could build people for their money. You might sell indulgences to build St. Peter’s basilica. You might do something like that. That’s the whole goal. That’s been the goal throughout history is to get people off this word. This word is life. It’s light, it’s salvation to your souls. Do the scriptures want anything for salvation? They lack anything that you need to know. What do you need to know for salvation? RET said it’s materially sufficient, but what he said is it’s not clear, but where, I mean it’s clear and all the ways that I pointed out, Jesus said to the religious leaders, have you never read? Isn’t that assuming scripture’s clear? Jesus said if you had read the scriptures, you’d believe all this presupposes scriptures clarity. So in conclusion, I think that there’s a lot of issues, of course, that are outstanding things that need to be further discussed.

(02:12:19):

Things like the Canada scripture, which is a huge topic, but none of that undermines the clear teaching of the word of God. I mean, consider it this way. If scripture says that it’s sufficient and somebody can raise a question to you undermining that claim, what would you believe? The text of scripture telling you it’s sufficient or the fact that you don’t know the answer to that particular question. I submit to you that you should believe God who speaks with ultimate authority and say, well, it must be that there’s something inadequate about me in my understanding, not the text of scripture, God’s word is the ultimate authority. Now, one of the things that I mentioned, and I’ll leave you with this tonight as a particularly relevant text to Solas scriptura Paul at the end of his ministry as it’s recorded for us in the book of Acts, said explicitly, I have not said anything. In fact, he says, I’ve said nothing than can be proven from the scriptures, nothing. Even the apostolic preaching is what was found in scripture. And I submit to you, you should believe nothing but what is found in scripture and in believing nothing but what’s found in scripture. Guess what? You’ll have. Not nothing. You’ll have life, salvation life, everything you need for life and godliness. And I’ll conclude with that.

Marlon (Host of “The Gospel Truth”) (02:13:46):

All right, now we have Trent Horn for a seven minute closing.

Trent Horn (02:13:54):

Alright? All right. I really want to thank everyone for being here tonight to discuss this foundational issue regarding Christian unity. I will ask also that you set aside all of the references to Catholicism that have been made tonight because that’s not what’s on trial here. I’m happy to defend Catholicism in a hostile venue. I’ve done that before. I’m willing to do that again. But that things about indulgences or the Catholic faith, that doesn’t answer the question that is being debated tonight because a Christian is sincere. Christian could ask the questions of Anthony. Yes, he reads scholarship that says the letter to the Hebrews is anonymous. We don’t even know if an apostle wrote it. So why should I trust that? Or I’ve seen Christians leave, oh, the passage about the woman caught in adultery is not in the earliest manuscripts of John or Luke. Should I think that’s not scripture.

(02:14:50):

I’ve seen Protestant apologists say that it’s not who should I listen to? Who should I go to where? How do I go to scripture if scripture is the thing that I have questions about in the first place? So tonight I show that the Bible is not the soul infallible rule of faith for the church. That means soul of s scriptura is false. We’ve had a lot of switching around you with the term word of God. Obviously the word of God is our highest authority. But the debate was about whether the word of God is confined to the written word alone. And it certainly is not. And remember I presented three arguments to show that this is not true. That scripture word of God is in the written word alone and that it’s fully sufficient to teach you the whole counsel of God all things faith in life and that it’s perspicuous and clear.

(02:15:35):

And that was amply demonstrated in my arguments. The first argument I gave was the problem of defining scripture. And I think it’s very clear. That’s why many Protestant politics are very surprised. They’ll say, well, yeah, the canon comes from the church, but the church doesn’t have to be infallible to give us the canon. So the church kind of got lucky when they got it right. Instead, Anthony proposed, oh, well yes, even the canon of scripture itself is found in scripture because scripture reveals the qualities that only scripture we’ll have and that’s how we can use it. What are those qualities? Not enough time to tell you tonight. What a shame. What a shame. So I think that this really shows that this is an infallible truth. If you’re going to believe in soul of scriptura, you have to know what the scriptura is and be able to tell anyone who says some parts of the scriptura are not scripture.

(02:16:25):

You are not just wrong, damnably wrong to say that it isn’t. The other argument I gave was the absence of soul of scripture. In scripture we heard a lot of talk about the word of God being able to inform and build people up. And I completely agree with that. I agree with that a hundred percent. But once again, the word of God is not confined to the written word alone. We saw that scripture never says we saw that soul of scriptura was not true in the Old Testament because prophets could continue to give revelation. It was not true in the New Testament. You couldn’t just say, sorry, Paul, I can’t have Second Corinthians. You already gave me one Corinthians. I’m not going to go beyond what is written. The people of God. Were waiting for revelation. But if you were to read scripture, it never says that public revelation would eventually come to an end that’s not in there.

(02:17:13):

Even though if scripture has a whole council of God, it should be there. We have nothing. We heard a lot about sufficiency. But in two Timothy three 16 through 17, you know what is called sufficient, not scripture. The man of God is called sufficient scripture is called Alamos. Helpful, useful, profitable, and it absolutely is helpful and useful, but in the wrong hands, scripture can lead to a person’s destruction and it doesn’t take much if even only 0.1% of scripture is unclear on these important matters. It can lead millions to spiritual destruction. And I’ve seen it Anthony’s worried saying, oh, if you just have the Bible in Perspicuous scripture, you’ll be okay. I’ve seen Protestants fall into the free grace heresy thinking that what the Bible says about we are saved by faith alone, that that means, oh, I’m saved as long as I believe in Jesus.

(02:18:03):

No matter what I do in the future, even if I become an apostate serial killer, I will still go to heaven. And there’s not an insignificant number of Christians who believe that. I’ve seen others look at the scriptures and say, oh, well we can have female pastors or same-sex weddings. I know there’s injunctions here in scripture, but that changes just like the injunctions on slavery, for example. And people get put in a bind at understanding how scripture from 2000 years ago is to be applied today just as the injunctions on. There are some injunctions that are not applied today, like those on slavery, for example. Slaves don’t have to be kind to their masters. They can run away. They’re allowed to do that. But in that particular time and place, when this was the dominant part of the economy, Paul was preaching peace for people and peace in Christ.

(02:18:52):

But social teaching and moral teaching, you’ll have people, those words are taken out of context 150 years ago that Christians primarily in the South used it to say, oh, we can have slavery in perpetuity. And Hosea priest wrote a book called The Bible Defense of Slavery. So the words of scripture, they are the word of God, but the problem is when they’re placed in the hands of men, they can easily go astray. I think that that abundantly shows that the doctrines of the perspicuity of scripture are false. That scripture is all the church. These is not what God only gave the church because what did God give us? He didn’t give us a book. He didn’t give us writings. He didn’t even give us writings to tell us, here’re the writings that you were to follow. He gave us a church, a universal church. Not this church and that church, but one church, one holy Catholic and apostolic church.

(02:19:48):

You might not like the word Catholic, but at least go with what’s in the nice seen creed, which doesn’t mention scripture. It says, I believe in one holy, catholic and apostolic church. That is what kept you in the bosom of doctrine and right practice setting theological guardrails so that people are not led astray by false teachers. But if one operates under sola scriptura, what do we have instead? A cacophony of voices claiming? Well, Anthony said, the Pope doesn’t tell you this. You’re not saved by a pope. You don’t need this pope or that Pope. Pope just means father. First Corinthians four 15 St. Paul says, you have had many guides, but not many fathers. I became your father in Christ Jesus who are our spiritual fathers. Hebrews 13 says that we should submit to our elders, they’ve been placed an authority over us. Which ones free grace Ones five point Calvinist, ones PCUS. A female pastor married to another lady with sparkle sermon talking about abortion, who determines scripture. Didn’t give us that answer. But Christ gave us a church that tells us this is scripture and guides us into salvation in Christ through the word of God proclaimed in sacred scripture and sacred tradition given to us for the salvation of all. So thank you so much for having me here tonight.