The Highway Forums General Discussion Open Forum A Request for Links to Doctrinal Debates

Dear Highway Readers and Staff,

One of my elders is the director of a residential, year-long Christian discipleship program for men. While the program--Manasseh House--is not a direct ministry of our church, a goal of the men of our church is to be more directly involved in the lives of the men of the program. To that end, one of our brothers--A., who nearly 20 years ago was a student in the program--teaches a weekly Bible study with the men in the later phases of the program. A. recently had what I think is a brilliant idea!

He is organizing a debate between the men of the program and the college-age young men of our church, in which Manasseh will defend, and the church kids oppose--as true devil's advocates!--the following three orthodox doctrines:

1) The Inerrancy and Authority of Scripture
2) The Deity of Christ
3) Justification by Faith Alone

Because the main goal is to get the "debaters"--pro and con--to sharpen their understanding, appreciation, articulation and defense of the hope that in them, they will be learning only enough forensic protocol to make this likely only a very rudimentary mock debate and more a presentation of the Scriptures and arguments involved. Even so, I would love to hear if you know of any links to sites with either transcripts or recordings of debates--either real or mock--on any of the above topics which could assist us. If so, I would be very grateful if you would post them!

Thanks in advance!

I would ask around the Christian colleges and Bible schools and their students. I was in a few of those debates in college (I had to argue in favor of abortion once - and despite being vehemently opposed to it personally, I "won" by outscoring my opponent in citing numbers and facts and twisting them to support my argument). College kids rock, man. Those older guys had better be well armed! Call the college profs and get some ammo from them. They've probably accumulated quite an arsenal over the years from previous debaters.

-R

Paul James White over at aomin.org has a lot of debates on these subjects try his site.

Robin,

Thanks, I hadn't thought of that! I will ask a couple of the young men recently out of school if they have any contact with professors who have organized such debates.

Boanerges,

Thanks. I had also thought of White, but although I often hear references to him I have not actually heard more than a few fragments of his debates linked elsewhere.

But I don't see anywhere on his site where you can get any of his debates < cheapskateAlert >without buying them< /cheapskateAlert >. All that our group will have time for may be a handful of short clips to see what a debate looks like. What am I missing here?

Off-my-own-topic, but I vote for no new avatar for you. Your old one has tempted me to envy for ages, and you wouldn't want to be the occasion of further stumbling on my part, now would you?

Okay I'll do a little more searching for you to find some "free" stuff for you. Pilgrim can tell you that I also have a tendency to be a cheap skate I'll tell you sometime about the soul searching I did before I bought my software developer studio. Not to mention my website developer studio, although I regret a little on that end.

Lastly I wouldn't want to be the occasion of your sin although if you send me a picture via email I might be able to convince "the boy" to do me a favor and create you a sketch to use as an avatar. No guarantees though he's pretty busy he tells me.

Hah! You might have misunderstood; the occasion of my envy is not your avatar itself--though it's great, crisp work that your son has done, as we can all see from the Valentine's Day shot--but the subject thereof, the raw material your son was working from! Let's just say that I'm one of those guys who, on a good day, could make C.S. Lewis look like Paul Newman by comparison! Some of us were standing behind the door when the looks got handed out. So thanks, but no thanks.

And if you can get a debate clip without too much trouble, that would be appreciated, but I don't want you or anyone putting excessive time into it either; again, the main focus for these men over the next few several weeks of preparation is simply studying relevant biblical passages and the most common arguments and counter-arguments. Having a sense of debate format would be icing on the cake.

Paul,

It might be silly on my part to think you haven't already searched this, but there are quite a number of Greg Bahsen's debates online and most are free. I have found a few in the past both in .pdf and audio/MP3, e.g., Bahsen vs. Stein (Atheist).

Pilgrim,

No it's not silly to think that--this is a very last-minute program and my part is basically to groom the men on one of the 3 topics, so I have spent little time on this minor aspect.

While the Bahnsen-Stein debate is on my family's "must-hear/read at least once a year list", I have not heard any of his other debates. Given that we pretty much follow the presuppositionalist track here, Bahnsen would be great to hear. (And no, we're not theonomists by any stretch, living in NYC can cure you of that pretty quickly!)

Thanks.