Jay Dyer is an incredibly disingenuous person whose arguments against Protestantism are stunningly full of flat out lies and distortions. Dyer’s critique fails because it repeatedly collapses distinctions the Reformed confessions explicitly maintain, That is rather funny seeing as he himself was a Protestant of the Reformed variety. One would think he understood the beliefs of the creed he once professed. Alas, that is not the case. This article is a thorough debunking of an interview of Jay Dyer by David Patrick Harry.
This video titled https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzY7JMgJMO0 is 2 and a half hours of awful dreck from Jay with no pushback from David Patrick Harry who sits speechless and in awe of "The Great Jay Dyer." It's horrendous on every level.
I have wanted to do a video rebuttal of my own so I uploaded the transcript into ChatGPT to get the lay of the land. I am familiar enough with my own faith to debunk this video and ChatGPT did naught but organize everything while making the same arguments I would. The result is a 27-point outline so comprehensive that I decided it's best just to post it.
Notice that ChatGPT rebuts Jay using the Westminster Confession of Faith. This goes back to a criticism I have long held against Jay: he REFUSES to engage with any Protestant Standards be it the WCF, Three Forms, 39 Articles, or the Augsburg Confession. His arguments against Protestantism rely not on what Protestantism actually teaches but on what Jay thinks Protestantism teaches and the alleged inevitable results of that teaching with a huge focus on the alleged inevitable results. That is a bad method of reasoning which leads to distortions at every step.
Here it is.
The fundamental problem with Dyer's argument
Dyer presents the argument as though he has discovered an internal contradiction:
Reformed justification → Christ must be a human person → Nestorianism
and alternatively:
Reformed penal substitution → the Father must damn the divine Son → the Trinity is divided.
Neither dilemma actually follows.
The fundamental mistake is that Dyer repeatedly collapses distinctions that Reformed theology explicitly makes:
- person vs. nature
- justification vs. sanctification
- basis vs. instrument of justification
- Christ's divine nature vs. his human nature
- Christ's person vs. the righteousness performed according to his human nature
- Scripture's supreme authority vs. the usefulness of church tradition
- historical development of doctrine vs. truth of doctrine
- Christ's suffering according to his humanity vs. a change in the divine Trinity.
And the particularly devastating thing is that the Westminster Confession explicitly says many of the things Dyer claims Reformed theology cannot say.
Let's go through it.
1. Dyer completely misrepresents the Reformed doctrine of Christ's person
This is probably the easiest error to refute.
Dyer says:
“Christ is not a human person who fulfills a covenant of works”
and then argues that Reformed theology has to make Jesus into a separate human person in order for Christ's obedience to have merit.
He later makes the dilemma explicit:
“the only other option is if you're reformed ... to opt for jesus being a human person.”
But Reformed theology explicitly rejects that Christological position.
The Westminster Confession says:
“two whole, perfect, and distinct natures ... inseparably joined together in one person”
and then explicitly says that this one person is “very God, and very man.”
Even more devastatingly for Dyer's argument, Westminster 8.7 says:
“Christ, in the work of mediation, acts according to both natures, by each nature doing that which is proper to itself.”
That's almost a direct answer to his objection.
So the Reformed position is:
One person. Two natures.
The Son is the person.
The human nature is not a second person.
The obedience is genuinely human obedience, because it is performed according to Christ's human nature, but the person performing that obedience is the eternal Son.
That's standard Chalcedonian Christology.
The Belgic Confession says the same thing:
“there are not two Sons of God, nor two persons, but two natures united in a single person.”
So Dyer's supposed dilemma—
“Either Reformed theology makes Jesus a human person, or it makes the Trinity suffer”
—is a false dilemma.
There is a third option, and it is the actual Reformed position:
The divine person of the Son acts through both natures.
2. The Westminster Confession actually sounds remarkably like the Christology Dyer says Reformed theology lacks
This is worth emphasizing.
Dyer repeatedly invokes Cyril of Alexandria and the Council of Ephesus against Reformed theology.
But look at what Westminster says:
“two whole, perfect, and distinct natures ... joined together in one person”
and:
“by each nature doing that which is proper to itself.”
And Cyril's own Christological language is precisely concerned with preventing the division of Christ into two persons.
At Ephesus, Cyril's second anathema says that the Word is hypostatically united to flesh, so that there is one Christ. His eleventh says the flesh is life-giving because it is the flesh of the Word himself.
The Reformed confessions are not saying:
“There is a human Jesus who is morally connected to God.”
They explicitly say the opposite.
So Dyer isn't exposing a hidden Nestorianism in Westminster.
He's assigning Nestorianism to a position that expressly denies it.
3. His “created righteousness” argument confuses Christ's human acts with Christ's person
This is the heart of the argument.
Dyer says Reformed theology must have a “created” righteousness because Jesus' obedience consists of temporal human acts:
“that merited status that he merits over his lifetime obviously is created because it relates to all of his temporal actions.”
He then turns this into the “bank account” caricature.
But there is nothing problematic about saying that Christ's human obedience is genuinely human and therefore creaturely.
That's exactly what the incarnation requires.
If Christ's human obedience weren't genuinely human, then he wasn't actually:
“made under the law”
and didn't actually obey God as man.
The Westminster Confession explicitly says:
“he was made under the law, and did perfectly fulfil it”
while simultaneously affirming that the one who did this is the eternal Son.
Dyer appears to reason:
- Human obedience is created.
- Christ's human obedience is created.
- Therefore the person who performs it must be a created human person.
But 3 does not follow from 1 and 2.
A person can act according to a nature without being identical to that nature.
That's precisely what Chalcedonian Christology means by the distinction between person and nature.
4. “God calls a filthy sinner righteous, therefore God lies” is a complete misunderstanding of forensic justification
This is probably Dyer's most rhetorically effective argument, but it depends on equivocating between two meanings of “righteous.”
He says Reformed theology teaches:
God “can call a man who’s filthy wicked and unrighteous righteous”
and therefore makes God a liar.
But Reformed theology does not say:
“The justified person is already perfectly sanctified.”
It explicitly says the opposite.
The Westminster Larger Catechism distinguishes justification and sanctification:
- justification: God imputes Christ's righteousness;
- sanctification: the Spirit actually renews and transforms the person.
And it explicitly says sanctification is imperfect in this life.
The Westminster Confession likewise says believers are:
“sanctified, really and personally”
and that the dominion of sin is progressively weakened.
So Dyer's formulation:
“You're actually filthy underneath the righteousness”
is a caricature.
The Reformed position is:
The believer remains sinful in himself while simultaneously being judicially accepted in Christ and progressively sanctified by the Spirit.
Those aren't contradictory propositions.
5. “Filthy rags” does not mean regenerated Christians perform no genuinely good works
Dyer repeatedly invokes Isaiah 64:6:
“we're all filthy rags”
and concludes that Reformed theology must regard everything a Christian does as worthless.
But read Westminster 16.6.
It says that although believers' works are imperfect:
God is nevertheless pleased to accept and reward them in Christ.
And WCF 16.2 says good works are:
- fruits and evidences of true faith,
- manifestations of thankfulness,
- means of strengthening assurance,
- edifying to other believers,
- and things through which God is glorified.
So Dyer has taken:
“Our works cannot constitute the ground of our justification”
and transformed it into:
“Reformed theology says Christians don't actually become holy.”
That's simply false.
6. Dyer confuses “faith alone” with the entire Reformed ordo salutis
His Genesis 12/15 argument is especially weak.
He says Paul cites Genesis 15 rather than Genesis 12, and therefore the Reformed interpretation of Abraham's justification supposedly doesn't work.
But there is no contradiction here.
Paul is specifically discussing Genesis 15:6 because that's the text that says:
Abraham “believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness.”
That's the exact proposition Paul is explaining in Romans 4.
The fact that Abraham had previously responded to God's call in Genesis 12 does not mean Genesis 15 cannot be the moment Paul selects for his argument about reckoning righteousness.
Dyer's argument is essentially:
“If Paul meant justification by faith, he should have cited Genesis 12.”
That's not an exegetical argument. It's an assertion about what Paul should have done.
And the Reformed position doesn't say Genesis 12 never happened.
7. Dyer incorrectly makes sola fide responsible for regeneration
He says:
“when you exercise saving faith for the first time in the reform view it's the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit…”
and then treats that whole sequence as though it were what sola fide means.
But that's a conflation.
Sola fide concerns the instrument of justification.
Regeneration is a different question.
The Westminster Confession treats them separately:
- Chapter 10 — effectual calling/regeneration
- Chapter 11 — justification
- Chapter 13 — sanctification.
WCF 10 explicitly describes the Spirit's work in effectual calling, including enlightening the mind, renewing the will, and drawing the person to Christ. Then chapter 11 addresses justification and says faith is its alone instrument.
So Dyer is taking several distinct Reformed doctrines and treating them as one proposition called “sola fide.”
That's not an accurate representation of the system.
8. The “bank account” metaphor is a caricature of imputation
Dyer repeatedly describes Reformed justification as:
“Christ's created merited righteousness ... put into your account”
and calls it a:
“theoretical spiritual bank account.”
The metaphor is polemically convenient, but it obscures what the doctrine actually says.
The Westminster Larger Catechism defines justification as God:
pardoning sins and accounting the person righteous because of Christ's perfect obedience and satisfaction, imputed to the believer and received by faith.
And Westminster specifically says Christ's obedience and satisfaction are real, not imaginary:
“proper, real, and full satisfaction.”
So if you want to attack imputation, attack imputation itself.
Don't turn it into a literal divine checking account and then refute the metaphor.
9. His penal-substitution argument commits the same person/nature error
This is the other major argument.
Dyer says:
“the father damned the son”
and therefore:
“this splits the Trinity.”
But classical Reformed theology does not teach that the Father ceased loving the Son, that the Son ceased loving the Father, or that the divine persons acquired contradictory wills.
The Westminster Confession says Christ endured:
“most grievous torments immediately in his soul, and most painful sufferings in his body”
while remaining the one divine-human mediator.
The Heidelberg Catechism similarly says Christ bore God's wrath “in body and soul.”
This is suffering according to Christ's humanity.
The divine nature doesn't become sinful.
The divine essence doesn't get punished.
The Trinity doesn't become internally divided.
Rather:
The person of the Son suffers according to his human nature.
And that is precisely why Chalcedonian Christology matters.
Dyer's argument assumes:
If the person of the Son suffers, the divine nature must suffer.
But that doesn't follow.
The Reformed confessional position explicitly distinguishes the natures while affirming the unity of the person.
10. In fact, Dyer's own discussion of Cyril actually supplies the answer to his objection
This is the deliciously ironic part.
Dyer quotes Cyril emphasizing that Christ's humanity belongs to the Word himself and that Christ is one person rather than two.
Fine.
But then he says Reformed theology must either:
- make Jesus a separate human person, or
- make the Father punish a divine person.
No.
Cyril's Christology itself gives you the third possibility:
The one person of the Son experiences suffering according to the human nature he assumed.
That is precisely how orthodox Christology can say:
“God suffered in the flesh”
without saying:
“the divine nature is passible.”
The same logic appears in the Westminster Confession's explicit statement that Christ acts according to both natures, each doing what belongs to it.
11. Dyer's claim that this means Nestorianism is therefore simply false
He says that if Reformed theology makes Christ's human obedience genuinely human, it is forced into Nestorianism.
But Nestorianism is not:
“Christ has a genuine human nature.”
That's Christianity.
Nor is it:
“Christ performed genuinely human actions.”
That's Christianity.
Nestorianism involves dividing Christ into two persons/hypostases.
The Westminster Confession explicitly rejects two persons.
The Belgic Confession explicitly rejects two persons.
Cyril explicitly rejects two persons.
So Dyer has constructed a false definition of the alleged contradiction.
12. The claim that nobody before the Reformation used “faith alone” is historically too strong
Dyer says:
“nobody taught the Reformation doctrine of justification by faith alone amongst the church fathers”
and cites Alister McGrath as having “totally debunked” the contrary position.
There is an important nuance here.
McGrath does argue that the Reformation doctrine represented a major theological development/discontinuity in the history of justification. His Iustitia Dei explicitly studies the emergence, medieval development, and Reformation transformation of justification.
So Dyer isn't completely fabricating McGrath's historical thesis.
But he's using it for a conclusion it cannot establish.
The historical question:
“Was the Reformation formulation of justification identical to the dominant patristic formulation?”
is not the same question as:
“Is justification by faith alone biblical?”
Those are two different arguments.
And there is actual patristic evidence that complicates Dyer's categorical statement. A scholarly article in the Journal of Ecclesiastical History argues that pre-Augustinian Latin theology contained significant formulations of justification by faith, including Hilary of Poitiers' “fides sola iustificat.”
Even 1 Clement 32:4 says Christians are justified:
“through faith”
rather than through their own works.
That doesn't prove that Clement taught the complete Westminster doctrine.
But it does mean:
“The Fathers taught works, therefore none of them had anything resembling justification by faith”
is far too simplistic.
13. More importantly, the Fathers' use of “faith” and “works” doesn't automatically settle the Protestant/Catholic debate
This is where both sides of the polemic frequently commit an error.
A Father can say:
faith is necessary
and also:
good works are necessary.
That does not automatically answer the question:
Are good works the ground or instrument by which God declares a sinner righteous?
Likewise, a Father can say:
faith alone
without necessarily meaning exactly what Luther, Calvin, or Westminster mean by the forensic/imputation distinction.
So Dyer's argument:
“The Fathers talk about works, therefore sola fide is false”
is an equivocation over what justification means and what role works play.
Augustine himself is an excellent illustration. He insists that faith without works is not sufficient for salvation, but simultaneously says works themselves arise from God's grace and that salvation is not earned independently of grace.
The real debate is therefore much more precise than Dyer makes it.
14. His argument from the Fathers to sola scriptura is a non sequitur
Dyer says:
the Fathers didn't teach sola scriptura;
therefore:
Protestant sola scriptura is an innovation.
But even if the historical premise were completely granted, the conclusion still wouldn't follow.
Sola Scriptura is a doctrine about the supreme normative authority of Scripture.
It doesn't require that second-century Christians use the exact phrase sola Scriptura.
The Westminster Confession explicitly acknowledges:
- the testimony of the church,
- ancient writers,
- councils,
- tradition,
- ordinary means of interpretation,
- and the illumination of the Holy Spirit.
But it makes Scripture the final judge.
That's not:
“I have my Bible and don't need the Church.”
That's solo Scriptura, which isn't the Westminster doctrine.
15. His canon argument is a false dilemma
Dyer's argument is:
“There's no way for you to know you have the correct canon without going to church history.”
But the Reformed position doesn't say:
“I personally decided which books are inspired because they made me feel good.”
Westminster explicitly says the church's testimony can lead us to a high and reverent esteem for Scripture.
But it denies that the church creates Scripture's authority.
WCF 1.4 says Scripture's authority depends wholly upon God, not upon the testimony of a church. WCF 1.5 says the church's testimony is an important means by which believers esteem Scripture.
That's a coherent third position:
The Church recognizes and receives the canon; the Church does not confer divine authority upon it.
Dyer's argument assumes:
either the Church is an infallible canon-making authority, or Protestantism has nothing.
That simply doesn't follow.
16. “The Fathers didn't have the complete canon” does not refute sola Scriptura
Dyer says:
“they didn't have a completed canon for centuries—how could they [teach sola Scriptura]?”
But this confuses the existence of revelation with the later recognition of the complete canonical collection.
The Old Testament existed as Scripture before the New Testament canon was complete.
The apostolic writings themselves were already being treated as authoritative before the fourth century.
And most importantly, the Reformed doctrine does not say:
“The first-century Church must have possessed a bound 66-book Bible identical to the Westminster table of contents.”
It says that the inspired writings are the supreme norm.
Dyer's objection therefore attacks a position the Reformed confessions don't actually hold.
17. His claim that Protestantism has “no continuity” with Justin Martyr is absurdly overstated
This section is rhetorically entertaining.
He says:
“anybody in the Westminster Confession of Faith reform tradition you have no continuity with Justin Martyr at all.”
Well, “no continuity at all” is indefensible.
Justin describes:
- baptism,
- Christian worship,
- Eucharist,
- prayers,
- Scripture,
- Christ's incarnation,
- resurrection,
- the Trinity,
- and Christian ethical living.
Reformed Christians certainly disagree with Justin's Eucharistic theology and ecclesiology.
But Westminster still has:
- baptism,
- the Lord's Supper,
- ministers,
- the visible church,
- corporate worship,
- Christian discipline,
- Scripture,
- the Trinity,
- Christ's incarnation,
- Christ's resurrection.
The Westminster Confession explicitly recognizes Baptism and the Lord's Supper as Christ's sacraments, including their spiritual efficacy.
And the Reformed Lord's Supper is not merely:
“bread and wine and nothing else.”
WCF 29.7 says believers really and spiritually feed upon Christ through faith.
So there is genuine continuity and genuine discontinuity.
That's a much more historically responsible statement.
18. Dyer's strongest historical point: the early Fathers don't simply equal Westminster
Here I'd actually concede something to him.
If the argument is:
“Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Ignatius and Cyril all taught precisely the Westminster Confession,”
that's obviously false.
They didn't.
Second-century Christianity had different institutional structures, liturgical practices and theological vocabulary.
And the mature Reformed confessional system is a sixteenth/seventeenth-century formulation.
But that isn't a refutation of Reformed theology.
It merely means Reformed Christians believe the later confessional formulations are faithful deductions from Scripture rather than verbatim reproductions of second-century theology.
That is a historical claim that can be debated.
Dyer repeatedly treats:
“This doctrine was formulated later”
as equivalent to:
“Therefore this doctrine is false.”
That's a genetic fallacy.
19. His Reformation-history argument is far too simplistic
Dyer says the Reformation emerges from:
“nominalism versus realism”
and says the Reformation is “born” out of that debate.
There is a real historical connection.
Luther studied in an environment influenced by the via moderna, and nominalist/late-scholastic categories influenced him. Modern scholarship absolutely recognizes this.
But Dyer turns:
one intellectual influence
into:
the explanation of the Reformation.
That's not how the historiography works.
Modern scholarship treats the Reformation as arising from an intersection of:
- theology,
- biblical scholarship,
- humanism,
- late medieval scholasticism,
- ecclesiastical politics,
- indulgence controversies,
- social conditions,
- princely politics,
- and Luther's own theological development.
Oberman's work itself is considerably more nuanced than Dyer's reduction. His scholarship examines multiple influences, including nominalism, humanism, the Black Death, and the conciliar movement.
And Oxford scholarship specifically emphasizes that Luther's relationship with nominalism was complex and changing, not simply:
nominalism → Reformation.
So Dyer is taking a legitimate historiographical factor and making it into a monocausal explanation.
20. His characterization of Reformed scholasticism as “hyper-rationalism” is also historically crude
The video repeatedly sets up:
Byzantine theology = coherent theological system
versus:
Latin scholasticism = rationalistic speculation.
But modern scholarship on Protestant scholasticism has substantially revised that caricature.
Amy Nelson Burnett's research, for example, notes that older historiography portrayed Protestant scholasticism as excessively rationalistic and Aristotelian, while newer research shows its deep commitment to Scripture and biblical exegesis, with philosophical borrowing being eclectic rather than slavish.
So you can certainly criticize Reformed scholastic method.
But:
“Scholasticism is hyper-rationalism and therefore the Reformers constructed theology from the wrong starting point”
is an argument, not an established historical fact.
21. Dyer's “Cyril teaches the essence–energies doctrine” argument is particularly vulnerable
This is another place where he takes a later Orthodox theological framework and reads it backward.
He repeatedly says Cyril's doctrine of Christ's deification involves the uncreated energies, and then treats this as essentially the Palamite theological framework.
Cyril absolutely teaches deification.
That's not controversial.
Modern scholarship describes Cyril's theology in terms of humanity's participation in divine life through Christ and the Spirit.
And Cyril certainly speaks of Christ's flesh as life-giving because it belongs to the Word. The Eucharistic argument against Nestorius is genuine.
But the specific Palamite essence–energies distinction is a later Byzantine development associated particularly with the fourteenth-century hesychast controversy. Scholarly treatments locate the controversy over the doctrine of uncreated energies specifically in the fourteenth century.
Therefore:
Cyril's doctrine of deification ≠ proof that Cyril possessed the fully developed Palamite essence–energies system.
Dyer can argue for continuity between Cyril and Palamas.
That's a legitimate theological argument.
But saying:
“Cyril teaches the uncreated energies, therefore Ephesus is already operating with the Palamite framework”
requires considerably more historical argument than he provides.
22. Cyril's Eucharistic argument does not establish the entire Orthodox sacramental system
Cyril's argument against Nestorius is very important:
The flesh in the Eucharist is Christ's flesh because it belongs to the Word himself, not to some independently existing human person.
Fine.
But Dyer then jumps from that to:
therefore Reformed Eucharistic theology is refuted.
That doesn't follow.
Reformed theology does not deny that the Lord's Supper communicates Christ and his benefits.
Westminster says worthy believers:
“really and indeed ... spiritually, receive and feed upon Christ crucified.”
The dispute is about how Christ is present and received—not whether the Supper is merely an empty memorial.
That distinction is important.
23. His epistemological argument against Reformed theology begs the question
Later he argues:
Reformed people are totally depraved;
therefore their minds are corrupted;
therefore they cannot have reliable theological knowledge;
therefore their epistemology collapses.
But this only works if we accept Dyer's premise that:
fallen human cognition must be healed through direct participation in the uncreated energies in order to possess reliable knowledge of revelation.
That's precisely what the Reformed position denies.
So this isn't a demonstration that Reformed epistemology is internally contradictory.
It's:
“If my Orthodox epistemological premise is true, your epistemology doesn't work.”
That's a presuppositional disagreement, not a refutation.
24. And Dyer overlooks something actually stated in Westminster: illumination by the Holy Spirit
This makes his “Reformed theology has no noetic illumination” argument particularly weak.
Westminster 1.6 explicitly says:
“we acknowledge the inward illumination of the Spirit of God to be necessary for the saving understanding of such things as are revealed in the Word.”
WCF 1.5 likewise says the Holy Spirit bears witness to the Word in believers' hearts.
And WCF 10 says effectual calling involves God:
“enlightening their minds spiritually and savingly.”
So Dyer's characterization:
Reformed people merely have fallen rational faculties staring at created texts with no divine illumination
doesn't describe Westminster theology.
The disagreement is what the Spirit's illumination consists of, not whether the Spirit illuminates.
25. The “all councils can err, therefore Reformed epistemology collapses” argument doesn't work
Dyer correctly quotes Westminster 31.3's position that synods and councils can err. That is indeed the Reformed position.
But he treats this as though Reformed theology has thereby admitted:
“Nobody can know anything.”
No.
The Reformed hierarchy is:
God → inspired Scripture → fallible human interpretation → fallible councils/confessions.
The fact that a council can err doesn't imply Scripture can err.
Westminster explicitly says Scripture is the final court of appeal and councils and ancient writers are to be examined by it.
Dyer may reject that hierarchy.
But he hasn't demonstrated an internal contradiction in it.
26. The really important distinction: he repeatedly attacks “solo Scriptura,” not actually “sola Scriptura”
This is perhaps the single biggest methodological problem with the whole video.
Dyer repeatedly describes Protestantism as:
“me and my Bible.”
But Westminster doesn't say that.
It explicitly acknowledges:
- church testimony,
- teachers,
- ordinary means,
- ancient writers,
- councils,
- historical testimony,
- Christian prudence,
- and the illumination of the Spirit.
The difference is that none of those things is infallible alongside Scripture.
WCF 1.10 is explicit: councils, ancient writers, doctrines of men and private spirits are all to be examined by the supreme judge, the Holy Spirit speaking in Scripture.
So if Dyer wants to refute Reformed sola Scriptura, he needs to demonstrate:
Why Scripture cannot function as the supreme normative authority while the Church remains a genuine ministerial authority.
He doesn't do that.
He mostly attacks an evangelical caricature of solo Scriptura.
27. There is one thing Dyer says that I would actually preserve in a rebuttal
He is absolutely right that the Reformed doctrine should not be reduced to “just read the Bible privately and ignore history.”
That's not Westminster.
The Reformed tradition itself produced extensive confessions precisely because it regarded historical theology, councils, creeds and previous theological reflection as important.
The actual disagreement is over authority, not whether tradition is useful.
That's an important distinction—and acknowledging it will make your rebuttal considerably stronger.
Bottom line
The video is not worthless. Dyer raises real historical and theological questions, particularly concerning:
- the historical development of justification,
- the Fathers' understanding of salvation,
- Cyril's Christology,
- the Eucharist,
- the relationship between Scripture and tradition,
- and the development of Reformation theology.
But his actual refutation of Reformed theology fails at several crucial points.
The strongest errors are:
1. False dilemma about Christology
2. Person/nature confusion
3. False dilemma about penal substitution
4. Justification/sanctification confusion
5. Caricature of imputation
The “bank account” language reduces a sophisticated forensic doctrine to a metaphorical bookkeeping exercise.
6. Genesis 12/15 argument doesn't work
Paul cites Genesis 15 because Genesis 15 explicitly says Abraham's faith was counted as righteousness. Dyer's “Paul should have cited Genesis 12” argument simply doesn't establish what he thinks it establishes.
7. Conflation of sola fide with regeneration
Sola fide concerns the instrument of justification; Dyer folds regeneration, effectual calling, justification and sanctification into one proposition. Westminster explicitly distinguishes them.
8. “Nobody taught faith alone” is too categorical
The patristic evidence is more complicated than Dyer admits, even though McGrath does argue for a significant Reformation-era reconceptualization of justification.
9. “No continuity with Justin Martyr” is ridiculous as stated
There is obvious continuity in Scripture, Trinity, incarnation, baptism, Eucharist, Christian worship and resurrection, alongside significant differences in sacramental and ecclesiological theology.
10. He repeatedly attacks solo Scriptura rather than the Westminster doctrine of sola Scriptura
Westminster explicitly recognizes the church's testimony and the necessity of Spirit-given illumination while assigning Scripture the supreme normative authority.
11. The Cyril/Palamas argument is historically underdeveloped
Cyril certainly teaches deification, but treating his theology as though it simply is the fully developed fourteenth-century Palamite essence–energies distinction is historically problematic.
12. His epistemological critique begs the question
He assumes the Orthodox doctrine of direct participation in the uncreated energies as the criterion by which Reformed epistemology must be judged. That's not a demonstration of contradiction; it's an argument from a disputed theological premise.
And there's an important irony here.
Dyer repeatedly tells the Reformed audience:
“Read Cyril. Read the councils.”
That's perfectly fair.
But the Reformed response can be:
“Fine. We read Cyril. Now read Westminster 8.2 and 8.7.”
Because once you actually put the two side by side, his central accusation—“Reformed Christology forces you into Nestorianism”—runs directly into the Reformed confession's explicit statement that there is one person, two natures, each nature acting according to its properties.
That is where I would make the centerpiece of the rebuttal.
