David Padfield and Frank Watson

Debate On "Faith Only" Salvation

On December 7 & 8, 1987, Frank Watson, a Baptist preacher, met David Padfield in public debate in Evansville, Indiana. The debate was scheduled for four nights, but on the second night Frank Watson withdrew from the debate with a brief nine minute statement. It was a shock to his moderator and all present. The following links will take you to articles, debate charts and audio files related to this debate.

Review Of The Debate

John Welch wrote a review of the debate for Faith and Facts Quarterly.

Padfield's Debate Charts

remission of sinsDownload Charts from the Padfield-Phillips Debate. Over 120 overhead charts used by Padfield in this debate (PDF file size: 251k). These charts were originally used for the date with Frank Watson, but updated for the debate with Don Phillips.

"For The Remission Of Sins."David Padfield wrote to several prominent Greek scholars and posed this question: "Is it grammatically possible that the phrase 'eis aphesin hamartion,' 'for the remission of sins,' as used in Acts 2:38, expresses the force of both verbs, 'repent ye and be baptized each one of you,' even though these verbs differ in both person and number?" These letters were quoted in the debate several times. This booklet contains photocopies of their responses and explains the phrase "for the remission of sins" in a very detailed manner (PDF file size: 640k).

Audio Files Of The Debate mp3 audio files

According the the rules for this debate, each speacker was given two 30-minute speeches per evening. These audio files are saved as MP3 files—you can click on the links to listen to them now, or right-click with your mouse and "Save to disk" to listen to them later. Each file is approximately 10MB in size.

  1. Padfield's First Affirmative (Monday, Dec. 7, 1987 | 27 minutes, 11.9 MB)
  2. Watson's First Negative (Monday, Dec. 7, 1987 | 30 minutes, 13.7 MB)
  3. Padfield's Second Affirmative (Monday, Dec. 7, 1987 | 29 minutes, 13.2 MB)
  4. Watson's Second Negative (Monday, Dec. 7, 1987 | 29 minutes, 13.2 MB)
  5. Waton's Concession Speech (Tuesday, Dec. 8, 1987 | 9 minutes, 4.3 MB)
  6. Padfield's Response (Tuesday, Dec. 8, 1987 | 36 minutes, 16.6 MB)