The large majority of what I would argue regarding both the Biblical evidence and the extrabiblical evidence didn't come up in the debate. See here for a collection of resources outlining my views on many of the relevant issues. I'll say a small amount about some Biblical topics that are relevant to other points I want to make, but my focus here will be on the extrabiblical sources.
As far as I recall, Ryan only mentioned a couple of extrabiblical sources in support of his belief in justification apart from baptism, Polycarp and some opponents of baptismal regeneration mentioned by Tertullian. I've written about those sources elsewhere, such as here and here. But I want to address Joe's objections. Ryan didn't offer much support for his interpretation of the sources in question during the debate. I don't know whether he has elsewhere.
I'll start with Tertullian. Joe objected that the individuals Tertullian referred to might be heretics. As my earlier post on Tertullian argues, he addresses multiple groups in his treatise. He mentions the heretical Cainites near the beginning, but he doesn't only address the Cainites, and the evidence suggests that the individuals cited by Ryan, later in Tertullian's treatise, weren't Cainites. I'm not aware of any evidence that the individuals in question were heretical in any relevant sense. (Arguing that a rejection of baptismal regeneration is heretical, for example, would beg the question and isn't something I'd classify as heretical.) Later in the treatise, Tertullian argues against infant baptism, and I doubt that every proponent of paedobaptism at the time was a heretic. The popularity of infant baptism after the time when Tertullian wrote suggests that there was some support for the practice among orthodox Christians earlier. So, although some of Tertullian's paedobaptist opponents may have been heretics, I doubt that all of them were. Furthermore, if these people cited by Ryan were heretics in terms of something like rejecting Jesus' deity or his resurrection, it would have been in Tertullian's interest to have mentioned that fact. He didn't (contrary to his mentioning of the discrediting Cainite affiliation of the woman he criticized at the beginning of the treatise). And, as I've argued elsewhere, these people Tertullian is responding to seem somewhat similar to Christians Celsus objected to shortly before the time when Tertullian wrote, and Celsus discusses them as if they represent mainstream Christianity. Tertullian's treatise isn't just responding to heretics, and I'm not aware of any reason to think there's a 50/50 chance or more that the people Tertullian was responding to in the section of his treatise cited by Ryan were heretics in any relevant way. They probably weren't.
Joe also mentioned that the opponents of Tertullian under consideration may have only been arguing for an exception to the general rule of baptismal regeneration rather than rejecting the general rule. I doubt that, for a few reasons. First, the accusations Tertullian brings against them make more sense if they rejected the rule rather than just advocating an exception to it. He criticizes them for "abolishing the sacrament of the water" (On Baptism 12) and "abolishing baptism" (14). Secondly, they appealed to Abraham to support their position (13), and Abraham was often cited by the early Christians as the paradigm example of how people are justified in general, not just in exceptional cases. Judging by what Tertullian says about their views of Paul and his writings, it seems likely that they accepted what Paul said about Abraham as the paradigm example of justification. It's unlikely that they'd think of Abraham as both the paradigm example of how people are normally justified and an illustration of how people are justified in one or more exceptional circumstances. Their citation of Abraham doesn't require that they were addressing what's normative, but bringing up Abraham makes more sense if they were addressing what normally happens. Third, Tertullian responds to them by addressing salvation in general, not just salvation in an exceptional situation. Fourth, Tertullian allowed exceptions, such as the baptism of blood he refers to elsewhere in the treatise (16), so it's unlikely that he'd criticize others for allowing an exception. If he was just disagreeing with which exception(s) they made, you'd think he'd get into the details relevant to that exception or group of exceptions. He doesn't.
It seems, then, that Tertullian is referring to people who rejected baptismal regeneration in general, not just in exceptional cases. So, it was appropriate for Ryan to cite these individuals in the debate.
Joe objected to Ryan's citation of Polycarp on the basis that it's an argument from silence. But though arguments from silence can be erroneous, they aren't always. There are valid arguments from silence, as Joe surely would acknowledge.
Polycarp was writing to a Christian audience, and he may have been expecting his audience to take his language with qualifiers in mind that he didn't spell out. People often use shorthand, assume something without stating it when they have reason to expect their audience to already accept the assumption in question, etc. And advocates of baptismal regeneration do sometimes mention justification through faith as a shorthand way of referring to justification through faith and baptism, justification through faith in the context of baptism, and so forth. Perhaps Polycarp was doing that. He discusses justification in multiple places in his letter to the Philippians without mentioning baptism, but those could have been shorthand that assumed the inclusion of baptism without spelling it out. All of us do that kind of thing in our everyday lives, in a lot of contexts.
But we also prefer the simplest explanation of something, all other things being equal. If an author only refers to faith, we don't conclude that he meant to refer to more than faith unless we have evidence to that effect. And it would require evidence of a particular type to conclude that he had a particular type of thing in mind that he was including with faith (e.g., baptism). We conclude that individuals like Justin Martyr, Cyprian, and Augustine held a highly efficacious view of baptism because of what they say about baptism, even if they use shorthand language that doesn't spell out that view of baptism elsewhere. By contrast, we don't have such comments on baptism from Polycarp. He mentions things like grace, the exclusion of works, and the inclusion of faith, even though all of those would have been more obvious to a Christian audience than the inclusion of baptism would have been. There's only a small handful of alleged references to baptismal regeneration in the New Testament, whereas those other things (grace, the exclusion of works, the inclusion of faith), which Polycarp referred to multiple times in multiple places, are discussed more often in the New Testament. Ryan's interpretation of Polycarp makes more sense of why somebody who mentions things like faith and the exclusion of works would leave baptism out of multiple passages addressing how we receive justification. The lack of reference to baptism is harder to explain under Joe's view than Ryan's.
And one of the other issues I brought up above, the exclusion of works, should be expanded upon. As Ryan mentioned during the debate, scripture tells us that faith isn't a work (e.g., Romans 4:5). By contrast, there is no comparable or better evidence that baptism shouldn't be considered a work. Joe brought up Titus 3:5 during the debate, but his assumption that the washing there is water baptism is a disputed point. Ryan doesn't have to assume his position in the debate in order to appeal to a passage like Romans 4:5 to argue that faith isn't a work. But Joe does have to assume his position in order to appeal to Titus 3 as he did. So, the two arguments aren't symmetrical. Ryan's is based on common ground he has with his opponent, whereas Joe's isn't. As I've explained elsewhere, baptism seems to be a work by the criteria we find in Romans 9 and James 2. So, I would argue that the exclusion of works in Titus 3:5 is evidence against seeing the washing as a reference to water baptism. Furthermore, the washing is said to be done by the Holy Spirit, which makes more sense as a reference to an inward spiritual activity than as a reference to an outward ceremony that's normally described as being done by a human baptizer. The washing language the passage uses is commonplace elsewhere, such as in the Psalms, to refer to spiritual cleansing in non-baptismal contexts. Given the passage's exclusion of works and reference to the Holy Spirit as the one who does the washing, an interpretation that doesn't involve water baptism makes more sense than Joe's view of the passage.
Therefore, when a source like Polycarp excludes works as a means of justification, Joe's appeal to Titus 3:5 isn't enough to conclude that baptism isn't being excluded. Baptism seems to qualify as a work, and Titus 3:5 doesn't give us reason to think otherwise.
The best argument I'm aware of for concluding that Polycarp believed in baptismal regeneration is that the doctrine was popular in the surrounding context. It's true that there was widespread belief in some kind of highly efficacious view of baptism from the second half of the second century onward. But being widespread isn't the same as being universal, and the sort of efficacy assigned to baptism among the people who held highly efficacious views of it varied. Things like regeneration, the forgiveness of sins, and the reception of the Holy Spirit were assigned to a variety of rites among the extrabiblical sources: anointing with oil, baptism, the laying on of hands, foot washing, etc. Baptism was defined differently by different sources, sometimes including more than the water ceremony we typically have in mind when we refer to baptism today. And when a source took a highly efficacious view of some other rite, there were implications for baptism. If you assign forgiveness of some or all sins to anointing with oil or foot washing, for example, then less forgiveness will be assigned to baptism accordingly. Or if the reception of the Spirit is assigned to anointing with oil or the laying on of hands, then it isn't being assigned to baptism. And so on. Go here for a post that provides further discussion of issues like these. The baptismal beliefs of the pre-Reformation sources varied a lot. There wasn't one view held by everybody, or even almost everybody, prior to the Reformation.
One of the perspectives we find in the extrabiblical sources is a highly efficacious view of prebaptismal faith. Such a view of prebaptismal faith makes the most sense of the sources other than Polycarp who only refer to faith - without mentioning baptism, anointing with oil, foot washing, etc. - when describing how justification is received. See here for links to posts discussing such sources who lived close to the time of Polycarp. And there were some sources who held what I've referred to as a hybrid view. They assigned a high level of efficaciousness to both prebaptismal faith and baptism (along with whatever else). For a discussion of a few church fathers who are in that category, see here. And here's another relevant source I've cited before, though not in the post just linked:
"Now someone might object to this and say: 'Did Paul not use Abraham as an example of someone who was justified by faith, without works? And here James is using the very same Abraham as an example of someone who was justified, not by faith alone, but also by works which confirm that faith.' How can we answer this? And how can Abraham be an example of faith without works, as well as of faith with works, at the same time? But the solution is ready to hand from the Scriptures. For the same Abraham is at different times an example of both kinds of faith. The first is prebaptismal faith, which does not require works but only confession and the word of salvation, by which those who believe in Christ are justified. The second is postbaptismal faith, which is combined with works. Understood in this way, the two apostles do not contradict one another, but one and the same Spirit is speaking through both of them." (in Gerald Bray, ed., Ancient Christian Commentary On Scripture: New Testament XI: James, 1-2 Peter, 1-3 John, Jude [Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2000], 32)
That quote is found in a catena often dated to the seventh or eighth century and attributed to somebody sometimes referred to as Andreas. The source Andreas is citing is Severus of Antioch. So, the reference to justification through prebaptismal faith seems not only to represent the view of Severus, but also to have been something Andreas considered acceptable for inclusion in his catena.
And the context in which Polycarp wrote doesn't just consist of later sources. It also consists of earlier ones. I've argued elsewhere that there's a double-digit number of examples of people being justified apart from baptism in the New Testament. See my post on the double healing phenomenon here and my posts on Acts here and here, for example. The evidence for justification apart from baptism during the time before Jesus' resurrection is so strong that even as much of an advocate of baptismal justification as Tertullian resorted to arguing that "in days gone by, there was salvation by means of bare faith, before the passion and resurrection of the Lord", whereas now "the law of baptizing has been imposed" (On Baptism 13). By contrast, there aren't any Biblical examples of individuals being justified at the time of baptism.
So, the context before and after Polycarp's letter provides many examples of justification apart from baptism. The view that justification is obtained apart from baptism also makes the most sense of Polycarp's letter itself.
Joe raised the issue of what was said about baptism by those who wrote directly on that subject, in contrast to an appeal to silence. But all of us think baptism is excluded in some contexts that don't directly address it. Since the thief on the cross is described as initially opposing Jesus (Matthew 27:44), it seems unlikely that he was baptized before his crucifixion. And he wouldn't have been baptized during the crucifixion. We don't need a statement from Luke (or another source) telling us that the thief wasn't baptized in order to conclude that he wasn't. Similarly, it's highly unlikely that Old Testament figures like Abraham and David were baptized, that the tax collector received a Christian baptism inside the temple in Luke 18:9-14, etc. And Ryan brought up Cornelius in Acts 10, a context in which baptism is discussed and is referred to as occurring after Cornelius' justification. See my post on Acts 10 here for further discussion. I've argued, here, that Peter rejects baptismal regeneration in his discussion of baptism in 1 Peter 3. The Jewish historian Josephus, who seems to have been drawing material from a source he had in common with Peter, refers to the non-justificatory nature of the baptism of John the Baptist. That material in Josephus is relevant in multiple ways, as discussed in the post just linked, and it's material specifically about baptism. It's not just an argument from silence, although, again, arguments from silence sometimes have value. Similarly, as explained above, the many references to the exclusion of works in the New Testament, Clement of Rome, Polycarp, The Letter To Diognetus, etc. are relevant, for reasons explained earlier in this post. That's not just an appeal to silence. When individuals like Clement of Rome refer to how people have always been justified in the same way, throughout human history, that seems to exclude justification through baptism, and it isn't just an argument from silence. Similarly, the pagan audience some of the early Christian sources were writing to (Aristides, The Letter To Diognetus, etc.) offers evidence that references to faith (or repentance) without referring to baptism aren't meant to include baptism. A pagan audience wouldn't be assuming the inclusion of baptism where it isn't mentioned. Or what about the sources I cited earlier who held a sort of hybrid position, involving both a highly efficacious view of prebaptismal faith and a highly efficacious view of baptism? Some of their comments explicitly identify the faith in question as prebaptismal. We don't need explicit evidence, though it is preferable. Implicit evidence is enough. And sometimes arguments from silence are valid. But we don't just have arguments from silence for pre-Reformation belief in justification apart from baptism. We also have many other lines of evidence for it, implicit and explicit.
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