Ep 997 ｜ Why Do Catholics Pray to Mary？ ｜ Guest： Trent Horn
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 17 minutes
Words per Minute
180.86624
Summary
In this episode of Debatable with Dr. Michael White, Dr. White sits down with Catholic apologist Trent Horn to discuss the differences between Protestantism and Catholicism, and why Catholics should pray to God through Mary.
Transcript
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Congress is trying to pass an anti-anti-Semitism bill.
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And what does the Bible say about this statement that, quote, the Jews killed Jesus?
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Also, what are some of the biggest differences between Protestantism and Catholicism?
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Well, we are talking about all of this, debating many subjects today with Catholic apologist
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This will be one of many conversations that I have with him because we went a long time
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in our conversation, over an hour, and we still have so many other topics to get through.
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But I hope that this is a good starter for you all.
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You guys have been asking me to have him on for so long, and he is wonderful.
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This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.
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Trent Horn, thanks so much for taking the time to join us today.
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Many people probably saw you in the debate that we did on Debatable with Dr. White.
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And now, because I didn't get the chance to ask you so many questions that I wanted to
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during that exchange, I wanted to bring you back on.
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This one won't be behind the paywall, so everyone gets to access this.
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So many people have been asking me to have you on.
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So tell those who may not know who you are, though, and what you do.
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So I'm a Catholic apologist, but I also speak frequently on other subjects, atheism, pro-life.
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I want to defend the Catholic worldview, so that includes some things that are unique to
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But in the post-Christian culture that we live in, a lot of the things that I'm defending
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are things Catholics and Protestants have in common.
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The existence of God, the divinity of Christ, marriage being something God created to bind
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men and women together, one man and one woman, the sanctity of life before birth, even just
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general sexual ethics, things that people didn't question 30 years ago now are really out on
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I have a podcast called The Council of Trent that is a play on words for those who are not
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There was a major ecumenical council held in the 16th century in response to the Protestant
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So my podcast is C-O-U-N-S-E-L, Council of Trent.
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And it's very providential also, because my parents are not Catholic, actually.
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I write, I speak, and I just want to help people come to know our Lord, come to know
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the Church He established, find salvation in Him, and live godly lives that'll make them
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And tell us a little bit about your testimony, because like you said, you weren't raised
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So I was raised in a nominally religious household.
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The closest thing that we had to religious instruction were the old Hanna-Barbera cartoons, the greatest
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stories from the Bible, those are still my favorite.
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It's just like, I'm sorry, a dancing cucumber and tomato can't get across the gravity of
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man's sin that demanded the flood of Noah, for example.
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It shows like, you compare like the VeggieTales Noah episode to the old Hanna-Barbera episode,
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and it opens, and God saw the world had become wicked and sinful, and you see the dancing
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ladies in the tavern, and a guy clubs another guy over the head, and God's, you know, and
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it's just, it brings a certain gravitas to this, that this is, because to me, cartoons
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That's the difference there, because there are animated things that are not appropriate
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So when I teach my kids, so that's what, I mean, that's what I was raised on, but by the
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time I got to junior high, high school, I kind of grew out of that, because we didn't
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go to church, I didn't get religious instruction at home, beyond the very basics, you know,
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I asked my mom, you know, how do I know this stuff in the Bible that it really happened?
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I believe there was a God up there that made everything, but I didn't think He cared
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Then in high school, I met Catholic teens in a youth group there, and also some Protestant teens
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in another youth group, was befriended by them, and that started me on my investigation
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first into being convinced of Christianity, and then looking into, okay, if I'm going
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to be Christian, well, what church am I going to belong to?
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And that all culminated in March of 2002, when I was 17, I was received into the Catholic
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Church, I was baptized, confirmation, First Eucharist, and after that I started doing
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I got involved in the pro-life movement because there was a girl, she went to a very tiny,
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tiny Catholic school, only like 20 people in the high school, so they wanted to have
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So to have a prom, they all said, okay, we're all going to invite someone who doesn't go
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to the school, and so that way they could have 40 people.
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She invited me, I met her dad, he was the president of the state Right to Life organization,
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and he kind of mentored me, took me under his wings, and then I started doing pro-life
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talks, and I traveled university campuses, and that's where I really cut my teeth on
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apologetics, was debating abortion, doing debates on college campuses, those things
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I love hearing how people came to where they are now, and I think it's really interesting
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that you weren't raised Catholic, because most Catholics I know, you know, they would
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Whether they really believe in Catholic theology today, most people who identify as Catholics
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today, it's a long-standing tradition in their family.
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Maybe they're from Italy, or they're from Ireland, and they've just always kind of grown
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And growing up in Texas, that Catholic culture really wasn't very prominent or pervasive.
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I went to Christian school, I think I knew literally one Catholic.
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And then I went to college, and I went to college in South Carolina, which is still in
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And yet that was like really my first encounter with a lot of Catholics.
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I didn't even know that people actually put ash on their foreheads on Ash Wednesday.
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The first time that I encountered that, I had no idea what was going on.
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And it's really interesting how Catholics and Protestants seem to kind of occupy, in some
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Like, I was talking to a Catholic who lives in the Northeast.
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She had no idea that we Protestants, when we say the Church, that we're not talking about
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Like, we would say, I think you said earlier, you know, the Church that Jesus established.
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I would say that too, but I'm talking about the universal body of believers, whereas you're
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specifically talking about the Catholic Church.
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She had no idea that there was a difference when we say those things, which, you know, it's
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Catholics and Protestants have been together for a long time, and yet there are a lot of
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I remember once, when I was doing pro-life work, the organization I worked for, we were
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So it was a great opportunity to dialogue with each other, but we were traveling in
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the South, I think in Alabama, staying at a host family's home while we were doing pro-life
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They said to us, wow, I didn't think Catholics believed really in Jesus.
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You're the first really Catholics I've ever met and talked to.
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I said, well, of course Catholics believe in Jesus.
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We got a big picture of him hanging on the cross because he died on the cross to redeem
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So I think that you're right that—and that's why dialogue is always important to get past
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the misconceptions so that we can really understand the things we agree on.
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And then the areas where we're still dividing, where there's disagreement, and where hopefully
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And I think it might go back to kind of what I said about a lot of Catholics having just
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a culture of Catholicism, maybe even more so than Protestantism.
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Most Protestants that I know don't even really know that they're Protestant.
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Like, they wouldn't call themselves Protestant.
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They don't really know about the Protestant Reformation.
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They might call themselves Baptist or Methodist or maybe even Evangelical.
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But most Protestants just think of ourselves as—
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And a lot of Catholics, because it's really something that has been more passed down to
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them, it's part of the culture, maybe in the countries where their ancestors, grandparents
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They are very culturally Catholic without necessarily—I don't want to say not practicing it, but not
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I'm not saying all or even most Catholics, but that, I think, is a lot of the experience
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that we Protestants have or Evangelicals have with Catholics, that it's our friend in college
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who made sure to go to Mass every weekend, but for the rest of the week didn't care about
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it or didn't go to Bible studies or things like that.
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It wasn't a very personal relationship, it seemed.
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So I'm just saying that that's kind of the impression that I think a lot of us Southern
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evangelicals have, which might sound weird to a Catholic who, like you said, is like,
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And that's why it's important, because the same thing happens on the Catholic side.
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You'll have Catholics that will meet evangelicals, people who call themselves Christians, you
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know, someone who says they're Protestant, but they have no problem posting really immodest
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pictures on their Instagram, and they go around saying that they're, well, I'm Christian, I
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Like, well, okay, but what about where are your other actions conforming?
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And that's why when we analyze, try to understand another faith, another church, what we should
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always do is take a look at what does that group officially teach, and also who are the
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best representatives of it, and always make the comparisons.
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If you're going to compare, it should always be worst to worst, best to best, not worst
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I totally agree with that, that you have to look at what is actually being taught, and
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then look at the fruit of that actual teaching, because there's always going to be hypocrites,
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and there's always going to be nominal Christians.
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I mean, definitely in the Bible Belt, there are plenty of evangelicals and Protestants, maybe
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less so today, because it's just less popular and convenient and comfortable to be a Christian,
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but certainly throughout the past 100 years, cultural Christianity, cultural Protestantism,
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Plenty of people who are Christian in a name only from all different denominations.
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Well, we're kind of sifting through the wheat and the chaff right now.
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I would say that we live in a post-Christian culture in the United States, that there was
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a time when Christianity was, it was the given.
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Maybe it wasn't always celebrated, but even as recently as I would say the 1990s, I remember
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watching, it was like the old, I was watching with my kids X-Men 97, the reboot of the cartoon
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And I remember on the old X-Men animated series, there's an episode where the mutant nightcrawler,
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you can see he's a German Catholic, and he's talking to Wolverine about Jesus.
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I don't know if that'll come back in X-Men 97, but probably not as much.
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But you could have that more, whereas nowadays, it's very clear that there is another worldview
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that is seen as an opposition to Christianity that has to be defended.
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A worldview, LGBT pride, abortion on demand, radical feminism, radical individualism, that
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that has become, it's become essentially a counterfeit religion for people to belong to.
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People will say, oh, you religious people, you're narrow-minded, and you Catholics, you
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But today, if you go against modern wokeism, you can be excommunicated that you said the
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There's dogmas and secular heresies you can hold to.
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You can take man out of religion, but you can't take religion out of man.
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They'll always just make something else to fill the void.
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Okay, before we get into some of the things that we might disagree on or the questions
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that I have, I want to talk about a couple of things that either we agree on or I just
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And one of them is this anti-Semitism bill or anti-anti-Semitism bill that is in Congress
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right now, the House of Representatives passed the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, which, like
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most things going through Congress, has this very innocuous title to make you think, of
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course, if you're against anti-Semitism, which I think we all should be, then you'll support
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And what people are concerned about, without getting into the weeds too much, just because
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we don't have time, people are concerned that this violates the First Amendment, that this
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seems to be policing speech, and specifically speech that is found in Scripture.
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So one of the things that the bill tries to ban or tries to punish is speech that says
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And they add something to that, a caveat that basically says, if someone says Jews killed
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They call that classic, using classic anti-Semitism, such as the claim that Jews collectively or
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totally killed Jesus, or blood libel, the claim that Jews have some kind of secret conspiracy
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to kidnap Christian children and use their blood for rituals, and things that have been
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thoroughly debunked, to use that to impugn Israel, modern Jews.
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So what they're saying, yeah, is—well, I'll let you explain more, and I'd definitely
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Yeah, so how I feel about this bill is—and I am someone—I mean, I'm ethnically Jewish.
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And so I am aware of a growing problem about anti-Semitism, both on the far left and the
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right, seeing malice towards Jewish people, a unfounded concern that Jews are a threat
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and danger to society that have to be dealt with, sometimes by any means possible.
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That being said, though, I don't support this bill for a variety of reasons.
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First, when you're talking about the First Amendment, I think this bill is related specifically
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to discrimination, Title VII, because, for example, I mean, under the First Amendment,
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It's not illegal to say things that are racist.
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But if you go to a public university and a professor is saying racist things towards you
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and is creating a hostile educational environment for you as a student, well, you can say, hey,
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I'm—or they're allowing, whether it's, you know, whites being racist to blacks or blacks
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being racist to whites or to whatever racial minority group, we would say, no, a university
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should protect people from racial discrimination.
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And so in the context there that even if you can say that stuff under the First Amendment,
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we could say, look, if you're at a publicly funded university, if you're at this place of
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employment, you should be able to be protected from racial harassment.
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So I don't think it's a First Amendment issue per se, because what it's dealing with is
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the idea, okay, well, if you're protected from racial harassment, like no one should
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be able to racially harass you because you're white or harass you because of your sex, because
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you're a woman or because you're religious, people shouldn't be allowed to do the same
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Now, the key here is how do you define anti-Semitism?
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But also how you define harassment, I would say, is a First Amendment issue.
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And what I would say is the best goal to understand you're defining it well is that you can apply
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it evenly across the board, that you don't treat groups unequally.
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So, for example, if the protesters on campuses here are allowed to, you know, pro-Palestinian
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protesters, pro-Hamas protesters really, can encamp, occupy buildings, can do all these
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things without repercussion, but Christians can't even put up crosses to show children being
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So it shouldn't just be when Christians do it, it's harassment, but for everyone else,
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I think that's a good marker to help determine that.
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But I think you and I would agree there are some things that are just legitimate harassment,
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that if it was done to Christians, we should, you know, people shouldn't do it to anyone
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So then the problem I have with the bill, though, is that it doesn't have a—it has
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It just says anti-Semitism is whatever the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance
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But I don't like that, because what if they change their definition of what it is?
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Like, the definition should be in the bill itself, and if you want to change it later,
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we have to go through Congress to change it later.
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It shouldn't be allowed for a non-profit, you know, a non-governmental organization.
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They could change the definition, then that changes the law.
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So there are elements within it where, for example, like, I would say anti-Semitism is
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wrong, but not everything is anti-Semitism, saying that the nation of Israel did something
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Well, it's not anti-Semitic to simply criticize the nation of Israel.
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Even if you're really against Israel, there's a difference between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.
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So people should be allowed to make these good faith criticisms.
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Unfortunately, those two things seem to have a lot of crossover.
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I agree that there are some maybe nuanced criticisms of maybe what people would call anti-Zionism.
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I've found, though, that typically when you dig deep enough, most anti-Zionists really just
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And that's where you would look for, is there a double standard here?
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Are you treating the nation of Israel differently because you already have a prejudicial attitude
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So some of the other—I'm trying to think of some of the other elements that are—oh,
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well, one thing, like, for example, if I were to say, you know, Jesus is the Messiah,
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and Jews should accept Jesus as the Messiah, some Jews would consider that anti-Semitic.
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Jesus is the Messiah for everyone, and he's come also to the chosen people.
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So, for example, saying that the Jews are Christ killers, to say that all Jewish people
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Yeah, all Jewish people, or even all Jewish people at the time of Jesus, to say that all
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of them have a collective responsibility and thus a unique guilt for the crucifixion that
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regular sinners do not share, I would say it's anti-Semitic.
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In fact, the Catechism of the Council of Trent—remember, the Reformation Council I referenced—they put
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out a catechism in 1566, and in that—this is even, this is not a modern thing, this goes
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back 400 years, 350 years, saying that the guilt sinners, like Catholics, Christians who
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sin, bear a more enormous guilt for the crucifixion than the Jews did, because the catechism quotes
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what Paul says in 1 Corinthians, saying, if they had known Christ was the Lord of glory,
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They crucified—Jesus was crucified by the Jewish leaders because they falsely believed
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We know this, and yet we still sin, and yet we still do—we still commit sins, which are
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the reason for which Christ died on the cross for us, that we, even knowing this, bear more
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On the one hand, it would be incorrect to say there is no Jewish involvement whatsoever in
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You'll have some critical scholars saying, oh, it was just the Romans.
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That is a popular belief that I've seen on X a lot, from all different stripes of people
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And by the way, I don't think whatever your motivation is, and whether you're right or
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Even if you do have malicious intent behind what you're saying, I can think it's repugnant
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But, I mean, the Bible does use explicit, and I would even say uncomfortable terms when
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it says, in so many words, the Jews killed Jesus.
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But, as you said, it's not an indictment on all Jewish people or saying that Jewish people
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Because we have to remember that the word translated the Jews in Scripture, hoy yudeoi, the Jews,
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It can refer to all of the people who are descended from the kingdom of Judah, or in Hebrew, Yehuda.
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So, you know, so after the Davidic kingdom split into the northern and the southern kingdom,
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The Jews of Christ's time, you know, all Jews are descended from those tribes in the
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But in Scripture, yudeoi can also mean a subset of Jews.
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So, for example, in John 7, 1, it says that Jesus remained in Galilee because the Jews were
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But that doesn't quite make sense because there were plenty of Jews in Galilee, right?
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Jesus would have associated primarily with Jews in Galilee.
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What makes more sense there is that, to translate it, Jesus remained in Galilee because the hoyyudeoi,
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And so, in 1 Thessalonians 2, for example, when Paul says he gives encouragement to those
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who are being persecuted by the Macedonians, saying, you know, resist them just as your
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countrymen in Judea resisted the Jews who killed our Lord Jesus.
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What he's saying, he's not saying all Jews did this.
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He's referring to the fact that the church was being persecuted by a particular collection
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of Jews in Judea, resist the Judeans who are persecuting the church, which Paul was once
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So, that's something that's a nuance there that can be lost in the translation, that if
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you don't see that, you just run with that and say, oh, in Jesus' time, all of the Jews,
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all of the Jews who were not Christians were killing, killed Jesus, wanted to kill Christians
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when there were factions and differences among them.
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And there were those who were, you had Rabbi Gamaliel, for example, who said, no, let the
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Christians be, that if this is from God, it will succeed.
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So, I think that you're correct that the way it was worded, just to say Jews killed Jesus,
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well, no, some of the Jewish leaders were certainly involved.
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In John 11, Caiaphas makes it clear it's better for one man to die than for the whole people
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Some Jewish leaders were involved, but it doesn't follow that, to use the phrase and then to use
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it to say, oh, all Jews bear this guilt, and therefore all Jews can be mistreated or
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punished, which Jews throughout history, you know, have been called Christ killers, have
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People would, you know, Jews will tell stories about, you know, you're on the playground and
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kids call you a Christ killer and they bully you.
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You take something as a kernel of truth and use it to hurt others.
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And there's also, there's Acts 2, 22 through 23, Acts 5, 30, Acts 7, 52.
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For example, Acts 2, 22, it starts out, men of Israel, hear these words, Jesus of Nazareth,
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and then I won't read everything, but, and then at the end of verse 23, you crucified and
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And so that still is not saying that literally every person in Israel or of Israeli descent
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crucified Jesus, but he is saying that, look, just as our forefathers killed the prophets
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And so it's still not saying that every single Jewish person that has ever lived is responsible
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for the crucifixion of Jesus, but in the same way that we would say, wow, when we see, for
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example, the mockers and the scoffers and those who stood before Jesus, like, we say we did
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that, like it was our sin, or we can see ourselves reflected in those who mistreated Jesus that
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we were also dead in sin and didn't realize the sacrifice that Jesus had made on our behalf.
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There is kind of some kind of collective guilt and collective responsibility we see when they
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are sharing the gospel to the Jewish people in Acts.
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But again, it's more of a, wow, we bear this kind of, this dereliction of duty.
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And so, as you said, it doesn't, it shouldn't lead to the actions, the discrimination, the
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hatred that you just described as kind of a consequence of that.
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There are going to be people at the time that their historical culpability is going to be
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I mean, there were, obviously there were Jews at the time when Jesus was crucified who
00:26:18.660
weren't anywhere near Jerusalem when this event was taking place.
00:26:22.440
So they certainly can't be held responsible for that happening.
00:26:25.520
That's just what's important to remember in scripture, especially in John's gospel,
00:26:28.540
when it mentions the Jews and the Jews, in many of these cases, it's talking about things
00:26:34.240
So, for example, in John 9, 22, you remember the story about the man born blind that Jesus healed.
00:26:39.660
And then the religious authorities, the priests say, oh, well, let's go to his parents.
00:26:45.100
And they're like, we want nothing, we don't want anything to do with this right now.
00:26:52.540
It says, they said this for fear of the Jews, which is weird because they're Jewish.
00:26:58.860
But what it's referring to, of course, is the leadership, especially the leadership within
00:27:03.000
Jerusalem and Judea that was trying to cozy up to the Roman Empire and maintain their own
00:27:10.540
And so they were reticent to want to welcome them in the kingdom of God because it didn't
00:27:14.460
fit within their paradigm of how they said, look, we've got everything basically working
00:27:18.460
We're not going to upset the apple cart with the Romans.
00:27:20.860
And we've got a pretty good deal here under their views.
00:27:24.980
And they had grown stiff-necked and hard-hearted to listen to God to say, well, what's God's
00:27:31.420
And that's why, of course, Jesus came to inaugurate the kingdom of God.
00:27:35.140
So just regarding this law, as we wrap that up, even the ACLU, which is now unfortunately
00:27:39.680
a left-wing institution, they have come out and they've said, we're against this.
00:27:47.400
I like to call them the anti-Christian liberties union or the American communist lawyers union.
00:27:54.740
In an April 26th letter, they said that this act will chill free speech on college campuses,
00:28:01.800
equate criticism of the Israeli government with anti-Semitism.
00:28:07.580
And even if I don't agree with the ACLU on most things, I do agree that this is not what
00:28:14.800
I think that there are other things that we can do to fix the absolute rot on college
00:28:19.660
campuses and just the ideology that is making their brains mush rather than chilling the
00:28:25.440
free speech of everyday people, even when that can mean, especially when that can mean
00:28:31.360
indicting someone who repeats something that the Bible says because you're reading into
00:28:40.940
And I think, as I said earlier, the key here is going to be equal treatment, right?
00:28:44.780
If we're treating everyone equally, we know then we're treating them justly in this regard.
00:28:49.540
So while people have freedom of speech, if I go to a university, like I remember I was
00:28:53.280
in a university class once and the professor was doing a lecture on stereotypes and they showed
00:28:59.760
And the documentary, everyone who was an example of making stereotypes was always like a white
00:29:06.780
And the teacher actually at one point cracked a joke saying something, something said, well,
00:29:15.680
And then I was like, you know, professor, I thought we were saying stereotypes are a bad
00:29:20.980
She got really embarrassed and red faced, but it's like, look, yeah, there's freedom of
00:29:24.620
But if I can say, hey, you calling me like saying is, oh, there's our there's Trent who's
00:29:32.720
I bet, you know, she helps those prosperity swindling preachers, televangelist scammers
00:29:38.000
say, uh, no, I don't appreciate being maligned that way.
00:29:42.840
With the very worst people who claim to represent what I believe.
00:29:46.460
So if I should be free from a religious stereotype that makes it hard for me to go to a university
00:29:51.620
where professors can or students can pick on me in that way and make it hard for me to
00:29:56.360
If I and you as a Christian should be protected from that on campus, then that should be the
00:30:01.000
same for anyone else who's just going there and who's trying to learn, you know, the same
00:30:06.220
We're protected from these, you know, malicious forms of harassment.
00:30:09.440
And we have an ironclad understanding of what that is, but then open it up to, we have open
00:30:14.300
debate about ideas like, you know, does God exist?
00:30:23.340
And college is the place where you should debate those kinds of important questions.
00:30:27.540
I wanted to get into the United Methodist Church split or the division and the change,
00:30:34.680
I want to get into some of my Catholic questions.
00:30:36.680
Maybe if we have time at the end, then we can get into that, or we can have you back
00:30:42.820
We've got plenty of our own issues in the Protestant world.
00:30:47.000
But I want to talk to you about genuine questions I have about Catholicism, disagreements
00:30:53.080
I can't say that I don't already have kind of some presuppositions about what you're going
00:30:59.000
But there are a lot of, there's just a lot of genuine curiosity I have about Catholic theology.
00:31:06.940
Let's try to go through them like as quickly as we can, because I have a lot of questions.
00:31:15.040
I would say this is one of the biggest points of confusion for us as Protestants is Catholics
00:31:24.620
And it's important to me to try to use language that Catholics would agree with.
00:31:34.300
And I've had a lot of Catholic friends tell me, well, we don't worship Mary.
00:31:39.860
And while I want to be careful not to say that Catholics worship Mary, because you all say
00:31:44.800
that you don't, I would say it looks a lot like worship.
00:31:48.300
I would say that it looks to me like praying the rosary, praying to Mary, which is something
00:31:53.360
I completely disagree with, it looks a lot like worship.
00:31:57.920
And I don't see this veneration of Mary, this level of honoring Mary, supported by Scripture,
00:32:05.800
the Gospels, the Epistles, Revelation, Jesus himself at all.
00:32:13.560
Well, I would say that the doctrine related to Mary comes from the Word of God.
00:32:17.740
And when you look in Scripture, the phrase Word of God primarily, if not entirely, actually
00:32:24.260
refers to the spoken Word of God, what God speaks, what the apostles speak.
00:32:29.620
So 1 Thessalonians 2.13, for example, says that Paul went and they recognized the Word
00:32:35.980
of God had been spoken to them, not the words of men.
00:32:38.260
So I would say that what we understand, and this is where when you start with Mary, of
00:32:43.600
course, we have to be careful not to look at it through, like, what is the framework we're
00:32:50.680
Because if we start with an assumption related to Sola Scriptura, which I'm sure we'll talk
00:32:54.860
about, well, I would say, well, if we're going to analyze something, we have to make sure
00:33:00.780
So we would say that it comes from the Word of God, both spoken and written.
00:33:04.160
And when you see in Scripture, Mary herself says, all generations will call me blessed,
00:33:11.700
for the Mighty One has done great things for me.
00:33:14.280
We recognize, just even from logic, that Mary is the mother of God.
00:33:20.240
She didn't give Jesus his divine nature, but she is the mother of the God-man.
00:33:25.220
So that makes her very close in relationship to Christ.
00:33:29.260
Just, I guess if I'm, I could go back, I guess there's two ways I could go about this.
00:33:34.180
One is giving you a little bit more of the reasons for, but also, I mean, I do have some
00:33:39.180
of my own questions, because I think sometimes if a Protestant looks at this, like I said,
00:33:44.640
if you don't have the greatest, if you don't have, it depends on the framework, how you look
00:33:49.280
Because you say, well, where is this in the Bible?
00:33:51.560
I would say, well, where does the Bible say everything a Christian believes or does has
00:33:58.400
So for example, like, let's take the sinner's prayer, for example.
00:34:09.760
And I accept you as my personal Lord and Savior.
00:34:19.840
And I don't believe that the sinner's prayer is some magical incantation that brings Jesus
00:34:25.360
Now, to be fair, I was raised believing that or thinking that.
00:34:30.500
But I think it's more about acceptance and belief in confession, which we do see reflected
00:34:35.820
in Scripture, but not that that particular incantation is found in Scripture and that it must be said
00:34:44.480
in order to validate or guarantee your salvation.
00:34:48.320
I'm not sure that any Protestant believes that.
00:34:50.000
But would you agree that it's appropriate, it's okay to say that prayer as long as you're not
00:35:00.200
Even though it's not in Scripture, it's still...
00:35:03.000
Not explicitly, but we would certainly say that we find the idea of acceptance and belief
00:35:08.960
and confession in Scripture in the same way that we would say the word Trinity is not in Scripture,
00:35:15.580
but we can see from John 1, for example, or even in the very beginning, that God is three
00:35:24.540
And so I would say that Protestants accept that, that not everything is verbatim in Scripture
00:35:33.240
We have our own Westminster catechisms that we believe are an accurate summary of Scripture,
00:35:45.040
I like to use different acronyms and alliterations to remember biblical ideas.
00:35:50.540
But of course, I believe that it's our, that Scripture is our inerrant and inspired standard.
00:35:58.420
And that's what I would say about the so-called sinner's prayer, is that it's not inerrant,
00:36:04.880
I would be open to even saying it's wrong, it should be changed.
00:36:08.160
But by what standard am I comparing that prayer?
00:36:11.800
So that would be my issue with like, that would be my issue with praying to Mary is
00:36:17.000
that, no, I don't think that every prayer that we pray has to be explicitly found in
00:36:20.460
Scripture, but I don't even see the idea of praying to Mary in Scripture.
00:36:26.580
So I'm trying to understand your standard when it comes to, because you're saying we should
00:36:31.400
use the Bible as our, as our standard to determine doctrine and practice.
00:36:35.600
Um, and what's funny is as a Catholic, I could actually agree with that in some sense, because
00:36:41.440
I could say, I agree with you that as, as a Christian, nothing we do should ever contradict
00:36:50.840
And that's what I don't like about the praying to Mary.
00:36:56.140
There's a difference between it not being in Scripture and it being contradicted.
00:37:00.600
For example, no one in Scripture prays directly to the Holy Spirit and says, come Holy Spirit
00:37:06.020
and kindle in your, in the hearts of your faithful, the love of God, you know, Holy Spirit guide
00:37:15.760
So there's a, so we could at least make the deduction.
00:37:18.220
So I would actually even be satisfied with some kind of like, deduction.
00:37:24.000
But when I, when I look at, for example, which I think we talked about maybe in the debatable,
00:37:27.860
so let me, let me, maybe I can explain my view and you can respond to it and you can kind
00:37:35.340
So when I'm looking at Scripture and I see, for example, when Jesus is given the opportunity
00:37:44.660
So I'm looking at Mark 3, for example, and his mother and his brothers came and standing
00:37:49.760
outside, they sent to him and called him and a crowd was sitting around him.
00:37:53.080
And they said to him, your mother and your brothers are outside seeking you.
00:37:56.500
And he answered them, who are my mother and my brothers?
00:37:59.460
And looking out, looking about at those who sat around him, he said, here are my mother
00:38:04.600
and my brothers for whoever does the will of God.
00:38:08.740
We don't ever see any kind of special honor, special veneration of Mary by Jesus.
00:38:16.040
You would think that she would come up in Revelation, like when we're looking at the
00:38:20.060
last supper and the, and the, or in the marriage supper between the bride and the bridegroom,
00:38:26.520
you would think that if Mary was this important, if we needed to pray to her, if she was watching
00:38:31.460
over us, if she was protecting us, if she was really this person carrying our prayers
00:38:36.380
to Jesus, like we would be reading about her a lot more in scripture and we just don't.
00:38:41.540
And even when Jesus is given the opportunity to pay special attention to his mom, he basically
00:38:46.960
brushes her off and says, I don't even think that she's more special than any of these
00:38:51.740
other Christians out here or any of these other followers of me out here.
00:38:55.460
Well, I don't think that's what Christ is saying here, because it reminds me also of
00:38:59.800
the episode where the woman says to Jesus, uh, blessed are the, are the breasts that nourished
00:39:05.940
And he said, rather blessed are those that hear the word of God and obey.
00:39:12.120
But I think what we can misread that because Jesus, like one could take that so far as to
00:39:17.500
say, oh, you know, your mother doesn't really matter.
00:39:21.860
What matters more are other believers, but the Bible is also very clear.
00:39:27.740
Like Jesus railed against the religious authorities for the Corban rule for donating money to the
00:39:33.760
temple when they were supposed to care for their aging parents.
00:39:37.220
Paul says the person who doesn't care for their relatives is worse than an unbeliever.
00:39:41.660
So I would worry that to take one narrative episode and try to draw more out of it than
00:39:50.200
Sure, but both of those examples, I'd say what's going on here is Jesus is saying that
00:39:53.880
to have a special relationship with him, it is not necessary to be his biological kin.
00:40:01.220
Anyone can have a special relationship with him through faith in him.
00:40:04.700
Whereas at the time, you would think, oh, to really have a special relationship with the
00:40:07.780
Messiah, if you're the brother of the Messiah, you know, I could never be that close to Jesus.
00:40:11.900
But that's kind of what Catholics are saying about Mary, that she's so special to him.
00:40:16.040
Because we don't just pray to anyone in heaven the way that Catholics pray to Mary.
00:40:22.120
And so you guys are saying that, yeah, all Christians can have a relationship with him,
00:40:27.040
but Mary has the special, special, special relationship with him.
00:40:30.060
Well, what I would take from there is, what I'm saying is that in order to have that relationship
00:40:35.920
with Jesus, you don't have to be biologically related to him.
00:40:39.140
But some people have more of a relationship with Jesus, are closer to him than others.
00:40:47.900
So for example, in James 5.16, it says that the prayers of a righteous person are very powerful.
00:40:54.560
Or if you look in the book of Job, for example, at the end of Job, when God deals with Job's
00:41:02.520
I will hear his prayers because you've spoken ill of me, spoken poorly of me.
00:41:07.080
Uh, that when you see in Scripture, uh, and that those who are holier, they're closer
00:41:19.500
Hebrews 12 says that those who are in heaven, the spirits of, they're the spirits of just
00:41:25.700
So those who are in heaven who are perfectly united to God, and we see this in the book
00:41:29.960
of Revelation, talking about the angels carrying the prayers of the saints to the throne, that
00:41:34.900
they have that special relationship with God, a special efficacy.
00:41:39.220
I think to understand praying to Mary, praying to the saints, that's language that I find
00:41:46.380
In fact, when you read the teachings, the official teachings of the Catholic Church, you
00:41:53.980
Rather, the phrases are, seeking the intercession of the saints.
00:41:57.580
So for example, like, let me ask you, what would you say prayer is?
00:42:06.960
Prayer is, I mean, it can be praising God, it can be making requests to God.
00:42:12.240
And of course, we have access to the Father through Christ, and that is, you know, a Protestant
00:42:18.180
retort, or a retort that I would have, is that we have one mediator, and his name is Jesus
00:42:23.440
Christ, we have the Holy Spirit as our intercessor, who, when we don't have the words to speak,
00:42:29.560
Scripture says, the Holy Spirit intercedes on our behalf.
00:42:33.200
And I also, I love Ephesians 3.12, that through Christ Jesus, we have boldness and access with
00:42:42.480
So when I read, for example, James 5, that the prayer of a righteous person has great power
00:42:48.080
as it is working, well, I think of that verse, that I have boldness and access and confidence
00:42:56.000
And Christ, he who knew no sin became sin so that we could become the righteousness of
00:43:03.420
So that means it is my prayer that has great power as it is working.
00:43:07.700
It is every Christian's prayer that has great power as it is working.
00:43:10.780
It is not that the, quote unquote, holier person has greater power.
00:43:15.020
It is that those who have been made holy by Christ in his perfect righteousness, that our
00:43:21.860
And so, again, I just don't see a need to use an intercessor of Mary, one, because I don't
00:43:32.240
think that she can hear our prayers, and I don't think that's in Scripture at all.
00:43:36.420
But also, yeah, I just don't see that biblical support that because she's holier or because
00:43:42.460
she's relationally closer, that she has some kind of special access to Jesus, and therefore
00:43:53.060
Yes, but not because I think that they have some kind of special power, but because the
00:44:00.220
prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.
00:44:03.060
And so I want, you know, I want people praying and I want...
00:44:06.940
But why when you can just pray to God yourself?
00:44:09.480
Why involve other people when you're righteous enough just to pray and ask God for it?
00:44:13.420
Because I think there's encouragement in that, and I don't know that it necessarily...we don't
00:44:19.640
read in Scripture that it sways God to have a certain number, a certain critical mass of
00:44:27.180
But because we are all called to pray, it's an act of obedience.
00:44:31.000
And through an incredible preordained order that I don't think we fully understand with the
00:44:38.160
sovereignty of God, that He's also in control of all things, and yet He asks us to evangelize
00:44:42.560
and pray, I don't totally understand that mysterious conundrum, and yet He commands us
00:44:54.480
You're not sure if our prayers actually affect what He does?
00:44:57.580
I think that it's mysterious, though, for us to say that God is omnipotent, that He's
00:45:01.580
not suspended by linear time, that we can't...that no plan of His can be thwarted, Job 42.2,
00:45:10.540
I'm just saying that all of that is true, and I'm not sure it's within our finite ability
00:45:19.700
I think the difficulty that comes when Catholics and Protestants discuss this is going to come
00:45:27.100
I asked you, when I asked you what prayer is, the definition you gave is interesting, that
00:45:37.960
What's funny is, if that is what prayer is, then asking Mary to pray for us, that actually
00:45:46.260
wouldn't count as prayer, because I'm not directing that request to God, I'm requesting it to another
00:45:52.220
So what's the...when you pray the rosary, what is that?
00:45:57.640
Well, I would say what prayer is, prayer is just a request.
00:46:03.540
So we've restricted the word prayer in a modern sense to mean exclusively making a request
00:46:10.460
of God, but traditionally the word prayer comes from the Latin word precare.
00:46:17.760
If you've listened to all kinds of Pride and Prejudice, I pray thee tell, pray this.
00:46:23.280
So prayer to the saints, that would just fall under, I ask.
00:46:31.040
So you're asking Mary to carry your request to Jesus?
00:46:34.320
Just so the idea here is that we have agreement that it's good for members of the body of Christ,
00:46:40.980
here at least on earth, who are in communion with one another, to pray for one another.
00:46:45.800
That that's a good thing, and it's good to seek out intercession among other members of
00:46:51.920
What Catholics believe is that the body of Christ does not exist solely on earth, that
00:46:59.140
There is only one body, not two bodies, not three.
00:47:01.680
There is one body, and that is made up of believers who are on earth, as well as those
00:47:08.220
believers who are in heaven or being prepared to enter heaven.
00:47:11.240
Uh, they're all connected through Jesus, who is the vine, we are the branches, uh, he is
00:47:17.240
the resurrection and the life, even though you die, you will live in me.
00:47:20.880
So we believe the saints in heaven, while their bodies lie in the earth, they are more alive
00:47:29.280
Uh, the book of Revelation says the souls in heaven are aware of the sufferings on earth
00:47:34.060
and cry out for God to do something about them, what's happening to the martyrs.
00:47:37.580
So our belief is just that if you can ask for intercession from members of the body of
00:47:42.560
Christ in this life, and we're still connected to the body in heaven, through the power and
00:47:47.960
love of God, we can ask those in heaven to pray for us, that there is nothing wrong.
00:47:52.740
So for example, if, if you have a boy at his mother's tombstone who's died and he says,
00:47:58.440
you know, mom, pray for me, I think you'd agree there's nothing, I think most Protestants
00:48:07.360
Like ask, you know, asking, for example, a boy asks his deceased mother and father in
00:48:14.320
Oh no, we would say that there's something wrong with that.
00:48:19.440
And I know that they are spiritually alive, but we don't pray to the physically dead.
00:48:25.880
We just don't because we believe that Jesus is our mediator.
00:48:29.700
And yeah, you're saying we can't ask, you're saying we can ask Christians on earth to pray
00:48:36.860
That would be the Protestant belief that we don't believe that the dead are hearing our
00:48:42.820
prayers and have the ability to carry our prayers to God or that they are into, because
00:48:53.260
And we don't believe that the dead or that we would call all Christian saints.
00:48:58.500
So the saints in heaven are interceding for us, or that Mary is interceding for us.
00:49:04.860
I don't think that we necessarily see that reflected in scripture.
00:49:08.620
And yeah, so the Protestant would say that there is a problem with that.
00:49:13.820
We could think about them and consider them, but we wouldn't pray to them, no.
00:49:17.500
You seem very confident that the souls in heaven do not know anything on earth or can't
00:49:29.320
No, I didn't say that I'm confident that they can't hear or that they can't see.
00:49:35.600
I said that we don't see that rule supported in scripture that they are carrying our request
00:49:40.720
And I think my other piece of confusion about that, I guess not this piece of confusion
00:49:45.300
wouldn't apply to that example that you gave the grandparent, because I'm guessing that
00:49:49.940
maybe the child would be the only one praying to that grandparent.
00:49:53.320
But when you've got Mary and you have all of these millions of people asking her for
00:49:58.280
intercession, is Mary in the Catholic view omniscient?
00:50:06.180
If she is a human who is, of course, now in heaven, it would necessitate ascribing to her
00:50:15.400
God-like characteristics of omnipotence and omniscience if she can hear the prayers of
00:50:21.900
Well, I would say that Mary's ability to hear multiple requests in different languages,
00:50:28.880
that doesn't fall under omniscience, because omniscience means that you have all knowledge,
00:50:36.120
Like, you know, for example, the solution of every single possible mathematical equation.
00:50:43.340
They don't need to know pi, all the decimal places of pi.
00:50:50.120
The knowledge of the saints in heaven, even if it is vast by human standards, it's still
00:50:55.260
infinitesimally small compared to the infinite knowledge of God.
00:51:01.000
But you believe that there is some kind of not just spiritual transformation, but that there
00:51:08.320
is an incredible expansion of people's capacity to know and to do when we get to heaven.
00:51:16.980
And that includes the ability to discern, sorry, to discern millions of prayers at once in all
00:51:23.460
different languages, somehow prioritize, order, carry those requests to God, and that Mary
00:51:30.480
has achieved that kind of transformation and expansion of her capacity and all of the saints
00:51:38.680
Well, I would say there is nothing to restrict an omnipotent God from allowing his creatures to
00:51:51.220
So I'm not sure if that's necessarily, if that answers my question.
00:52:02.240
That just as God can give humans on earth supernatural knowledge of the future, for example,
00:52:07.980
like to be a prophet, or God can give people knowledge of things they wouldn't naturally
00:52:14.160
God can give the saints in heaven knowledge and abilities they would not naturally have
00:52:19.620
on earth or have in accord with just their own abilities.
00:52:23.400
So where do Catholics get that idea that he has granted Mary the ability to answer all
00:52:30.260
these prayers and to kind of specially give them to Jesus?
00:52:35.000
Well, I would say that there is a long tradition of this.
00:52:37.940
Like if you go to the catacombs, for example, that the very first Christians who were, you
00:52:42.980
know, it's very difficult to find early examples of like, like for me, when I was in my conversion
00:52:50.160
and what I did was first, I listened to all kinds of William Lane Craig, J.P.
00:53:00.600
I was like, yeah, this, this makes a lot of sense.
00:53:06.740
And I looked at all the different churches out there.
00:53:12.400
I'm going to go back and look at the historical records.
00:53:17.680
But just to say, look, there's all these different churches that argue about stuff.
00:53:23.960
And so that moved me a lot into the Catholic direction.
00:53:27.640
And at least it moved me a lot away from a lot of, a lot of forms of modern Protestantism
00:53:32.760
that I felt were very ahistorical in that regard to say, look, there were the apostles.
00:53:37.040
They gave the teaching to this first generation of Christians.
00:53:40.140
You know, they, they couldn't have really bungled it that badly.
00:53:45.040
It's difficult during this time period though, to find a lot of reference, you know, finding
00:53:49.280
liturgies or, you know, you didn't have churches.
00:53:53.320
You're in hiding, you're in persecution from the Romans.
00:53:56.280
But even during this period, we have things like the oldest known liturgical prayer.
00:54:04.540
Like the oldest Christian prayer outside of scripture is called the Subtuum Presidium.
00:54:09.400
Most scholars would date it to the third or fourth century.
00:54:16.980
O Theotokos, God-bearer, mother of God, place us under the wings of thy refuge.
00:54:24.280
It's, it's asking Mary, who's the mother of God, to intercede on behalf of sinners.
00:54:29.040
Or if you go to the catacombs, where Christians were hiding and where they were buried, there's
00:54:33.260
little inscriptions in there that say things like, Peter and Paul, pray for Primos, a sinner.
00:54:46.980
My concern, when Catholics and Protestants dialogue with each other, I think the concern
00:54:57.980
that Protestants have is, hey, Catholic, you're not using Sola Scriptura, and I'm worried
00:55:04.420
you're obliging us or permitting us to believe too much.
00:55:08.320
Like, you've got all this extra stuff, you know, I'm worried about you bringing in.
00:55:12.540
Like, you know, prayer, seeking the intercession of Mary and the saints and these other Catholic
00:55:18.620
If you just said, use the Bible in the Sola Scriptura sense of, we have to find it at least
00:55:24.120
deduced, implicit, you know, we have to find it here in Scripture, you're worried about
00:55:29.500
too much coming in, and the Bible will help cut out some of the extra stuff that's an accretion
00:55:36.480
That's what I see as one of the big, the Protestant concerns where Sola Scriptura has a benefit.
00:55:41.000
Now, there can be a benefit in cutting out extra things that are just human traditions,
00:55:48.840
That's why I would say you shouldn't believe anything that contradicts Scripture.
00:55:53.020
But my other concern from the Catholic perspective is that if we use Sola Scriptura, if we just
00:55:58.280
use that based on individual interpretations of Scripture, we risk failing to believe certain
00:56:04.160
things, that certain things could get left out, for example.
00:56:10.320
So we risk being able to distinguish, like, you might say, well, it's fine if you're a Calvinist
00:56:20.080
But it's not okay for you to be a Trinitarian and someone else to be a modalist.
00:56:25.200
Like, but the Bible itself doesn't tell us when do theological disagreements become heresy.
00:56:32.520
It's like there is a concern here that if we just use Sola Scriptura, which ends up really
00:56:39.200
being individual interpretations, there becomes a problem there, I think, that you can fail to
00:56:48.760
Say, well, but it's like, for example, and there's big things, there's also little things.
00:56:52.500
I remember meeting a girl once, I said, oh, what are you doing for Christmas?
00:57:02.440
And Jehovah's Witnesses are all like that, which we wouldn't include as a denomination
00:57:06.740
of Christianity, we would say as a cult, but...
00:57:10.820
Because the Bible itself doesn't say what theological beliefs are the minimum ones to be a Christian.
00:57:17.260
That's a tradition later established at the Ecumenical Councils.
00:57:20.540
We would, I think you and I would agree that there is a difference between not doing anything
00:57:26.380
that is not explicitly said in Scripture, which is not where I fall.
00:57:31.660
I don't even know really anyone who falls on that, because of course, it doesn't say
00:57:35.100
in Scripture that you can use a piano in church and that you have to have an altar call and
00:57:42.220
And we do believe that Scripture interprets Scripture, that there is a systematic way,
00:57:48.360
There's a right and a wrong way to interpret Scripture, that there is actually one meaning
00:57:53.020
of Scripture, even if there are many different subjective interpretations.
00:57:58.300
And I hear this a lot from Catholics, that this is the problem with Protestantism, is that
00:58:02.320
you've got all these different denominations, which it's a myth that there are 33,000, by the
00:58:08.820
Yes, but just for anyone out there who might be confused about that, all the different
00:58:13.000
subsets, there is a much smaller range of actual Christian denominations.
00:58:18.920
But I see plenty of disagreement among Catholics, too.
00:58:22.820
Catholics individually, even how they would interpret the Bible.
00:58:25.900
Now, maybe they're disagreeing with official Catholic doctrine, but there are certainly liberal
00:58:36.160
There are certainly Catholics, I would say, probably, maybe particularly in the Northeast,
00:58:40.280
who they go to Mass and they do all the things that they're supposed to do.
00:58:44.020
But they're extremely liberal when it comes to abortion, when it comes to LGBTQ.
00:58:47.420
And if you compare, for example, if you go to Pew Research and you compare what each religion
00:58:53.660
in America, how they fall on these issues of abortion, LGBTQ, even like living together
00:58:59.720
before you get married, Protestants in general are far more conservative on these issues than
00:59:07.980
Catholics are, people who identify as Catholics.
00:59:10.500
Of course, we don't know people's real beliefs and how closely they align.
00:59:18.120
There are a lot of disagreements among Catholics, a lot of Catholics who do things that are not
00:59:22.220
in accordance with Scripture or Catholic doctrine.
00:59:25.840
I guess I get confused about if division is the argument against Protestantism.
00:59:29.920
There are plenty of divisions among Catholics, don't you think?
00:59:32.640
There are, but Catholics would recognize where we're divided on issues that the Church hasn't
00:59:41.740
Like, is it okay to go to a pride parade, for example?
00:59:48.080
Like, there isn't an official teaching on that, but I would say it's scandalous to be
00:59:51.680
there unless you're witnessing to people, which I've done before.
00:59:55.080
The scandal is just to be there wearing the garb.
00:59:57.940
Even if you're saying, well, I'm just here loving people.
00:59:59.540
And it's like, well, but people are going to look at this and take a different message
01:00:07.020
But when it comes to saying, can a man and a woman be married in church, even the most
01:00:13.700
You'll get a priest who gets excommunicated if they try to give the sacrament of marriage
01:00:20.100
Whereas in the Protestant world, we were discussing this earlier, you have the Methodist Church
01:00:23.340
and Methodist churches and other Protestant churches, where the issue comes up, two churches
01:00:27.280
just come into existence, rather than even in the Catholic world, there are people who
01:00:30.860
support so-called same-sex marriage, they're dissenters, but they'd say, yeah, but the
01:00:34.920
Church teaches this, and I disagree, not this is actually the truth, and the Church, you
01:00:44.380
If I say, okay, for example, United Methodist Church, they decided that, sure, LGBTQ people,
01:00:49.540
active, not just people who struggle with that sin, but active.
01:00:55.020
And I say, but that's not what Scripture teaches.
01:01:00.780
So is that really so different than what y'all do, except for Scripture is the Word of God,
01:01:06.940
and the Church, even though you believe it's been inspired by God, they're men, they're
01:01:13.080
Well, I would say that the leadership of the Church, the gift of infallibility is not something
01:01:19.200
that is exercised in everything that the leaders of the Church say.
01:01:23.800
It's under special occasions and instances when it's invoked, such as at an ecumenical
01:01:29.700
council when all the bishops of the world gather together to decide to teach infallibly,
01:01:34.540
or if the Pope, using his power as the pastor of the Church, to infallibly settle an issue,
01:01:41.760
But I think the difference there is that within the Catholic world, we do have levels of authority
01:01:48.580
in Church teaching to know what are essential and what are not essential.
01:01:52.700
So even people who are pretty far left in the Church, people that I know, would say,
01:01:58.020
well, no, you can't deny that Christ is present in the Eucharist.
01:02:01.240
You know, you can't deny the divinity of Christ.
01:02:03.260
You can't deny—you can't say Mary gave birth to other children, for example.
01:02:06.760
So we have, you know, certain teachings that would be essential, some of which are infallibly defined.
01:02:13.380
Would it be a heresy to say that Mary gave birth to other children?
01:02:20.240
Heresy is the obstinate, post-baptismal rejection of something that's been divinely revealed.
01:02:28.360
So there's going to be—it's heresy, but the responsibility one has for it's different.
01:02:32.220
And if you are a Catholic and you reject this, it's going—and you—and as a Catholic,
01:02:37.120
you're obliged to believe what the Church teaches, that's going to be different than a Protestant.
01:02:41.660
However, I would say that the Protestant reformers like Martin Luther or Ulrich Zwingli
01:02:46.680
probably would have said—they would have said it is heresy to say that—
01:02:52.120
He definitely had a—Martin Luther had a different view of Mary than most Protestants do today.
01:02:56.120
Well, even Thomas Cranmer, John Wesley, and I've seen debate about Calvin, what he believed on this.
01:03:01.680
He's—Calvin certainly rejected the idea that the Bible could be used to prove Mary gave birth to other children.
01:03:08.040
He didn't think those texts were convincing at all.
01:03:12.220
So the difference here is what I would say is—and this would be my question—like, how do you—
01:03:16.580
because you would agree that there are doctrines Protestants can disagree about.
01:03:23.340
And there are Protestants—there are doctrines they cannot disagree about.
01:03:36.360
And there are people who would disagree on that.
01:03:40.140
But the Bible never tells us which—how to divide between the two.
01:03:46.620
Which is why we would say—which is why we would say—if I say, for example, in times, you might be a premillennialist, I might be a postmillennialist, and I might—or, well, that's not true.
01:03:58.040
I'm a premillennialist, I might be talking to someone who's a postmillennialist, and I think I would say, look, you're, you know, you're dead wrong on that.
01:04:04.760
But I still appreciate you as a brother in Christ.
01:04:13.140
Do you believe that by grace through faith you have been saved in Christ, and he and only he has become your righteousness, your justification, your mode of sanctification?
01:04:24.900
Do you believe in John 14, 6, that Jesus is the only way, the only truth, the only life, that no one can come to the Father except through him?
01:04:32.620
Now, I think that there are issues, like the LGBTQ issue, that is not the gospel, but it gets to the heart of the gospel.
01:04:41.660
Now, there would be people who probably disagree with this.
01:04:45.020
Now, do I think that you can be wrong on this and still be saved?
01:04:50.080
I think that we are all going to die being wrong about some things.
01:04:54.260
I don't think that your view of LGBTQ is what grants you or what prohibits your salvation.
01:05:02.580
But what I typically find is that someone who denies Genesis 1, 27, that God made us male and female, is eventually going to deny John 14, 6.
01:05:12.840
And so I don't think that your salvation is predicated upon what you believe about LGBTQ, but I do think that that speaks to a fundamental misunderstanding of God and his word.
01:05:26.340
And therefore, you probably do not believe the gospel.
01:05:37.580
So Mally is identical to you in every way except for one, and that is she is married to a woman.
01:05:45.300
But she's identical to you, and she has all of your other same beliefs.
01:05:48.840
She just thinks that the teachings on homosexuality don't apply today, just like the teachings on slavery don't apply today.
01:05:58.120
She believes—you believe in Jesus, so you're not going to heaven.
01:06:04.580
I would say, okay, you believe that Jesus is the only way to heaven.
01:06:09.000
You're against abortion, but you don't believe that the word of God is authoritative.
01:06:21.040
Why do you believe in John 14, 6, and how did you decide upon that?
01:06:24.560
That's what I would ask Mally, because Mally's got some inconsistencies there.
01:06:29.000
And I would say, you know, this is really important.
01:06:33.520
I would also say that she is living in—it's not just a belief for her.
01:06:41.980
And we do believe that you die to your old self.
01:06:46.340
And even though we won't fully stop sinning—that's our belief—until heaven,
01:06:52.100
we do believe in progressive sanctification, and that God is going to rid us of our idols.
01:06:57.120
And if you see no fruit, no sanctification in someone's life—
01:07:04.040
But she is also—she makes money being a gestational surrogate.
01:07:18.480
Let me ask you then a question about—so you agree that there's essential doctrines,
01:07:26.940
There isn't, like, a biblical text or a principle that are saying, the way you divided them,
01:07:40.480
So you would say that homosexuality would go to the heart of the essential.
01:07:44.880
It would go to the heart of the essential, yes.
01:07:47.480
So it's different than, let's say, contraception.
01:07:53.580
I mean, you could argue—you could, again, argue that this speaks to someone's mistrust
01:08:05.180
of what God has to say about the dignity of life and the dignity of the unborn.
01:08:13.920
That's one thing Protestants are known for, is that we're open to argumentation based
01:08:19.760
But I would not say that someone who believes the wrong thing about conception is not saved.
01:08:30.820
Because—but what's interesting here is that a hundred years ago, all Protestants would disagree
01:08:36.820
with you, because before 1930, before the Lambeth Conference, all Protestants believed contraception
01:08:43.480
So it's like, are Protestants right now, or were they right back then?
01:08:49.980
I also—well, I believe that hormonal birth control is sinful.
01:08:55.860
Well, I don't think that most Protestants would agree with that today, but I don't know
01:08:59.980
that those Protestants who believed that it was all sinful then would have said someone
01:09:03.140
is not going to heaven, or someone is not saved.
01:09:05.660
And so there's a difference between sinful and a primary doctrine of that we would consider
01:09:12.900
Like, we believe someone's saying there's more than one way to God, or if you're loving
01:09:18.040
enough, or if you're good enough, or if you do all the right things, then you'll go to
01:09:22.020
Even if that person agrees with me on all other doctrines, I would say you're not a Christian,
01:09:26.540
because Christianity, the crux of Christianity is the cross.
01:09:29.500
The crux of Christianity is what Jesus accomplished on the cross.
01:09:33.100
And outside of that, I think that we can have disagreements, some bigger, some smaller,
01:09:38.380
some with greater implications, some with fewer implications.
01:09:41.400
But your salvation is not dependent upon those secondary and tertiary disagreements, even if
01:09:50.720
I think that they're getting really, really close to the heart of the sinner, and that
01:09:54.380
they probably do speak to a misunderstanding that you have essentially about God.
01:09:58.920
But we still haven't found the mechanism to determine which are primary and which are
01:10:06.140
secondary, that there's no place—I couldn't ask you, where could I go in the Bible to
01:10:14.480
I don't think there's anywhere you could point me to.
01:10:17.120
No, and it's not that Protestants don't believe in teaching or interpretation or councils or
01:10:24.720
creeds or catechisms or debates or discussions or progress when it comes to that, because we
01:10:30.020
do, and just as Catholics do, but we don't have one institution that we go to and say,
01:10:40.280
We do believe that Scripture is the authority, that the Church or the Pope is not the authority,
01:10:45.500
and we also acknowledge that there will be very smart Christians, very solid even denominations
01:10:51.120
and churches that disagree on some of these things.
01:10:53.520
But we believe that Scripture interprets Scripture, and that very smart, brilliant theologians
01:10:59.000
over time have done us a great service in helping us understand what those primary, secondary,
01:11:06.200
The difference is that we don't have a church institution that we would look to and say,
01:11:11.700
these are the categories, this is what they all fall into.
01:11:15.840
But I believe every Protestant would agree on what the gospel is and that that is primary.
01:11:21.020
What I would say the Catholic view of salvation is that we receive salvation as a gift of God's
01:11:39.180
grace, and you are saved as long as you do not permanently reject that gift before death.
01:11:44.240
And so I think that if you looked at, like with a surveillance camera, of like a Protestant
01:11:53.280
convert, Catholic convert, the way they act is actually very similar.
01:11:58.140
Let's say you have an atheist high school, atheist in high school, one becomes Protestant,
01:12:03.960
On camera you would see them, I believe in Jesus, go and get baptized.
01:12:08.480
Then they live a life where they're not getting drunk, they're not fornicating, they're praying
01:12:13.880
to God, and they don't reject faith in God, and then they die at the end of their life.
01:12:19.600
I think we would see something very similar, whereas we would just disagree explaining how
01:12:26.240
Well, and Calvinists wouldn't believe that a true Christian can ever lose their salvation,
01:12:29.580
because we believe in the perseverance of the saints.
01:12:31.080
Well, what we would say is from the camera's perspective, they would look the same.
01:12:34.160
Both of them, they don't forever fall away, but we would disagree about why that is.
01:12:39.760
One, we would say that Catholics and other historic Christians, because there are many
01:12:44.000
Protestants who traditionally rejected that view, would say that this person chose to not
01:12:49.460
reject God, or if they did, they were reconciled with God, like the prodigal son, and they died
01:12:57.060
And the Calvinists would say, well, no, it would have been impossible for him to fall away.
01:13:01.140
But I would say that we really do agree about receiving through faith, through grace.
01:13:22.960
Yes, I'm a Baptist, and we don't believe that baptism gives any form of salvation,
01:13:27.780
that it's an outward symbol of inward regeneration.
01:13:31.140
And so we do disagree on that portion, because we would say that's even like a work, that
01:13:35.520
you're kind of earning your salvation, and we would just reject that.
01:13:38.780
Well, that's why Martin Luther said, we're saved by faith alone.
01:13:43.100
We're saved by faith, not by works, is what Luther said.
01:13:47.680
So Luther's conclusion was, baptism's not a work.
01:13:51.320
Let me just say something that I really appreciate about Catholics, because we're definitely
01:13:54.340
going to have Trent back on as long as he is available.
01:13:56.680
We didn't even get to half of the questions that I wanted to, and we're well over an hour.
01:14:01.960
There are lots of things that I appreciate about my Catholic friends, but I really appreciate
01:14:06.420
how strong, traditionally strong, the Catholic Church has been on reproductive technology,
01:14:11.840
on surrogacy, on—and even recently, the Pope making his statements about surrogacy, about
01:14:22.540
Yes, that is a huge failure, a huge lack of understanding among Protestants, among evangelicals,
01:14:29.760
that I get absolutely reamed for that every time I talk about it, because, I mean, this
01:14:36.340
There is not a congruent and cohesive or authoritative teaching on reproductive technology, I would
01:14:44.880
It's going to be hard to get the Bible's take on that.
01:14:48.220
Well, again, I would argue that it can be deduced from Scripture and the dignity of
01:14:52.840
life and just looking at what IVF is and all of that.
01:14:55.560
So we could go on and on and on, but all I wanted to say is that I do appreciate how clear
01:14:59.960
the Church has been on that, and sometimes I look around and I feel like it's only Catholics
01:15:04.720
standing there with me as we're talking about this stuff, and I appreciate that.
01:15:08.480
Well, historically, when you look in the 1970s, even with something like legal abortion, the
01:15:13.240
National Right to Life Committee was essentially founded by the Catholic Church, that evangelicals
01:15:18.540
and—like the Southern Baptists, for example, were allowing abortion in the case of rape up
01:15:23.240
until the 1980s, that many Protestants were saying, well, Scripture, there's some poetic passages
01:15:29.360
about the unborn, but it doesn't talk about abortion or it doesn't talk about abortion in
01:15:33.520
hard cases, so we're going to leave that up to consciences. And so that goes back to
01:15:38.700
what I was saying before, and I do think that that's a benefit when you have an authoritative
01:15:43.380
magisterium. Yes, there's concerns, hey, this is too much, but my other concern I brought
01:15:47.920
up was, by using sola scriptura, the danger of failing to believe certain things, like
01:15:52.460
the wrongness of reproductive technologies or other elements like that. So I think that's
01:15:56.380
this continual sort of tension between Catholics and Protestants for us to discuss in the
01:16:01.220
nature of authority. I think that Catholics have, in some cases, like that case that you're
01:16:07.320
talking about or this issue, have pushed Protestants to better praxis and to be more thoughtful in
01:16:13.680
the application of our theology. I see that—you probably wouldn't agree with this—that Protestants
01:16:19.220
and the Protestant Reformation in some ways even reformed the Catholic Church.
01:16:24.160
The Catholic Church, that's why the Council of Trent, reform was needed, but not revolution.
01:16:31.960
And even pushed, I would say, like, Protestants' love for Scripture and our just emphasis on
01:16:40.360
Bible studies and studying Scripture, I think, has had a positive effect on Catholics and has
01:16:45.820
had a positive effect on Catholicism. Whereas, like, I love that the Bible in a Year podcast,
01:16:51.560
I think, is, like, the number one religion and spirituality. Father Mike Schmitz, I think his
01:17:00.700
Yeah. So I see—I think that Protestants, in some ways, continue to reform and push and
01:17:07.560
challenge Catholics in a positive way. And I would say on these controversial issues, Catholics
01:17:12.080
continue to challenge and push Protestants in a positive way. So I'm thankful for that. We'll
01:17:16.640
definitely have you back on. Thank you so much.