Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - May 06, 2024


Ep 997 ｜ Why Do Catholics Pray to Mary？ ｜ Guest： Trent Horn


Episode Stats

Length

1 hour and 17 minutes

Words per Minute

180.86624

Word Count

13,985

Sentence Count

779

Misogynist Sentences

10

Hate Speech Sentences

71


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.200 Congress is trying to pass an anti-anti-Semitism bill.
00:00:05.260 It sounds good, but what's really in it?
00:00:07.660 And what does the Bible say about this statement that, quote, the Jews killed Jesus?
00:00:14.200 Also, what are some of the biggest differences between Protestantism and Catholicism?
00:00:19.680 Why do Catholics pray to or through Mary?
00:00:23.340 Well, we are talking about all of this, debating many subjects today with Catholic apologist
00:00:28.060 Trent Horn.
00:00:29.520 This will be one of many conversations that I have with him because we went a long time
00:00:34.780 in our conversation, over an hour, and we still have so many other topics to get through.
00:00:39.200 But I hope that this is a good starter for you all.
00:00:42.160 You guys have been asking me to have him on for so long, and he is wonderful.
00:00:45.940 I thought it was a great conversation.
00:00:47.600 This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.
00:00:49.520 Go to GoodRanchers.com.
00:00:50.920 Use code Allie at checkout.
00:00:52.040 That's GoodRanchers.com, code Allie.
00:00:59.520 Trent Horn, thanks so much for taking the time to join us today.
00:01:07.320 Thank you for having me.
00:01:08.360 Yes.
00:01:08.780 Okay.
00:01:09.020 You're back.
00:01:10.180 Many people probably saw you in the debate that we did on Debatable with Dr. White.
00:01:18.860 And now, because I didn't get the chance to ask you so many questions that I wanted to
00:01:24.720 during that exchange, I wanted to bring you back on.
00:01:27.300 For everyone.
00:01:28.180 This one won't be behind the paywall, so everyone gets to access this.
00:01:31.820 So many people have been asking me to have you on.
00:01:34.160 So tell those who may not know who you are, though, and what you do.
00:01:38.140 Sure.
00:01:38.300 So my name is Trent Horn.
00:01:39.380 I am a staff apologist for Catholic Answers.
00:01:42.060 So I'm a Catholic apologist, but I also speak frequently on other subjects, atheism, pro-life.
00:01:48.960 I want to defend the Catholic worldview, so that includes some things that are unique to
00:01:53.160 Catholicism.
00:01:54.380 But in the post-Christian culture that we live in, a lot of the things that I'm defending
00:01:58.940 are things Catholics and Protestants have in common.
00:02:01.060 The existence of God, the divinity of Christ, marriage being something God created to bind
00:02:06.740 men and women together, one man and one woman, the sanctity of life before birth, even just
00:02:12.020 general sexual ethics, things that people didn't question 30 years ago now are really out on
00:02:17.880 the fringe for some people.
00:02:19.140 So that's what I do.
00:02:20.440 I have a podcast called The Council of Trent that is a play on words for those who are not
00:02:25.620 Catholic.
00:02:25.960 There was a major ecumenical council held in the 16th century in response to the Protestant
00:02:32.300 Reformation called The Council of Trent.
00:02:34.380 So my podcast is C-O-U-N-S-E-L, Council of Trent.
00:02:38.200 I love that play on words.
00:02:38.540 And it's very providential also, because my parents are not Catholic, actually.
00:02:42.800 I'm a convert.
00:02:44.120 So it all came about providentially.
00:02:45.980 So that's what I do.
00:02:46.700 I write, I speak, and I just want to help people come to know our Lord, come to know
00:02:51.600 the Church He established, find salvation in Him, and live godly lives that'll make them
00:02:56.880 happy and holy people.
00:02:58.340 And tell us a little bit about your testimony, because like you said, you weren't raised
00:03:01.840 Catholic.
00:03:02.840 Right.
00:03:03.400 So I was raised in a nominally religious household.
00:03:07.620 We didn't go to church.
00:03:09.040 The closest thing that we had to religious instruction were the old Hanna-Barbera cartoons, the greatest
00:03:14.700 stories from the Bible, those are still my favorite.
00:03:17.400 They are still my favorite Bible stories.
00:03:20.220 I don't show my kids VeggieTales.
00:03:21.700 I hate that.
00:03:22.520 Really?
00:03:22.980 Oh, I hate it.
00:03:24.540 It's just like, I'm sorry, a dancing cucumber and tomato can't get across the gravity of
00:03:29.200 man's sin that demanded the flood of Noah, for example.
00:03:32.060 Even for kids.
00:03:32.920 Oh, yeah, even for kids.
00:03:33.780 So I love the Hanna-Barbera cartoons.
00:03:35.480 Yeah.
00:03:36.040 It shows like, you compare like the VeggieTales Noah episode to the old Hanna-Barbera episode,
00:03:41.200 and it opens, and God saw the world had become wicked and sinful, and you see the dancing
00:03:46.700 ladies in the tavern, and a guy clubs another guy over the head, and God's, you know, and
00:03:50.700 it's just, it brings a certain gravitas to this, that this is, because to me, cartoons
00:03:55.900 are for kids, animation is for everyone.
00:03:58.500 That's the difference there, because there are animated things that are not appropriate
00:04:01.900 for children.
00:04:02.540 Yeah.
00:04:03.820 Cartoons, those are for kids.
00:04:05.340 So when I teach my kids, so that's what, I mean, that's what I was raised on, but by the
00:04:08.300 time I got to junior high, high school, I kind of grew out of that, because we didn't
00:04:11.380 go to church, I didn't get religious instruction at home, beyond the very basics, you know,
00:04:15.700 believe in Jesus.
00:04:16.660 But I had questions.
00:04:17.700 I asked my mom, you know, how do I know this stuff in the Bible that it really happened?
00:04:20.600 Yeah.
00:04:21.920 Couldn't get a good answer.
00:04:22.980 So I became a deist.
00:04:24.360 I wasn't an atheist.
00:04:25.600 I believe there was a God up there that made everything, but I didn't think He cared
00:04:28.480 about us.
00:04:29.140 Right.
00:04:29.720 Then in high school, I met Catholic teens in a youth group there, and also some Protestant teens
00:04:36.700 in another youth group, was befriended by them, and that started me on my investigation
00:04:41.360 first into being convinced of Christianity, and then looking into, okay, if I'm going
00:04:45.560 to be Christian, well, what church am I going to belong to?
00:04:47.920 Right.
00:04:48.280 And that all culminated in March of 2002, when I was 17, I was received into the Catholic
00:04:54.060 Church, I was baptized, confirmation, First Eucharist, and after that I started doing
00:04:59.400 a lot of pro-life work.
00:05:00.420 I got involved in the pro-life movement because there was a girl, she went to a very tiny,
00:05:06.280 tiny Catholic school, only like 20 people in the high school, so they wanted to have
00:05:09.820 a prom.
00:05:10.700 So to have a prom, they all said, okay, we're all going to invite someone who doesn't go
00:05:13.780 to the school, and so that way they could have 40 people.
00:05:16.620 She invited me, I met her dad, he was the president of the state Right to Life organization,
00:05:21.060 and he kind of mentored me, took me under his wings, and then I started doing pro-life
00:05:26.560 talks, and I traveled university campuses, and that's where I really cut my teeth on
00:05:30.960 apologetics, was debating abortion, doing debates on college campuses, those things
00:05:35.700 can get pretty wild, as we've seen recently.
00:05:37.740 So that's kind of my background.
00:05:39.560 Okay, got it.
00:05:40.500 I love hearing how people came to where they are now, and I think it's really interesting
00:05:46.120 that you weren't raised Catholic, because most Catholics I know, you know, they would
00:05:50.380 call themselves cradle Catholics.
00:05:52.040 Whether they really believe in Catholic theology today, most people who identify as Catholics
00:05:58.120 today, it's a long-standing tradition in their family.
00:06:02.680 Maybe they're from Italy, or they're from Ireland, and they've just always kind of grown
00:06:07.120 up in Catholic culture.
00:06:09.380 And growing up in Texas, that Catholic culture really wasn't very prominent or pervasive.
00:06:14.100 I went to Christian school, I think I knew literally one Catholic.
00:06:18.220 And then I went to college, and I went to college in South Carolina, which is still in
00:06:23.080 that Bible Belt, not a ton of Catholics there.
00:06:26.180 And yet that was like really my first encounter with a lot of Catholics.
00:06:29.720 I had a roommate who was Catholic.
00:06:31.920 I didn't even know that people actually put ash on their foreheads on Ash Wednesday.
00:06:36.620 The first time that I encountered that, I had no idea what was going on.
00:06:41.140 And it's really interesting how Catholics and Protestants seem to kind of occupy, in some
00:06:46.780 ways, different universes.
00:06:49.060 Like, I was talking to a Catholic who lives in the Northeast.
00:06:52.780 She had no idea that we Protestants, when we say the Church, that we're not talking about
00:06:58.580 the Catholic Church.
00:06:59.680 Like, we would say, I think you said earlier, you know, the Church that Jesus established.
00:07:04.300 I would say that too, but I'm talking about the universal body of believers, whereas you're
00:07:09.420 specifically talking about the Catholic Church.
00:07:11.780 She had no idea that there was a difference when we say those things, which, you know, it's
00:07:18.520 just kind of fascinating.
00:07:19.720 Catholics and Protestants have been together for a long time, and yet there are a lot of
00:07:24.500 misunderstandings about the two.
00:07:26.000 There are.
00:07:26.460 I remember once, when I was doing pro-life work, the organization I worked for, we were
00:07:31.100 half Catholic and half Protestant.
00:07:32.520 So it was a great opportunity to dialogue with each other, but we were traveling in
00:07:37.360 the South, I think in Alabama, staying at a host family's home while we were doing pro-life
00:07:42.340 outreach on a university campus.
00:07:44.220 And we spoke with them, and it was funny.
00:07:46.960 They said to us, wow, I didn't think Catholics believed really in Jesus.
00:07:52.540 You're the first really Catholics I've ever met and talked to.
00:07:55.700 And I've seen that.
00:07:56.320 I said, well, of course Catholics believe in Jesus.
00:07:58.440 We got a big picture of him hanging on the cross because he died on the cross to redeem
00:08:02.500 our sins right in the front of church.
00:08:04.520 We received Jesus in the Eucharist.
00:08:06.460 So I think that you're right that—and that's why dialogue is always important to get past
00:08:11.140 the misconceptions so that we can really understand the things we agree on.
00:08:16.360 Yeah.
00:08:16.740 And then the areas where we're still dividing, where there's disagreement, and where hopefully
00:08:20.200 maybe we can bridge the gap on some of that.
00:08:21.900 And I think it might go back to kind of what I said about a lot of Catholics having just
00:08:28.580 a culture of Catholicism, maybe even more so than Protestantism.
00:08:33.060 Most Protestants that I know don't even really know that they're Protestant.
00:08:38.120 Like, they wouldn't call themselves Protestant.
00:08:39.980 They don't really know about the Protestant Reformation.
00:08:42.560 They might call themselves Baptist or Methodist or maybe even Evangelical.
00:08:47.320 But most Protestants just think of ourselves as—
00:08:51.100 We're Christian.
00:08:51.580 As Christians, yes.
00:08:53.640 And a lot of Catholics, because it's really something that has been more passed down to
00:08:59.200 them, it's part of the culture, maybe in the countries where their ancestors, grandparents
00:09:04.720 came from.
00:09:06.080 They are very culturally Catholic without necessarily—I don't want to say not practicing it, but not
00:09:13.660 knowing why they practice it.
00:09:16.120 I'm not saying all or even most Catholics, but that, I think, is a lot of the experience
00:09:20.840 that we Protestants have or Evangelicals have with Catholics, that it's our friend in college
00:09:26.200 who made sure to go to Mass every weekend, but for the rest of the week didn't care about
00:09:32.000 it or didn't go to Bible studies or things like that.
00:09:34.840 It wasn't a very personal relationship, it seemed.
00:09:38.300 So I'm just saying that that's kind of the impression that I think a lot of us Southern
00:09:42.420 evangelicals have, which might sound weird to a Catholic who, like you said, is like,
00:09:47.580 of course we believe in Jesus.
00:09:49.100 What are you talking about?
00:09:49.860 And that's why it's important, because the same thing happens on the Catholic side.
00:09:52.780 You'll have Catholics that will meet evangelicals, people who call themselves Christians, you
00:09:58.480 know, someone who says they're Protestant, but they have no problem posting really immodest
00:10:02.980 pictures on their Instagram, and they go around saying that they're, well, I'm Christian, I
00:10:06.400 believe in Jesus.
00:10:07.040 Like, well, okay, but what about where are your other actions conforming?
00:10:10.500 And that's why when we analyze, try to understand another faith, another church, what we should
00:10:18.340 always do is take a look at what does that group officially teach, and also who are the
00:10:24.220 best representatives of it, and always make the comparisons.
00:10:28.080 If you're going to compare, it should always be worst to worst, best to best, not worst
00:10:32.160 to best.
00:10:32.460 I totally agree with that, that you have to look at what is actually being taught, and
00:10:38.100 then look at the fruit of that actual teaching, because there's always going to be hypocrites,
00:10:43.580 and there's always going to be nominal Christians.
00:10:46.780 I mean, definitely in the Bible Belt, there are plenty of evangelicals and Protestants, maybe
00:10:52.600 less so today, because it's just less popular and convenient and comfortable to be a Christian,
00:10:57.160 but certainly throughout the past 100 years, cultural Christianity, cultural Protestantism,
00:11:02.580 has been extremely prominent.
00:11:05.060 Plenty of people who are Christian in a name only from all different denominations.
00:11:08.520 Well, we're kind of sifting through the wheat and the chaff right now.
00:11:10.860 I would say that we live in a post-Christian culture in the United States, that there was
00:11:15.460 a time when Christianity was, it was the given.
00:11:18.180 Maybe it wasn't always celebrated, but even as recently as I would say the 1990s, I remember
00:11:25.320 watching, it was like the old, I was watching with my kids X-Men 97, the reboot of the cartoon
00:11:31.180 that I loved as a kid.
00:11:32.320 And I remember on the old X-Men animated series, there's an episode where the mutant nightcrawler,
00:11:38.200 you can see he's a German Catholic, and he's talking to Wolverine about Jesus.
00:11:41.360 I'm like, yeah, I got to have that.
00:11:42.700 And I mean, I haven't finished the series yet.
00:11:44.640 I don't know if that'll come back in X-Men 97, but probably not as much.
00:11:48.280 So they're trying to be faithfully original.
00:11:49.500 But you could have that more, whereas nowadays, it's very clear that there is another worldview
00:11:56.160 that is seen as an opposition to Christianity that has to be defended.
00:11:59.640 A worldview, LGBT pride, abortion on demand, radical feminism, radical individualism, that
00:12:09.400 that has become, it's become essentially a counterfeit religion for people to belong to.
00:12:13.800 It has rituals.
00:12:14.500 It's so funny.
00:12:15.900 People will say, oh, you religious people, you're narrow-minded, and you Catholics, you
00:12:20.860 burn people at the stake.
00:12:22.400 But today, if you go against modern wokeism, you can be excommunicated that you said the
00:12:28.500 wrong thing.
00:12:29.360 There's dogmas and secular heresies you can hold to.
00:12:32.800 So you can take someone out of religion.
00:12:35.360 You can take man out of religion, but you can't take religion out of man.
00:12:38.780 They'll always just make something else to fill the void.
00:12:40.780 Yeah, that's absolutely true.
00:12:44.500 Okay, before we get into some of the things that we might disagree on or the questions
00:12:59.620 that I have, I want to talk about a couple of things that either we agree on or I just
00:13:03.720 want your insight on.
00:13:04.840 And one of them is this anti-Semitism bill or anti-anti-Semitism bill that is in Congress
00:13:11.780 right now, the House of Representatives passed the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, which, like
00:13:17.440 most things going through Congress, has this very innocuous title to make you think, of
00:13:22.140 course, if you're against anti-Semitism, which I think we all should be, then you'll support
00:13:27.200 this kind of legislation.
00:13:28.720 But you have to dig deeper.
00:13:30.420 And what people are concerned about, without getting into the weeds too much, just because
00:13:33.840 we don't have time, people are concerned that this violates the First Amendment, that this
00:13:38.560 seems to be policing speech, and specifically speech that is found in Scripture.
00:13:45.580 So one of the things that the bill tries to ban or tries to punish is speech that says
00:13:51.600 that Jews killed Jesus.
00:13:53.980 And they add something to that, a caveat that basically says, if someone says Jews killed
00:14:01.180 Jesus in order to indict Israel as a whole.
00:14:04.340 I don't even know how—
00:14:05.900 They call that classic, using classic anti-Semitism, such as the claim that Jews collectively or
00:14:13.240 totally killed Jesus, or blood libel, the claim that Jews have some kind of secret conspiracy
00:14:19.220 to kidnap Christian children and use their blood for rituals, and things that have been
00:14:24.360 thoroughly debunked, to use that to impugn Israel, modern Jews.
00:14:28.780 So what they're saying, yeah, is—well, I'll let you explain more, and I'd definitely
00:14:33.360 give more of my thoughts on it.
00:14:34.700 No, that's okay.
00:14:35.540 You can go ahead.
00:14:36.760 Yeah, so how I feel about this bill is—and I am someone—I mean, I'm ethnically Jewish.
00:14:42.780 Half my family is Jewish.
00:14:44.540 They're Russian Jews that immigrated here.
00:14:46.480 And so I am aware of a growing problem about anti-Semitism, both on the far left and the
00:14:55.000 right, seeing malice towards Jewish people, a unfounded concern that Jews are a threat
00:15:04.040 and danger to society that have to be dealt with, sometimes by any means possible.
00:15:07.660 That is legitimate anti-Semitism.
00:15:10.140 That being said, though, I don't support this bill for a variety of reasons.
00:15:16.820 First, when you're talking about the First Amendment, I think this bill is related specifically
00:15:20.680 to discrimination, Title VII, because, for example, I mean, under the First Amendment,
00:15:26.240 you can say racist things, for example.
00:15:28.320 It's not illegal to say things that are racist.
00:15:31.000 But if you go to a public university and a professor is saying racist things towards you
00:15:37.380 and is creating a hostile educational environment for you as a student, well, you can say, hey,
00:15:41.820 I'm—or they're allowing, whether it's, you know, whites being racist to blacks or blacks
00:15:46.960 being racist to whites or to whatever racial minority group, we would say, no, a university
00:15:54.480 should protect people from racial discrimination.
00:15:56.940 And so in the context there that even if you can say that stuff under the First Amendment,
00:16:01.280 we could say, look, if you're at a publicly funded university, if you're at this place of
00:16:04.660 employment, you should be able to be protected from racial harassment.
00:16:08.340 So I don't think it's a First Amendment issue per se, because what it's dealing with is
00:16:12.780 the idea, okay, well, if you're protected from racial harassment, like no one should
00:16:16.200 be able to racially harass you because you're white or harass you because of your sex, because
00:16:19.900 you're a woman or because you're religious, people shouldn't be allowed to do the same
00:16:23.920 if you're Jewish.
00:16:25.100 Now, the key here is how do you define anti-Semitism?
00:16:29.300 And I think my—
00:16:30.020 But also how you define harassment, I would say, is a First Amendment issue.
00:16:34.040 Absolutely.
00:16:35.240 And what I would say is the best goal to understand you're defining it well is that you can apply
00:16:40.520 it evenly across the board, that you don't treat groups unequally.
00:16:45.040 So, for example, if the protesters on campuses here are allowed to, you know, pro-Palestinian
00:16:51.160 protesters, pro-Hamas protesters really, can encamp, occupy buildings, can do all these
00:16:56.980 things without repercussion, but Christians can't even put up crosses to show children being
00:17:01.480 killed by abortion, you know, that's unequal.
00:17:04.320 We should treat everyone equally.
00:17:06.380 So it shouldn't just be when Christians do it, it's harassment, but for everyone else,
00:17:10.500 it's them expressing their views.
00:17:12.300 I think that's a good marker to help determine that.
00:17:14.520 But I think you and I would agree there are some things that are just legitimate harassment,
00:17:18.460 that if it was done to Christians, we should, you know, people shouldn't do it to anyone
00:17:21.400 else.
00:17:21.720 So then the problem I have with the bill, though, is that it doesn't have a—it has
00:17:27.800 a fluid definition of anti-Semitism.
00:17:30.840 It just says anti-Semitism is whatever the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance
00:17:36.220 says is anti-Semitism.
00:17:38.040 But I don't like that, because what if they change their definition of what it is?
00:17:41.280 Like, the definition should be in the bill itself, and if you want to change it later,
00:17:44.880 we have to go through Congress to change it later.
00:17:46.540 It shouldn't be allowed for a non-profit, you know, a non-governmental organization.
00:17:52.040 They could change the definition, then that changes the law.
00:17:54.900 So I don't agree with that.
00:17:56.920 So there are elements within it where, for example, like, I would say anti-Semitism is
00:18:03.320 wrong, but not everything is anti-Semitism, saying that the nation of Israel did something
00:18:08.320 immoral in its conflict with Hamas.
00:18:10.880 Well, it's not anti-Semitic to simply criticize the nation of Israel.
00:18:14.940 Even if you're really against Israel, there's a difference between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.
00:18:20.800 So people should be allowed to make these good faith criticisms.
00:18:24.880 It's certainly not anti-Semitic.
00:18:26.380 Unfortunately, those two things seem to have a lot of crossover.
00:18:31.400 I agree that there are some maybe nuanced criticisms of maybe what people would call anti-Zionism.
00:18:37.620 I've found, though, that typically when you dig deep enough, most anti-Zionists really just
00:18:42.420 don't like the Jewish people.
00:18:43.620 And that's where you would look for, is there a double standard here?
00:18:46.760 Are you treating the nation of Israel differently because you already have a prejudicial attitude
00:18:52.300 towards Jewish people?
00:18:54.600 So some of the other—I'm trying to think of some of the other elements that are—oh,
00:18:58.580 well, one thing, like, for example, if I were to say, you know, Jesus is the Messiah,
00:19:02.680 and Jews should accept Jesus as the Messiah, some Jews would consider that anti-Semitic.
00:19:06.880 I would say, well, no, it's the truth.
00:19:08.300 Jesus is the Messiah for everyone, and he's come also to the chosen people.
00:19:14.060 But there are other things.
00:19:15.880 So, for example, saying that the Jews are Christ killers, to say that all Jewish people
00:19:22.300 bear a collective—
00:19:24.300 Responsibility.
00:19:24.520 Yeah, all Jewish people, or even all Jewish people at the time of Jesus, to say that all
00:19:30.160 of them have a collective responsibility and thus a unique guilt for the crucifixion that
00:19:36.240 regular sinners do not share, I would say it's anti-Semitic.
00:19:40.340 In fact, the Catechism of the Council of Trent—remember, the Reformation Council I referenced—they put
00:19:46.120 out a catechism in 1566, and in that—this is even, this is not a modern thing, this goes
00:19:51.200 back 400 years, 350 years, saying that the guilt sinners, like Catholics, Christians who
00:20:00.780 sin, bear a more enormous guilt for the crucifixion than the Jews did, because the catechism quotes
00:20:07.940 what Paul says in 1 Corinthians, saying, if they had known Christ was the Lord of glory,
00:20:11.760 they would not have crucified him.
00:20:12.960 They crucified—Jesus was crucified by the Jewish leaders because they falsely believed
00:20:17.200 he was a false messiah.
00:20:18.520 Yeah.
00:20:19.000 But think about us.
00:20:20.260 We know Jesus is the messiah.
00:20:22.160 We know this, and yet we still sin, and yet we still do—we still commit sins, which are
00:20:27.700 the reason for which Christ died on the cross for us, that we, even knowing this, bear more
00:20:32.700 of a responsibility.
00:20:33.780 So there's a balance here.
00:20:36.140 On the one hand, it would be incorrect to say there is no Jewish involvement whatsoever in
00:20:42.260 the crucifixion.
00:20:43.500 That just contradicts the biblical narrative.
00:20:45.700 You'll have some critical scholars saying, oh, it was just the Romans.
00:20:48.860 Well, no, this is very clear.
00:20:51.180 That is a popular belief that I've seen on X a lot, from all different stripes of people
00:20:56.840 who identify as Christians.
00:20:58.600 And that's not quite right either.
00:21:00.280 I agree.
00:21:01.160 It depends on kind of what your motivation is.
00:21:03.700 And by the way, I don't think whatever your motivation is, and whether you're right or
00:21:07.080 wrong, it should be banned by Congress.
00:21:10.000 Even if you do have malicious intent behind what you're saying, I can think it's repugnant
00:21:15.100 without thinking it should be illegal.
00:21:17.460 But, I mean, the Bible does use explicit, and I would even say uncomfortable terms when
00:21:23.520 it says, in so many words, the Jews killed Jesus.
00:21:27.360 But, as you said, it's not an indictment on all Jewish people or saying that Jewish people
00:21:33.500 today bear that responsibility.
00:21:36.380 Or even all Jews at that time.
00:21:38.560 Because we have to remember that the word translated the Jews in Scripture, hoy yudeoi, the Jews,
00:21:45.640 it has a variety of meanings.
00:21:48.300 It can refer to all of the people who are descended from the kingdom of Judah, or in Hebrew, Yehuda.
00:21:53.940 So, you know, so after the Davidic kingdom split into the northern and the southern kingdom,
00:21:59.020 the northern kingdom was assimilated.
00:22:01.140 Those are the Samaritans.
00:22:02.380 The southern kingdom going into exile.
00:22:04.740 The Jews of Christ's time, you know, all Jews are descended from those tribes in the
00:22:08.780 southern kingdom, the Judahites, the Jews.
00:22:12.020 But in Scripture, yudeoi can also mean a subset of Jews.
00:22:17.080 It can refer to the Judeans.
00:22:19.200 So, for example, in John 7, 1, it says that Jesus remained in Galilee because the Jews were
00:22:27.520 seeking to kill him.
00:22:29.060 But that doesn't quite make sense because there were plenty of Jews in Galilee, right?
00:22:33.440 Jesus would have associated primarily with Jews in Galilee.
00:22:36.360 What makes more sense there is that, to translate it, Jesus remained in Galilee because the hoyyudeoi,
00:22:41.840 the Judeans, sought to kill him.
00:22:44.620 And so, in 1 Thessalonians 2, for example, when Paul says he gives encouragement to those
00:22:49.740 who are being persecuted by the Macedonians, saying, you know, resist them just as your
00:22:54.320 countrymen in Judea resisted the Jews who killed our Lord Jesus.
00:22:59.020 But what's Paul talking about here?
00:23:00.660 What he's saying, he's not saying all Jews did this.
00:23:04.280 He's referring to the fact that the church was being persecuted by a particular collection
00:23:08.840 of Jews in Judea, resist the Judeans who are persecuting the church, which Paul was once
00:23:14.640 a member of.
00:23:15.640 So, that's something that's a nuance there that can be lost in the translation, that if
00:23:20.320 you don't see that, you just run with that and say, oh, in Jesus' time, all of the Jews,
00:23:26.780 all of the Jews who were not Christians were killing, killed Jesus, wanted to kill Christians
00:23:32.140 when there were factions and differences among them.
00:23:35.920 And there were those who were, you had Rabbi Gamaliel, for example, who said, no, let the
00:23:40.260 Christians be, that if this is from God, it will succeed.
00:23:43.060 If it's not, it won't.
00:23:44.500 So, I think that you're correct that the way it was worded, just to say Jews killed Jesus,
00:23:49.720 well, no, some of the Jewish leaders were certainly involved.
00:23:52.000 In John 11, Caiaphas makes it clear it's better for one man to die than for the whole people
00:23:56.380 to be subjugated and killed.
00:23:58.400 Some Jewish leaders were involved, but it doesn't follow that, to use the phrase and then to use
00:24:04.120 it to say, oh, all Jews bear this guilt, and therefore all Jews can be mistreated or
00:24:10.160 punished, which Jews throughout history, you know, have been called Christ killers, have
00:24:14.100 been denied civil rights, for example.
00:24:17.520 People would, you know, Jews will tell stories about, you know, you're on the playground and
00:24:21.580 kids call you a Christ killer and they bully you.
00:24:23.940 That's where it moves in anti-Semitism.
00:24:25.900 You take something as a kernel of truth and use it to hurt others.
00:24:28.500 Right.
00:24:29.780 And there's also, there's Acts 2, 22 through 23, Acts 5, 30, Acts 7, 52.
00:24:36.900 Right.
00:24:37.180 For example, Acts 2, 22, it starts out, men of Israel, hear these words, Jesus of Nazareth,
00:24:43.480 and then I won't read everything, but, and then at the end of verse 23, you crucified and
00:24:48.080 killed by the hands of lawless men.
00:24:49.560 And so that still is not saying that literally every person in Israel or of Israeli descent
00:24:57.120 crucified Jesus, but he is saying that, look, just as our forefathers killed the prophets
00:25:04.200 that God sent to you, so we mistreated Jesus.
00:25:07.420 And so it's still not saying that every single Jewish person that has ever lived is responsible
00:25:13.480 for the crucifixion of Jesus, but in the same way that we would say, wow, when we see, for
00:25:20.680 example, the mockers and the scoffers and those who stood before Jesus, like, we say we did
00:25:27.100 that, like it was our sin, or we can see ourselves reflected in those who mistreated Jesus that
00:25:34.380 we were also dead in sin and didn't realize the sacrifice that Jesus had made on our behalf.
00:25:41.040 There is kind of some kind of collective guilt and collective responsibility we see when they
00:25:45.960 are sharing the gospel to the Jewish people in Acts.
00:25:49.360 But again, it's more of a, wow, we bear this kind of, this dereliction of duty.
00:25:57.600 We mistreated the one who God sent to us.
00:26:00.600 And so, as you said, it doesn't, it shouldn't lead to the actions, the discrimination, the
00:26:05.780 hatred that you just described as kind of a consequence of that.
00:26:10.260 Right.
00:26:10.640 There are going to be people at the time that their historical culpability is going to be
00:26:14.800 different.
00:26:15.080 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
00:26:32.820 like the Jewish leadership.
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.
00:26:44.060 Was he really born blind?
00:26:45.100 And they're like, we want nothing, we don't want anything to do with this right now.
00:26:47.940 This is controversial.
00:26:49.220 Go and ask him.
00:26:50.100 He's an adult.
00:26:50.720 He can talk to you.
00:26:51.580 And there's a curious line.
00:26:52.540 It says, they said this for fear of the Jews, which is weird because they're Jewish.
00:26:57.380 It's just such a weird thing to say.
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
00:27:08.700 particular established order.
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
00:27:17.880 the way we want.
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
00:27:30.040 plan for his people?
00:27:31.420 And that's why, of course, Jesus came to inaugurate the kingdom of God.
00:27:34.520 Yes.
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.
00:27:44.040 Of course, they said-
00:27:45.620 It's got to be pretty bad when the ACLU-
00:27:47.400 I like to call them the anti-Christian liberties union or the American communist lawyers union.
00:27:52.860 That's perfect.
00:27:53.880 That's perfect.
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.
00:28:05.800 And they made a statement about that.
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
00:28:14.280 we need.
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
00:28:37.400 their motivations behind saying it.
00:28:39.520 That's just too much.
00:28:40.520 I agree.
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
00:28:58.600 us a documentary about it.
00:28:59.760 And the documentary, everyone who was an example of making stereotypes was always like a white
00:29:03.820 male Christian.
00:29:04.580 Right.
00:29:04.920 And I was like, okay, that's cool.
00:29:06.780 And the teacher actually at one point cracked a joke saying something, something said, well,
00:29:12.600 about pedophiles.
00:29:13.640 She goes, oh, unless you're a Catholic priest.
00:29:15.680 And then I was like, you know, professor, I thought we were saying stereotypes are a bad
00:29:20.360 thing.
00:29:20.660 Yeah.
00:29:20.980 She got really embarrassed and red faced, but it's like, look, yeah, there's freedom of
00:29:24.340 speech.
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
00:29:29.320 Catholic.
00:29:29.920 He must be a pedophile enabler.
00:29:31.960 Or there's Allie.
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.
00:29:46.260 Right.
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
00:29:55.380 go to school.
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
00:30:03.700 thing, Jewish, Muslim, whoever it may be.
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?
00:30:17.660 Which religion is the true religion?
00:30:19.380 Is there one that that is the true religion?
00:30:21.380 That's not harassment to debate those.
00:30:23.340 And college is the place where you should debate those kinds of important questions.
00:30:26.660 Right.
00:30:27.200 Okay.
00:30:27.540 I wanted to get into the United Methodist Church split or the division and the change,
00:30:33.040 but I don't think that we have time.
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
00:30:41.700 and we can discuss that.
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
00:30:52.420 that I have.
00:30:53.080 I can't say that I don't already have kind of some presuppositions about what you're going
00:30:57.140 to say, because I do.
00:30:59.000 But there are a lot of, there's just a lot of genuine curiosity I have about Catholic theology.
00:31:05.120 And so I'll just go through them.
00:31:06.940 Let's try to go through them like as quickly as we can, because I have a lot of questions.
00:31:11.840 First one is about Mary.
00:31:15.040 I would say this is one of the biggest points of confusion for us as Protestants is Catholics
00:31:21.920 praying to or through Mary.
00:31:24.620 And it's important to me to try to use language that Catholics would agree with.
00:31:29.560 I don't want to misrepresent.
00:31:30.740 And so if I do that, it's not on purpose.
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.
00:32:10.160 So where does Mary and doctrine come from?
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
00:32:48.560 using to determine doctrine?
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
00:32:58.500 the framework we're using is a fair one.
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.
00:33:17.820 She is the mother of the Creator.
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
00:33:48.660 at it, right?
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
00:33:55.840 to be found in Scripture?
00:33:58.100 Yeah.
00:33:58.400 So for example, like, let's take the sinner's prayer, for example.
00:34:02.300 You say, Lord Jesus Christ, I am a sinner.
00:34:05.660 I believe you died on the cross for me.
00:34:07.920 Forgive my sins.
00:34:09.760 And I accept you as my personal Lord and Savior.
00:34:13.440 You know, the sinner's prayer.
00:34:15.160 There's nothing like that in Scripture.
00:34:17.320 Like, would you agree?
00:34:18.440 I mean, there's no one, there's no...
00:34:19.840 And I don't believe that the sinner's prayer is some magical incantation that brings Jesus
00:34:24.720 into your heart.
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
00:34:54.540 superstitious about it?
00:34:57.140 Yes, I would say it's okay to say that prayer.
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
00:35:22.580 persons, but one God.
00:35:24.540 And so I would say that Protestants accept that, that not everything is verbatim in Scripture
00:35:30.260 that we say or believe.
00:35:31.520 We have our own creeds.
00:35:33.240 We have our own Westminster catechisms that we believe are an accurate summary of Scripture,
00:35:39.040 but that Scripture must be our standard.
00:35:41.840 Of course, we believe in interpretation.
00:35:43.160 I believe in preachers and teachers.
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,
00:36:03.400 it's not infallible.
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?
00:36:10.880 Scripture.
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.
00:36:25.060 That's my issue.
00:36:26.120 Okay.
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
00:36:48.080 what is taught in Scripture.
00:36:50.240 Yeah.
00:36:50.840 And that's what I don't like about the praying to Mary.
00:36:53.020 But then where, where is that?
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
00:37:11.080 me today.
00:37:12.340 That's not in Scripture.
00:37:14.260 But he's God.
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
00:37:32.340 of break it apart.
00:37:33.180 Maybe that would be the easier way to go.
00:37:35.340 So when I'm looking at Scripture and I see, for example, when Jesus is given the opportunity
00:37:41.340 to treat his mother in a special way.
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.
00:38:06.980 He is my brother and sister and mother.
00:38:08.740 We don't ever see any kind of special honor, special veneration of Mary by Jesus.
00:38:14.000 We don't see it in any of the epistles.
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
00:39:05.460 you.
00:39:05.940 And he said, rather blessed are those that hear the word of God and obey.
00:39:09.740 Yeah.
00:39:09.960 That's a great other example of that.
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.
00:39:20.600 You don't have to worry about your mother.
00:39:21.860 What matters more are other believers, but the Bible is also very clear.
00:39:25.740 You have special obligations to your parents.
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.
00:39:40.620 Yeah, exactly.
00:39:41.660 So I would worry that to take one narrative episode and try to draw more out of it than
00:39:47.620 is being taught.
00:39:48.860 That's just one example for me.
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.
00:40:10.860 No, we all can be 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.
00:40:45.680 I think that's very clear from Scripture.
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
00:41:00.260 friends, he tells them, have Job pray for you.
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
00:41:13.580 to God, their prayers are more efficacious.
00:41:16.500 So Hebrews 12, so who are the holiest people?
00:41:19.500 Hebrews 12 says that those who are in heaven, the spirits of, they're the spirits of just
00:41:24.320 men made perfect.
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
00:41:44.520 to actually be not very helpful.
00:41:46.380 In fact, when you read the teachings, the official teachings of the Catholic Church, you
00:41:50.400 don't have phrases like, pray to the saints.
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?
00:42:03.900 Prayer is pleading with God.
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
00:42:39.760 confidence through our faith in Christ.
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
00:42:52.960 through what?
00:42:53.540 My good works?
00:42:54.260 No, my faith in Christ.
00:42:56.000 And Christ, he who knew no sin became sin so that we could become the righteousness of
00:43:03.080 God.
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
00:43:20.580 prayer has great power.
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
00:43:48.960 we should pray through her.
00:43:50.160 Do you ever ask other people to pray for you?
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
00:44:25.520 people praying for something.
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
00:44:47.220 to.
00:44:47.760 So I think it's an act of obedience.
00:44:49.540 I think it's encouragement.
00:44:50.940 And God hears our prayers.
00:44:54.480 You're not sure if our prayers actually affect what He does?
00:44:57.040 No, I do.
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,
00:45:07.980 and yet our prayers actually do something.
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
00:45:16.080 to perfectly be able to explain that.
00:45:18.600 That's what I'm trying to say.
00:45:19.700 I think the difficulty that comes when Catholics and Protestants discuss this is going to come
00:45:25.840 down, I think, to language.
00:45:27.100 I asked you, when I asked you what prayer is, the definition you gave is interesting, that
00:45:31.900 prayer is making a request of God.
00:45:34.740 That's one of the things that prayer can do.
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
00:45:51.380 creature.
00:45:52.220 So what's the...when you pray the rosary, what is that?
00:45:55.820 When you pray the rosary?
00:45:57.320 Yes.
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.
00:46:16.100 Like pray tell.
00:46:17.200 Yes.
00:46:17.760 If you've listened to all kinds of Pride and Prejudice, I pray thee tell, pray this.
00:46:22.280 Right.
00:46:23.280 So prayer to the saints, that would just fall under, I ask.
00:46:28.420 I ask.
00:46:29.200 I ask this.
00:46:30.180 So you can pray...
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
00:46:50.480 the body of Christ.
00:46:51.920 What Catholics believe is that the body of Christ does not exist solely on earth, that
00:46:57.060 there is only one body of Christ.
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
00:47:26.360 in Christ now than we are even, right now.
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
00:48:03.940 is there's nothing wrong with that.
00:48:06.520 Wrong with?
00:48:07.360 Like ask, you know, asking, for example, a boy asks his deceased mother and father in
00:48:12.400 heaven to pray for him.
00:48:14.320 Oh no, we would say that there's something wrong with that.
00:48:16.940 Why?
00:48:17.520 Oh, we would not, we don't pray to the dead.
00:48:19.440 And I know that they are spiritually alive, but we don't pray to the physically dead.
00:48:23.920 We, we, we don't believe in that.
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
00:48:34.540 for us.
00:48:34.980 We can't ask Christians in heaven to do that.
00:48:36.760 Yeah.
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
00:48:50.280 that would be intercession, right?
00:48:51.540 That they are interceding for us.
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.
00:49:04.340 Yeah.
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.
00:49:11.960 We would say, oh, we don't pray for the dead.
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
00:49:25.200 hear our requests.
00:49:26.340 What is the source of your confidence in that?
00:49:29.320 No, I didn't say that I'm confident that they can't hear or that they can't see.
00:49:34.560 I didn't say that.
00:49:35.600 I said that we don't see that rule supported in scripture that they are carrying our request
00:49:40.020 to God.
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?
00:50:02.240 Like, how does she order all of these prayers?
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
00:50:20.640 millions of Catholics at once.
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,
00:50:35.040 all truths.
00:50:36.120 Like, you know, for example, the solution of every single possible mathematical equation.
00:50:41.700 The saints in heaven don't need to know that.
00:50:43.340 They don't need to know pi, all the decimal places of pi.
00:50:47.680 So it's not omniscience.
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.
00:51:00.760 You see?
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
00:51:35.960 as well.
00:51:37.060 Where does that idea come from?
00:51:38.680 Well, I would say there is nothing to restrict an omnipotent God from allowing his creatures to
00:51:44.880 have more cognitive abilities.
00:51:47.440 Sure.
00:51:48.000 Yeah.
00:51:48.500 Nothing can restrict God from doing anything.
00:51:51.220 So I'm not sure if that's necessarily, if that answers my question.
00:51:55.820 Well, you're asking how she does that.
00:51:58.580 She couldn't do it on her own.
00:51:59.880 And I would say God allows her to do that.
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
00:52:12.880 have.
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.
00:52:55.800 Moreland debates.
00:52:56.720 This is like early 2000s.
00:52:58.520 Yeah.
00:52:59.200 And I was just convinced.
00:53:00.600 I was like, yeah, this, this makes a lot of sense.
00:53:02.880 I believe in Jesus.
00:53:04.040 He rose from the dead.
00:53:05.480 Now, where do I go?
00:53:06.740 And I looked at all the different churches out there.
00:53:08.780 And so I said, well, you know what?
00:53:10.500 I just want to be like the first Christians.
00:53:12.400 I'm going to go back and look at the historical records.
00:53:15.360 What did the first Christians believe?
00:53:17.680 But just to say, look, there's all these different churches that argue about stuff.
00:53:21.280 What were the first Christians like?
00:53:22.680 I want to be like them.
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.
00:53:42.620 Like what, what did they believe?
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.
00:53:52.000 You had house 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.
00:54:02.100 Most scholars date it to the third century.
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.
00:54:12.120 And that prayer says, it's a prayer to Mary.
00:54:15.920 It's a request to Mary.
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.
00:54:39.840 You know, little, little things like that.
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
00:55:17.940 doctrines.
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
00:55:34.940 or ancillary.
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,
00:55:47.180 that are not divine 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
00:56:16.700 and this guy's an Arminian.
00:56:18.260 Like, that's a difference that we can have.
00:56:20.080 But it's not okay for you to be a Trinitarian and someone else to be a modalist.
00:56:24.940 Yeah.
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
00:56:47.520 believe certain things.
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?
00:56:55.680 She said, oh, I don't celebrate Christmas.
00:56:57.640 I said, well, why not?
00:56:58.400 She said, well, it's not in the Bible.
00:57:00.180 Yeah.
00:57:00.720 So it's like...
00:57:01.220 There are definitely some like that.
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...
00:57:08.900 But where does that standard...
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
00:57:39.320 things like that.
00:57:40.080 There is freedom among denominations.
00:57:42.220 And we do believe that Scripture interprets Scripture, that there is a systematic way,
00:57:46.380 an exegetical way to interpret Scripture.
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
00:58:06.340 way.
00:58:06.640 Oh, I agree.
00:58:07.100 That's looking at like all the different...
00:58:08.200 All the different...
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
00:58:32.340 Catholics.
00:58:33.020 Yes.
00:58:33.140 There are certainly Catholics...
00:58:33.860 I just wrote a book about them.
00:58:35.400 Yeah, yeah.
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.
00:59:15.720 But there are a lot of Catholics who disagree.
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.
00:59:25.180 So I don't know.
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
00:59:39.840 spoken on, for example.
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
01:00:02.500 from it.
01:00:03.360 It's a stumbling block, a literal scandalizo.
01:00:06.040 Scandalon, yeah.
01:00:07.020 But when it comes to saying, can a man and a woman be married in church, even the most
01:00:11.080 liberal Catholic churches don't do that.
01:00:13.700 You'll get a priest who gets excommunicated if they try to give the sacrament of marriage
01:00:18.260 to two men or two women.
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
01:00:41.280 know, this is a disagreement.
01:00:41.780 Is that so different than what Protestants do?
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.
01:00:53.940 They can be clergy.
01:00:55.020 And I say, but that's not what Scripture teaches.
01:00:57.320 That's not what Scripture teaches.
01:00:58.360 Scripture is very clear about this.
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
01:01:11.380 fallible men.
01:01:12.320 Right.
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,
01:01:40.460 like one of the Marian dogmas.
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?
01:02:16.080 Yes, it would be a heresy.
01:02:17.060 So are all Protestants heretics?
01:02:20.240 Heresy is the obstinate, post-baptismal rejection of something that's been divinely revealed.
01:02:27.500 So, yes.
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—
01:02:50.620 Yeah, they might have.
01:02:51.600 They absolutely—
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.
01:03:10.940 You know, not 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.
01:03:20.720 Mm-hmm.
01:03:21.280 Just as Catholics do.
01:03:22.920 Sure.
01:03:23.340 And there are Protestants—there are doctrines they cannot disagree about.
01:03:27.080 There's essential and non-essential.
01:03:29.260 Mm-hmm.
01:03:30.280 Secondary, tertiary.
01:03:32.160 Not primary.
01:03:33.040 Yeah, that's what I say.
01:03:33.620 And that's a huge—that's a huge division.
01:03:35.840 Yeah.
01:03:36.360 And there are people who would disagree on that.
01:03:38.420 That's kind of the nature of Protestantism.
01:03:40.140 But the Bible never tells us which—how to divide between the two.
01:03:43.880 That's kind of scary.
01:03:45.140 It's up to people's interpretation.
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.
01:04:07.820 Now, how do I discern that?
01:04:10.940 Do you believe in the gospel?
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.
01:04:40.880 So it's still essential.
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.
01:05:29.600 Well, let me ask you a hypothetical.
01:05:31.320 Suppose I had another woman here.
01:05:32.900 She's almost like—she's identical to you.
01:05:35.420 We'll call her Mally.
01:05:37.340 Okay.
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.
01:05:44.920 Okay.
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.
01:05:55.700 But she still says she's against abortion.
01:05:58.120 She believes—you believe in Jesus, so you're not going to heaven.
01:06:01.640 So could Mally be saved?
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.
01:06:13.700 That's what I would dig into.
01:06:14.700 Well, she would just say—
01:06:16.040 I would say, you don't believe in Romans 1.
01:06:17.700 You don't believe in 1 Corinthians 6.
01:06:19.020 You don't believe in Genesis 1, 27.
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.
01:06:39.100 She is living in perpetual sin.
01:06:41.980 And we do believe that you die to your old self.
01:06:45.020 You become a new creation.
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—
01:06:59.820 Let's try another one.
01:07:00.320 Let's say Mally's the exact same as you.
01:07:02.180 Okay.
01:07:02.460 And she's married to a man, even.
01:07:04.040 But she is also—she makes money being a gestational surrogate.
01:07:09.760 I wouldn't say that she's not saved.
01:07:11.660 Okay.
01:07:11.840 I would say that she is really wrong on that.
01:07:15.200 But I wouldn't say that she is unsaved.
01:07:17.760 Okay.
01:07:18.100 Yeah.
01:07:18.480 Let me ask you then a question about—so you agree that there's essential doctrines,
01:07:24.500 there's ones that are not essential.
01:07:26.940 There isn't, like, a biblical text or a principle that are saying, the way you divided them,
01:07:33.780 you just gave a summary.
01:07:34.760 Here just are the ones that are essential.
01:07:36.940 Yeah.
01:07:37.360 And Protestants will disagree.
01:07:39.700 So on—
01:07:40.320 Probably.
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.
01:08:12.500 So you could argue that.
01:08:13.920 That's one thing Protestants are known for, is that we're open to argumentation based
01:08:18.660 on the Word of God.
01:08:19.760 But I would not say that someone who believes the wrong thing about conception is not saved.
01:08:25.340 About contraception.
01:08:26.280 Yeah.
01:08:26.760 What did I say?
01:08:27.560 Conception.
01:08:28.140 Yeah.
01:08:28.780 Contraception is not saved.
01:08:30.460 Right.
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
01:08:42.220 was sinful.
01:08:43.480 So it's like, are Protestants right now, or were they right back then?
01:08:46.880 Well, I also believe that it's sinful.
01:08:49.980 I also—well, I believe that hormonal birth control is sinful.
01:08:53.180 Let's say just like condoms.
01:08:53.560 Let's say a condoms.
01:08:55.380 Okay.
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
01:09:10.440 outside the bounds of Christianity.
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
01:09:21.740 heaven.
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
01:10:11.360 find out which belong to which?
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,
01:10:38.360 well, what does this mean?
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,
01:11:05.000 and tertiary issues are.
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,
01:12:02.960 one becomes Catholic.
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
01:12:25.120 that salvation is happening.
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
01:12:55.420 in friendship with God.
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.
01:13:07.840 The Catholic Church is very clear.
01:13:09.360 You cannot merit initial salvation.
01:13:11.940 That's why babies, they're saved immediately.
01:13:14.300 Baby can't do anything.
01:13:15.740 He's just baptized, and he's saved.
01:13:18.380 It's a reception.
01:13:18.940 It's a gift of grace.
01:13:19.520 Yeah, we don't—we—well, I—
01:13:22.220 Some Protestants.
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.
01:13:41.640 Baptism saves us.
01:13:43.100 We're saved by faith, not by works, is what Luther said.
01:13:45.540 And Luther said, well, baptism saves us.
01:13:47.680 So Luther's conclusion was, baptism's not a work.
01:13:50.260 It's God's 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
01:14:19.420 reproductive technology.
01:14:21.560 He says it should be banned.
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
01:14:35.480 is a weakness.
01:14:36.340 There is not a congruent and cohesive or authoritative teaching on reproductive technology, I would
01:14:44.200 say, among most evangelicals.
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
01:16:56.680 name is.
01:16:57.820 Father Mike, movie star.
01:16:58.980 Yeah.
01:16:59.260 He's got those wonderful cheekbones.
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.
01:17:18.640 Thank you, Allie.