Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - REPLAY ｜ Catholic vs. Protestant： Praying to Mary ｜ Guest： Trent Horn ｜ Ep 997

00:00:00.660 Congress is trying to pass an anti-anti-Semitism bill. 0.93

00:00:05.720 It sounds good, but what's really in it?

00:00:08.120 And what does the Bible say about this statement that, quote, the Jews killed Jesus?

00:00:14.660 Also, what are some of the biggest differences between Protestantism and Catholicism?

00:00:20.140 Why do Catholics pray to or through Mary?

00:00:23.600 Well, we are talking about all of this, debating many subjects today with Catholic apologist

00:00:28.540 Trent Horn.

00:00:30.100 This will be one of many conversations that I have with him because we went a long time

00:00:35.220 in our conversation, over an hour, and we still have so many other topics to get through.

00:00:39.660 But I hope that this is a good starter for you all.

00:00:42.640 You guys have been asking me to have him on for so long, and he is wonderful.

00:00:46.400 I thought it was a great conversation.

00:00:48.060 This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.

00:00:49.980 Go to goodranchers.com.

00:00:51.380 Use code Allie at checkout.

00:00:52.340 That's goodranchers.com.

00:00:53.600 code Allie. Trent Horn, thanks so much for taking the time to join us today.

00:01:07.780 Thank you for having me. Yes. Okay. You're back. Many people probably saw you in the debate that

00:01:14.300 we did on Debatable with Dr. White. And now, because I didn't get the chance to ask you

00:01:23.020 so many questions that I wanted to during that exchange. I wanted to bring you back on for

00:01:27.980 everyone. This one won't be behind the paywall, so everyone gets to access this. So many people

00:01:32.980 have been asking me to have you on. So tell those who may not know who you are, though, and what you

00:01:38.000 do. Sure. So my name is Trent Horn. I am a staff apologist for Catholic Answers. So I'm a Catholic

00:01:43.800 apologist, but I also speak frequently on other subjects, atheism, pro-life. I want to defend the

00:01:50.760 Catholic worldview. So that includes some things that are unique to Catholicism. But in the post

00:01:55.800 Christian culture that we live in, a lot of the things that I'm defending are things Catholics

00:02:00.320 and Protestants have in common, the existence of God, the divinity of Christ, marriage being

00:02:05.700 something God created to bind men and women together, one man and one woman, the sanctity

00:02:10.220 of life before birth, even just general sexual ethics, things that people didn't question

00:02:15.540 30 years ago now are really out on the fringe for some people. So that's what I do. I have a podcast

00:02:21.460 called The Council of Trent that is a play on words for those who are not Catholic. There was

00:02:26.960 a major ecumenical council held in the 16th century in response to the Protestant Reformation

00:02:33.300 called The Council of Trent. So my podcast is C-O-U-N-S-E-L, Council of Trent. And it's very

00:02:39.440 providential also, because my parents are not Catholic, actually. I'm a convert. So it all

00:02:45.540 came about providentially. So that's what I do. I write, I speak, and I just want to help people

00:02:50.080 come to know our Lord, come to know the Church He established, find salvation in Him, and live

00:02:55.620 godly lives that'll make them happy and holy people. And tell us a little bit about your

00:03:00.660 testimony, because like you said, you weren't raised Catholic. Right. So I was raised in a

00:03:05.620 nominally religious household. We didn't go to church. The closest thing that we had to religious

00:03:11.500 instruction were the old Hanna-Barbera cartoons, the greatest stories from the Bible. Those are

00:03:16.840 still my favorite. They are still my favorite Bible stories. I don't show my kids veggie tales.

00:03:21.980 I hate that. Really? Oh, I hate it. It's just like, I'm sorry, a dancing cucumber and tomato

00:03:27.640 can't get across the gravity of man's sin that demanded the flood of Noah, for example. Even for

00:03:32.640 kids oh yeah even for kids so i love the hanna-barbera cartoons yeah uh it shows like you

00:03:37.400 compare like the veggie tales noah episode to the old hanna-barbera episode and it opens

00:03:42.420 and god saw the world had become wicked and sinful yeah and you see the the dancing ladies

00:03:47.540 in the tavern and a guy clubs another guy over the head and god's you know and it's just it

00:03:51.800 it brings a certain gravitas to this that this is because to me cartoons are for kids animation is

00:03:57.820 for everyone that's a difference there because there are animated things that are not appropriate

00:04:02.380 for children yeah uh cartoons those are for kids uh so when i teach my kids so that's what i mean

00:04:07.280 that's what i was raised on but at the time i got to junior high high school i kind of grew out of

00:04:11.460 that because we didn't go to church i didn't get religious instruction at home beyond the very

00:04:14.920 basics you know believe in jesus but i had questions i asked my mom you know how do i know

00:04:19.380 this stuff in the bible that it really happened yeah couldn't get a good answer so i became a

00:04:24.340 deist i wasn't an atheist i believe there was a god up there that made everything but i didn't

00:04:28.540 think he cared about us right then in high school i met uh catholic uh catholic teens in a youth

00:04:34.920 group there and also some protestant teens in another youth group was befriended by them and

00:04:40.380 that started me on my investigation first into being convinced of christianity and then looking

00:04:45.340 into okay if i'm gonna be christian well what church am i going to belong to right and that

00:04:49.500 all culminated in march of 2002 when i was 17 i was received in the catholic church i was baptized

00:04:55.620 confirmation first eucharist and after that i started doing a lot of pro-life work i got

00:05:01.720 involved in the pro-life movement because there was a girl she went to a very tiny tiny catholic

00:05:07.260 school only like 20 people in the high school so they wanted to have a prom so to have a prom they

00:05:12.220 all said okay we're all going to invite someone who doesn't go to the school and so that way they

00:05:16.300 could have 40 people she invited me i met her dad he was the president of the state right to life

00:05:20.740 organization. And he kind of mentored me, took me under his wings. And then I started

00:05:25.280 doing pro-life talks, and I traveled university campuses. And that's where I really cut my teeth

00:05:31.300 on apologetics, was debating abortion, doing debates on college campuses. Those things can

00:05:36.260 get pretty wild, as we've seen recently. So that's kind of my background.

00:05:40.060 Okay, got it. I love hearing how people came to where they are now. And I think it's really

00:05:46.240 interesting that you weren't raised Catholic because most Catholics I know, they would call

00:05:51.020 themselves cradle Catholics. Whether they really believe in Catholic theology today, most people

00:05:57.440 who identify as Catholics today, it's a longstanding tradition in their family. Maybe

00:06:03.340 they're from Italy or they're from Ireland, and they've just always kind of grown up in Catholic

00:06:08.860 culture. And growing up in Texas, that Catholic culture really wasn't very prominent or pervasive.

00:06:14.440 I went to a Christian school.

00:06:16.680 I think I knew literally one Catholic. 0.95

00:06:19.020 And then I went to college, and I went to college in South Carolina, which is still in that Bible belt.

00:06:24.200 Not a ton of Catholics there.

00:06:26.580 And yet that was like really my first encounter with a lot of Catholics.

00:06:30.180 I had a roommate who was Catholic.

00:06:32.400 I didn't even know that people actually put ash on their foreheads on Ash Wednesday.

00:06:37.080 The first time that I encountered that, I had no idea what was going on. 0.68

00:06:41.600 And it's really interesting how Catholics and Protestants seem to kind of occupy, in some ways, different universes.

00:06:49.520 Like, I was talking to a Catholic who lives in the Northeast.

00:06:53.240 She had no idea that we Protestants, when we say the Church, that we're not talking about the Catholic Church.

00:07:00.120 Like, we would say, I think you said earlier, you know, the Church that Jesus established.

00:07:04.760 I would say that, too.

00:07:06.020 But I'm talking about the universal body of believers, whereas you're specifically talking about the Catholic Church.

00:07:12.240 She had no idea that there was a difference when we say those things, which, you know, it's just kind of fascinating.

00:07:20.180 Catholics and Protestants have been together for a long time, and yet there are a lot of misunderstandings about the two.

00:07:26.480 There are.

00:07:26.940 I remember once when I was doing pro-life work, the organization I worked for, we were half Catholic and half Protestant.

00:07:33.540 So it was a great opportunity to dialogue with each other.

00:07:36.020 But we were traveling in the South, I think in Alabama,

00:07:39.860 staying at a host family's home while we were doing pro-life outreach on university campus.

00:07:44.660 And we spoke with them.

00:07:46.520 And it was funny.

00:07:47.420 They said to us, wow, I didn't think Catholics believed really in Jesus.

00:07:53.000 You're the first really Catholics I've ever met and talked to. 1.00

00:07:56.160 And I've seen that.

00:07:56.780 I said, well, of course Catholics believe in Jesus.

00:07:58.900 We got a big picture of him hanging on the cross

00:08:01.540 because he died on the cross to redeem our sins

00:08:03.480 right in the front of church.

00:08:04.980 We received Jesus in the Eucharist.

00:08:06.940 So I think that you're right that,

00:08:08.460 and that's why dialogue is always important

00:08:10.120 to get past the misconceptions

00:08:12.520 so that we can really understand the things we agree on.

00:08:17.000 And then the areas where we're still dividing,

00:08:18.980 where there's disagreement,

00:08:20.060 and where hopefully maybe we can bridge the gap

00:08:21.820 on some of that.

00:08:22.900 And I think it might go back to kind of what I said

00:08:26.360 about a lot of Catholics having just a culture of Catholicism,

00:08:30.420 maybe even more so than Protestantism, most Protestants that I know don't even really know

00:08:37.280 that they're Protestant. Like, they wouldn't call themselves Protestant. They don't really know about

00:08:41.300 the Protestant Reformation. They might call themselves Baptist or Methodist or maybe even

00:08:46.840 evangelical, but most Protestants just think of ourselves as... Or Christian. As Christians, yes.

00:08:54.100 And a lot of Catholics, because it's really something that has been more passed down to them,

00:08:59.960 It's part of the culture, maybe in the countries where their ancestors, grandparents came from.

00:09:06.560 They are very culturally Catholic without necessarily, I don't want to say not practicing it, but not knowing why they practice it.

00:09:16.640 I'm not saying all or even most Catholics, but that I think is a lot of the experience that we Protestants have or evangelicals have with Catholics.

00:09:24.260 that it's our friend in college who made sure to go to mass every weekend,

00:09:29.500 but for the rest of the week didn't care about it

00:09:32.560 or didn't go to Bible studies or things like that.

00:09:35.300 It wasn't a very personal relationship, it seemed.

00:09:38.640 So I'm just saying that that's kind of the impression

00:09:41.140 that I think a lot of us Southern evangelicals have,

00:09:44.700 which might sound weird to a Catholic who, like you said,

00:09:47.780 is like, of course we believe in Jesus.

00:09:49.600 What are you talking about?

00:09:50.420 And that's why it's important,

00:09:51.240 because the same thing happens on the Catholic side.

00:09:53.160 you'll have Catholics that will meet evangelicals, people who call themselves Christians,

00:09:58.880 you know, someone who says they're Protestant, but they have no problem posting really immodest

00:10:03.440 pictures on their Instagram. And they go around saying that they're, well, I'm Christian, I

00:10:06.860 believe in Jesus. Like, well, okay, but what about where are your other actions conforming? And that's

00:10:11.280 why when we analyze, try to understand another faith, another church, what we should always do

00:10:19.380 is take a look at what does that group officially teach, and also who are the best representatives

00:10:25.520 of it, and always make the comparisons. If you're going to compare, it should always be worst to

00:10:30.600 worst, best to best, not worst to best. I totally agree with that, that you have to look at what is

00:10:36.280 actually being taught, and then look at the fruit of that actual teaching, because there's always 0.95

00:10:42.160 going to be hypocrites, and there's always going to be nominal Christians. I mean, definitely in 1.00

00:10:48.800 the Bible Belt, there are plenty of evangelicals and Protestants, maybe less so today because it's

00:10:54.580 just less popular and convenient and comfortable to be a Christian, but certainly throughout the

00:10:58.880 past 100 years, cultural Christianity, cultural Protestantism has been extremely prominent.

00:11:05.440 Plenty of people who are Christian in name only from all different denominations.

00:11:08.980 We're kind of sifting through the wheat and the chaff right now. I would say that we live in a 0.99

00:11:12.400 post-Christian culture in the United States, that there was a time when Christianity was,

00:11:17.360 it was the given maybe it wasn't always celebrated but even as recently as i would say the 1990s

00:11:23.840 um i remember watching uh it was like the old i was watching with my kids x-men 97 the reboot of

00:11:31.320 the cartoon that i loved as a kid and i remember on the old x-men animated series there's an episode

00:11:36.160 where uh the mutant nightcrawler you can see he's a german catholic and he's talking to wolverine

00:11:40.980 about jesus i'm like yeah i gotta have that and i mean i haven't finished the series yet i don't

00:11:45.320 know if that'll that'll come back in x-men 97 but yeah probably not as much so they're trying to be

00:11:49.260 faithfully original but you could have that more whereas nowadays it's very clear that there is

00:11:55.700 another worldview that is seen as an opposition to christianity that has to be defended a worldview

00:12:00.940 um lgbt pride abortion on demand uh radical feminism uh radical individualism that that

00:12:10.040 has become it's become essentially a counterfeit religion for people to belong to it has rituals 0.96

00:12:14.960 It's so funny. 0.99

00:12:16.360 People will say, oh, you religious people, you're narrow-minded, and you Catholics, you burn people at the stake.

00:12:22.860 But today, if you go against modern wokeism, you can be excommunicated that you said the wrong thing.

00:12:29.820 There's dogmas and secular heresies you can hold to.

00:12:33.260 So you can take someone out of religion.

00:12:35.800 You can take man out of religion, but you can't take religion out of man.

00:12:39.220 They'll always just make something else to fill the void. 0.97

00:12:41.260 Yeah, that's absolutely true.

00:12:42.640 Before we get into some of the things that we might disagree on or the questions that I have, I want to talk about a couple of things that either we agree on or I just want your insight on.

00:12:53.740 And one of them is this anti-Semitism bill or anti-anti-Semitism bill, the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, which, like most things going through Congress, has this very innocuous title to make you think, of course. 0.88

00:13:07.440 If you're against anti-Semitism, which I think we all should be, then you'll support this kind of legislation. 0.74

00:13:13.520 But you have to dig deeper.

00:13:15.340 And what people are concerned about, without getting into the weeds too much, just because we don't have time,

00:13:20.260 people are concerned that this violates the First Amendment, that this seems to be policing speech,

00:13:26.020 and specifically speech that is found in Scripture.

00:13:30.320 So one of the things that the bill tries to ban or tries to punish is speech that says that Jews killed Jesus.

00:13:38.920 And they add something to that, a caveat that basically says if someone says Jews killed Jesus in order to indict Israel as a whole, like how, I don't even know how.

00:13:50.820 They call that classic, using classic anti-Semitism, such as the claim that Jews collectively or totally killed Jesus or blood libel, the claim that Jews have some kind of secret conspiracy to kidnap Christian children and use their blood for rituals and things that have been thoroughly debunked, to use that to impugn Israel, modern Jews.

00:14:14.520 So what they're saying, yeah, is, well, I'll let you explain more and I definitely give more of my thoughts on it.

00:14:19.460 No, that's okay. You can go ahead.

00:14:21.760 Yeah, so how I feel about this bill is—and I am someone—I mean, I'm ethnically Jewish. Half my family is Jewish.

00:14:29.500 They're Russian Jews that immigrated here.

00:14:31.420 And so I am aware of a growing problem about anti-Semitism, both on the far left and the right,

00:14:40.200 seeing malice towards Jewish people,

00:14:46.140 a unfounded concern that Jews are a threat and danger to society 0.96

00:14:49.940 that have to be dealt with, sometimes by any means possible. 0.99

00:14:52.840 That is legitimate anti-Semitism.

00:14:55.700 That being said, though, I don't support this bill for a variety of reasons.

00:15:01.660 First, when you're talking about the First Amendment,

00:15:03.580 I think this bill is related specifically to discrimination, Title VII.

00:15:08.800 because, for example, I mean, under the First Amendment, you can say racist things, for example.

00:15:13.260 It's not illegal to say things that are racist.

00:15:16.060 But if you go to a public university and a professor is saying racist things towards you

00:15:22.320 and is creating a hostile educational environment for you as a student,

00:15:25.560 well, you can say, hey, or they're allowing, whether it's, you know, whites being racist to blacks

00:15:31.420 or blacks being racist to whites or to whatever racial minority group, we would say, no,

00:15:38.800 a university should protect people from racial discrimination.

00:15:42.240 And so in the context there that even if you can say that stuff under the First Amendment,

00:15:46.240 we could say, look, if you're at a publicly funded university, if you're at this place of employment,

00:15:50.220 you should be able to be protected from racial harassment.

00:15:53.260 So I don't think it's a First Amendment issue per se, because what it's dealing with is the idea,

00:15:58.120 OK, well, if you're protected from racial harassment, like no one should be able to racially harass you because you're white

00:16:03.040 or harass you because of your sex, because you're a woman or because you're religious,

00:16:06.140 uh people shouldn't be allowed to do the same if you're jewish now the key here is how do you

00:16:11.580 define anti-semitism uh and i think also how you define harassment i would say is a first 0.79

00:16:18.220 amendment issue absolutely and and what i would say is the the best goal to understand you're

00:16:22.820 you're defining it well is that you can apply it evenly across the board that you don't treat

00:16:28.100 groups unequally so for example if the protesters on campuses here are allowed to you know pro

00:16:35.520 Palestinian protesters, pro-Hamas protesters really, can encamp, occupy buildings, can do all 0.76

00:16:41.740 these things without repercussion, but Christians can't even put up crosses to show children being 0.55

00:16:46.420 killed by abortion, you know, that's unequal. We should treat everyone equally. So it shouldn't

00:16:52.420 just be when Christians do it, it's harassment, but for everyone else, it's them expressing their 0.81

00:16:56.440 views. I think that's a good marker to help determine that. But I think you and I would 0.55

00:17:00.180 agree there are some things that are just legitimate harassment, that if it was done

00:17:04.160 to Christians. People shouldn't do it to anyone else. So then the problem I have with the bill,

00:17:10.020 though, is that it has a fluid definition of anti-Semitism. It just says anti-Semitism is

00:17:17.580 whatever the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance says is anti-Semitism. But I don't like

00:17:23.860 that, because what if they change their definition of what it is? The definition should be in the

00:17:27.660 bill itself, and if you want to change it later, we have to go through Congress to change it later.

00:17:31.480 It shouldn't be allowed for a non-governmental organization.

00:17:37.200 They could change the definition, and that changes the law.

00:17:39.860 So I don't agree with that.

00:17:42.200 So there are elements within it where, for example, I would say anti-Semitism is wrong,

00:17:48.940 but not everything is anti-Semitism, saying that the nation of Israel did something immoral

00:17:53.840 in its conflict with Hamas.

00:17:55.800 Well, it's not anti-Semitic to simply criticize the nation of Israel.

00:17:59.880 Even if you're really against Israel, there's a difference between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

00:18:05.780 So people should be allowed to make these good faith criticisms.

00:18:09.820 It's certainly not anti-Semitic.

00:18:11.320 Unfortunately, those two things seem to have a lot of crossover.

00:18:16.340 I agree that there are some maybe nuanced criticisms of maybe what people would call anti-Zionism.

00:18:22.540 I've found, though, that typically when you dig deep enough, most anti-Zionists really just don't like the Jewish people.

00:18:28.560 And that's where you would look for, is there a double standard here?

00:18:31.700 Are you treating the nation of Israel differently because you already have a prejudicial attitude towards Jewish people?

00:18:39.520 So some of the other, I'm trying to think of some of the other elements that are, oh, well, one thing, like, for example, if I were to say, you know, Jesus is the Messiah and Jews should accept Jesus as the Messiah, some Jews would consider that anti-Semitic. 0.93

00:18:51.800 I would say, well, no, it's the truth.

00:18:53.700 Jesus is the Messiah for everyone.

00:18:56.340 And he's come also to the chosen people.

00:18:58.560 but there are other things so for example saying that the jews are christ killers to say that all

00:19:06.380 jewish people bear a collective yeah all jewish people or even all jewish people at the time of 0.90

00:19:13.680 jesus to say that all of them have a collective responsibility and thus a unique guilt for the

00:19:19.480 crucifixion that regular sinners do not share i would say it's anti-semitic in fact the catechism

00:19:26.740 of the Council of Trent, remember the Reformation Council I referenced, they put out a catechism

00:19:31.760 in 1566, and this is not a modern thing, this goes back 400 years, 350 years, saying that

00:19:40.400 the guilt sinners, like Catholics, Christians who sin, bear a more enormous guilt for the

00:19:48.520 crucifixion than the Jews did, because the catechism quotes what Paul says in 1 Corinthians, 0.74

00:19:54.080 saying, if they had known Christ was the Lord of glory, they would not have crucified him.

00:19:58.660 Jesus was crucified by the Jewish leaders because they falsely believed he was a false Messiah.

00:20:03.880 But think about us. We know Jesus is the Messiah. We know this, and yet we still sin. And yet we

00:20:10.040 still commit sins, which are the reason for which Christ died on the cross for us, that we even

00:20:15.740 knowing this bear more responsibility. So there's a balance here. On the one hand, it would be

00:20:23.260 incorrect to say there is no Jewish involvement whatsoever in the crucifixion. That just

00:20:28.820 contradicts the biblical narrative. You'll have some critical scholars saying, oh, it was just

00:20:32.560 the Romans. Well, no, this is very clear. That is a popular belief that I've seen on X a lot

00:20:39.520 from all different stripes of people who identify as Christians, and that's not quite right either.

00:20:45.220 I agree it depends on kind of what your motivation is. And by the way, I don't think whatever your 1.00

00:20:50.420 motivation is, and whether you're right or wrong, it should be banned by Congress. Even if you do

00:20:55.680 have malicious intent behind what you're saying, I can think it's repugnant without thinking it

00:21:00.860 should be illegal. But I mean, the Bible does use explicit, and I would even say uncomfortable

00:21:07.140 terms when it says in so many words, the Jews killed Jesus. But as you said, it's not an

00:21:15.160 indictment on all jewish people or saying that jewish people today right bear that responsibility

00:21:21.020 or or even all jews at that time because we have to remember that the word translated the jews in

00:21:26.640 scripture uh hoy a yudioi the jews uh it has a variety of meanings it can refer to all of the

00:21:34.980 people who are descended from the kingdom of judah or in hebrew yehuda so you know so after

00:21:40.400 the davidic kingdom split into the the northern and the southern kingdom the northern kingdom

00:21:44.740 was assimilated, those are the Samaritans, the southern kingdom going into exile,

00:21:49.680 the Jews of Christ's time, you know, all Jews are descended from those tribes in the southern

00:21:53.900 kingdom, the Judahites, the Jews. But in scripture, Eudoi can also mean a subset of Jews.

00:22:01.780 It can refer to the Judeans. So for example, in John 7, 1, it says that Jesus remained in Galilee

00:22:10.400 because the Jews were seeking to kill him.

00:22:14.000 But that doesn't quite make sense

00:22:15.760 because there were plenty of Jews in Galilee, right?

00:22:18.380 Jesus would have associated primarily with Jews in Galilee.

00:22:21.360 What makes more sense there is that to translate it,

00:22:23.920 Jesus remained in Galilee because the Oudeoi,

00:22:26.780 the Judeans sought to kill him.

00:22:29.960 And so in 1 Thessalonians 2, for example,

00:22:31.600 when Paul says he gives encouragement

00:22:34.200 to those who are being persecuted by the Macedonians, 1.00

00:22:37.000 saying, you know, resist them 0.75

00:22:38.680 just as your countrymen in Judea resisted the Jews who killed our Lord Jesus. But what's Paul

00:22:44.540 talking about here? What he's saying, he's not saying all Jews did this. He's referring to the

00:22:50.020 fact that the church was being persecuted by a particular collection of Jews in Judea. Resist 0.99

00:22:56.000 the Judeans who are persecuting the church, which Paul was once a member of. So that's something 1.00

00:23:02.420 that's a nuance there that can be lost in the translation, that if you don't see that,

00:23:06.640 You just run with that and say, oh, in Jesus's time, all of the Jews, all of the Jews who

00:23:12.680 were not Christians were killing, killed Jesus, wanted to kill Christians when there were 0.96

00:23:18.440 factions and differences among them. 0.73

00:23:21.240 And there were those who were, you had Rabbi Gamaliel, for example, who said, no, let the

00:23:25.180 Christians be that if this is from God, it will succeed. 0.88

00:23:28.020 If it's not, it won't. 0.98

00:23:29.440 So I think that you're correct that the way it was worded just to say Jews killed Jesus,

00:23:34.580 some of the Jewish leaders were certainly involved. In John 11, Caiaphas makes it clear

00:23:38.760 it's better for one man to die than for the whole people to be subjugated and killed.

00:23:43.240 Some Jewish leaders were involved, but it doesn't follow that to use the phrase and then to use it 0.67

00:23:49.200 to say, oh, all Jews bear this guilt and therefore all Jews can be mistreated or punished, which Jews

00:23:56.080 throughout history have been called Christ killers, have been denied civil rights, for example. 0.59

00:24:01.980 people would you know jews will tell stories about you know on the you know on the playground and 0.83

00:24:06.520 kids call you a christ killer and they bully you that's where it moves in anti-semitism you take

00:24:11.040 something as a kernel of truth and use it to hurt others right and there's also there's acts 2 22

00:24:17.680 through 23 acts 5 30 acts 7 52 right for example acts 2 22 it starts out men of israel hear these

00:24:26.680 words jesus of nazareth and then i won't read everything but and then at the end of verse 23

00:24:31.760 you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.

00:24:34.520 And so that still is not saying that literally every person in Israel or of Israeli descent

00:24:42.280 crucified Jesus, but he is saying that, look, just as our forefathers killed the prophets

00:24:49.140 that God sent to you, so we mistreated Jesus.

00:24:52.360 And so it's still not saying that every single Jewish person that has ever lived is responsible 0.61

00:24:58.420 for the crucifixion of Jesus, but in the same way that we would say, wow, when we see, for example,

00:25:06.140 the mockers and the scoffers and those who stood before Jesus, like we say, we did that, like it

00:25:12.760 was our sin, or we can see ourselves reflected in those who mistreated Jesus, that we were also dead

00:25:20.880 in sin and didn't realize the sacrifice that Jesus had made on our behalf. There is kind of some kind

00:25:27.520 of collective guilt and collective responsibility we see when they are sharing the gospel to the

00:25:32.260 Jewish people in Acts. But again, it's more of a, wow, we bear this kind of, this dereliction of

00:25:41.980 duty. We mistreated the one who God sent to us. And so, as you said, it doesn't, it shouldn't lead

00:25:47.980 to the actions, the discrimination, the hatred that you just described as kind of a consequence

00:25:54.400 of that mentality. Right, that there are going to be people at the time that their historical

00:25:58.200 culpability is going to be different. I mean, obviously there were Jews at the time when Jesus

00:26:02.340 was crucified who weren't anywhere near Jerusalem when this event was taking place. So they certainly 0.99

00:26:07.800 can't be held responsible for that happening. That's just what's important to remember in

00:26:11.920 Scripture, especially in John's Gospel, when it mentions the Jews and the Jews. In many of these

00:26:16.540 cases, it's talking about things like the Jewish leadership. So for example, in John 9.22, you

00:26:21.840 remember the story about the man born blind that Jesus healed, and then the religious authorities,

00:26:27.000 the priests, say, oh, well, let's go to his parents. Was he really born blind? And they're

00:26:30.200 like, we don't want anything to do with this right now. This is controversial. Go and ask him. He's

00:26:35.240 an adult. He can talk to you. And there's a curious line that says they said this for fear of the

00:26:39.440 Jews, which is weird because they're Jewish. It's just such a weird thing to say. But what it's

00:26:44.440 referring to, of course, is the leadership, especially the leadership within Jerusalem and

00:26:48.660 Judea that was trying to cozy up to the Roman empire and maintain their own

00:26:53.620 particular established order.

00:26:55.400 And so they were reticent to want to welcome them in the kingdom of God

00:26:58.540 because it didn't fit within their paradigm of how they will.

00:27:01.300 They said, look, we've got everything basically working the way we want. 0.70

00:27:03.400 We're not going to upset the apple cart with the Romans. 0.93

00:27:05.800 And we've got a pretty good deal here under their views.

00:27:09.720 And they had grown stiff necked and hard hearted to listen to God to say,

00:27:14.080 well, what's God's plan for his people?

00:27:16.160 And that's why, of course, Jesus came to inaugurate the kingdom of God.

00:27:19.480 Yes.

00:27:20.200 So just regarding this law, as we wrap that up, even the ACLU, which is now unfortunately

00:27:24.620 a left-wing institution, they have come out and they've said, we're against this.

00:27:29.100 Of course, they said...

00:27:30.440 It's got to be pretty bad when the ACLU...

00:27:32.460 I like to call them the anti-Christian liberties union or the American communist lawyers union.

00:27:37.800 That's perfect. 1.00

00:27:38.800 That's perfect.

00:27:39.380 In an April 26 letter, they said that this act will shill free speech on college campuses, equate criticism of the Israeli government with anti-Semitism.

00:27:50.380 And so and they made a statement about that.

00:27:52.620 And even if I don't agree with the ACLU on most things, I do agree that this is just this is not what we need.

00:27:59.640 I think that there are other things that we can do to fix the absolute rot on college campuses and just the ideology that is making their brains mush rather than chilling the free speech of everyday people, even when that can mean, especially when that can mean indicting someone who repeats something that the Bible says because they're reading into their motivations behind saying it.

00:28:24.440 That's just too much.

00:28:25.460 I agree.

00:28:25.760 And I think, as I said earlier, the key here is going to be equal treatment, right?

00:28:29.640 If we're treating everyone equally, then we're treating them justly in this regard.

00:28:34.540 So while people have freedom of speech, if I go to a university, like I remember I was

00:28:38.220 in a university class once, and the professor was doing a lecture on stereotypes, and they

00:28:43.420 showed us a documentary about it. 0.84

00:28:45.020 And the documentary, everyone who was an example of making stereotypes was always like a white 0.61

00:28:48.740 male Christian. 0.85

00:28:49.500 Right.

00:28:49.860 And I was like, okay, that's cool.

00:28:51.700 And the teacher actually at one point cracked a joke saying something, something, said,

00:28:57.200 well, about pedophiles.

00:28:58.500 she goes oh unless you're a catholic priest and then i was like you know professor i thought we

00:29:03.220 were saying stereotypes are a bad thing yeah she got really embarrassed and red-faced but it's like

00:29:08.000 look yeah there's freedom of speech but if i can say hey you calling me like saying is oh there's

00:29:13.120 our there's trent who's catholic he must be a pedophile enabler or there's ali i bet you know 0.55

00:29:18.200 she helps those prosperity swindling preachers uh televangelist scammers right say uh no i don't 0.67

00:29:25.100 appreciate being maligned that way. With the very worst people who claim to represent what I believe.

00:29:31.120 Right. So if I should be free from a religious stereotype that makes it hard for me to go to a

00:29:36.140 university where professors or students can pick on me in that way and make it hard for me to go

00:29:40.400 to school, if I and you as a Christian should be protected from that on campus, then that should

00:29:45.760 be the same for anyone else who's just going there and who's trying to learn. The same thing,

00:29:48.840 Jewish, Muslim, whoever it may be, protected from these malicious forms of harassment. And we have

00:29:54.820 an ironclad understanding of what that is, but then open it up to, we have open debate about

00:29:59.880 ideas, like, you know, does God exist? Which religion is the true religion? Is there one

00:30:04.820 that is the true religion? That's not harassment to debate those, and college is the place where

00:30:09.400 you should debate those kinds of important questions. Right. Okay, I wanted to get into

00:30:13.400 the United Methodist Church split, or the division and the change, but I don't think that we have

00:30:19.280 time. I want to get into some of my Catholic questions. Maybe if we have time at the end,

00:30:23.900 And we can get into that, or we can have you back and we can discuss that.

00:30:27.760 We've got plenty of our own issues in the Protestant world.

00:30:31.920 But I want to talk to you about genuine questions I have about Catholicism, disagreements that I have.

00:30:38.020 I can't say that I don't already have kind of some presuppositions about what you're going to say, because I do.

00:30:43.940 But there are a lot of, there's just a lot of genuine curiosity I have about Catholic theology.

00:30:50.360 And so I'll just go through them.

00:30:51.780 let's try to go through them like as quickly as we can because i have a lot of questions okay um

00:30:56.700 first one is about mary i would say this is one of the biggest points of confusion

00:31:02.640 for us as protestants is catholics praying to or through mary and it's important to me to try to

00:31:11.560 use language that catholics would agree with i don't want to misrepresent and so if i do that

00:31:17.140 it's not on purpose. And I've had a lot of Catholic friends tell me, well, we don't worship

00:31:23.140 Mary. And while I want to be careful not to say that Catholics worship Mary, because you all say 0.97

00:31:29.720 that you don't, I would say it looks a lot like worship. I would say that it looks to me like

00:31:35.160 praying the rosary, praying to Mary, which is something I completely disagree with. It looks

00:31:41.620 a lot like worship and i don't see this veneration of mary this level of honoring mary supported by

00:31:49.860 scripture the gospels the epistles revelation jesus himself at all so where does mary and

00:31:56.640 doctrine come from well i would say that the doctrine related to mary comes from the word of

00:32:02.380 god and when you look in scripture the phrase word of god primarily if not entirely actually

00:32:09.200 refers to the spoken word of God, what God speaks, what the apostles speak. So 1 Thessalonians 2.13,

00:32:15.960 for example, says that Paul went and they recognized the word of God had been spoken

00:32:21.960 to them, not the words of men. So I would say that what we understand, and this is where when

00:32:27.540 you start with Mary, of course, we have to be careful not to look at it through, like, what is

00:32:32.880 the framework we're using to determine doctrine? Because if we start with an assumption related to

00:32:38.140 Sola Scriptura, which I'm sure we'll talk about, well, I would say, well, if we're going to analyze

00:32:42.540 something, we have to make sure the framework we're using is a fair one. So we would say that

00:32:46.760 it comes from the Word of God, both spoken and written. And when you see in Scripture,

00:32:53.400 Mary herself says, all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great

00:32:58.400 things for me. We recognize just even from logic that Mary is the mother of God. She is the mother

00:33:03.600 of the Creator. She didn't give Jesus his divine nature, but she is the mother of the God-man,

00:33:10.160 so that makes her very close in relationship to Christ. I guess if I'm—I could go back,

00:33:17.440 I guess there's two ways I could go about this. One is giving you a little bit more of

00:33:21.380 the reasons for, but also, I mean, I do have some of my own questions, because I think sometimes

00:33:26.360 if a Protestant looks at this, like I said, if you don't have the greatest—if you don't have—it

00:33:32.300 depends on the framework, how you look at it, right? Because you say, well, where is this in

00:33:35.580 the Bible? I would say, well, where does the Bible say everything a Christian believes or does 1.00

00:33:40.100 has to be found in scripture? Um, so for, so for example, like let's take the sinner's prayer, 0.68

00:33:45.820 for example. Uh, so you say, Lord Jesus Christ, I am a sinner. Uh, I believe you died on the cross

00:33:51.980 for me, uh, forgive my sins. And, uh, I accept you as my personal Lord and savior, you know,

00:33:58.540 a sinner's prayer. There's nothing like that in scripture. Like, would you agree? I mean,

00:34:03.500 there's no one, there is no... And I don't believe that the sinner's prayer is some magical

00:34:08.060 incantation that brings Jesus into your heart. Now, to be fair, I was raised believing that or

00:34:13.980 thinking that. But I think it's more about acceptance and belief in confession, which we

00:34:19.940 do see reflected in scripture, but not that that particular incantation is found in scripture and

00:34:27.680 that it must be said in order to validate or guarantee your salvation.

00:34:33.260 I'm not sure that any Protestant believes that.

00:34:34.940 But would you agree that it's appropriate, it's okay to say that prayer

00:34:38.680 as long as you're not superstitious about it?

00:34:42.040 Yes, I would say it's okay to say that prayer.

00:34:45.120 Even though it's not in Scripture, it's still okay.

00:34:47.920 Not explicitly, but we would certainly say that we find the idea of acceptance

00:34:52.600 and belief and confession in scripture in the same way that we would say the word Trinity is

00:34:59.640 not in scripture, but we can see from John one, for example, or even in the very beginning that

00:35:06.440 God is three persons, but one God. And so I would say that Protestants accept that, that not

00:35:12.900 everything is verbatim in scripture that we say or believe. We have our own creeds. We have our

00:35:18.540 own Westminster catechisms that we believe are an accurate summary of Scripture, but

00:35:24.300 that Scripture must be our standard.

00:35:26.780 Of course, we believe in interpretation.

00:35:28.360 I believe in preachers and teachers.

00:35:29.980 I like to use different acronyms and alliterations to remember biblical ideas.

00:35:35.420 But of course, I believe that Scripture is our inerrant and inspired standard.

00:35:43.160 And that's what I would say about the so-called sinner's prayer, is that it's not inerrant.

00:35:48.240 it's not infallible. I would be open to even saying it's wrong, it should be changed.

00:35:53.140 But by what standard am I comparing that prayer? Scripture. So that would be my issue with praying

00:36:01.140 to Mary, is that no, I don't think that every prayer that we pray has to be explicitly found

00:36:05.200 in Scripture. But I don't even see the idea of praying to Mary in Scripture. That's my issue.

00:36:11.260 Okay, so I'm trying to understand your standard when it comes to... Because you're saying we

00:36:16.160 We should use the Bible as our standard to determine doctrine and practice.

00:36:22.360 And what's funny is, as a Catholic, I could actually agree with that in some sense, because

00:36:26.400 I could say I agree with you that as a Christian, nothing we do should ever contradict what

00:36:33.640 is taught in Scripture.

00:36:35.060 Yeah, and that's what I don't like about the praying to Mary.

00:36:39.020 But then where is that?

00:36:41.200 There's a difference between it not being in Scripture and it being contradicted.

00:36:45.560 For example, no one in scripture prays directly to the Holy Spirit and says, come Holy Spirit

00:36:50.980 and kindle in the hearts of your faithful, the love of God, you know, Holy Spirit guide

00:36:56.020 me today.

00:36:57.280 That's not in scripture.

00:36:59.180 But he's God.

00:37:00.700 So we could at least make the deduction.

00:37:03.160 So I would actually even be satisfied with some kind of like deduction.

00:37:08.480 But when I look at, for example, which I think we talked about maybe in the debatable.

00:37:12.660 So let me, maybe I can explain my view and you can respond to it and you can kind of

00:37:17.360 break it apart.

00:37:18.120 Maybe that would be the easier way to go.

00:37:20.260 So when I'm looking at scripture and I see, for example, when Jesus is given the opportunity

00:37:26.280 to treat his mother in a special way.

00:37:29.600 So I'm looking at Mark 3, for example, and his mother and his brothers came and standing

00:37:34.700 outside, they sent to him and called him and a crowd was sitting around him.

00:37:38.000 And they said to him, your mother and your brothers are outside seeking you.

00:37:41.600 And he answered them, who are my mother and my brothers?

00:37:44.660 And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, here are my mother and my brothers.

00:37:50.320 For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.

00:37:54.020 We don't ever see any kind of special honor, special veneration of Mary by Jesus.

00:37:58.940 We don't see it in any of the epistles.

00:38:00.800 You would think that she would come up in Revelation, like when we're looking at the

00:38:05.000 last supper and the marriage supper between the bride and the bridegroom, you would think that if

00:38:12.440 Mary was this important, if we needed to pray to her, if she was watching over us, if she was

00:38:17.640 protecting us, if she was really this person carrying our prayers to Jesus, like we would

00:38:23.000 be reading about her a lot more in scripture and we just don't. And even when Jesus is given the

00:38:28.040 opportunity to pay special attention to his mom, he basically brushes her off and says,

00:38:33.420 I don't even think that she's more special than any of these other Christians out here or any of

00:38:38.220 these other followers of me out here. Well, I don't think that's what Christ is saying here,

00:38:43.480 because it reminds me also of the episode where the woman says to Jesus, uh, blessed are the,

00:38:49.040 are the breasts that nourished you. And he said, rather blessed are those that hear the word of

00:38:53.760 God and obey. Yeah. That's a great other example of that. But I think what we can misread that

00:38:59.080 because one could take that so far as to say,

00:39:03.140 oh, your mother doesn't really matter.

00:39:05.540 You don't have to worry about your mother. 0.78

00:39:07.080 What matters more are other believers.

00:39:09.380 But the Bible is also very clear

00:39:10.560 you have special obligations to your parents.

00:39:12.680 Like Jesus railed against the religious authorities

00:39:15.540 for the Corban rule,

00:39:16.960 for donating money to the temple

00:39:18.960 when they were supposed to care for their aging parents.

00:39:22.140 Paul says the person who doesn't care for their relatives 0.99

00:39:24.060 is worse than an unbeliever. 1.00

00:39:25.640 Yeah, exactly. 1.00

00:39:26.600 So I would worry that to take one narrative episode and try to draw more out of it than

00:39:32.560 is being taught—

00:39:33.800 That's just one example for me.

00:39:35.300 Sure.

00:39:35.600 But both of those examples, I'd say what's going on here is Jesus is saying that to have

00:39:39.720 a special relationship with him, it is not necessary to be his biological kin.

00:39:46.140 Anyone can have a special relationship with him through faith in him.

00:39:49.640 Whereas at the time, you would think, oh, to really have a special relationship with

00:39:52.640 the Messiah, if you're the brother of the Messiah, I could never be that close.

00:39:55.640 Jesus. No, we all can be close to Jesus. But that's kind of what Catholics are saying about

00:39:58.440 Mary, that she's so special to him. Because we don't just pray to anyone in heaven the way that

00:40:05.420 Catholics pray to Mary. And so you guys are saying that, yeah, all Christians can have a

00:40:11.200 relationship with him, but Mary has the special, special, special relationship with him.

00:40:15.000 Well, what I would take from there is, what I'm saying is that in order to have that relationship

00:40:20.860 with Jesus. You don't have to be biologically related to him. But some people have more of a

00:40:26.940 relationship with Jesus, are closer to him than others. I think that's very clear from Scripture.

00:40:32.840 So for example, in James 5.16, it says that the prayers of a righteous person are very powerful.

00:40:39.360 Or if you look in the book of Job, for example, at the end of Job, when God deals with Job's

00:40:45.200 friends, he tells them, have Job pray for you. I will hear his prayers because you've spoken ill

00:40:50.480 of me, spoken poorly of me, that when you see in Scripture that those who are holier,

00:40:57.600 they're closer to God. Their prayers are more efficacious. So Hebrews 12, so who are the

00:41:03.060 holiest people? Hebrews 12 says that those who are in heaven, they're the spirits of just men

00:41:09.520 made perfect. So those who are in heaven who are perfectly united to God, and we see this in the

00:41:14.780 book of Revelation, talking about the angels carrying the prayers of the saints to the throne,

00:41:19.100 that they have that special relationship with God, a special efficacy.

00:41:24.260 I think to understand praying to Mary, praying to the saints,

00:41:27.860 that's language that I find to actually be not very helpful.

00:41:31.320 In fact, when you read the teachings, the official teachings of the Catholic Church,

00:41:34.800 you don't have phrases like, pray to the saints.

00:41:38.760 Rather, the phrases are, seeking the intercession of the saints.

00:41:42.900 So for example, let me ask you, what would you say prayer is?

00:41:46.660 prayer is pleading with god prayer is i mean it can be praising god it can be making

00:41:55.260 requests to god and of course we have access to the father through christ and that is you know

00:42:02.320 a protestant retort or a retort that i would have is that we have one mediator and his name

00:42:07.980 is jesus christ we have the holy spirit as our intercessor who when we don't have the words to

00:42:14.100 speak scripture says the holy spirit intercedes on our behalf and i also i love ephesians 3 12

00:42:20.340 that through christ jesus we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in christ

00:42:27.420 so when i read for example james 5 that the prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is

00:42:33.480 working well i think of that verse that i have boldness and access and confidence through what

00:42:38.420 my good works? No, my faith in Christ and Christ, he who knew no sin became sin so that we could

00:42:45.600 become the righteousness of God. So that means it is my prayer that has great power as it is

00:42:52.280 working. It is every Christian's prayer that has great power as it is working. It is not that the

00:42:57.180 quote unquote holier person has greater power. It is that those who have been made holy by Christ

00:43:03.060 in His perfect righteousness, that our prayer has great power.

00:43:07.900 And so, again, I just don't see a need to use an intercessor of Mary, one, because I

00:43:16.980 don't think that she can hear our prayers, and I don't think that's in Scripture at all.

00:43:20.920 But also, yeah, I just don't see that biblical support that because she's holier or because

00:43:27.420 she's relationally closer that she has some kind of special access to Jesus and therefore we should

00:43:34.320 pray through her. Do you ever ask other people to pray for you? Yes, but not because I think that

00:43:39.960 they have some kind of special power, but because the prayer of a righteous person has great power

00:43:46.920 as it is working. And so I want, you know, I want people praying and I want... But why when you can

00:43:52.980 just pray to God yourself? Why involve other people when you're righteous enough just to pray

00:43:57.460 and ask God for it? Because I think there is encouragement in that, and I don't know that

00:44:02.960 it necessarily—we don't read in Scripture that it sways God to have a certain number, a certain

00:44:09.300 critical mass of people praying for something, but because we are all called to pray, it's an

00:44:14.480 act of obedience, and through an incredible preordained order that I don't think we fully

00:44:21.280 understand with the sovereignty of God that he's also in control of all things, and yet he asks

00:44:26.640 us to evangelize and pray, I don't totally understand that mysterious conundrum, and yet

00:44:31.200 he commands us to. So I think it's an act of obedience. I think it's encouragement,

00:44:36.580 and God hears our prayers. You're not sure if our prayers actually affect what he does?

00:44:41.860 No, I do. I think that it's mysterious, though, for us to say that God is omnipotent,

00:44:46.140 that he's not suspended by linear time, that we can't—that no plan of his can be thwarted, Job 42.2,

00:44:52.920 and yet our prayers actually do something. I'm just saying that all of that is true,

00:44:58.080 and I'm not sure it's within our finite ability to perfectly be able to explain that. That's what

00:45:03.840 I'm trying to say. I think the difficulty that comes when Catholics and Protestants discuss this

00:45:09.920 is going to come down, I think, to language. I asked you—when I asked you what prayer is,

00:45:14.520 the definition you gave is interesting, that prayer is making a request of God.

00:45:19.660 That's one of the things that prayer can do.

00:45:22.900 What's funny is, if that is what prayer is, then asking Mary to pray for us,

00:45:30.560 that actually wouldn't count as prayer, because I'm not directing that request to God,

00:45:35.220 I'm requesting it to another creature.

00:45:37.200 So when you pray the rosary, what is that?

00:45:40.880 When you pray the rosary?

00:45:42.240 Yes.

00:45:42.620 Well, I would say what prayer is, prayer is just a request.

00:45:48.480 So we've restricted the word prayer in a modern sense to mean exclusively making a request of God.

00:45:56.580 But traditionally, the word prayer comes from the Latin word precare.

00:46:01.020 Like pray tell.

00:46:02.140 Yes, if you listen to all kinds of pride and prejudice.

00:46:04.920 I pray thee tell, pray this.

00:46:07.140 so prayer to the saints that that would just fall under i ask i ask i ask this so you can pray

00:46:15.840 asking mary to carry your request to jesus just so the idea here is that we have agreement that

00:46:22.200 it's good for members of the body of christ here at least on earth who are in communion with one

00:46:28.580 another to pray for one another that that's a good thing and it's good to seek out intercession

00:46:33.840 among other members of the body of Christ. What Catholics believe is that the body of Christ

00:46:39.040 does not exist solely on earth, that there is only one body of Christ. There is only one body,

00:46:45.160 not two bodies, not three. There is one body, and that is made up of believers who are on earth,

00:46:51.920 as well as those believers who are in heaven or being prepared to enter heaven.

00:46:57.120 They're all connected through Jesus, who is the vine, we are the branches. He is the resurrection

00:47:02.640 in the life, even though you die, you will live in me. So we believe the saints in heaven,

00:47:07.820 while their bodies lie in the earth, they are more alive in Christ now than we are even

00:47:13.020 right now. The book of Revelation says the souls in heaven are aware of the sufferings on earth

00:47:18.980 and cry out for God to do something about them, what's happening to the martyrs. So our belief

00:47:24.120 is just that if you can ask for intercession from members of the body of Christ in this life,

00:47:28.860 and we're still connected to the body in heaven through the power and love of God,

00:47:33.460 we can ask those in heaven to pray for us that there's nothing wrong.

00:47:37.680 So, for example, if you have a boy at his mother's tombstone who's died and he says,

00:47:43.400 you know, mom, pray for me, I think you'd agree there's nothing.

00:47:47.520 I think most Protestants say there's nothing wrong with that. 0.98

00:47:51.380 Wrong with? 0.88

00:47:52.100 Like, you know, asking, for example, a boy asks his deceased mother and father in heaven to pray for him.

00:47:59.280 Oh, no, we would say that there's something wrong with that.

00:48:01.880 Why?

00:48:02.460 Oh, we would not.

00:48:03.300 We don't pray to the dead.

00:48:04.440 And I know that they are spiritually alive, but we don't pray to the physically dead.

00:48:08.880 We don't believe in that.

00:48:10.820 We just don't.

00:48:11.700 Because we believe that Jesus is our mediator.

00:48:15.640 You're saying we can ask Christians on earth to pray for us.

00:48:19.880 We can't ask Christians in heaven to do that. 0.70

00:48:21.600 Yeah, that would be the Protestant belief, that we don't believe that the dead are hearing

00:48:27.420 our prayers and have the ability to carry our prayers to god or that they are into because

00:48:35.200 that would be intercession right that they are interceding for us and we don't believe that

00:48:39.340 the dead or that um we would call all christian saints so the saints in heaven are interceding

00:48:45.580 for us or that mary is interceding for us um yeah i don't think that we necessarily see that

00:48:51.680 reflected in scripture and yeah so the protestant would say that there is a problem with that we

00:48:56.960 would say, oh, we don't pray for the dead. We could think about them and consider them,

00:49:01.240 but we wouldn't pray to them, no. You seem very confident that the souls in heaven

00:49:06.580 do not know anything on earth or can't hear our requests. What is the source of your confidence

00:49:13.400 in that? No, I didn't say that I'm confident that they can't hear or that they can't see.

00:49:19.360 I didn't say that. I said that we don't see that rule supported in scripture that they are carrying

00:49:24.440 our request to God. And I think my other piece of confusion about that, I guess not this, this

00:49:29.520 piece of confusion wouldn't apply to that example that you gave the grandparent, because I'm guessing

00:49:34.600 that maybe the child would be the only one praying to that grandparent. But when you've got Mary,

00:49:39.460 and you have all of these millions of people asking her for intercession, is Mary in the

00:49:45.400 Catholic view omniscient? Like, how does she, how does she order all of these prayers? If she is

00:49:51.680 a human who is of course now in heaven you're it almost would it would necessitate ascribing to her

00:50:00.340 god-like characteristics of omnipotence and omniscience if she can hear the prayers of

00:50:05.580 millions of catholics at once well i would say that mary's ability to hear multiple requests

00:50:12.560 in different languages that doesn't fall under omniscience because omniscience means that you

00:50:18.400 have all knowledge, all truths. Like, you know, for example, the solution of every single possible

00:50:25.420 mathematical equation. The saints in heaven don't need to know that. They don't need to know

00:50:29.040 pi, all the decimal places of pi. So it's not omniscience. The knowledge of the saints in

00:50:36.380 heaven, even if it is vast by human standards, it's still infinitesimally small compared to the

00:50:43.400 infinite knowledge of God. But you believe that there is some kind of, not just spiritual

00:50:51.300 transformation, but that there is an incredible expansion of people's capacity to know and to do

00:51:00.800 when we get to heaven. That includes the ability to discern millions of prayers at once in all

00:51:08.400 different languages, somehow prioritize, order, carry those requests to God, and that Mary has

00:51:15.740 achieved that kind of transformation and expansion of her capacity, and all of the saints as well.

00:51:21.920 Where does that idea come from? Well, I would say there is nothing to restrict an omnipotent God

00:51:27.660 from allowing his creatures to have more cognitive abilities.

00:51:32.280 Sure. Yeah. Nothing can restrict God from doing anything. So I'm not sure if that's

00:51:37.900 necessarily, if that answers my question, how she does that? She couldn't do it on her own. And I

00:51:45.020 would say God allows her to do that. That just as God can give humans on earth supernatural

00:51:50.900 knowledge of the future, for example, like to be a prophet, or God can give people knowledge of

00:51:56.700 things they wouldn't naturally have, God can give the saints in heaven knowledge and abilities

00:52:02.200 they would not naturally have on earth or have in accord with just their own abilities.

00:52:08.340 So where do Catholics get that idea that he has granted Mary the ability to answer all these

00:52:15.380 prayers and to kind of specially give them to Jesus? Well, I would say that there is a long

00:52:22.020 tradition of this. Like if you go to the catacombs, for example, that the very first

00:52:25.780 christians who were you know it's very difficult to find uh early examples of like like for me when

00:52:34.160 i was in my conversion and what i did was first i listened to all kinds of william lane craig

00:52:39.980 jp moreland debates this is like early 2000s yeah uh and i was just convinced i was like yeah this

00:52:46.480 this makes a lot of sense i believe in jesus he rose from the dead now where do i go and i looked

00:52:52.040 at all the different churches out there, and so I said, well, you know what? I just want to be like

00:52:56.100 the first Christians. I'm going to go back and look at the historical records. What did the first 0.99

00:53:00.980 Christians believe? But just to say, look, there's all these different churches that argue about

00:53:05.380 stuff. What were the first Christians like? I want to be like them. And so that moved me a lot

00:53:11.300 into the Catholic direction. At least it moved me a lot away from a lot of forms of modern

00:53:16.880 Protestantism that I felt were very ahistorical in that regard to say, look, there were the 0.84

00:53:21.280 apostles, they gave the teaching to this first generation of Christians, you know, they couldn't

00:53:26.200 have really bungled it that badly. Like, what did they believe? It's difficult during this time 0.63

00:53:31.220 period, though, to find a lot of reference, you know, finding liturgies, or, you know, you didn't

00:53:36.360 have churches, you had house churches, you're in hiding, you're in persecution from the Romans.

00:53:41.040 But even during this period, we have things like the oldest known liturgical prayer. Most scholars

00:53:47.880 dated to the third century, like the oldest Christian prayer outside of scripture is called

00:53:52.980 the Subtuam Presidium. Most scholars would date it to the third or fourth century. And that prayer

00:53:58.460 says, it's a prayer to Mary. It's a request to Mary, O Theotokos, God-bearer, mother of God,

00:54:05.740 place us under the wings of thy refuge. It's asking Mary, who's the mother of God,

00:54:12.240 to intercede on behalf of sinners. Or if you go to the catacombs, where Christians were hiding 0.99

00:54:17.000 and where they were buried, there's little inscriptions in there that say things like,

00:54:21.140 Peter and Paul, pray for Primos, a sinner. You know, little things like that.

00:54:27.120 When Catholics and Protestants dialogue with each other, I think the concern that Protestants have 0.90

00:54:32.240 is, hey, Catholic, you're not using Sola Scriptura, and I'm worried you're obliging us

00:54:39.060 or permitting us to believe too much. Like, you've got all this extra stuff, you know,

00:54:44.060 i'm worried about you bringing in like you know prayer seeking the intercession of mary and the

00:54:49.500 saints and these other catholic doctrines if you just said use the bible in the sola scriptura

00:54:54.900 sense of we have to find it at least deduced implicit you know we have to find it here in

00:55:00.000 scripture you're you're worried about too much coming in and the bible will uh help cut out

00:55:05.980 some of the extra stuff that's that's an accretion or ancillary that's what i see as one of the big

00:55:10.940 Protestant concerns where Sola Scriptura has a benefit. Now, there can be a benefit in cutting

00:55:17.780 out extra things that are just human traditions, that are not divine traditions. That's why I would

00:55:22.680 say you shouldn't believe anything that contradicts Scripture. But my other concern from the Catholic 0.97

00:55:27.820 perspective is that if we use Sola Scriptura, if we just use that based on individual interpretations

00:55:33.440 of Scripture, we risk failing to believe certain things, that certain things could get left out

00:55:40.680 for example uh so we risk being able to distinguish like you might say well it's fine if

00:55:48.900 you're a calvinist and this guy's an arminian like that's a difference that we can have but

00:55:53.660 it's not okay for you to be a trinitarian and someone else to be a modalist yeah like but the

00:55:59.820 bible itself doesn't tell us when do theological disagreements become heresy it's like there is a

00:56:07.180 concern here that if we just use sola scriptura which ends up really being individual interpretations

00:56:14.760 um there because there becomes a problem there i think that you can you can fail to believe

00:56:21.020 certain things say well but it's like for example and there's big things there's also little things

00:56:25.640 i remember meeting a girl once i said oh what are you doing for christmas she said oh i don't

00:56:29.400 celebrate christmas i said why not she said it's not in the bible yeah so it's like there are

00:56:34.540 definitely some like that and jehovah's witnesses are all like that which we wouldn't include as a

00:56:39.440 denomination of christianity we would say is a cult but but but where does that standard because

00:56:44.140 the bible itself doesn't say what theological beliefs are the minimum ones to be a christian

00:56:49.980 that's a tradition later established at the ecumenical councils we would i think you and i

00:56:55.300 would agree that there is a difference between not doing anything that is not explicitly

00:57:00.920 um said in scripture which is not where i fall i don't even know really anyone who falls on that

00:57:06.900 because of course it doesn't say in scripture that you can use a piano in church and that you

00:57:10.660 have to have an altar call and things like that there is freedom among denominations and we do

00:57:15.740 believe that scripture interprets scripture that there is a systematic way an exegetical way to

00:57:20.800 interpret scripture there's a right and a wrong way to interpret scripture that there is actually

00:57:24.900 one meaning of Scripture, even if there are many different subjective interpretations.

00:57:31.220 And I hear this a lot from Catholics, that this is the problem with Protestantism, is

00:57:35.320 that you've got all these different denominations, which it's a myth that there are 33,000, by

00:57:39.340 the way. 0.75

00:57:39.760 Oh, I agree.

00:57:40.240 That's looking at all the different—yes, but just for anyone out there who might be

00:57:44.260 confused about that—all the different subsets, there is a much smaller range of actual Christian

00:57:50.480 denominations. But I see plenty of disagreement among Catholics, too. Catholics individually,

00:57:57.020 even how they would interpret the Bible. Now, maybe they're disagreeing with official Catholic

00:58:01.220 doctrine, but there are certainly liberal Catholics. There are certainly Catholics.

00:58:07.080 I just wrote a book about them.

00:58:08.420 Yeah, yeah. There are certainly Catholics, I would say, probably, maybe particularly in the

00:58:12.400 Northeast, who they go to Mass and they do all the things that they're supposed to do,

00:58:16.520 but they're extremely liberal when it comes to abortion when it comes to lgbtq

00:58:20.940 and if you compare for example if you go to pew research and you compare what each religion in

00:58:27.020 america how they fall on these issues of abortion lgbtq even like living together before you get

00:58:33.580 married um protestants in general are far more conservative on these issues than catholics are

00:58:42.000 people who identify as Catholics. Of course, we don't know people's real beliefs and how closely

00:58:47.740 they align, but there are a lot of Catholics who disagree. There are a lot of disagreements

00:58:52.300 among Catholics, a lot of Catholics who do things that are not in accordance with Scripture or

00:58:57.080 Catholic doctrine. So I don't know, I guess I get confused about if division is the argument

00:59:01.800 against Protestantism, there are plenty of divisions among Catholics, don't you think?

00:59:05.780 There are, but Catholics would recognize where we're divided on issues that the Church hasn't spoken on, for example.

00:59:14.960 Like, is it okay to go to a pride parade, for example?

00:59:21.220 Like, there isn't an official teaching on that, but I would say it's scandalous to be there unless you're witnessing to people, which I've done before. 0.99

00:59:28.240 The scandal is just to be there wearing the garb.

00:59:31.080 Even if you're saying, well, I'm just here loving people.

00:59:32.660 it's like well but people are going to look at this and take a different message from it

00:59:36.140 it's a stumbling block a literal scandal on yeah but when it comes to saying can a man and a woman

00:59:42.300 be married in church even the most liberal catholic churches don't do that you'll be

00:59:47.120 you'll get a priest will get excommunicated they try to give the sacrament of marriage to

00:59:51.840 two men or two women whereas in the protestant world we were discussing this earlier

00:59:55.020 you have the methodist church in methodist churches and other protestant churches where

00:59:59.060 the issue comes up two churches just come into existence rather than even in the catholic world

01:00:03.280 there are people who support so-called same-sex marriage they're dissenters but they'd say yeah

01:00:07.500 but the church teaches this and i disagree not this is actually the truth and the church you

01:00:14.400 know is that so different than what protestants do if i say okay for example united methodist

01:00:20.000 church they decided that sure lgbtq people active not just people who struggle with that sin

01:00:25.400 but active, they can be clergy. And I say, but that's not what scripture teaches. That's not

01:00:30.700 what scripture teaches. Scripture is very clear about this. So is that really so different than

01:00:36.780 what y'all do, except for scripture is the word of God and the church, even though you believe

01:00:41.540 it's been inspired by God, they're men, they're fallible men. Right. Well, I would say that the

01:00:48.000 leadership of the church, the gift of infallibility is not something that is exercised in everything

01:00:54.700 that the leaders of the church say it's under special occasions and instances when it's

01:01:00.460 when it's invoked such as at an ecumenical council when all the bishops of the world gather together

01:01:05.660 to decide to teach infallibly or if the pope using his power as the pastor of the church

01:01:10.940 to infallibly settle an issue like one of the marian dogmas but i think the difference there

01:01:17.660 is that within the catholic world we do have levels of authority in church teaching to know

01:01:23.500 what are essential and what are not essential. So even people who are pretty far left in the

01:01:29.540 church, people that I know, would say, well, no, you can't deny that Christ is present in the

01:01:33.380 Eucharist. You know, you can't deny the divinity of Christ. You can't deny, you can't say Mary

01:01:38.060 gave birth to other children, for example. So we have, you know, certain teachings that would be

01:01:44.360 essential, some of which are infallibly defined. Would it be a heresy to say that Mary gave birth

01:01:48.300 to other children? Yes, it would be a heresy. So are all Protestants heretics? Heresy is the

01:01:54.620 obstinate post-baptismal rejection of something that's been divinely revealed. So there's going

01:02:01.880 to be, it's heresy, but the responsibility one has for it's different. If you are a Catholic

01:02:06.340 and you reject this, and as a Catholic, you're obliged to believe what the Church teaches, 0.55

01:02:12.180 that's going to be different than a Protestant. However, I would say that the Protestant reformers

01:02:17.300 like Martin Luther or Ulrich Zwingli probably would have said, they would have said, it is

01:02:22.880 heresy to say that. Yeah, they might have. He definitely had it. Martin Luther had a different

01:02:27.380 view of Mary than most Protestants do today. Well, even Thomas Cranmer, John Wesley, and I've seen

01:02:32.520 debate about Calvin, what he believed on this. Calvin certainly rejected the idea that the Bible

01:02:37.980 could be used to prove Mary gave birth to other children. He didn't think those texts were

01:02:42.780 convincing at all you know not at all so the difference here is what i would say is this

01:02:47.540 would be my question like how do you because you would agree that there are doctrines protestants

01:02:52.280 can disagree about just as catholics do sure and there are protestants that there are doctrines

01:02:58.640 they cannot disagree about there's essential and non-essential secondary tertiary not primary

01:03:05.980 and that's a huge that's a huge division yeah and there are people who would disagree on that

01:03:11.460 That's kind of the nature of Protestantism.

01:03:13.300 But the Bible never tells us how to divide between the two.

01:03:17.040 That's kind of scary.

01:03:18.300 It's up to people's interpretation.

01:03:19.780 Which is why we would say, if I say, for example, in times, you might be a premillennialist,

01:03:27.800 I might be a postmillennialist, and I might—or, well, that's not true.

01:03:31.220 I'm a premillennialist.

01:03:32.160 I might be talking to someone who's a postmillennialist, and I think I would say, look, you're dead

01:03:36.960 wrong on that.

01:03:37.740 But I still appreciate you as a brother in Christ.

01:03:40.840 Now, how do I discern that?

01:03:44.080 Do you believe in the gospel?

01:03:46.600 Do you believe that by grace through faith, you have been saved in Christ and he and only

01:03:52.820 he has become your righteousness, your justification, your mode of sanctification?

01:03:58.340 Do you believe in John 14, 6, that Jesus is the only way, the only truth, the only life

01:04:02.360 that no one can come to the father except through him?

01:04:05.300 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.

01:04:14.020 So it's still essential.

01:04:15.020 Now, there would be people who probably disagree with this.

01:04:18.160 Now, do I think that you can be wrong on this and still be saved?

01:04:23.240 I think that we are all going to die being wrong about some things.

01:04:27.100 I don't think that your view of LGBTQ is what grants you or what prohibits your salvation.

01:04:36.040 But what I typically find is that someone who denies Genesis 127, that God made us male and female, is eventually going to deny John 14, 6.

01:04:45.760 And so I don't think that your salvation is predicated upon what you believe about LGBTQ.

01:04:52.820 I, but I do think that that speaks to a fundamental misunderstanding of God and his word. And 0.59

01:04:59.700 therefore you probably do not believe the gospel. Well, let me ask you a hypothetical. Suppose I

01:05:04.860 had another woman here. She's almost like, she's identical to you. We'll call her Mally. Okay.

01:05:10.940 So Mally is identical to you in every way, except for one. And that is, she is married to a woman,

01:05:18.060 but she's identical to you. And she has all of your other same beliefs. She just thinks that

01:05:22.800 the teachings on homosexuality don't apply today, just like the teachings on slavery don't apply

01:05:28.420 today. But she still says she's against abortion. She believes you believe in Jesus or you're not

01:05:33.560 going to heaven. So could Mally be saved? I would say, okay, you believe that Jesus is the only way

01:05:41.720 to heaven. You're against abortion, but you don't believe that the word of God is authoritative.

01:05:46.820 That's what I would dig into. I would say, you don't believe in Romans 1. You don't believe in

01:05:51.400 1 Corinthians 6. You don't believe in Genesis 1.27. Why do you believe in John 14.6, and how did you

01:05:56.800 decide upon that? That's what I would ask Mally, because Mally's got some inconsistencies there.

01:06:01.920 And I would say, you know, this is really important. And I would also say that she is

01:06:08.180 living in—it's not just a belief for her—she is living in perpetual sin. And we do believe that

01:06:16.600 you die to your old self. You become a new creation. And even though we won't fully stop

01:06:21.980 sinning—that's our belief—until heaven, we do believe in progressive sanctification and that God

01:06:28.600 is going to rid us of our idols. And if you see no fruit, no sanctification in someone's life—

01:06:32.780 Let's try another one. Let's say Mally's the exact same as you. And she's married to a man,

01:06:36.480 even. But she makes money being a gestational surrogate. 1.00

01:06:41.980 i wouldn't say that she's not saved okay i would say that she is really wrong on that but i wouldn't

01:06:49.000 say that she is unsaved okay yeah let me ask you then a question about um so you agree this so

01:06:55.860 there's this there's essential doctrines there's ones that are not essential there isn't like

01:07:01.340 a biblical text or a principle that are saying the way you divided them you just gave a summary

01:07:07.720 here here just are the ones that are essential yeah and protestants will disagree so on so you

01:07:13.640 would say that homosexuality would go to the heart of the essential it would go to the heart

01:07:19.700 of the essential so it's different than let's say contraception um hmm you could i mean you could

01:07:31.160 argue. You could, again, argue that this speaks to someone's mistrust of what God has to say

01:07:40.320 about the dignity of life and the dignity of the unborn. So you could argue that. That's one thing

01:07:47.940 Protestants are known for, is that we're open to argumentation based on the Word of God. But I would

01:07:53.600 not say that someone who believes the wrong thing about conception is not saved.

01:07:58.460 About contraception.

01:07:59.400 Yeah. What did I say?

01:08:00.460 conception yeah contraception is not saved yes right because but what's interesting here is that

01:08:06.060 a hundred years ago all protestants would disagree with you because before 1930 before

01:08:12.060 the lambeth conference all protestants believe contraception was sinful so it's like are

01:08:17.860 protestants right now were they right back then well i i also believe that it's sinful

01:08:22.300 i also well i believe that hormonal birth control is simple and so yeah okay okay well i don't think

01:08:29.900 that most Protestants would agree with that today, but I don't know that those Protestants

01:08:33.960 who believed that it was all sinful then would have said someone is not going to heaven or

01:08:37.780 someone is not saved. And so there's a difference between sinful and a primary doctrine of that we

01:08:42.940 would consider outside the bounds of Christianity. Like we believe someone's saying there's more

01:08:49.080 than one way to God, or if you're loving enough, or if you're good enough, or if you do all the

01:08:53.420 right things, then you'll go to heaven. Even if that person agrees with me on all other doctrines,

01:08:58.160 I would say you're not a Christian because Christianity, the crux of Christianity is the

01:09:02.220 cross. The crux of Christianity is what Jesus accomplished on the cross. And outside of that, 0.79

01:09:07.860 I think that we can have disagreements, some bigger, some smaller, some with greater implications,

01:09:13.160 some with fewer implications. But your salvation is not dependent upon those secondary and tertiary

01:09:22.160 disagreements, even if I think that they're getting really, really close to the heart of

01:09:26.620 the sinner, and that they probably do speak to a misunderstanding that you have essentially about

01:09:31.520 God. But we still haven't found the mechanism to determine which are primary and which are

01:09:39.260 secondary, that there's no place—I couldn't ask you, where could I go in the Bible to find out

01:09:45.220 which belong to which? I don't think there's anywhere you could point me to.

01:09:49.220 No, and it's not that Protestants don't believe in teaching or interpretation or councils or creeds or catechisms or debates or discussions or progress when it comes to that, because we do, and just as Catholics do, but we don't have one institution that we go to and say, well, what does this mean?

01:10:13.420 We do believe that scripture is the authority, that the church or the pope is not the authority.

01:10:18.860 And we also acknowledge that there will be very smart Christians, very solid even denominations and churches that disagree on some of these things.

01:10:26.980 But we believe that scripture interprets scripture and that very smart, brilliant theologians over time have done us a great service in helping us understand what those primary, secondary and tertiary issues are.

01:10:39.220 The difference is that we don't have a church institution that we would look to and say,

01:10:44.700 these are the categories, this is what they all fall into, but I believe every Protestant

01:10:50.600 would agree on what the gospel is and that that is primary.

01:10:55.120 What I would say the Catholic view of salvation is that we receive salvation as a gift of God's

01:11:00.920 grace, and you are saved as long as you do not permanently reject that gift before death. 0.90

01:11:05.980 And so I think that if you looked at, like with a surveillance camera, of like a Protestant

01:11:15.020 convert, Catholic convert, the way they act is actually very similar.

01:11:19.880 Let's say you have an atheist in high school, one becomes Protestant, one becomes Catholic.

01:11:25.700 On camera, you would see them, I believe in Jesus, go and get baptized.

01:11:31.100 Then they live a life where they're not getting drunk, they're not fornicating, they're praying

01:11:35.620 to god uh and they they don't reject faith in god and then they die at the end of their life i think

01:11:41.820 we would see something very similar uh whereas we would just disagree explaining how that salvation

01:11:47.460 wouldn't believe that a true christian can ever lose their salvation because we believe in the

01:11:51.960 perseverance of the saints well what we would say is from the camera's perspective they would look

01:11:55.420 the same both of them they don't forever fall away but we would disagree about why that is

01:12:01.240 One, we would say that Catholics and other historic Christians, because there are many Protestants who traditionally rejected that view, would say that this person chose to not reject God.

01:12:12.380 Or if they did, they were reconciled with God, like the prodigal son, and they died in friendship with God.

01:12:18.880 And the Calvinists would say, well, no, it would have been impossible for him to fall away.

01:12:23.140 But I would say that we really do agree about receiving through faith, through grace.

01:12:29.480 The Catholic Church is very clear.

01:12:31.160 You cannot merit initial salvation.

01:12:33.720 That's why babies, they're saved immediately.

01:12:36.060 Baby can't do anything.

01:12:37.500 He's just baptized and he's saved.

01:12:40.140 It's a reception.

01:12:40.680 It's a gift of grace.

01:12:41.380 Yeah, we don't, we, well, I, I. 0.70

01:12:43.980 Some Protestants.

01:12:44.700 Yes, I'm a Baptist and we don't believe that baptism gives any form of salvation, that

01:12:49.780 it's an outward symbol of inward regeneration.

01:12:52.500 And so we do disagree on that portion because we would say that's even like a work that

01:12:57.260 you're kind of earning your salvation and we would just reject that well that's why martin luther said

01:13:01.840 we're saved by faith alone baptism saves us we're saved by faith not by works is what luther said

01:13:06.960 and luther said well baptism saves us so luther's conclusion was baptism's not a work it's god's

01:13:12.480 work let me just say something that i really appreciate about catholics because we're

01:13:15.840 definitely going to have trent back on as long as he is available we didn't even get to half of the

01:13:20.300 questions that i wanted to and we're well over an hour um there are lots of things that i appreciate

01:13:25.400 about my Catholic friends, but I really appreciate how strong, traditionally strong, the Catholic

01:13:30.980 Church has been on reproductive technology, on surrogacy, on the Pope making his statements

01:13:37.560 about surrogacy, about reproductive technology.

01:13:40.940 He says it should be banned.

01:13:42.120 Yes, that is a huge failure, a huge lack of understanding among Protestants, among evangelicals,

01:13:49.160 that I get absolutely reamed for that every time I talk about it, because, I mean, this

01:13:54.860 is a weakness there is not a congruent and cohesive or authoritative teaching on reproductive

01:14:02.640 technology i would say among it's going to be hard to get the bible's take on it's going to

01:14:06.260 be hard to get the bible's take on that well again i would argue that it can be deduced from

01:14:11.060 scripture and the dignity of life and just looking at what ivf is and all of that so we could go on

01:14:16.000 and on and on but all i wanted to say is that i do appreciate how clear the church has been on that

01:14:20.400 and sometimes I look around and I feel like it's only Catholics like standing there with me as

01:14:25.340 we're talking about this stuff and I appreciate that well historically when you look in the 1970s

01:14:30.540 even when something like legal abortion the National Right to Life Committee was essentially

01:14:34.460 founded by the Catholic Church that evangelicals and like the Southern Baptists for example were 0.52

01:14:40.160 allowing abortion in the case of rape up until the 1980s that many Protestants are saying well

01:14:46.220 scripture there's some poetic passages about the unborn but it doesn't talk about abortion or it

01:14:51.460 doesn't talk about abortion in hard cases so we're going to leave that up to consciences

01:14:55.920 and so that goes back to what i was saying before and i do think that that's a benefit

01:15:00.320 when you have an authoritative magisterium yes there's concerns hey this is too much

01:15:05.700 but my other concern i brought up was by using sola scriptura the danger of failing to believe

01:15:11.100 certain things like the wrongness of reproductive technologies or other elements like that so i

01:15:15.340 think that's this continual sort of uh tension between catholics and protestants for us discussing

01:15:20.440 the nature of authority i think that catholics have in some cases like that case like that case

01:15:26.440 that you're talking about or this issue have pushed protestants to better praxis and to be

01:15:32.120 more thoughtful in the application of our theology i see that you probably wouldn't agree with this

01:15:37.960 that protestants and the protestant reformation in some ways even reformed the catholic church

01:15:43.560 The Catholic Church, that's why the Council of Trent, reform was needed, but not revolution.

01:15:51.340 And even pushed, I would say, like, Protestants' love for Scripture and our just emphasis on Bible studies and studying Scripture, I think, has had a positive effect on Catholics and has had a positive effect on Catholicism.

01:16:06.560 Catholicism, whereas I love that the Bible in a Year podcast, I think, is the number one religion

01:16:12.880 and spirituality. Father Mike Schmitz, I think his name is. Father Mike movie star. He's got

01:16:18.860 those wonderful cheekbones. Yeah. So I think that Protestants in some ways continue to reform and

01:16:26.240 push and challenge Catholics in a positive way. And I would say on these controversial issues, 0.89

01:16:31.180 Catholics continue to challenge and push Protestants in a positive way. So I'm thankful 0.98

01:16:35.380 for that. We'll definitely have you back on. Thank you so much. Thank you, Ali.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - October 10, 2026

REPLAY ｜ Catholic vs. Protestant： Praying to Mary ｜ Guest： Trent Horn ｜ Ep 997

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