Pints With Aquinas - Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and the Problem of Certainty (Erick Ybarra)

Episode Date: February 20, 2025

Erick Ybarra is a revert to the Catholic faith from Protestantism and has spent over a decade studying the doctrinal nature of the divisions that exist within Christendom, particularly between Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, as well as Protestantism. He is a speaker that has appeared on various social media outlets, but is known most especially for his contribution as a co-host of Youtube's Reason and Theology and his own channel, Erick Ybarra. He resides in Central Florida with his wife, Victoria, and their 6 children.

How far in the Bible do you have to go in history to find the book of Job? It's like if you're trying to sell this epistemically satisfying version of Christianity on a shelf, you're not going to put the book of Job at the beginning of world history. I mean, so part of Christianity is that it has this Just plain and utter difficulty and the book of Job. He's asking why wait Where's the cause of all this you realize that he he must have been feeling what I'm feeling intellectually And physically and yet God comes and and and doesn't say oh This is how I've mechanically worked it out so that there's suffering. No, he just says, who am I?

Eric, how are you? I'm doing well, how are you? I'm very well. Yeah, good to have you. Am I too high for him? Josiah? It's up to you There we go, is that better?

Okay, now we're level. This is it's so nice to have you. You know, it's funny We we've been recording these in batches all week. This is actually the second to last interview we'll be doing here in the studio before I build a studio down in Florida. Pineswithaquinas.com slash studio to help. And Pineswithaquinas.com slash studio to help. And you know so this is going to release in you know several weeks from now But I think it would be awkward if we acted as if a huge debate didn't just take place in the studio yesterday right, so How do you think it went? Yeah, so it's interesting because

For those at home, what was the tell tell us about? It's interesting because... Mason- For those at home, what was the... Tell us about the lead up to the debate. What was it about? Bates- Yeah, by the time you guys are listening to this, this debate had been done for quite some time. But the debate was between myself, a Catholic, and an Eastern Orthodox Christian. And what's interesting is that this Eastern Orthodox apologist had been anonymous for years. And there's a little bit of a backstory, which is basically public information.

So back in like 2015, I would say, I was involved in a lot of the online debates between East and West. And there was always a few guys who were really astute and who would come and partner up with me and basically debate me against Catholicism, the papacy. And there was this one fellow who would always show up with very astute comments. His name was Denny Sellen.

And so we had known each other. He had a public profile on Facebook. comments his name was Denny selling and So we had known each other he had a public profile on Facebook and so we'd go back and forth like paragraphs In the comments, you know the branches would be like 500 comments people would just lose their mind trying to follow it and so it was really just between me and him Yeah, you know and a couple other guys, but keep talking Yeah, and Then he he basically dropped off the scene of the social media world and I want to say I'm not sure exactly how long it was between when he no longer participated on Facebook

and then Ubi Petrus emerged. And they started writing articles, doing videos. And initially I had been intrigued by the arguments, but it rang a bell to me. I'm like, this sounds like Denny. This just sounds like Denny, my old debate partner on Facebook. But everybody was like, no, it's not Denny. It's somebody else.

We don't know who it is. Why would they say, did they have any reason for saying it's not him? What were they covering for? There was some corroborative evidence that it just couldn't be Denny. So Lofton and I at the time invited him on the show. I invited him on the show. I said look I know that you have a you know you have a pseudonym and you know maybe you don't want to show your face but why don't you come on the show? We talk about all of our differences you know. And initially he did not, he did

not want to do that. He says, no, I prefer articles because in articles we could really go through everything. And I understand where he was coming from. He's like, we can go through all the details. We don't need to suffer from the, you know, the, the, the handicap of the moment. Yeah. You know, you could think on You're having to think on the moment. Yeah, exactly. Just think on the spot, having to be articulate. And I like that. I like writing articles, too. So I said, you know, I respect that.

You know, you don't want to come on. That's fine. But so they continue to write articles. And at the time, it was assumed it was one guy. Later on, we found out it was a team effort. And are these all Protestant converts So Denny was not Denny was raised Catholic, okay, and then around the age 20 He had converted to Eastern Orthodoxy and I knew Denny

He had Latin skills He was He had Latin skills. He was fluent or somewhat fluent in Arabic. He had studied abroad or lived abroad. So I knew that about Denny during his public profile. So when Ubi Petrus came out and started, you know, waxing with Latin this and I'm like,

not only do the arguments sound like Denny, but this this whole Latin front is also something that was reminiscent of Denny Sellen. But I was actually convinced it wasn't Denny. Something in my mind was like, this is not the old Denny. Then somehow Jay Dyer and Ubi Petrus got into a collaborative effort. They made a video basically reviewing me and my material and why a lot of my arguments are wrong and things like that. And it was at that point where he had offered a debate. Shortly before that or around that time, he had offered a debate. Shortly before that or around that time, he had offered a public debate.

And I initially said, sure, we'll do it. But I backed out of it. I backed out of it. Several reasons. Number one, I just didn't like the being anonymous thing. I didn't like that. I thought, something you said to me years ago when we were talking about this,

he's like, yeah, there's no skin in the game. It's like back in the old disputation days, medieval debates, if somebody showed up in a box with a hole, with a breathing hole, nobody's gonna say, well, the data's all that matters. It's like, dude, Who are you? You know show yourself That plus some other reasons he I knew he was very smart. I knew that he had gotten me

By the cojones in a few things in his articles And so I knew that I wasn't gonna be as prepared as some of the other Orthodox that I had spoken to. So then I backed out and then he made a big deal out of it. Jay Dyer made a big deal. Oh, we all going to be on my show. I forget. No, we were going to debate on Lofton's Lofton's show. I think that or another like Orthodox channel that was, you know, not really more of like a low-key balanced Orthodox channel. But I backed out. That's the simple- Did you give a reason? Yeah, at the time I was just, you know, I was given some of the reasons that were immediate to me.

I didn't like that he was involved with Jay Dyer. I had already debated Jay Dyer by that point, if you can call it a debate. It was one of these spontaneous things that happened out of nowhere. But I know that I didn't want to get involved in that social media cyber war that I saw the after effects after the Jay Dyer debate. after the Jay Dyer debate, uh, people just making memes. Um, you're, you know, you're God, you got destroyed by Jay Dyer. People say, no, Jay Dyer got destroyed by Bara and it just generates acid, you know, and you just got all this like, Oh wow. Well, if he bars, right, then Catholicism right and then It's not that's not necessarily the case and people don't know how to treat debates. So this became like a online Cyber war I didn't want another one of those and I didn't like the fact that he was anonymous

Yeah, so I backed out but they made a big deal out of that. Everybody made a big deal out of that They're like, oh he borrows backed out So that was the big thing because I was making influence in the East-West debates online, on YouTube, in the social media sphere. So I actually learn a lot from Mike Tyson. He's a little bit of a philosopher, but something I picked up from one of his talks,

and he does talks every now and then, is that people When you get to be so good at something Almost to the point where it's like people think that you might be invincible. Yeah What ends up happening is people start to crave? Yeah, that to be shattered You know, it's so if all if they start talking Oh, this guy's the best at this this guy is the most prolific and smart

theologian in the world There's something in human nature that wants to Recalibrate that guy down. Yeah, you know, you can't be that high Yeah, you know and so when I backed out of that debate that was the opportunity for people to say Okay, this guy doesn't even want to debate. He doesn't even want to do a live debate So but I I stuck to my guns because I really did how was that for you the aftermath the blowout? because people who haven't been on the other end of a Twitter mob as it were don't know what that's like

Yeah, it's well it can come in all shapes and sizes Twitter mob as it were don't know what that's like. Yeah, it's- And it can come in all shapes and sizes. Some people have obviously had it a lot worse, but it can feel like the entire world is coming after you. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, so it all depends on how you treat it. If you treat it as if you're literally walking down 57th Avenue in Manhattan

and real people are coming up to you in your face and saying these things. It could be torture if you take it that way. Like, oh, these are real human beings, real souls that know me, they see me, and they're coming up to me and saying these things. But the thing is, I've never had that interaction with anybody in real life, face to face, enemy or not, enemy or friend.

So I sooner or later was able to reprogram how I perceive it as like I was telling you earlier, like a, like the old Counter-Strike days, you know online, you know Now it's Call of Duty the guys play it's all of the yeah called it. It's it's a cyber character Interesting not just the person they're attacking but they made themselves cyber character, right? And so, you know all the games that we played back in the 80s and early 90s like I played doom you remember that game You you just you want to slot you slaughter the character that you're fighting, you know Yeah, and you want to be you want people to perceive you as tough exactly exactly and then especially when you have like

person versus person multiplayer online games Interesting especially yeah, and when you could start changing the skins. Yes. Like no one presents themselves as a weakling. Everyone wants to look like the hero. Exactly. So this is an opportunity for somebody who doesn't, who perhaps doesn't really have a lot of face-to-face encounters

in life. Here's an opportunity to glove up into a cyber character and say what you want to say, you know? So once I reprogrammed the whole cybersphere as just this fake game, I was able to take all the all that is really interesting. Yeah, I just I mean whenever I meet somebody face to face with a good handshake It's just Look, I have eyeballs. You have eyeballs. We have a nose. We have face We have the soul standing here on the other side. It's just different

Everybody says this, you know when Jordan Peterson is asked about being attacked online or others are when Jordan Peterson is asked about being attacked online or others are he always says and I've personally said I've only had good encounters, you know when people come up to you They recognize you at the airport or wherever right he says, you know, it's it's it's 99.5% positive that's been my experience. No way nearest. I'm not putting myself on the platform with Jordan Peterson But when people encounter me in public, yeah, it's always positive Of course, it's always positive. Of course, it would be embarrassing to come up to you and do anything otherwise. Well, what's funny is I remember saying that even the banal critical comments on YouTube, people wouldn't say to your face. No.

So I had Peterson on, speaking of Peterson, and someone commented about him and said, why does he look so red? If this person, that's not too offensive, right? That's just pretty banal. If you were at Jordan Peterson talk and you got to shake his hand after, you probably wouldn't say, why do you look so red? Even those things, we wouldn't say, let alone the more egregious attacks.

Yeah, that's right. So there's this huge invisibility gap, almost like from the Harry Potter movie, The Invisibility Cloak. You the Harry Potter movie the invisibility cloak You don't have to worry about the embarrassment, you know, especially if you're if you're Avatar name is you know Sky Lectra 1589 and you've got like this cartoon anime character with a you know

You don't have to worry about the embarrassment of making such a comment like that. Yeah. You would suffer the embarrassment in real life. And there are some people who would do that, uh, but they suffer the embarrassment, you know? Um, so the backlash, the thing with, with Jay Dyer is that he had a lot of influence and a lot of his followers were of that anonymous type, you know, who didn't really engage in like, you know, any kind of real interactions.

But I just, I just reprogrammed how I perceived it. And that was just fine for me. One way I've reprogrammed it is by looking at boy band music videos from the 90s and reading the adulating comments, people who had just changed my life. I'm like, oh, okay. Comments mean nothing. Right.

You know, like if someone is saying this song by the whoever changed my life and that song's like legitimately, you know, as deep as a puddle, then I shouldn't be terribly impressed when people say that maybe a show I did, did that. Ruin their life. Yeah, ruin or, or made it terrific. Right, exactly.

You know, like it's really, how can I just try to be honest? Yes. We all hopefully are trying to be honest, charitable. That's right. We ask forgiveness when we don't. Yeah. So anyway, um, it'll be Petrus now began to do more projects against me. One project in particular that they did, uh, it was, it was spectacular. Like the, effects, they had a narrator. It wasn't Denny speaking, it was somebody else

that they got to speak. At the end of this critique they did, why Ibarra is wrong on history, at the end, he had a clip from Gladiator when Maximus Aurelius is coming out into the Coliseum and he's fighting all these foes in the, you know, in the, in the circle ring. And in the background is I challenge you, Ibarra, to a debate and I will give you double time that I give myself.

And went on and on and on and I still said no I'm not gonna do it oh you bar is not gonna do it so I went a while not interested I lost interest in wanting to do it I didn't even respond to the videos because I just saw how it's so and and correct me if I'm wrong, but for those at home, it's not just him who was challenging you to a debate. From what I could see, you know, several times when I said, like, who's the best? Like, I don't... I never want to put up someone against someone who's new. You know, I want it to be a comparable match, as as it were to use that language and everyone said ubi petrus They said he's the best

Yeah So not only was he the one challenging you to debate him But everybody else in the orthodox circle was challenging you to debate him. Yes, this is really this is really interesting Yes, given that this just took place yesterday. Yes, this is a so long time coming Yeah, because jay dyer is the guy that everybody wants to see debate Catholics, but everybody kind of knew that J. Dyer's Ballywick is not the papacy and the history of the papacy. He's more along the lines of the Christian metaphysic of the East and essence energies distinction against scholasticism and Thomistic metaphysics and all that.

And Vatican too, he's like the guy to go talk to from an orthodox perspective on the fallout in the 20th century. But people know that he's not the guy for the papacy in the first millennium. But when Ubi came on the scene, even Jay was saying, no, Ubi's the guy for this. So then that's when all attention went to Ubi and all credit to him.

I mean, Ubi, which we know now as Denny, incredibly intelligent guy. And like I said, he had me by the Conus and some of the articles and I might even just read it halfway and I just like, I'm going to need like a week to take, to respond to this. So I would just, I, you know, I had life, I had work, I had kids being born. So I just, it was just too much for me to handle. Yeah. Um, well, um, years go by and I ended up writing a book on the paper. See, uh, had published with St Paul center and may as well. Uh, years go by and I ended up writing a book on the papacy. I had it published with St. Paul Center, Emmaus Road.

And I wanted to generate more conversations, you know, about the papacy. Oh, yes, there it is. Wow. I wanted to generate more conversations. So I started inviting people to come on my show to talk about the papacy, Eastern Orthodoxy, and all that. And so I think you saw that. I came on your show. We did the interview and then we came up to what six months ago you and I got together and you said, hey why don't we, you haven't been on in a while, why don't, why don't you,

what do you want to do? You want to do a debate or something? No, I said sure, you know, so I I posted on X you know, hey looking for a Protestant or an Eastern Orthodox Who wants to debate this hornets nest again in studio? Yeah live. Oh, so you didn't think he would say yes I didn't think he was gonna I didn't think it would be petrus would would go for that so Everybody was immediately like debate Jay Dyer on Vatican too I didn't think he was going to, I didn't think it would be, Petrus would, would go for that. So, um, everybody was immediately like debate Jay Dyer on Vatican too. Um, that didn't fall through obviously, but then it would be commented and said, Hey, you know, if you're looking for a debate, you know, I'm here.

So that's when I said, Hmm, I'm wondering if he saw that it was live in person in a studio. And he did. And he said, you know what, for five years now, I've been looking forward to the, this debate. Uh, this is the opportunity. If it means me having to come out from under the, the, the, the, the hiddenness, um, then I'll do it. So I was like, you know what that that removes a great deal of all of my

former objections to doing something like that And the people want that the people the people just wanted to see this so many people have wanted to see this not just uh The crazed online viewer but the thoughtful the thoughtful people who are like, look, Eric, um, yeah, who will be in the team have a little bit of a rough angle, but they're becoming the online encyclopedia against Catholicism. You gotta say something, you know, if you're gonna be involved in this, you know. So I generated an interest in having Ubi Petrus in a discussion, and so that's what I'm like,

yeah, let's get this done, you know. So that's when he accepted, and you know, that's when we, and then he comes in the studio. I still don't know who he is. Yeah. So it's been what, 2016 since I've seen his public profile. I'm I, I, my memory is fading, obviously as I get older, but I thought to myself that looks like Denny selling, but I didn't know for sure. For sure.

That's why when he was here. I was like you look familiar Do I know you because I may have seen him for years? I mean he could have been coming to my parish for all I know and then he started he He introduced himself. Hi, I'm Denny selling This is my old debate was wild right because By the way, I just want to say that he was very kind. And the whole time, he was a great sport from the beginning to the end of being here.

And that just goes back to our earlier point about how well we're online, sometimes the worst in us can come out. I'm not accusing him of that, but I think that's true of everybody. We can just forget that that's a real person there. But yeah, he was very amiable. But it was interesting because when he agreed to be on the show, you know,

what we usually do here at Plains with Aquinas is we, we book your flights, we book your hotels and things like this, but he didn't want that because he didn't want us to know who he was. And so it was wild that he, he would not let us know anything about him until the moment he stepped in here. Um, so that was, that was interesting. So I have all this preparation for the debate I've been thinking about.

Well, sorry, that's what I was about to say. I love that you and I were joking, like, who's this gonna be? Like, what? Because, you know, I'm about to have someone on the show and I don't know who it is. And I'm like, well, what's the worst that could happen here? Like, is it, like, what if it's like Michael Lofton?

And I'm like, that's a joke, you know? Like, he comes in, it's like, it turns out he's been orthodox, isn't it? So I'm like, what if it's, what if it is J. Dyer? Like, we have no idea who it is, who's about to step in here. But I'm like, that's, it's worth it, let's do this, this is fun.

Is that your first time ever having to do that, where the person didn't want to be known? I mean, when would that ever happen? Yeah. Until the moment he steps foot into the, I might be mistaken about this, but he wouldn't even let us book him a hotel room. Yeah. So he was really secretive.

Yeah. Yeah. And you wonder, you know, I'm sure there's a lot of good reasons. I mean, you know, there's a lot of people who fear what would happen to their their reputation, maybe their job, you know, something they do that they don't want to get involved in something where they're going to create a war online. Because when you do that, and obviously I know this, you know this, when you get into the social sphere and all of your enemies have that invisibility cloak, they can pull some nasty operations against

you. So I understand, you know, people wanting to be anonymous. I know one of my favorite YouTubers, Classical Theist, he's been anonymous for many, many years since he started. And it's because, you know, people have certain careers that just, it, you don't want to be vulnerable. So I, I, I, I get it, you know, but, you know, he was willing to come out and, and he did. And I, but the thing is I had all this debate preparation for, and I was thinking about my opening statement, I was thinking about all the books I've been

reading from 400 AD to 599 AD. And when he said he was Denny Sellin, it's like my whole mind was like, oh, this is Denny from back years ago. Like, oh I'm talking to somebody that I've talked to for years. So it, cause I didn't really talk that much with Ubi Petrus. I didn't really have much engagement with him. So it was surreal because it was like going back to an old debate partner. And so I had to like get gears, you know, adjusted. And so, yeah, but I thought the debate went very well.

And it's not easy doing debates. And I think the structure we had was very favorable to guys like he and I, where we like to talk, we like to explain ourselves, we like to be able to give analogies and things like this, because the clock is what kills me. In previous debates I've been in, it's always the clock, and trying to remember everything you wanna say.

Here we had 20 minute opening, 20 minute rebuttal, 15 minute cross, and then a 50 minute free flowing discussion, and from the comments I heard people saying, that was great. You know, that was great because, you know, the time, the clock gets to you, you know, and you're scrambling, you know, I think that he got a lot of the material out that he normally gave in his presentations. Obviously, you can't do too much in 20 minutes.

And people don't often understand the limitations of a debate. You can tell that, and it's impossible to avoid that. Even before we went live, there was people in the comments saying, you know, Ibarra's lost, you know, or Ubi lost. They don't know how to really grade a debate. They're just saying, Oh, who's, who is the one that believes what I believe? And, you know, if even if the guy who's the on the opposing side does extremely well in the debate, but is not convincing, they'll say, oh, he lost. But that's not how the debate is graded. A debate is graded on a number of factors. And, yeah, they include some petty things like the way you speak, the way you

appear. Yeah, things like this. And so the way to the way to grade a debate is to see how the performance was between both sides on the resolution itself. It would be, it feels like there is a job here for somebody out there who wants to start Some kind of I think there is a guy who does where you go through and you actually lay out the points made The points responded to the points abandoned. Yes. Yeah, I think there is a guy If he doesn't do it if he doesn't do it for money. He has he has done it for certain debates. I've seen it and that is you know, it's a money. He has, he has done it for certain debates. I've seen it. Um,

and that is, you know, it's a, it's a scary science. Like a debate coach or a debate, um, referee, maybe one who isn't even Christian. But would you just not that what he says is going to solve it, but right. Yeah. And maybe get a few of them because one's going to, yeah, but uh, I I don't think debates are meant to be Answering the question especially between protestants catholics and orthodox

Oh, do I need to convert to orthodoxy now as a result of this debate? Or do I need to convert to catholicism? I as a result of this debate, or do I need to convert to Catholicism? I strongly tell people don't do that. I mean, I've been studying these issues. I've been studying theology, history almost every day of my life since June of 2005. Yes, there have been breaks and vacations. Yes. But generally speaking, and the more I've studied, the more I realize how more complex, how less adamant and bulldog manic I would be had I known more. Yes. Yes. You, you've, uh, you've forgotten more than I will ever learn, I think about the paper see.

And this is true in every kind of area. There's this new I don't know if you know about this, but there's this new apparent research coming out about the benefits of nicotine such that I think my wife will mind me saying this. I mean, she's gone down this rabbit trail where she's putting on like she's cutting up a nicotine patch And she's putting little bits on it really The point is this right? It's like We are bombarded every day with conflicting information

not just about profound things like philosophy and theology but like trivial things like If you have a sore back, what exercise should you do you got one guy saying sit up she got another guy saying that's the worst thing you could possibly do pick any topic and there's people who seem equally credentialed and enthusiastic disagreeing online yeah and I what does that do to the soul mmm John Eldridge who I love a great Protestant author, who I'm going to have on the show soon, says that it makes us weary, skeptical pragmatists. You know, like we're just skeptical of everything. We come to hate mystery, and we just do whatever in the moment. So I think, does that make

sense? Yes, it does. And so I think you're right. It's no one You just have to somehow live your life knowing you cannot have all the information, right? This is not possible That's right And you're gonna have to make a decision that seems right to you because you even see people in the comments like I can't Tell how do I know right? Who's one and it's like well, this is how you live your life You what what seems true to you based on what you know? live your life, what seems true to you based on what you know, granted that you're not unbiased, granted that you're making decisions based on what might be expedient to you or

your family and taking that into consideration, but at the same time doing your best not to deceive yourself and trusting that the good Jesus died for those who are confused, and He loves those of us who are confused, and He's guiding those of us who are confused. And He knows our situation. I mean, He is omniscient. He actually is like chat GPT looks like a baby compared to Him. He knows everything, and He knows what it's like You know for us to be confused He knows that experience he knows what it's like for me to be confused and what and he's compassionate with me Yeah, and I don't know. I just think If you're only going to adopt a worldview when you're convinced that you can refute all of your interlocutors You will hold no view right so don't even worry about that.

Right. What should we worry about? Do you think? Yeah. How should we make our way through this? Well, what I think is the first thing, you know, when you're, when you're trying to assess a debate, look at it as an invitation to look further. Don't look at it as a, um, this is a trial that's going to be closed.

This is an invitation to study, to do more research. However, what if you do that and then you continue to do research and you continue to do research and things don't become so crystal clear for you? And I think, you know, I think we spoke about this last time I was on, the things that you just so wonderfully described, that's becoming so clear that you cannot deny it anymore, that there are good-willed worshippers of Jesus Christ who are

genuinely seeking, who are doing their diligent effort in trying to learn, but who are coming to different conclusions and they don't see the strength of the Catholic side, they don't see the strength of the Orthodox side. Many of them say, we saw one guy comment yesterday, he said, this debate was a win for Protestantism. Because he said, look, if a Catholic and an Orthodox can get in the room, and it could be this, basically like, the tie, it's basically a tie, then that just means that this can't be the way. And so it has to be the way of Protestantism which allows for adaption. It allows for us to reevaluate, revise, and say,

well, what is Jesus showing me? You know, that's another danger zone, right? So as we start talking about the difficulties of being pedal to the metal, foaming at the mouth, bulldogmatic about a specific belief system, we can try to say let's get ourselves out of these shackles. But then we don't often think about what are the implications of unshackling. Then you start to rub elbows and shoulders with people say, yeah, but then I went Mormon or yeah, I was Muslim. Yeah, Muslim. I just joined the Jehovah's Witnesses and this and that. So I don't think that we have to go that far on the other side.

So if we think of like a ditch on this side, a ditch on this side, this ditch being, you're so stupid, don't you know Sola Scriptura was invented by Martin Luther? And like that ditch, you know, where everybody, you know, the Catholic who thinks like you have to have an IQ of 70 to be anything but a Roman Catholic. That ditch, I'm sure a lot of us know what that ditch looks like. Well, then there's this other ditch, which is basically the tyranny of subjective feeling and subjective experience. And that, if you spend time there, you start to crave that objectivity over there. Yeah, that certainty. So when you're on this ditch and you spend a decade there, you can get exhausted there.

You're craving for this. But then you get over here and you're there for a decade and then, no, I can't take this. My daughter came out of the closet. I had nothing to tell her. My daughter came out of the closet. I had nothing to tell her. Now you're craving the other ditch. Is there something in the middle? I do think there is. And, you know, my kids teach me so much. Every night we talk about Scripture. We're in Deuteronomy right now. We go through Scripture we've, I've had this discipline. I forced myself to do it and it's embarrassing sometimes because, you know, I'll have a bad day sometimes.

You know, I yelled at one of my kids and I'm just embarrassed. Just like, who are you to open up to Deuteronomy chapter so and so. That is the devil. Yeah, so I forced myself to do it and... Good on you. Yeah, so I forced myself to do it and good on you Even if I look really bad. I mean, I know what that's like just so you don't feel alone in your vulnerability there I know what it's like to be a Hail Mary say the prayer. Look at me. Yes, right. Yeah. Yeah done it many many times. Yeah Anyway, I think there's a middle and because my kids we've been talking about what is faith that Because is faith just believing something like, you know Because I mean we're being raised in this house to believe in Jesus to believe in the Old and New Testament all this stuff but

We we're coming to learn that there's other people out there with different views and they're smart. They're not dumb people Ben Shapiro, I mean what my son likes daily wire. So he's like, Oh, Ben Shapiro is a Jew, you know? So how do we deal with this? And what I tell them is no, Christianity is not a blind faith where you just choose a faith. You know, I do think that there is a relatively simple way to funnel down the probability of what is true. And I try to tell my kids, look, there's the altar where we have divine and Catholic faith,

we believe in God who revealed himself, he cannot lie, no matter what happens, I believe what he said. He cannot lie no matter what happens. I believe what he said But when you go into like apologetics, it's I view it as a different room like a like a scientific laboratory where propositions Weigh out on probability. Mm-hmm and not so much on absolute empirical proof and not so much on absolute empirical proof.

We're this little ball floating in the middle of space, right? Some of us are standing sideways on the equator and we're not falling off. There's got to be a God, right? Most people, and I'm not trying to insult atheists, you know, because atheists can be the smartest people in the world. But if you were to see, like if you're laying down at the beach and you see a little ball start to float in the sky, and then a number of other balls join it and start moving around, and you see that there's order to it. You're not going to look at that and say, oh, hey, that's another one of those accidents, just minimize to five seconds

instead of billions of years. Nobody's going to do that. They're going to be like, something's going on here. Either somebody's doing that or there's a God, you know? So we all know that there's a God, this little ball floating in the middle of nowhere. Is it likely that God would reveal himself? I think it is. I think it is. I think it's more likely that if an intelligent being created this little ball and created creatures like us, that he revealed himself. Okay, well where did he reveal himself? Well, you've got some historical religions that at least claim to hold this. It's like you've got one in a way. Well there's...

Because you've got Judaism, which is... Right, I was just going to say that. ...prevents Christianity, and then you've got essentially a've got Judaism, which is I was just going to say it's Christianity and then you've got essentially a christian heresy Which is islam islam. Yeah Good point, you know, so it's not like there's a multiplicity of religions claiming god is revealed. There's one. Yeah And the fruition of judaism is christianity. Yeah, i'll have to go and tell my kids. Oh matt frad said this But uh, yeah, I mean the way I said it was well, you've got Judaism, Christianity, which is the tree out of the root of true Judaism, and then you've got Islam.

All the other religions are from the bottom up, you know. How do we seek God? Yeah, how do we find God? And I'm not trying to discount, you know, because I know some people are like, well, you know, this guy just doesn't understand I'm not I want to just put it all under the category of from the bottom up, you know Because when I was a skeptic I looked at religion that way is everybody just trying to get on a 10-foot ladder to grab the stars It's just how can you beautiful? I'm putting it, you know when you've got this task of

Can you beautiful putting it, you know when you've got this task of Wanting to find God and then come down from your ten-foot ladder with all these details. I Just couldn't put up with that. So when I was Coming to understand that no no get that ladder off of this God came down and He didn't make it so unmistakably clear as if he like writes in the clouds every day, hey, believe in the Old and New Testament and look at this wonderful miracle I'm going to do again to convince the skeptics like every day. He doesn't do that, but he does, he has given sufficient appetizers, I think, to make it unmistakably clear that

miracles have happened. And so, for example, when Moses asked God, how are they going to believe me? I'm just a, I don't really speak that well. You want me to go to the people of Israel? And like, what if, I mean, he was smart. Like, how are they, anybody can claim that they saw something in a bush. He's like, well, put your hand into your cloak,

take it out. And he's like, well, the power to change my arm from leprous, you know, from being fair to leprous, back to fair, then changing a rod to a snake, then back to a rod. that shows that whatever Moses came from It had power over nature And if it had power over nature, then it knows more than us That's that that's like an appetizer, you know, huh? Look at what he just did

What are our options here? Well, he just changed his hand from being fine to leprous and back. Only the one who has power over creation can do that. So, whatever Moses is saying has to be traced back to the Creator, the one who has power over nature. traced back to the Creator, the one who has power over nature. So that's how they can have faith, the Israelites had faith. Because sometimes people think, see, we have faith because we don't see, but Moses saw, Abraham saw, the apostles saw, so how did they have faith in the resurrection? They saw it, right? Well, they saw a great deal of what God wants us to believe, but there is still a darkness beyond that. And so the darkness for the Israelites was, we're getting the heck out of Egypt, right? That was the darkness. They had to trust in that. But what

they saw empirically was that man just changed his arm and changed that rod to a snake. That's a big appetizer for me. I'm staying for the full course. That's where faith, so it's not blind. You're looking at God's appetizers that he's throwing out in the world And the biggest one is the resurrection of Jesus that is that is the feast But there's also much blackness behind it because what does the resurrection mean? Does it's funny you say that Jordan Peterson was just pressed by Alex O'Connor Do you think if you had a video camera you would see a man kind of walking out of his tomb? And I'm not sure if you saw it or not, but he just said, probably yes. And then he immediately said, but I have no idea what that means.

Well, you know, that gets us into, you know, well, what did he, what did the one who rose from the dead, what did he say about the implications? That's how the apostles had faith without sight, is because yes, they saw the corpse of Jesus, they saw him alive again, gloriously glistened with light, but they still had the blackness of what this means for them in their future. What it's going to mean when he departs into the sky, what are they going to do next Saturday? That they had to walk by faith. Paul saw the resurrected Jesus, and yet he says, we walk by faith, not by sight. So, I think that to the diligent seeker, the diligent knocker,

it does come down to God has spoken through the Old Testament and the New Testament. And that brings, I do think it brings you into the circle of, well, Christianity is true. Jesus Christ is true. So whatever game, well, not game, but whatever exercise that we're doing when we say, hey, we can't be so, you know, we can't be so stressed out about all these details and what if this guy and this guy come to different conclusions. We don't want to make it seem like we are just in utter darkness with a ski mask on backwards with, you know, blinders on, running in two o'clock in the morning in the forest. You know, we're not, that's not the situation. I do think that God has given light, and that light

is the gospel. But the question is, is within that now we've got a casino of options, and that's the difficulty, is if God wanted...and this really, I struggled with this, Matt, and we spoke about this last time I was on here. I struggled with that because I was so fixed on believing that if I wasn't wearing the right shoe size, I wasn't in the right exact spot that I would be falling into what Jesus called the flames of hell. And as I studied Protestantism, I studied orthodoxy, I studied Catholicism, I realized, wow, this is, um, this is really difficult.

And I started to have more existential questions. I started to back up and say, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, put the book here, move the book here. If I was a good dad and my son was this eager to know what he needs to survive, would I leave him in this maze? No, I don't think I would. So I struggled, I struggled, and I started to really, kind of like the Israelites when they were brought out of Egypt and they were starving and they didn't have a lot of water, they didn't have a food, they said,

God doesn't like us. He brought us out here to watch us die. You know? And I started to feel that way. I started to feel that way. I felt more loved by my dog. I was like, if it's this hard, my dog is coming up to me to snuggle with me. I feel more loved by my dog. You know? And I, I hit bottom when that happened. And we talked about this a little bit when I was on before where I couldn't square that with the love of Christ. If he came into the world, died on the cross for me, he shed his blood for my soul. He went through all that hard work to do that, just so that I can make a silly mistake in what denomination I'm in and send me to hell.

I can't fathom that. I can't fathom that. And so I released myself from what I judged to be a self-inflicted torture. And anybody who wants to come and dangle it over me, I can't put the cross and that torture together. It just, I can't do it. Maybe there's somebody smarter than me that really can. I just can't. And happy days came from that. And it's not as if I'm been happy and everything's joyful. I still, I cycle through this. Think of a circle. There are some days where I'm on top, I'm happy, I believe I'm in the middle of God's will, I know that He's going to raise me from the dead on the last day, I know that my sins are forgiven, life is great, last day, I know that my sins are forgiven, life is great, no matter what I'm going through. But then there's the circle. It's a cyclical thing where I could find myself at the bottom

some days. Like, yeah, but what if? What if? What if? And so I'm in that circle. I will be there. I will be doing that. Not to release you of your tension, not to try to do that because that's kind of what we're talking about. We're all in this tension. So not to say something kind of trite, but I wonder if our good Lord has permitted you to go through this so that you can articulate what many of us are going through, but don't know how to articulate as well as you can. That is, that is, if God is going to do that, that is more than I can ask for, and it helps me.

Because we are in a stage of church history, I mean, Teresa of Lusia didn't live that long ago, but she wasn't in that. I mean, she was in stable Catholicism land, and even on her deathbed, questioned the existence of God, or I shouldn't say question But had doubts about his goodness to her right? Yeah But what we have to endure with the onslaught of conflicting information from people who are smarter than us regarding the Christian faith and different denominations This hasn't happened before you grew up in a small country town in Australia or America and you're looking at your options What you're looking at is what the Baptist pastor the Catholic Catholic priest, and the village atheist says, and you might

get a few books from the library, but ultimately, like, you're probably going to side with one of these options. Even 20 years ago, it appeared much simpler than it does today. Exactly. Yes. And so, you know, we got the two ditches. I think the middle of the road is, number one, to believe God exists, to believe that he loves creation, he loves us. If you're not there, then you need to try and get there.

Your life isn't going to be easy. If you go into absolute skepticism, maybe atheism, you'll taste happiness, you'll snuff out all the existential questions, the cancer diagnosis within your family, all these things, you could try to push it all out of the way, but it's going to be really hard. And then once you feel your body decaying and you know, I'm still, I'm only 37. I'd imagine when I get older, I'm gonna have a lot more challenges that, you know,

some of the listeners here who are much older than me know that I'm gonna face that I haven't faced yet. I can't imagine facing it as an atheist. It just, it would be so hard. You know? So you got to get to the point where you believe in God, you believe he loves the creation, he loves the world. And yet there's this hiddenness, you know, there is this, um, there is this pro, it, it, it, we, we would be lying to ourselves if we don't call it, at least Prima Thaashi, a problem.

We have a God who loves us, we clearly have a God who created us, and yet he's not talking to us in some way every day. He's not making it so that we're always feeling empirically his warmth, his care. What we see in many cases is what looks like an absolute disaster. You know, some people, you were telling me a story about what you saw in Ukraine. All those families, all those people, maybe they never had a chance to even study about Catholicism. What do we have to say about all of this? But that's the challenge, is Christianity is true, but how do we deal with the fact that God isn't here preventing every evil

Making sure we're comforted in every question You know cuz that's that would feel like what and if you read the book of Revelation It does look like that's where we're headed because it says and he will wipe away all of their tears and Yep, and you're exactly right and prior to that you've got Christ saying, you know, when the Son of Man returns, will he find faith on the earth? I think that's surprising to people that, so according to Christ, the trajectory of the church is not one of ascendance and growing numbers. It's one of diminishing numbers and apostasy. That's where we're headed before the return. That's right. So we're talking about the problem of evil, and it is interesting, it really is interesting that there's a million different ways to talking about the problem of evil, and it is interesting. It really is interesting that there's a million different

ways to talk about the problem of evil, and so sometimes it feels like we're talking about different arguments even. But the problem of divine hiddenness is a subset of the problem of evil, but what we're talking about is like one step further. It's, now we believe in God, but there's still this problem of hiddenness for me

as I seek to align myself with the church. That's right. And so is there an answer? Eric, is there an answer? And my kids are... Evidence strikes people differently too. Yes, it does. So I'm kind of trying to find this balancing act

between there are really compelling arguments for the Catholic Church, which I accept. I'm trying to find the balancing act between that and this sort of temptation maybe to slip into a sort of Christianity and differentism, Christian and differentism or even apostolic and differentism where I'm like, I don't know. So let's just, I can't be bothered. I can't keep doing this. And I think a lot of people feel that.

They begin apologetics with a sort of triumphalism that gives them great confidence. If they're really honest, they'll start to realize that everyone who disagrees with them isn't an idiot. Right. I mean, some people seem stuck in thinking that everybody else is an idiot and that must feel great. I would love that. But I can't do that anymore. No. And so now

what do you do? What do you do when people, you know, and so I don't want to, I don't want to say there aren't compelling arguments for the Catholic church, because that's what that's a big reason why I'm Catholic. I still think that is the case. I also know that no matter how much I know, I will always have to live with unanswered questions That's always everybody does that's right the atheist the Christian everybody. Yeah, and what's so beautiful is that the Bible It advertises itself

for the soul to absorb that fact. The book of Job, how far in the Bible do you have to go in history to find the book of Job? It's like, if you're trying to sell this epistemically satisfying version of Christianity on a shelf, you know, you're not going to put the book of Job at the beginning of world history. I mean, and yet it's there, you know?

So part of Christianity is that it, it, it has this, uh, just plain and utter difficulty, you know? And the book of Job, he's asking why, where's the cause of all this, you know, and if we really meditate on like his suffering and you realize that he must have been feeling what I'm feeling intellectually and physically he had the physicality to fuel the intellectual Objection and yet God comes and and and doesn't say oh This is how I've mechanically worked it out so that there's suffering. No, he just says Who am I? You know, I'm the one who said waters can go this far

Mountains can go this high stars can go this far, mountains can go this high, stars can go this wide. I mean, he was calling Job to stop thinking about these problems and to just think about how awesome God is, how great He is, how powerful He is. But then there's still that, yeah, but you seem reckless. You got all that power, but it seems reckless. And even then, I think the Bible has something embedded into us to help us absorb. And that is the story of God himself

coming into the world and dying on the cross for our sins. Not walking away from suffering, not walking away from suffering, not walking away from it, but actually swallowing it even more deeply than any of us can coming in so deeply into the problem and then breaking out of it and giving us hope. That is the way into the middle of the road. And if I don't have that, then I don't have anything. Now, what about Catholicism? I wrote an article like six months ago,

helped out a lot of people. Yeah? Yeah, the article's called, Is Catholicism Safe? Is it safe? Because a lot of people are freaking out. I'm not safe. I mean, I've raised my kids in the Catholic Church. Some people are still young enough to, like, they don't have to think about this, but

when you start having kids, my oldest is going to be 17. You know, I've spent so much time devoted to this, and you know, for somebody to come and tell me, well, this is all wrong, that makes me feel very unsafe. It makes me feel like, you know, well, maybe I should have been a Baptist, maybe I should have been an Eastern Orthodox, whatever, right? Well, I wanted to write an article to help people not feel like they're in danger. And the article was, okay, just existentially, we look at this in the laboratory. Let's get away from the altar just for a moment. In the laboratory, do you think Jesus Christ died and rose from the dead for our sins? Yes. Do you believe he started a church? Yes. Okay. Do you believe he's saving people through that

church? Yeah, he said go into the world, preach to God. Okay. Through what means has he been saving people for the first 1500 years of Christianity? When all those people died and were buried, were they buried in any kind of hope of eternal life? Well, of course. Yeah. Okay, well, what was that? What was the field? What was the game? You know, well, it was what we call apostolic Christianity. Well, that funnels us down even more. So Catholicism, orthodoxy, Oriental orthodoxy. But we know for sure that Catholicism, just by the sheer breadth of it,

it's impossible to conceive that all of those Catholics were buried in the hope of damnation, just by virtue of who they were. It's also highly improbable that they were all closet Baptists or something. Yeah, no, yeah. That's just not even on the table. Right. So, you mean to tell me that we have such a high probability in this laboratory that if God is saving people through

the church, that he saved people through Catholicism. It had to have been. It had to have been. All those people who lived and died for centuries, who believed in the papacy, they believed in the philioque, they believed in the sacraments, they believed that they didn't have a right to start their own church, they believed, they were believing the things that we believe, you know, and they were buried in the hope of eternal life. So if God did that then, you know, people were crossing that bridge safely then, then it can happen again today. And so you can have the hope of being buried with the hope of

eternal life following the method of Catholicism. Even if Orthodoxy leads to the same way, even if Protestantism can get you into heaven, even if what we know is that one of the tools that God has used To unite people to his son is the Catholic Church and it's Inconceivable to think that it was not It was not used You see what I'm trying to say? Yep. So the whole it was just it's again a laboratory exercise just to have people to feel To ease off. No. No, even if I can't answer like Pope Francis, the filioque, even if I can't get all these things answered, I do know that whoever wrote the imitation went to heaven. I do know that these great

saints, these great martyrs who defied odds and just evil over evil, they made it to heaven. If anybody made it to heaven, they did. And so it's kind of like looking at a bridge that you know works, but if you put that engineering lens on, you can see, well, that corner there looks like it's deteriorating and this, and you have all these questions about it, but it's the longest bridge that's been used. You don't have to feel that you're in danger. So that's the other point is that I think it's safe to be a Catholic, even if you have

a thousand and five questions that you can't answer, and if you look at them closely, you're leaning in the direction that Catholicism is wrong, even if you're there, you're still safe. You're still safe because you got to hold on to faith. Like Newman said, a thousand doubts doesn't amount to one act of unbelief or doubt. A thousand questions. A thousand questions. Sorry.

A thousand questions. A thousand questions. Sorry. A thousand questions. The unanswered questions don't amount to a single, you know, culpable doubt. You know, so that got a lot of the weight off of me. So I wanted to share that in that article and it helped a lot of people. Yeah. I really appreciate it. Where do you post these articles for those who want to read it? My Patreon. I started a Patreon. Can people who aren't patrons read that article? Yes, I think so. Yeah, so I have three articles. I have... What is your Patreon for those who might want to support you? It's called Classical Christian Thought. Yeah, my wife has helped me out, helped me to set that up, and set that up and she's she's the one who, you know, made the all the art and the music on my videos and stuff.

Yeah, I gotta say, you know, I've been talking to you, we've had about three phone calls, I would say since the debate with Ubi was scheduled, eh? And I would never do this but I thought to myself if I secretly recorded all of these conversations with you, again I would never do anything like that, and then posted it, people would realize what a stand-up fella you are because every conversation was you honestly saying look, if I'm wrong I'm happy to be proven wrong and Ubi's a intelligent fella and I'm honored to be able to debate with him And I think even a few times where I was getting a little prickly like you would be like you wouldn't respond that way And I just think that's you know I think a lot of people say hey

I'm I'll go wherever the evidence leads, but they don't they say that to look a certain way They don't actually mean it and you know yeah, I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready Yes, if you know if there was I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready. Yes. So if, if, you know, if there was somebody who was going to be ready to shift the gears due to the right reasons, that's me. So coming into this debate, were you, were you underwhelmed by his arguments? I don't mean that in a pejorative way.

I just mean, I think, did you come in thinking, okay, great, maybe I'll hear an objection to my arguments that I haven't heard before. I did. It didn't seem like it happened, but maybe I'm wrong. No, because a lot of the things that, you know, I've been meditating on the weakness of Catholicism for too long to be

shocked. So there's a lot. And when I say weakness, I don't, I'm not trying to say that like that it's all weak. There are weak points just like in everything, you know. But no, I did come in thinking that this could be the day that you are so plastered against the wall and you can honestly have nothing to say in response. And you may have to walk away and go back to your schematic, your blueprint, whatever, and make some very significant adjustments, recreations, whatever, I was happy to have that disposition

and open to that. It did not happen, but who knows, maybe I'll have another debate in the future. But I don't think so. I really, I don't think that, you know, and I, I knew that, uh, at a face to face debate is, is, uh, it's hard to get everything you want to say because when you write articles, you can go into like all these things. So I wasn't expecting too much to happen in the, in the debate. Um,

you know, so, but yeah, yeah, I did, in our conversations leading up to it on the phone, I thought to myself, well, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to take everything I know, prepare, and if it's not good enough, then it's not good enough. That's how, that's what I, that's, you know. I've been thinking a lot about, and people will forgive me if they've heard me bang on about this too much, this distinction between Cartesian epistemology and phenomenal conservatism.

Are you familiar? Yeah, slightly, yeah. Well, it's, I sometimes wonder, certainly Descartes was not the first skeptic in human history, it goes back to the Greeks, but I wonder if his thought has permeated down to the laypeople and we are of the false opinion that unless we have an incorrigible belief, we don't actually have a right to hold that belief. And so you've got Descartes trying to, as it were, build his ladder on the initial rung of the Cogito and try to make his way out of, you might say, Plato's cave of ignorance. But it wasn't long before the whole edifice collapsed.

You have David Hume and Nietzsche and Kierkegaard going, I don't even think you have any kind of right to think the cogito is the case. Like where is the self? You know, David Hume, when I reflect upon the self, I don't find it. I find sensations and things, but I don't find the self. And so a lot of modern epistemology has just been in a heap within Plato's cave. I think, because here's the thing, like I don't hold anything with that kind of certainty I don't even know if certainty is a helpful word to use at all You know, yeah this sort of binary, you know, or you don't know. I don't think that's helpful

I don't even think it's worth talking about I believe all sorts of things That my wife's name is Cameron that I was born in Sydney that my wife's name is Cameron, that I was born in Sydney, that my father's name is Gary, that the Catholic Church is the true Church. And yet, even though I know these things, I don't know any of them with incorrigible certainty, and I know them to different degrees of certainty. I'd be more willing to give up the fact, say, that I was born in Sydney, that my wife's name is Cameron, and so on.

And yet, just because I have these varying degrees of what we could say is certainty, to use that word that I don't like, doesn't mean I don't have a right to hold them. And so, you know, do I know I have a left hand? Yeah. Well, do you know you have a left hand? Yes. But if what you're trying to make me say is do you know with indubitable certain confidence then it's like no, but why think I should see this is this kind of Cartesian idea that I that I that I have to and I think a good response is phenomenal conservatism. So rather than saying I'm going to doubt everything until I have a good reason to believe something

you kind of say the opposite you say I I'm gonna accept what appears to be the case unless I've got good reason to abandon it. That just seems like how all human beings at all times have always lived. Absolutely. And that'll do. Unless you want something to be wrong, then all of a sudden you put the hat on

of Cartesian certainty and you demand absolute evidence. Like in the debate, Catholicism and Orthodoxy, and I don't think Ubi or Denny would do this, but it almost appears that when I'm talking to some Orthodox, some Protestants, they're happy accepting Eastern Orthodoxy on a phenomenological conservative viewpoint or Orthodoxy-Protestant.

But when it comes to the presentation for Catholicism, then they have a demand for absolute proof, not just to answer nine out of the 10 questions, and not just to answer nine out of the 10 questions and not just to answer 10 out of the 10, but to answer it in such a way that I cannot make another hint of skepticism. Why do you demand that for something you really don't want to be true, but what you do hold to be true,

that for something you really don't want to be true, but what you do hold to be true, you're happy to have it at lower levels of certainty. You see what I'm saying? Yeah, I do. So that's one of the reasons why I've changed a lot in the way, it's a lot of people get angry at me. They're like, Eric, I just, I like what you're saying, but the thing is, is you make it out to be

where Catholicism is not The only Logical crystal clear thing and when you do that you hurt me Because you make me feel like I need to question like well, no see your problem is and I don't I'm not sure I don't say this like oh your problem Say but the problem is is their expectations of what needs to be in order to have that confidence And so they see me as a guy who's chipping away at their confidence Because of what you just described is they're expecting their certainty to rest on that kind of Cartesian absoluteness and That's a really good point to bring up.

Did you read anything or just...? I know enough to be dangerous. You know a few things. Well, write on it, write on it. Well, I have. I have a sub stack now. I wrote an article the other day and I said, well, if people say nice things, maybe I'll stick around and keep writing so no I read a bunch of Descartes recently

And I looked at his first argument for God's existence. I'm like I don't buy it I don't think it works so now I'm back to the first rung you know because I don't think Descartes was himself an epistemic skeptic mmm I think what he was trying to do was use doubt as a tool to show, you know, because he lived in a turbulent time. There's the Protestant Reformation, there's Galileo, all the old authorities are being questioned. How do we know anything? Right. So I think he was actually trying to show, no, we can by just like reflecting back on the self and building the epistemic tower as opposed to either relying on external authorities. Right. But I think it

clearly failed. And that's a nightmare. But I love him. I love Descartes. What's interesting too is a contemporary of Descartes, of course, Blaise Pascal. And so when you factor in, like, because here's the other thing, like an atheist might say to me, well, you only believe in God because you're afraid of hell. I don't think that's true, but fine. I'll just grant that, sure. Maybe that's why I don't know how to give up belief in God. But, like, this phenomenal conservatism approach

to belief in God is not a reason you should believe in God, but it seems to be a pretty good reason for why I believe in God, because that's how I believe in everything without exception. Mm. Yeah, yeah. And then you have the wager. The wager. Yeah, exactly. So it's all right. So what am I going to do? Maybe it's not within my power to not believe. I don't even know how I would do that. And if you, you know, and if you said, well, then you're biased or you're not intellectually

serious. Sure. Maybe that's true as well. But I'm still in the position where I don't know how to not believe this. Yeah. Well, I think if you duplicate or clone the conditions for themselves, they would realize that they're on sinking sand. You know, when you that and that's what I think a lot of people are coming to realize is that when you rest your certainties on that kind of caliber of proof that you need,

it's sinking sand because it starts to, you start to realize, no, that's not there. A few people that I read to answer your question. So one is obviously Descartes, a bit of Hume, but then obviously Plantinga, So one is obviously Descartes, Bitter Hume, but then obviously Plantinga, Logan Gage, and then, so Logan Gage is a modern epistemologist who works at Franciscan. So two with Trent, I wanna say Trent Doherty?

Yeah, he's brilliant. Yeah, I haven't heard two of those guys before. So. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But anyway, I made this point in my interview with Shapiro, this idea of our foundational beliefs. If you need an argument for every belief you hold, you won't hold any belief, because you would have to rely on an infinite regress of arguments to hold your first belief. Since that's not possible, there are necessarily things that we believe not on arguments, but on the way things seem to us. The external world is real. The past is real. I don't know how to prove that to

you. Maybe it was created five minutes ago with the appearance of age. That's possible and that would fit the data, but I don't have any good reason to believe that. I don't have any compelling reason to think you're not real. I mean, maybe you're a cyborg. I mean, AI is getting pretty sophisticated right now. Maybe you were sent back from the future. What the hell do I know? I don't know that, but I do know that, and I've got no reason to doubt it.

So if something seems to be the case to me, and not... So it seems to be the case, there's no good reason to doubt it, and when I put it into effect it works Like when I put Christianity in my life into effect I flourish when I offer up my suffering when I treat people as more important than me when I Don't kind of rest in my Disgusting pride that wants to blame my wife when we get into an argument, but instead like humbly Acknowledge where I've failed say

Things work when I treat people like they were creating the image and lightness of God when I treat myself that way my life gets better so The fact that it seems that way the fact that I don't know any good arguments that contradict it the fact that when I work This way life seems to flourish that'll do Contradicted the fact that when I work this way life seems to flourish that'll do Until it either doesn't work or there's a good argument against it. I'm just gonna keep doing this Yeah, I wonder I wonder if this way of thinking is

More native to how humans should think already You know because it it sounds out of the box thinking it sounds like it sounds out of the box thinking. It sounds like it's out of the box thinking, but maybe it should be in the box thinking. What I just said. But this is how we believe every single thing. There's no thing that we believe. That's what I'm saying. It's like, it's supposed to be in the box thinking. It sounds fancy what I'm saying, right? Because we're talking about epistemology and phenomenal conservatism and some French dude. But kids know this. But kids know this, yeah. Of course. Yeah, it is bizarre Like I often think about this if I had a one-year-old on my lap Anything could happen and they would take it just as given like If I've had a baby in my lap and then my head turned into a butterfly and flapped its wings

The baby might be surprised might react but but then we just accept it as such. Like, there's no state of affairs that could take place before a baby, that the baby wouldn't just then... I don't know why I said that. I got it, I got it. Very good visual. But my point is that we just... Yeah, thank you. My head turning into a butterfly. But yeah, we just sort of accept what seems to be the case to us, and I don't know how we're supposed to do anything other than that. Yeah. So and then and then the thing that's bizarre, too, is even if I did

accept these things for false motives. And we talk about epistemic rights and you know, it's wrong at all times and all places to believe things on insufficient evidence like all right, but then I can't fathom how there could possibly be an objective moral law apart from there being God. So why do you get off telling me that I'm right or wrong to act in this way? Yeah, I think one of those situations that we're seeing today where you take what seems to be true until you can't is, and it's a growing, it's growing is the doctrine of universalism because a lot of people will say,

well, it seems to me like universalism has to be true. Right. But then we're prohibited, right? And then you read scripture. You read scripture. And it's like a splash of cold water in the face. Right. Isn't it? Like kind of, oh wow. Like wow. Yeah. And if the one who has power over nature, the one who created everything is saying this, then we don't have a choice.

Right. But it's growing. And so you got guys like David Bentley Hart who you know See this eases the tension. Remember we talked about that like we don't like tension. I hate tension I want it resolved Right, right and you just mentioned a moment ago that atheism could be the way to resolve that except it doesn't right I think this is another way of Prematurely tight trying to do away with the tension. Yeah, well, we can all be saved That's right maturally trying to do away with the tension. Well, we can all be saved.

That's right. And I can come up with a great syllogism for how that seems to be the case. Right. And it hits home. It hits home for a lot of people. But just like the analogy with the ditch, I think we can get into that ditch again,

because somebody had been asking me, because we had David Bentley Hart on Reason and Theology, don't say two and a half years ago and it was funny because he had a lot of demands before he got on he was like okay I want this I don't want this I don't want this we were not supposed to like argue with him okay he just wanted to be able to answer interview questions and that's it. Well we had Father Patrick, I remember father father John Ramsey Patrick is his or you know It's his his name that he got when he became Orthodox and was made a higher monk But he he was joining us and he argued He argued with the.

As he was doing that, we like. Well, I thought to myself, well, you know, he's an ordained orthodox priest. I'm not gonna talk. I'm not gonna tell him to stop, you know. So he just went in, you know, David Bentley Hart just kind of like chuckled it off and everything. But a lot of people after that show were like,

Eric, like you didn't say anything. You just let him speak. So you don't have an answer for universalism, do you? Like, well, it was not a plan debate. It was just an interview. And one of the stipulations that I wanted to respect was that, that it's not going to be a debate. And I've left universalism out of my, you know, stack of papers for years now. But about three months ago, I decided to write a small article, it was a very small article,

a small one, on my initial feelings as to why universalism is wrong. Obviously, you know, you could go to Scripture, like you said, read the Bible. But today, all the universalists are camped out in Scripture. They're redefining terms, they're coming up with all kinds of things to show, well, no, the Bible is universalist, you see. So, it's like you can't go there as your handy sidearm pistol anymore. And I thought to myself, okay, well, maybe there's like another way to question this doctrine. And I thought to myself, well, we know that the majority of Christianity, I'm talking about the majority. Oh, Eric, you don't know about St. Isaac the Syrian

and this, this, and that. Okay, yeah, I know that there's some voices. Oh, but you don't know Augustine. Augustine said it was widely believed. Okay, that was in a very specific time period. He wasn't saying that this was the universal belief at one time. The majority of Christians for the last 2,000 years have believed that hell exists and that it lasts forever. If that's the case, and if Christianity, the Christian church, is the mind of Christ, right, because Paul tells the Corinthians, you know, you have the mind of Christ, right? So Christianity is the mind of Christ. And if the mind of Christ has held this doctrine for so long, just to be now shown

to be absolutely ridiculous, because when universalists argue against, they're like, dude, this is as obvious as denying infant damnation or whatever. They make it seem as if the only person who could come to this belief in eternal perdition is somebody who is psychologically defected or absolutely stupid. Okay, but if that's the case, and that seems to be how universalists typically argue their case, that they try to present the doctrine in such a way that you got to be crazy to

believe it. If that's the case, then the mind of Christ, the church, Catholicism,odoxy oriental orthodoxy evangelicalism Has been crazy Right, and if they've been crazy about that They've been they might have been crazy about other things and that's why I think universalism is a door that leads out of Basically to the edge of christian, where you make your own Christianity. And if you stay there long enough, I don't know how you do it, David Bentley Hart has stayed there long enough, but if you listen to him talk about Hinduism or any of the other religions, he talks

about them just like they're just equally religious people like me on the way to God. So, his Christianity is a Christianity that's not Christianity. It's a Christianity that's basically taken on the belief systems of everyone, where it's compatible with a variety of different views. He's not a relativist, I'm not saying he's a relativist or anything. But I would say that he has a form of religious pluralism, and I think universalism takes you in that direction. Basically, I don't think universalism is true, because if it was true, then it would prove that Christianity has been

just psychologically absurd, intellectually absurd for all these centuries. And if that's the case, then how could I trust it? You know? It's so wrong about something that's so obvious, then no, thank you. I'll check something else out. So, but that's not an argument to disprove universalism. It was just an article I wrote on my initial thoughts on why I'm not. The development of doctrine. Are there doctrines that were given to the church

that in a sense we've come through its development, we've come to hold less strongly. In other words, there are certain developments where it's like it becomes more robust. Is it possible for doctrine, for the church to become more aware of a topic such that it now seems to believe in that thing or the severity of that thing less? Does that make sense? Yeah. You know, like you talk about the Trinity, like it's like, okay, so a modern theologian today knows more about the Trinity intellectually than St. Peter.

But are there things that over time the church comes to examine, like limbo might be an example? I'm thinking of this because I believe it was in Fides et Ratio. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it was no, not Fides et Ratio, Pope Benedict space alve. Yes, where he indicates or says that the majority of people go to purgatory. Now, this isn't a definitive teaching, but this seems to be his opinion. And he even makes it seem like there would be some who would go to hell, right? He says this, but he's sounding a lot different to St. Thomas Aquinas. Yeah, he does. Yeah. So do you see what I'm...

Yeah, I know, I see it. So in that case, I don't see like a change in doctrine. What I see is something that's basically always been possible to assert. So, I mean, Augustine, for example, believed that in, you know, the Masa Domnata. What's that mean? That's like the mass of the dam, like most people are not going to heaven. And he bases his views pretty strongly on the words of Jesus. I mean, the disciples were hanging around Jesus long enough so that their question was, their question to him was not, well, who's going to be damned? No, their question was, who's going to be saved, right?

So obviously, his teaching motivated that question more than it did the opposite. But is, is, is it the case that most people are going to hell or, you know, that's actually not answered right in the doctrine of hell. So I don't know if it would be a doctrinal development as opposed to a very rare and unique permitted view that goes against the majority. But now it's becoming a majority.

Now it's becoming the majority where people, especially Catholic theologians, like I mean, John Paul the second, he believed the possibility of hell. He made that very clear. But he also spoke in ways that would make you think that we don't have to have such a dire expectation for the lost, right? Benedict, the same thing and Pope Francis the other day said, he likes to think of hell as empty.

When did he say this? Oh this was uh... When you say recently because I know he said that at one point. He said this again? It was like three months ago, four months ago. Yeah, not just the other day. So but he said he liked to think of hell as empty. So it does look like there has been a shift in whether you know, you've got this... Maybe the death penalty could be an example. Oh, the death penalty.

Could that be a good example? Yeah. Where the church seems to be changing its opinion. Well, it's interesting, because that one, I know that early Christians were trying to emphasize the Gospel even in the civil sphere so much that the death penalty was like a last resort, you know, even Augustine. I've got an example. Forgive me for cutting you off.

I'll say this and you can flush it out again, but I mean, outside of the church there's no salvation. Like this seems to be something where the church believes it less. Less might not be the right way to put it. But it's one thing to hold that view in Catholic Europe. It's another thing to realize that there's this whole group of people that the gospel has never reached. Right. You see?

Yes. And so now it's like, okay, now we have to show what we mean by that. So that truth is still the case. It is. Right. It is. It's still the case. And yet, maybe there's an analogy there with hell. Our assumptions have changed, because we used to believe that the gospel was so clear that anybody

who denied it has to be culpable. So that's an assumption. It may be well grounded, but nowadays we tend to assume inculpability, right? So back in the day... Yeah, I tend to assume, I would say, under certain circumstances. Yes, yeah, we tend to assume that the non-Christian is not doomed, right? Because when God judges them, God's going to be like, hey, look, you didn't have the gospel, you didn't have...but back in ninth century, tenth century, you know, days of Aquinas, they seem to speak more adamantly, like, okay, well, they're not even baptized, they're not going to heaven. But, well, if you open the lid on that conviction, there are certain adjustable assumptions, namely the establishment of culpability,

the establishment of the lack of charity. Like Augustine, when he was talking about the Donatists who were in schismatics, they were schismatics, he just assumes that they didn't have charity. He's like, yeah, they don't have charity. If you don't have charity, you can't have the gospel, right? You can't be saved. Is this charity breaks the you can't have the gospel, right? You can't be saved. Is this charity breaks the family and they broke the family so they have the vice of hatred. Right? So they can't be going to heaven. But it's like, wait a minute, uh, Saint Augustine, and I hesitate to do this, right? I don't, I'm not trying to correct Augustine, but I'm just trying to speak for the Catholic church today.

Wait a minute, Saint Augustine, do you really think that they all have culpable, deliberate violation of charity? What about all the kids who were Donatists, who grew up and knew nothing else? Those questions were not really explored a lot in the early convictions about outside the church, there is no salvation. You don't really see people questioning that. So it's just kind of assumed that, yeah, well, they're outside the church, you know, and they're going to answer for it.

Today I think we have more of like a consideration of whether that guilt is actually established. Another example, the suicide, is he damned or not? We have more information about the psychological state of the suicide than we once did. Right, exactly. So, yeah, I would say the doctrinal parameters are still there, but things have caused assumptions to be revamped as to whether this is actualized or not. So yeah, that's a good question. There's been huge changes.

So when you come to a guy like Dr. Gavin Orland, he looks at this and just says, well, it's clearly a change like Dr. Gavin Orland, he looks at this and just says, well, it's clearly a change of belief. The church used to believe outside the church there's no salvation. And yet today you've got Vatican II saying that the Holy Spirit has made use of the elements of sanctification outside the church. So he sees it as a clear change of belief. I don't think it has to be a change of belief. It's just that we have to realize that before they were,

those convictions were still true because if, but there are subjective considerations that need to be there to establish the full actuality of that fate, you know, the full actuality of that fate, you know. Whereas today we seem to be maybe far too fixed on the subjective situation. But the thing is if you deny that that moveability exists between the subjective psyche, then you destroy criminology, justice, and so many other things that we

hold to be first principles. You know, did that guy do it willingly? Yeah. Oh, no, he didn't do it willingly. Oh, well, then we can't nail him with the exact punishment of the law. Well, I don't believe in the subjective fluctuation of culpability. He's got to be punished just like the rest Well, that would be the destruction of what we first principles on things that we know on moral principles Yeah, so you can't deny them, but you could be reckless with it to the point where you're now today

It's like well, everybody's inculpable. That's right. No one should go to prison even that's what makes it so dangerous today It's cuz like you got the liberal theologians today is they grip on the legitimacy of that distinction of the subjective psyche and they know that the conservative trad can't deny it because if he does then we're denying traditional moral principles. But then they use it in such a way to get themselves in the neighborhood of universalism. Oh, you're like, I just had one guy tell me that he doesn't see a problem with two guys who are homosexual, who are active with each other, have no plans to stop,

but are daily communicants of the sacred chalice. And that's perfectly fine. I say, how do you conceive of that? Well, Eric, mortal sin, there's three conditions to mortal sin. And they're essentially impossible to meet, it sounds like. Right, so like, do you really think they have this? Do you really think they have this? Do you really think they have this? Do you really think they have this? Yeah, yeah. It's like, and so in his mind,

he's using the subjective elasticity to build this expectation that even in a situation like that, it's likely that they're walking in grace. That's utter absurdity to me. Back to these two ditches, which I think are really helpful. I can see how the stress that we're under, that we've been talking about with competing worldviews and chaos in the church, I can see how that leads both to everyone will be saved and I can also see it influencing those who want to say,

basically everyone's going to be condemned. So the reason going to everyone will be saved relieves the tension is now I don't have to be so hung up on the particularities of history. And I don't have to concern myself. I can quickly ease the tension by saying, well, we're all going to heaven. But at the same time I can see the chaos today, we can't handle it. You can't live

in chaos. Chaos, it'd be like living in a storm. You need shelter if you're gonna function. And I also think people who want to point the finger and everybody's gonna be damned is another way of control and easing the tension. Because now I get to say who's in and who's out and I can make things black and white again. Right. And I think that too easily relieves the tension. Yes. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. So I mean, we're all we're in a frenzy, a little bit of a frenzy to be in the middle. But I think we have to fight for it. We just have to fight for that balance. And it's not necessarily the most comfortable place. I wonder what you think about this. I think that orthodoxy is going to very soon experience what we in the church are experiencing. 20 years ago, fellow, we were on top of the bloody world.

All these Protestants flooding into the church, JP II, Benedict, and now I feel like we're being sufficiently humbled. I'm embarrassed about the times I told Protestants about just how unified we are. And I'm sorry I did that in a triumphalistic way. Now don't get me wrong, I do think there's a unity in the church that isn't in Protestantism. I still think that's a valid critique of Protestantism and an argument for Catholicism. But I mean, it's clear that things are difficult right now and embarrassing right now. And I don't like that. I wish it wasn't the case.

But I think that Orthodoxy, maybe I'm wrong, I'm just speculating, is currently undergoing what maybe we went through in the 20s where it's got great curb appeal You know the tradition big bearded Eastern fellas dispensing wisdom, but I don't know I don't I think they might you know What am I trying to say just that we only have options that aren't perfect yeah, and by perfect I don't mean true, I just mean that would make us feel completely secure if we stick to appearances. Yes. In many ways, my investigation of Eastern Orthodoxy has yielded that as already starting. Tell me how.

Well, I remember when I was looking into Eastern Orthodoxy, I thought to myself, Eric, you don't want to be hoodwinked again. Like if Catholicism is wrong, you fell over. I mean, you were like, oh, wow, this is amazing. You jumped right in, right? Well, look at what you're doing now with Orthodoxy. Sounds like you're about to do the same thing. Don't you want to make sure that when you get on the other side that... You won't have bias. Yeah that you're not going to have

issues to face? And boy, I quickly realized I was going to have issues to face just by visiting parishes, you know, getting to know Orthodox people. It's like, oh, where are you going? Oh, I'm going to go to the OCA parish. Oh, no, no, no, go to OCA. Why? Why? Well, this. And then it's like, oh, okay, well, can I go to the Greek Orthodox? No, I wouldn't go there because this. It's like, wait a minute, so now I got to pass Orthodox churches too? To go to the right one? Why? Well, you got to go to where they hold the canons. The canons are inspired, infallible, and you got to go to where they hold the cannons. The cannons are inspired, infallible, and you got to get re-baptized. You can't just accept what these liberals are saying where the Catholic baptism is valid. It's like, oh boy.

So now I realize I'm going to have to sort of, I can't just come on board. I'm going to have to come into the captain's cabin and verify if he's driving the ship right. Kind of like what I'm doing now in the Catholic Church. And so when I started doing that, I realized, oh, wait a minute, there's a history of this. Back in the early 1900s, there was the development of a new calendar in Greece. Today we call them the new calendarists, right? Well, that's just a name. It came with a whole bunch of other things that they call ecumenism. And that hit the Orthodox Church before it hit Catholicism.

It hit Catholicism like in the 50s and the 60s. Is this what led to the old Russian believers breaking off? No, that's just previous. That's another interesting one. But in any case, without going into too many details, there's just so many names, so many things that have happened, but they themselves have undergone an experience of ecumenism to the point where Orthodox were talking with Anglicans, were talking with Catholics in a way that blurred that rigid line that the Orthodox want to see, which is outside the Orthodox Church, there is no sacraments,

there are no, there is no grace, there is no salvation. Well, you had a lot of Orthodox hierarchs who were coming out saying the opposite of that, and not just like one-offs. We're talking about... Can you give us more concrete examples if you can on the spot? Yeah, so the Orthodox Church joined the World Council of Churches. Have you heard, are you familiar with the World Council? I've heard it, I don't know anything about it. Well, it's, you know, it's analogously kind of like the United Nations, you know, it's in the religious sphere, the World Council of Christian churches where,

look, we've had the world wars, we've had division, now we're in the world, the era of technology, global communication. We need to like look at this desperate brokenness of Christianity and try to do something to make Christianity a one identity for the world. People are looking at us and they're saying, how, Christianity? Yeah, that's just as different as all the continents, you know. So the World Council of Churches was a Protestant outfit, but the Orthodox joined as members. Now, not every jurisdiction agreed to that, but there is an Orthodox contingent. And that predated Vatican too.

And so they were already in the ecumenical dialogue about what do we share in common with the Anglicans, with the Protestants. Eventually one of the big, uh, clearest examples and people can YouTube this too, is if you look at the Assisi day of the prayer for peace that was called by John Paul the second, um, Yeah, you, you know, people know it for all the Hindus and the Buddhists and all those other people who were there, but it's not often seen, um,

that members, delegates, representatives from all of the Orthodox churches came. I want to say even if Moscow, I'm certain of that. That was in 1986. Okay. So a couple of decades after Vatican II and they're there side by side. Interesting. So if you want to impugn the Catholic Church for this particular prayer day,

you're going to have to also equally impugn. You have to because they were onn. You have to, because. They were on board. They were on board, nobody was disciplined. There was no synopsis of bishops who got together to say, we anathematize this. Actually there has been, but those Orthodox churches are not

in the 14 autocephalous federation of worldwide orthodoxy. They're called the old calendarists that have broken away from communion with the main bodies of the orthodoxy. They have all kinds of anathemas to throw and launch at. They call it world orthodoxy. So like today the set of accountants say the Vatican Two pseudo church, you know, you hear that from like the Diamond Brothers or whatever. Well, the orthodox, the true canonical orthodox, the true orthodox, they refer to the wider body as world Orthodoxy. They're the ones that

have fallen victim to perennialism, ecumenism, liberalism, and all that kind of thing. And they have lots of data to show for it. The Patriarch of Constantinople today, Bartholomew, with all due respect to him, he has made public statements that are just very concerning. Such as? Well, with the legitimacy of Catholic Christianity. He has only made strides to make it seem as if Catholics, Pope Francis, the Vatican, that's a valid expression of Christian. Why else would you be coming to the election of a new pope?

Why would you be joining in prayer services at the Vatican? Unless you thought this was something Christian. You see? So... What did you tell me about Ubis Patriarch? Oh, oh, well, okay. So this, as far as I know, Denny is part of the Greek Orthodox Church of America, the Archdiocese of America.

And one of the things that the Greek Orthodox Church in America is dealing with is their Archbishop, L.P. DeForest, who, and again, all due respect to him, I don't want to make this seem as like an insult to attack him, but he has been involved in some very egregious situations. One in particular, which is documented, it's public, it's all over the place, is he, he, he, he conducted a public baptism where the two parents were well-known famous homosexuals. Oh, I remember seeing that photo. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I think.

Did he have like a doctrinal corner to defend himself with while the baby's not guilty for the parent. Did he, he, he said, he tried to come out and give what the conservative defense might be for that. But Orthodox were not happy about that. Um, he's also participated. He, I think he celebrated the divine liturgy at an Anglican church in New York That's known for its LGBT support That's also documented pictures

Journalists have talked about it Now does he support? Gay marriage no he will he'll tell you no But he sounds very similar to like James Martin. That's it sounds very similar to... It's sort of like James Martin. It sounds very similar to that kind of thing, you know? And, you know, look, you could do your research, the people listening could do your research, I don't want to distort reality. This has just been common news now.

Yeah. This is not like breaking news. This has been around for a long time. My Orthodox friends all tell me this is happening, but here's what they'll say. But this is okay. I mean, it's not okay, but in orthodoxy, the, those are, those are BB guns. That's a wet noodle fighting against a Navy warship of the liturgy of the, the, the, the the you know the whole universal apostolic fortress of Eastern Orthodoxy. These are just wet noodles.

In Catholicism you've got the Pope who's the center of unity. When you see him doing it that's like an utter destruction. You're sunk, right, because of how much influence the pope has. But it's really, in my opinion, a smokescreen. Because orthodoxy, yes, they don't hold that there's one patriarch that has all this influence, binding influence on every other patriarch. But they do hold to the principle of you are what you commune

with. So it's a little bit of a different angle to look at things. In the early church, if a bishop came out as a heretic, to just, and then his successor was a heretic, and then his successor was a heretic, and then his successor was a heretic, and then neighboring churches joined that heresy, but then there was Orthodox churches communing with those churches, and everybody knew about it. They would have said that's utter chaos, that there's no way...that's a contamination on all of those churches, because they're all in communion with each other. So Orthodoxy doesn't hold to this isolationist ecclesiology where, well, in my little bubble we don't do

that. Yes, I'm under Elpidophorus, but my priest doesn't do anything like that. We have the liturgy, we have the faith, we have the canons, but you commune with Elpidophorus. You're under the but you commune with Elpidiphorus. You're under the Omophorion of Elpidiphorus. He's in communion with these other patriarchs. They've all been tolerating Bartholomew. So in other words, it's not just an issue of, well, I've got this fortress in my isolated bubble. You know, your bubble is linked with other bubbles and that bubble is linked to other

bubbles and those bubbles are still in communion with this liberal situation. And so it may not be a defeater to orthodoxy, but it would be from a patristic lens, a very serious problem to just have hierarchs in communion with liberals for years where in an era of global communication, everybody knows about it, but nothing is done about it. That's serious issue. And so anyway, I'm not trying to say that, Oh, this is proof that orthodoxy is wrong. I'm just saying this as a way that if you become orthodox, thinking that a Vatican II experience is impending, you don't have to think that.

It's already been going on. So it can be the case of out of the frying pan into the fire. For those who are on the ledge of Catholicism, they're disenchanted, they're frustrated with Pope Francis, they're looking for a safe option. It could be going out of the frying pan into the fire. In most cases, they're going to feel it's not. Because the Orthodox just have a better way of maintaining at least that sense of security. But it's undeniable that when you start to get into the hierarchy, that things are far more lax than it can be claimed to be.

A lot of the American converts to Orthodoxy, for example, and all credit to them. I appreciate the masculinity that the orthodox are trying to bring back onto the scene. That's much needed, but let's not pretend that that characterizes all the ranks up to the top in Orthodox Christianity. And it could be, look, an Orthodox could say, look, Eric, I realize it's bad. Yeah, my bishop says that, he does that, he's a liberal, but I just, I think that I can absorb the brunt of this and be fine because of these reasons. Okay, well then when I say that as a Catholic, just give me the credit, you know. Don't make me feel like I'm in another world

where my ecclesiastical scenery is just completely abominable and yours is completely beautiful. At least admit that we're both having to come up with reasons for how to float in the chaotic waters. Then I think I get more respect from the Orthodox when we can level that way. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That's awesome.

Thank you. Next year is the anniversary of the Sism, isn't it? One of them? Well, you talk about the Nicene. The Orthodox. Catholic Easter. Yeah. Yeah, so they're having a,

basically, I don't know too much about this. I just know that they are meeting together. Pope Francis has said he will attend, where they're going to basically celebrate the anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, which a lot of people don't realize, but one of the biggest issues at the Council of Nicaea was the date of Easter. So everybody remembers Nicaea because of the consubstantiality of the father and the son, but one of the big issues was the celebration of Easter.

When should it be celebrated? Should it be on the 14th day of Nisan, or should it be on the Sunday of that week? Well, they all ruled, Constantine made it imperial law. Well, so they're gonna celebrate the anniversary of that. And the idea is for Catholics and Orthodox to now celebrate Easter on the same date. Okay, all right, I misunderstood. Thanks for clearing that up. I heard,

at least from what I know, I heard a few people say that they're, you know, they were speculating. Oh, what if the Greeks, yeah, came into union with Rome? Man, I, I, I think it's very hard to say what would happen. I'm almost certain that there are some patriarchs who would just ex communicate whoever does that. Oh yeah. Moscow. But see the thing about Moscow the Patriarch Kirill and you know, we're talking about Vatican too. Patriarch Kirill is not this, you know, like Uber canonical, true Orthodox kind of guy. A lot of people think he is. He signed a document with Pope Francis. It's called the Cuba Declaration.

They met in Cuba. They flew into airport in Cuba, sat down with each other and wrote a joint declaration. When was this? Oh, this is like two with which Pope Pope Francis. Really? Yeah. Patriarch Carrell and Pope Francis. Yeah.

In Cuba. In Cuba. Yeah. Missed that. Yeah. Look it up. And they wrote a joint declaration. And one of the things in that declaration that they said was that we, we will not

try to proselytize from either of the two churches because, and they quoted Paul who wrote to the Romans, Romans 15, it says, I will not go where another man has already planted. Wow. Which... That's problematic for both of us. It's problematic for both of us, but it's not well widely known. And most of the Russian Orthodox people I know just say, well, I mean, you know, to join whatever that document, you know. But it's

still there. I do think though that Kirill would excommunicate. Well, he has already he has already removed Bartholomew from communion because of the new situation in Ukraine. But if if Bartholomew joined the Catholic Church, I do think that there are patriarchs who would just say, okay, he's on his own, we have our church, you know, the 13 bottle-cuffless heads, or they might ordain another competitor in Constantinople. I don't think it'd be a very beautiful scene.

What would have to happen for the Orthodox, we talk about them like they're a unified body, but what would have to happen for the Orthodox, we talk about them like they're a unified body, but what would have to happen for the Orthodox for us to come into communion with them? And then from the Catholic point of view, what would have to happen for them to come into communion with us? Yeah, wow. The Orthodox, from what I know, if we're thinking historically, the very first thing that needs to happen is the philiogue needs to come out of the creed. And then I would say that... Do you think it's problematic that the Eastern Catholics have already done that? I don't, because I think it's important for us to have one creed,

but there's just a historical realism that tells us that there were different creeds, especially before Nicaea, like the Apostles' Creed, the creeds that were going around that Irenaeus used, or Cyril of Jerusalem used, they were not exactly the very same. Even after Chalcedon, the West still used the Apostles' Creed in their catechesis, and then we have the well-known Athanasian Creed. That was widely used by monastics all over the West. So, historical realism tells me that it's not a big deal if we have a couple different creeds. So, I don't think it's an egregious problem that the Eastern Catholics, you know, that situation exists. To admit it isn't to deny it.

Right, yeah. But I think the Orthodox, historically speaking, they have assembled synods and confessions detailing why the Latins have come out of the body of Christ, and it all goes back to the filioque way, historically. Today people don't feel the pressure of that. They think it's the papacy, they think it's the liberalism, they think it's the liturgy, they think it's...and there are a lot of things that I just don't know how the Orthodox would commune with the American Catholic Church. I just don't see how the Orthodox would commune with the American Catholic Church. I just don't see how that would happen.

But certainly the philioque way, its doctrine will need to be repudiated, I think, by the Catholic Church. There are good theologians in the Orthodox Church, like the late Archbishop of Pergamon, he's known as John Zizoulus He was the one of the premier theologians of the Orthodox Church in the 20th century died recently Even him he made great strides To try and find a middle ground on the filioque and I would say he probably went the farthest you could possibly go from an Orthodox perspective, but his position still condemns the Council of Florence the way we believe the filioque.

You know, so I just don't know how the filioque could stay in the books. Then papal supremacy, papal, you know, the orthodox went far at the Florentine Council in saying that Christ handed to Peter full power to govern 10 and shepherd the universal flock. They were willing to accept that. They were willing to accept a lot of things, but they didn't believe it was an immediate jurisdiction. They didn't believe that the pope had the power of infallibility. Those things would have to go. The don't, I, the Orthodox just,

they're not going to be able to accept that. Okay. You know, then, um, the use of unleavened bread, that may be an issue for some Orthodox, you know, cause that was definitely an issue back in the day. Dr. Ed Succhenski, you should have him on. I don't know if you've had him on, but he's one of the best pens in the world of Byzantinology Byzantinology study of Byzantine Christianity he's wrote a book. It's called Beards, Azymes and Purgatory. What's it called? I think it's called Beards Okay, Azymes and Purgatory. So he wrote this trilogy on the East-West

Division the first one was on the filioque. It's the go-to source Then he wrote a book on the East-West division. The first one was on the filioque, it's the go-to source. Then he wrote a book on the papacy, and then he wrote a book on the beards, azimes, which is on leaven versus leaven bread, and then purgatory. So basically he wrote like a trilogy on what is dividing Catholicism and orthodoxy, and all three are published by Oxford. And he would probably argue that the Unleavened Bread issue is not necessarily a big, you know, shouldn't be a dividing point today. You know, but then you've got the Palomism, essence and energies Beatific vision we have dogmatized that we will see the essence of God big issue for Palamas big issue for a lot of Orthodox We won't see the essence of God. How could you you know?

It's we're going to see the we are going to experience the energies of God what surrounds him not him You know well, it's him, but it's, it's, it gets into a quirky issue with that. Um, so I do think that all those things that have to be peeled back for the Orthodox to say, okay, we're ready Catholics. I don't think, I mean we just need them to say they're okay. We've basically accommodated them so much, you know, Phileo way, as long as you say through the sun, like we don't even need more details than that.

You know, as long as you don't condemn Florence, as long as you don't condemn Vatican I, Vatican II. The Immaculate Conception. Immaculate Conception. We're, we're ready to have you guys back on at the dinner table. Yeah. Interesting. Immaculate conception. We're we're ready to have you guys back on at the dinner table. Yeah interesting. So I mean He you know, you were saying if Bartholomew and the Greeks came into union with the Rome that they'd be Excommunicated right? So I guess my question is suppose we do start to see groups coming into communion with the Rome

There's going to be realistically Orthodox groups that coming into communion with Rome, there's going to be, realistically, Orthodox groups that excommunicate or disassociate with those groups who are now in communion with Rome. So could we just say, well, the Sism has already, already ended and it's called Eastern Catholicism because that has happened. People have come back into union. Yeah.

Um, I'm being a little playful. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good question. Um, so much of like cultural orthodoxy, at least from my limited vantage point, if all the churches, all 14 entered into communion with Rome tomorrow, I don't think that the average orthodox person would do anything about it Um like just

The neighborhood grandmother who's eastern orthodox if her Patriarch joined into communion with rome. I don't think it would change her life at all. Yeah Um, but it would for invested Patriarchs who think it's a matter of contention. Difficult to say because they cannot have their own counsel, right? When you're dealing with Catholicism and orthodoxy, it's very easy to assume that both sides have a tangible unity such that they can just, there's two things talking to each other. Because Catholicism is one, we all know Catholicism is one. Who has the final say? The Roman Pontiff. In Orthodoxy, it's not that way. And which is very interesting, because I remember Denny in the debate yesterday,

I don't know if you remember me asking him this because I had to I was like, wait a minute Do you think that the bishop of Rome has the right to call? all Ecumenical councils in the first millennium and he said sure but that he didn't mean the money was may not have been there the lodging Expenses me so like the the Emperor had to do it back then But what he just said was very important because that would mean That Constantinople today who takes the place of Elder Rome, does have the authority to call an ecumenical council. And I don't know if he knows the import of what his admission is, because if the ecumenical patriarch today has the right to convene a Synaxis a panorthodox council if he has the right to call it

He's not inviting it. Yeah. Yeah. He is ordering a council the absentees thereby being guilty of breaking law That is not attributed to Bartholomew by anybody today that I know of. I think you need the willing cooperation of all the other patriarchs, which is why at Crete in 2016, it was destined to be pan-Orthodox, but Russia came out at the last minute and three other churches came out at the last minute. And then everybody's, okay, well, it's not really pan-Orthodox anymore. Well, because Bartholomew doesn't have the right to call this, this is a collaborative

effort. But if Ubi is right and Rome had that right and therefore Constantinople had that right, then maybe if Constantinople goes into union with Rome, according to Ubi's ideas, there ain't much to really combat because what are the other patriarchs gonna do? What, does Alexandria now have the power to call a universal synaxis? What, what Canon says that I don't know of one. So I think their inability to have a pan-orthodox council is already the

handwriting on the wall for how, how impossible it is to talk about a Catholic and Orthodox reunion. Because they don't even have a methodological reunion within themselves on a universal level. So to talk about reunion with Catholicism, it's just going to devolve the partitions coming in, just like Eastern Catholicism came in through groups, partitions. Do you think there were things that Ubi said in the debate that he's going to get blowback for, or at least people who are generally on his side are going to publicly disagree with? They might disagree with that, that Bishop of Rome had the right to call ecumenical councils.

Usually scholars and Orthodox are adamant. No, the Emperor had the right to call an ecumenical council, not any bishop. I mean, he seems to want to take serious the data. So there are Orthodox out there who, like for example, I told him, I asked him, do you think the Russian Orthodox Church is canonically illiterate? He didn't really answer the question, I don't think. I can't remember. But the reason why I asked that is because the Russian Orthodox Church has produced official statements on primacy, particularly about

Constantinople denying that Constantinople has any kind of jurisdiction over the universal church, whether appellate or immediate, it doesn't matter. And they follow from canonical commentators like St.us of the Holy Mountain, the Haggiorite, and others who say Constantinople's primacy is regional. It's just to his patriarch. But Ubi seems, in his writings, in his videos, he seems to say that Constantinople, like Rome, has a universal appellate jurisdiction. Remember, in the beginning of the debate, he said Rome was the universal archbishop. So Constantinople

today would have to be the universal archbishop. The problem with that is what are the prerogatives of an archbishop vis-a-vis his bishops? There are canonical prerogatives. So as soon as you say that Constantinople enjoys the position of a universal archbishop to the other patriarchs, you put him in a position where he has power over them. And that's just... I don't... you don't come across a lot of Orthodox who say that. Yeah. And then wouldn't it be the case that Moscow would be rejecting the legitimate authority of Buffalo.

Yeah. And if it's a divine issue, then the Orthodox, the Russian Orthodox church would be guilty of denying a divinely instituted organ in the church, which, you know, and we didn't get to that, but we didn't have time to get to it. I want to tell you about Hello, which is the number one downloaded prayer app in the world. It's outstanding. Halo.com slash Matt Fradd, sign up over there right now

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Fantastic. Hello.com slash Matt Fradd. I have some questions here from our local supporters. I want to invite everybody watching if you would please consider becoming a supporter of ours over at matphrad.locals.com if you have the means. When you become an annual supporter, we send you a free pints with Aquinas beer stein. You just have to pay for shipping. You'll get these interviews one week before they hit YouTube.

You'll get to be part of a beautiful community of Catholics and non Catholics around the world who aren't there to be trolls, but are there to support each other here on Locals. It's really great. You also get exclusive streams from me and other things besides. So please consider it and I appreciate your support. Matfrad.locals.com. All right, I haven't read these, so let's see here. How does one, this person asked to be anonymous, how does one inspire a very sick lung disease terminal, not sure how long, Catholic family member to come back to the sacraments, specifically confession followed by Holy Communion? I would say that emphasizing the essence of the gospel as a path of suffering, it's, the gospel is an invitation to those who suffer and who are near death.

That's the cream of the crop. for Christianity, if you are in that specific situation, that is, it's like a force of gravity bringing you in. The Savior Himself suffered. And so the only way to really overcome this unstoppable force that's attacking your body is to go where you can be saved and to join the Savior who himself embraced suffering. And then to emphasize the love of God. Also to say what else are your options? You have lung disease, you're dying, you have cancer, you're stage four, this, that, whatever. Head your bets. Where are you gonna go? Yeah. Where are you gonna dying, you have cancer, you're stage four, this, that, whatever. Hedge your bets.

Where are you going to go? Yeah. Where are you going to go? Are you going to reject the sacraments, reject the faith, and then go to some other place to find relief? No. You are doomed. This is it.

You have one place to go, and that's the vortex vortex between life and death which is the sacraments. Yep Selarach says I hate to ask but what do you think about Michael Lofton and all the papacy debacle? I hate to see so much disunity among great Catholics and the church in general Was the first question what do I think about Michael Lofton? What do I think about Michael Lofton? What do you think about Michael Lofton and all the papers he debunked? Okay, well, it's no secret. You know, we did have a collaborator. We did collaborate in the past.

I helped him with reason and theology. You know, he had recently taken issue with me saying that I helped him start it. That's fine. I didn't mean to say like I had ownership of it or anything. I was just there since the beginning. So we helped each other out. Well, where it's at today is I think Michael Lofton has, he has healed his former objections to Catholicism that were built on radical traditional reactionism. You know, that's what led him out of Catholicism

in the first place. So when he came back to Catholicism, he had to heal that, he had to undo that perception that he had, that everything is just so terrible and the church is basically the case of hell of Brafail. So he has basically had to rethink whether that actually yielded. So he had to question all of his trad reactions and he has a point. Nuanced Catholicism, right? That's the way to take two things that look like they contradict and make them coherent. Well, that's, that is true. All credit to Michael Loftin. We do do that. We have to do that. To say that we can't do that is just ridiculous.

Problem, I think, is I think he's gone so far in the direction where he's just, he just, no matter what, he's going to reconcile two things that clearly don't go together. And so I think that God bless his heart. He's trying to do the right thing. I think he is, he is taking what is very clearly reality and forcing it to be a non reality and then judging people for taking it as a reality, you know, and that comes clear in his public videos and the way that he,

he talks about people, you know, Bishop Strickland and some of these folks who may have, maybe they've gone a little, I'm not saying they have, but maybe they have gone a little outside the boundary. But what about what they're looking at? Have that, has that gone outside the boundary? If it has, then we need to be a little bit more, um, less finger wagging at this group and that group. Yeah, okay.

Maybe this is wrong, but, but are you going to say that, that what we're experiencing in Rome is, is all right? No, we clearly see that there's something wrong. And so I think that he has geared a number of Catholics to go off of a, I think that he has geared a number of Catholics to go off of a, an intellectual principle that certain things can't happen. And it's, it's not accurate. It's not accurate. Certain things are happening and we have to just,

just take down the medicine, you know, here, take the Robitussin drink it down quickly. Um, and I think that he sees the consequences and implications of that as total destruction. Like if he, he thinks that my principles on what I think is allowable in the Catholic church, he thinks that that means the gates of hell have already prevailed. You know, I don't think, I don't think my positions get me to that point. It's a theological opinion, you know? So I think that

continue with the debates, Michael, but I think you need to, if you just shifted things and said, okay, well, this is an opinion, this is an opinion I hold to this opinion. His opinions are reasonable. Now there's some things that he says I don't think are reasonable, but his positions are reasonable. If he just said, okay, this guy over here disagrees with me, I'm not going to call him dumb. I'm not going to say he's a schismatic. I'm not going to say he's absurd. Um, I'm going to say, well, it's, it's, I disagree with it, but this is another position. So I think if he becomes more

amiable to coexist with the other positions, yes, the trads, yes, no, not the liberals, the crazy liberals, but within the orbit of those who are trying to stay in the nexus of the heart of Catholicism, I think that it'll go a longer way for people to hear him out. Yeah. Thank you. Devin Stewart asks, if you think the evidence for and against the papacy is so close, why doesn't that push you closer to Protestantism or atheism? Because it's a very good question.

Because Protestantism isn't just essentially a rebound. You know, oh, Catholicism, Orthodoxy didn't work, must be Protestantism. It doesn't have rebound credit. Protestantism has the burden of reconstructing what Christianity is. So it looks like the ricochet, oh, not Catholicism, not orthodoxy, oh, the ricochet Protestant, no, you have got to ask, okay, well, what does Protestantism stand on? And when you look at the burden of reconstruction that it has to build to say this is what Christianity is, I think you fall victim to the tyranny of subjectivity. What is Christianity? Well, I think it's this. Well, I think it's this. Well, I think it's that. Well, I think it's this. Well, that is tyranny. It's a

bigger tyranny than having to deal with the close call of catholicism in orthodoxy. Mm. Thank you Muhammad baba says who would eric like to debate next? Well, here's another way of putting it you can answer that but also if you could have One person that you could actually sit down and and by debate we mean like engage uh in in good faith Wow um And by debate we mean like engage in good faith. Wow. Probably Sean Luke. He's a, he's a Anglican friend of mine sharp as they come sharp as they come. And we've always had good interactions. He doesn't pull punches.

I don't pull punches. And yet we've always maintained such a good friendship. I would probably be him or Jordan Cooper. I should mention I've offered to debate Jordan Cooper on justification or the papacy. He's a really good guy. I think we could have a good debate too. Yeah. Okay. Titus to us says if someone offered you the option to cut off your legs and replace them with robot legs, okay, that would give you superpowers, would you accept that offer? What are the moral implications too severe

that you would turn it down? This is quite the question. I would not take that option because it would be totally outside of my comfort zone. I know nothing about having to operate robotic legs. Okay. Okay. Anthony Machetta says, since you admitted that you don't have a satisfactory answer for the Vigilius

question, how is this not a falsifier for Catholicism? Much thanks for your great work. Oh yeah. Okay. So the Vigilius argument, that's not what... What is that? Yeah. So the questioner is not understanding what Ubi or Denny was saying about... He was asking about the legitimacy of Silvarius' pontificate in light of the fact that he was deposed and basically removed from his position under the power of Justinian and Theodora and Vigilius.

The whole question was, it was related to the legitimacy of Silvarius and Vigilius. It has nothing to do with the legitimacy of the papacy itself. So when Denny asked that question, I haven't looked into the details cause it's really conspiratorial, um, as to what actually happened to Pope Silvarius. He was treated terribly according to the records by Pope Vigilius. And so there's a question as to what actually is legitimate in that transaction. But I didn't see how that relates to my resolution that the Vatican I is present in the 5th and 6th century.

It's just a conspiracy within the papal who was the pope at the time. So I don't know how it could even come close to a falsification of the papacy So I would have to like learn from them as to why they think yeah So when I said that I see a few people responding to him giving him links to I guess articles You've written him in the past. Okay, maybe Eric you borrow wordpress.com more comments on Vigilius. So maybe yeah I mean I've written about Vigilius, but yeah, that, Danny, that was not a concession to like, Oh yeah, we don't need, you know, all the evidence I've presented now goes away. Yeah. Yeah.

Um, Joe Ward says, would the church recognize the Orthodox canon if reunification would have happened? Would the Orthodox recognize the orthodox canon if reunification would have happened? Would the orthodox recognize the Catholic canon? I think would the Catholic church recognize the orthodox canon? No, I don't think so because the Catholic church has spoken definitively on the canon of scripture. The orthodox church has not. They have not. So there are some Orthodox synods that have a smaller canon than others. We would not be able to say, okay, you're fine with calling Revelation not canonical or something like that. I'm not sure if you're familiar or not, but I think Jimmy would say it's possible because at the Council of Trent,

when the canon was ratified, what was declared was the books that are inspired, not a declaration about what books aren't. In other words, the Catholic Church leaves open, could theoretically leave open the possibility that maybe there is another book or two. So my understanding, the only other Orthodox body that has more books than us would be the Ethiopic Orthodox. Oh, okay.

The Orthodox Church have a subtraction. Oh, I see. I see. I apologize. No, that's okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense then. Now could you tell me about this canonization of the non-Catholic that just took place? Is there a Coptic or more that were, um, St. Severus, uh, St. Severus of Ann, no, uh,

Isaac the Syrian, I think, or Isaac Nunn. Yeah. Yeah. I think the Syrians, the doctor of the church. Yes. So he's been a saint, right? So he was put into the Roman martyrology, I think. Who? This fellow you're talking about. Isaac of Nineveh. Okay.

Or maybe, yeah. If you're talking about the Assyrian saint. Yeah, sorry, I should have had more to go on when I asked you that question. No, that's okay. I saw... Well, I'm not seeing anything right now, but I was of the opinion that a non-Catholic person was just canonized by a Catholic.

Oh, I don't think so. I know, I mean, I know that Gregory Narek was a non-Catholic who was canonized. How can that be? That is one of those, I'll, you know, admittedly to me it's a very squirrely thing. Maybe that's too bold to say, but obviously what we would have to say is that they did not embody the culpability of schism, and they subjectivized the conditions for heavenly life. And the Church somehow came to a moral certainty of it. Is there anything that, I'm sure this is always the case, right, with debates you get done, wrapped up, and then you think about how it went. Are there things that you, obviously the answer is yes, but are there specific things you wish I had, I should have done that better.

I wish I had responded this way. Yeah. So, he brought up the Latin term, auctoritas, that when the popes in the first millennium talked about their authority, or when other people referred to papal authority, they used the classical Latin word auctoritas, which is to be distinguished from another word for authority, potestas, which means like power and authority. Well, auctoritas has an origin that gives it more of like a more, like a soft power, like it's got the ability to ratify,

but it's not, it's not something that is like an authority to impose and coerce, you know, make command. And he said that auctoritas has that lesser meaning, so the kind of primacy in the first millennium that the Pope had was like a lower version than today, where today the Roman Pope has potestas over all Christians. Well, I wanted to say I've written an article recently surveying the use of auctoritas for the last two thousand years, and the usage of that term is so wide and it's applicable to so many different domains. In fact, the

Pseudo-Isidorean Decretals, which Denny slash Ubbe has historically said, oh, the Isidorean decretals, which Danny slash Ubi has historically said, Oh, the Isidorean, the pseudo Isidor. Yeah. That's where they created the papacy, the forgeries, right? Well, in the forgeries, they use the word octory toss to refer to the Pope's power. How could they do that if they all knew that a story toss meant something like honor or something less. Tiktatus papai, one of the most widely referenced documents illustrating the Hildebrandian supremacy

of the papacy, uses Akhteritate to refer to the pope's authority. Unum sanctum uses the word Akhteritate to refer to the pope post authority. Unum sanctum uses the word actoritate to refer to the post authority. So it's very clear that actoritas does not need to be whittled down to one meaning of like a less honorific kind of ratifying permissible authority. It's got wide range of usage and it can be used to describe full-bl blown jurisdiction to command. I wish I would have said that, but we didn't have time. Yeah. Yeah. It seemed to be heating up towards the end there. I felt like we were just hitting. Oh yeah.

I wish we'd had no more time to talk about the Julius. But, uh, um, that's like, and I accepted, I, I said we should do the fifth sixth century because I wanted myself to be challenged because for me the most challenging part of history is the Vigilius event and I put myself in here in this position because I Wanted to see how well I could do Under it, but we didn't fortunately we didn't get a chance to go too far into it. Yeah, Eric as we wrap up What would you point people towards? I know we have your excellent

I mean, how you how do you feel about your book on the Papacy? Oh, I mean, I go back to it and I think it's a great resource for new students who don't want to spend 12 years doing all the hard reading I did. I put it all together for you and then you could branch out from there, study the best on the Orthodox side. So I recommend that for... So for those at home, it's called The Papacy, Eric Ibarra. Yeah. Where else can they go?

Well, so I have a book on Melchizedek and the Last Supper. That's probably my... I get the highest reviews for that because it supports the Catholic Orthodox view of the Eucharist in history and from the Bible I have a book on justification for Protestants and I have a book on the filioque for the Orthodox Church Yeah, and then if you want to check out my patreon classical Christian thought I have tons of articles videos I have a course I'm lecturing through the papacy book Whereabouts at patreon classical Christian thought yes, you also on YouTube. I am on YouTube classical Christian thought I see but primarily

Your stuff is over on patreon. It's half and half. It's like half and half. Yeah, brother It's always just lovely to talk to you. Yeah, it's nice to talk to somebody who kind of Yeah, also agrees that we're in a bit of a fog and can acknowledge it without going insane or being in this shit. Yeah. All right. Thanks. Thank you.

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