Pints With Aquinas - From Baptist Leftist to Conservative Catholic w/ Suan Sonna

Starting point is 00:00:00 G'day and welcome to Pints with Aquinas. My name is Matt Fradd. Today on the show we have Swan Sona. We're going to be talking about many things. His conversion from being a leftist Baptist, if that's even how he'd describe himself. I did. He may not, but we're going to be talking about that. His conversion to Catholicism. We're going to do a deep dive into papacy. Really brilliant young guy. You're going to love this interview. But the reason I'm looking at you right now is to let you know that we have some new merch um which you can see on the screen right now and if you click the link at the top of the description below you can go and buy it right now and you too can be attractive so uh yeah i thought it was kind of cool we haven't really done much merch before but i thought we'd try our hand at it so again click that link it's

Starting point is 00:00:41 thirteen dollars a t-shirt but you can also get that introverted but willing to discuss to mystic metaphysics on sweaters and all sorts of things so help us out by doing that swan lovely to have you mate thanks for having me on yeah good to good to have you you just flew in last night very late yeah yeah it wasn't too bad yeah yeah and you're from Kansas? From Kansas. Studying? Philosophy at Kansas State. Right. And so a 21-year-old undergrad, but also publishing in academic journals with like the best of them. I guess, you know. That's really impressive.

Starting point is 00:01:16 Yeah. What are your specialties right now? What are you? So right now I'm really focused like in philosophy and ethics. I really enjoy that topic and i enjoy how it intersects with metaphysics and so questions of uh for instance um what is normativity and is there a fact value distinction right so thomas addresses this with his natural law theory um but on my own time i'm really interested in the papacy and scripture yeah what do you do for fun

Starting point is 00:01:41 what i do for fun that's not impressive at all um i i play with my cat sebastian cool oh yeah he's a he's a he's a very aggressive cuddler okay uh and then i go to the movies with my friends and you know i go out and hang out with them have bonfires you know just normal normal things yeah yeah very good yeah well man it's great to have you we had you on the show once before to debate the papacy with Protestant Stephen Neames? Stephen Nemesh. Nemesh, I'm sorry. And it was, did Christ establish an infallible magisterium?

Starting point is 00:02:13 Yeah. That's right. And you did absolutely excellent. Thank you. That was amazing. If people are watching right now and they want to see a fantastic debate on the magisterium, on the papacy, go check that out because that was the bomb. So, yeah. So, I didn't know this about you until last night. We all had the blessing of sitting around outside Scott Hahn's house

Starting point is 00:02:31 with like three Protestants who are in the midst of converting who will go nameless. Yeah. And somebody else who's right now discerning between orthodoxy and Catholicism. But you were raised a Baptist. I was, yeah. What was that like?

Starting point is 00:02:44 Oh, it was great, you know. So, just to give you a little bit about my backstory, my father's a Baptist minister, and my mother, she has some theological education. And so, in 2000, my dad left northeastern India to come here. And, you know, he was a young guy. He thought that he could manage, you know, just studying in seminary, then coming back to India. But about a year into his studies, he realized that he just really couldn't live without his family. And so the Baptist Church in Kansas, they raised enough money to get my entire family here in 2001. And so I grew up in a very good environment. It was very Bible-centered, very Jesus-centered.

Starting point is 00:03:23 And I grew up around a lot of missionary kids, you know, like my father's family, you know. And so I grew up with kids from Africa, from other parts of Asia. And it was a very, very beautiful upbringing. I have nothing bad to say about how I was raised as a Baptist because they really emphasized love of Christ and love of other people. What were your thoughts about Catholics as you were growing up, or did you not have any? Yeah, well, I didn't have too many. I thought their churches were pretty, especially the older ones that were downtown. Yeah, I was going to say, a lot of them are crap.

Starting point is 00:03:55 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm glad you saw the beautiful ones. I only saw the pretty ones. But they weren't on my radar. And I just thought a lot of my Hispanic friends were Catholic, and so I said, that's cool. I didn't really think about converting, or I didn't have any negative thoughts. I thought the stuff about Mary was a little weird, like all the statues. And I wanted to know what that was about.

Starting point is 00:04:12 But I didn't care. You know, I was happy. So, okay, but this is interesting because before you came to the church, which was when? I came in Pentecost 2020. Wow. So last year. Yeah. That's nuts. Does it feel a lot longer than that? Well, I like to say that when I became Catholic, it just felt so natural that it was just the next evolution of my faith, so to speak. So,

Starting point is 00:04:36 I feel like I've been Catholic my whole life, actually. Wow. Yeah. Well, I'm so excited to talk to you about the papacy and defending the papacy from Scripture and objections people have towards it, especially in this day and age where people aren't terribly fond of our current Holy Father. Yeah. There seems to be, you know, even if people think he's okay, they don't seem to look upon him as they did John Paul II, say, or Pope Benedict. Yeah. So that'll be good. But, yeah, so tell us a bit about your upbringing because you mentioned to me that when you went into university, you started to sort of adopt sort of leftist

Starting point is 00:05:08 ideas. So I want to know how you went to that and then how you went to being Catholic. Yeah, so it was actually more high school. So when I was in high school, you know, everyone around me was liberal. And I thought like, okay, that's the reasonable thing to be right. So be leftist, be progressive. I was super big into democratic socialism. I was reluctantly pro-choice. And I just believe that, you know, marriage is just whatever you make it to be, right? And so I didn't really, you know, defend these traditional beliefs of the church, of the faith. Even though you were a Baptist.

Starting point is 00:05:39 Even though I was a Baptist, you know? And so, but then at the same time, I was watching people like William Lane Craig. I was really into apologetics. And it just, it didn't occur to me until one day, I forget when, but I just started, I stopped and I asked myself, like, why do I not believe that marriage is a union of one man and one woman? Or why am I so hesitant or quiet about it? You know, because a lot of my friends, they were very openly pro-choice and, you know, pro the red redefinition of marriage. And so I just thought, okay, well, why am I so hesitant? Why am I so quiet? And so I started

Starting point is 00:06:10 going to scripture and I started reading Paul, you know, book of Romans. I started looking elsewhere and I just started realizing, man, I can't really get around, you know, this position that I'm in, you know, I need to find a way to adopt the traditional perspective that seems to be there in the scriptures. And so I started reading Catholic philosophers and theologians like St. Thomas Aquinas, Robert George, Ryan T. Anderson, John Finnis, and it finally gave me the intellectual confidence to be able to say, okay, I accept the teaching of scripture because I see it in the natural law and I see it in the authoritative text of the word of God. Yeah, you seem like a really intelligent guy who's open to where the arguments lead and somebody who's not just going to go along with something because it's emotionally, whatever, powerful. But so how did you begin to start having those beliefs about, you know, being okay with abortion, maybe in certain circumstances?

Starting point is 00:07:03 Was it just because your friends held those views? Were you also thinking things through at the time? I mean, a lot of it was just kind of peer pressure in a way. I didn't really think really deeply about it because I thought like, okay, you know, I used to have a really big ego and now like I have no ego at all. So back in the day, you know, I used to think like, oh, well, you know, this is what the smart people believe, you know, and I was looking around and most of the conservatives that I knew were like the really cringe, you know, like on YouTube yelling and screaming into the mic, you know.

Starting point is 00:07:31 That's funny because now I have the opposite impression. Really? Yeah. Like I'm open to whatever argument someone who claims to be leftist may have. Yeah. But when I think of people shouting into their phone while they're driving about something, it's not the conservative people. Though I'm sure they do that as well. Right, right.

Starting point is 00:07:45 And so I didn't grow up with a very good impression of conservatives, and I didn't think they were very intellectual or thoughtful. And so, yeah, I mean, I just adopted what my friends believed. And it didn't occur to me until later, wait a minute, there's a problem here. Because I remember in particular, you know, I was pro-choice, and I had a friend of mine named Charles, and I think he's fine with me mentioning him. He texted me while I was on a trip with my orchestra in high school. And he said, Swan, why are you pro-choice? Just out of the blue. Yeah, just out of the blue.

Starting point is 00:08:14 Just dropped it right on me. And I was just enjoying, you know, the bus ride to wherever we were going. And I told him, like, oh, it's because I don't believe that pre-born humans are persons. So they don't have consciousness they don't have first person reflexive consciousness or whatever and then he's like wait but if you believe that then you ought to be okay with infanticide then and i'm like no no no i know infanticide's a horrible thing you know once the child's outside the womb that that's a totally different conversation but he's like well not in principle and then i started looking at some of

Starting point is 00:08:41 the research he was sending in and i was like wait okay so some children aren't you know yeah aware of like a first person awareness until months after they're born and i'm like man i'm not okay with infanticide and then i started looking more into like what actually goes on in abortion and you not looked at that no no i just like you know like the way that people pro-choice people talk about abortion is they just say it's ending a pregnancy. Yeah. Right? And it's like, oh, well, you end a pregnancy. You know, you use contraception maybe or something like that.

Starting point is 00:09:10 So I was like, okay, it's not a big deal. And even if you do have to kill the unborn life, it's probably just a bunch of clump of cells. It doesn't look too human or whatever. And then I looked at the process and I looked at what other philosophers like Peter Singer or I think it's Michael Tooley had argued. And I saw, wait a minute, their position leads to infanticide if they're being consistent. They seem okay with it. And they're okay with it, right? And so I started talking to my pro-choice friends about this, bringing up the science and the evidence. And they were like, oh, they didn't know that that was the ramification of their belief.

Starting point is 00:09:44 And so at first they seemed kind of open-minded because I was still one of them, so to speak. I was kind of like, you know, yeah, but you're not a threat. Yeah, as a fellow liberal, you know, I've been thinking about this, you know. And then, you know, things changed when I became conservative. But that's when I started really second-guessing my beliefs on the issue. Now, you told me that I think when you were in high school and you were struggling with the faith, you reached out to Dr. William Lane Craig, and he got back to you. You have to tell us that story.

Starting point is 00:10:12 Right. Okay. So, you know, while I was struggling with the issue of marriage and abortion, I really got into the topic of also the interpretation of Genesis chapter one and two, and particularly like, do I have to be a six-day creationist, or do I have to be theologically liberal and just not take the Bible seriously, right? And sorry for the theological liberals who might be, you know, not happy with what I just said. But regardless, I started having doubts, because I'm like, okay, if evolution happened and there wasn't an Adam and Eve, there was always death and suffering on the face of the earth.

Starting point is 00:10:47 And at least if you have the Adam and Eve story in the Garden of Eden, then you can say, you know, there was a time when it was all good and we messed it up, right? But then I started resenting the story of Adam and Eve because I was like, man, I don't want to believe that we once had it right and we lost it, you know? I was like, man, I don't want to believe that we once had it right and we lost it, you know? And, you know, my dad, who's a minister, you know, he would sometimes take me around to see, you know, what he does and to have me pray with him. And I visited this elderly woman who was in the hospital and she was dying. And, you know, in the hospital room, there was like a crucifix. So it was a Catholic hospital. And as I was watching her die and I looked at the well i didn't i didn't she didn't die in front of me but she was dying um and i looked up at the crucifix i was like where are you you know where are you christ you're just letting this woman die you know and i thought

Starting point is 00:11:36 like man is this the history of life on the earth is this what it's all been about is this is it really a god or do we just invent him you And I started having these doubts. And so I became agnostic and I told Bill Craig, hey, Bill Craig. How did you get his email? You just reached out over the website? So on Reasonable Faith, they have this Q&A portion. And so I wrote to him there and I wrote out my objections and I wrote out all my questions and everything. And then I was like, yeah, there's no way Bill Craig's going to respond because there's probably tens of others of questions that he wants to answer. But he answered it. And he destroyed me.

Starting point is 00:12:11 Bill Craig destroys Swan Sona. We've got to make that a clear. That's fantastic. Yeah, I mean, like, he responded to my objections. He showed me that I was being too rash, that I was being too emotional, basically. And I wasn't thinking clearly through what i was saying and so i told bill craig hey can you like delete my name from the question and stuff and so now it's anonymous but you can find the number because we get a link to that

Starting point is 00:12:34 below to watch swan get destroyed by bill craig honestly though but that because it was a question of the week probably yeah question of the week do me a favor send me that would you mind sending me the link uh yeah i mean you did say take your name off of it right you've developed since then i imagine you're okay yeah i mean like yeah you can you can look at you can look at it if you want no i mean yeah sure i'll send it to you but uh yeah it's pretty i look back and i kind of laugh at it because i'm like dang i got i got destroyed you know um but yeah so he answered that and then i reached out to him on facebook and i was like hey hey, Bill Craig, I'm so glad that you responded because now I feel like I can I'm I'm back to being a Christian, but I'm really uncomfortable. But I'm getting there, you know, like I was done being agnostic for the time.

Starting point is 00:13:15 So I was only agnostic for a bit, maybe like a few months or something like that. And Craig, you know, he's really sweet, really generous. And, you know, he said, yeah, I can. And, uh, you know, he said, yeah, I can make it anonymous and everything. And so he really did help me get my faith back on track because he taught me that, um, you know, even if you have all these doubts or questions, like think about my arguments for the resurrection, right? And he said, look at the arguments I've given there, the Kalam, look at all these other things I've done, right? If the arguments are strong enough, then at least you can say, okay, if you have a web of beliefs, the thing that's at the center is the resurrection,

Starting point is 00:13:49 or it's the Kalam, or whatever argument you prefer for the existence of God and for the claims of Christ. And so I started realizing, okay, so I got to find a way to reconcile this belief that I have that, okay, I think the earth is old, evolution happened, and so I got to reconcile these two things. And so I started reading tons of books think the earth is old, evolution happened, and so I got to reconcile these two things. And so I started reading tons of books on the problem of evil, on the problem of natural evil, and then eventually I came to a pretty comfortable position when it came to evolution in Christianity. Yeah, can we talk more about that, about Adam and Eve? I remember being surprised that in the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas asks the question, in some way, shape, or form,

Starting point is 00:14:25 was there death before the fall? And he says, yes. And he said that Adam and Eve's choice didn't lead carnivorous animals, or sorry, vegetarian animals to suddenly become carnivorous. So that's something. But yeah, what was your kind of biggest hang up with Adam and Eve and where you are right now on that? Yeah. So I'll tell you where I am right now. So I do believe there was a historical Adam and Eve, although at this moment, though— And do you believe that for theological reasons or scientific reasons? Theological reasons. Because I just—I really have a hard time seeing how the story of Scripture holds up if you don't have a historical Adam and Eve.

Starting point is 00:15:02 Because they play such a central role, right? holds up if you don't have a historical Adam and Eve, because they play such a central role, right? And so what I believe is that Adam and Eve were a special creation by God, and that the Garden of Eden was kind of an oasis in which God allowed Adam and Eve to be our first high priest, and they were able to represent all of creation, and that when they fell, they showed to God, so to speak, that as human beings, our highest representatives had failed. And so Adam and Eve are like the maximum, so to speak, in the genus human, right? So we can't go higher than Adam because he's our federal head. He's the human being specifically designated by God to represent us.

Starting point is 00:15:40 Until the new Adam came along to be our new representative. And if we are united to his body and his reality, then we become a new creation, right? And so, I mean, I accepted historical Adam and Eve. The question that some of my Catholic friends have brought up, though, is like, do you believe, Swan, that every human being naturally finds their origin in Adam and Eve? And the thing is, like, when I read the book of Genesis, I think Pope Pius XII, he explicitly said, rejected, is it polygynism? Polygynism, yeah.

Starting point is 00:16:07 Something like that, right, where like multiple human beings appeared on the scene, right, or something like that, rather than their origin in Adam and Eve. My understanding from Humanae Generis is that that language in which he seeks to call into question polygynism is too vague to be thought of as a sort of papal declaration, a sort of magisterial declaration. Yeah, that's what I thought. Yeah, because he seems to say there seems to be no way of reconciling. I think that's the language, if I recall correctly. Yeah, yeah. But fair enough. But I mean, sure, maybe that's right, though.

Starting point is 00:16:36 And so why do you think that? So because, you know, when you read the book of Genesis, it's never explained where Cain's wife came from. Yeah. And it's like, okay. It does seem prima facie as you read those first few chapters. book of Genesis, it's never explained where Cain's wife came from. And it's like, okay. It does seem prima facie as you read those first few chapters, for at least, I'm not even making this claim. I'm just saying it seems that there's other humans around. Exactly, exactly. And the scriptures themselves provide no further explanation on where they came

Starting point is 00:16:58 from, right? And so it seems to me that Adam and Eve were special creations of God, just as the new Adam and the new Eve are special creations of God. And so you can use that historical typology. But I also believe that because Adam and Eve failed, you know, a lot of people, they're really embarrassed when you tell them that they evolved from ape-like creatures or hominids, right? But I think like that's the point because sin brought us to such an embarrassing state because we were supposed to be, you know, in a sense, over the animal kingdom and unique and different as rational animals. But then when we look at our origin, you know, we're no different than the other animals to some extent, right? And so I think that has to do in part with the fall, because the fall, I think, has retroactive

Starting point is 00:17:38 consequences as well as forward-looking consequences. There's a lot to go into there, but yeah. Yeah, you began by saying some of your Catholic friends will say to you, did we naturally come from Adam and Eve? And then you talked about other humans, perhaps. So how do you reconcile that? Where are you at right now? Right. So I think that the rest of the human race evolved by evolution, and they came about through that natural process under divine providence, right? But then Adam and Eve were the special creation of God to be our representatives before him and to be the representatives of all humanity.

Starting point is 00:18:10 Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's important too. Like I can imagine hearing what you just said, maybe 20 years ago, right? As I was sort of still becoming Catholic or 21 years ago and being like, oh, come on. Like, this is just like, you're just trying to make your story work yeah yeah but we all do that i mean we all begin with what's more apparent to us and then from that vantage point try to make sense of what's less apparent yeah um so in a sense we do that in every branch of science and i just realized too you know i i really so you know it's funny because a lot of young earth creationists um and you know i'm not trying to be disrespectful to anybody but a lot of young earth creationists we use the argument, well, if you drop the Bible right in front of somebody, what would they believe about human origins, right?

Starting point is 00:18:49 When I was a kid, I read the story of Adam and Eve, and once I saw that the sun and moon weren't created until the fourth day, I was like, oh, okay, so day isn't being literally used. You picked that up just from reading it. When I was a kid, yeah. I mean, Augustine addressed that. I hadn't read Augustine at the time yeah yeah but i was just like oh okay so okay there's some liberties being taken here but i see that there's like a historical core at least

Starting point is 00:19:12 even if there's some extravagances on the side um but yeah i mean i just i didn't have that intuition as a kid and the more i got deeper into science i just started realizing like if you're really gonna take like the young earth creationist, you really have to do a lot of difficult bending and twisting with the evidence. And, uh, I just, I didn't want, I couldn't do that. Yeah. Were people in your Baptist church circles, uh, where, where did they fall in this conversation? A lot of them are young earth creationists, but I mean, there's a, uh, among the among the I hate to put it like this but among like the more educated professor types you know they're older or theistic evolution okay yeah yeah so then you started getting introduced to Catholicism as you were reading these

Starting point is 00:19:57 sort of new crop of what are they called the natural law theorists yeah new natural new natural law yeah like George and others. Right. Yeah, so I started paying attention to Catholic philosophy and theology, and I was like, dang, okay, Catholics are really smart, but they're wrong about the papacy, they're wrong about justification. What's going on with Mary? You know, Mary was a big hang-up for me, actually. It is for many. Yeah. And so, you know, I had a hard time kind of accepting that. And at this point in the story, intellectually speaking, I had been convinced of conservative Christianity, right? A belief in the dignity of human life from conception to a natural death. I was convinced of that.

Starting point is 00:20:36 And then I was convinced, intellectually speaking, that marriage is a union of one man and one woman. But I started having a really hard time with accepting that because I had a lot of friends in the LGBT community in high school. And so I'm like, how can I say I love you, but I believe this at the same time? And so growing up, because I didn't have my biological grandparents, I had adopted grandparents, basically. So, you know, elderly people in the Baptist community who were like my grandparents. And so my adopted grandfather, he had died a while back. And so, and that left a huge hole in my childhood when he passed away. But my adopted grandmother, she told me a story about how he took care of a gay man. And, you know, he was struggling with drugs and other things and homeless. And my grandfather, he would bring him in.

Starting point is 00:21:27 He would take care of him. He would feed him. He would do all that he could. And whenever this man would ask him, do you believe what the Bible says about marriage? My grandfather said, yes, but that's not going to stop me from loving you. And when I heard that my deceased grandfather had lived that way, I saw the perfect balance between truth and grace. And I said, Christ, like, I never want to look at the words of Christ and

Starting point is 00:21:52 just say, you know, sweep it under the rug. I, you know, I, even in my life when I've struggled with God, the father or God, the spirit, cause it seems too abstract. I've never lost a devotion to God, the son. And so I said, God, make me a good son of yours. Help me to accept what you've taught here in Scripture, what I see in the natural law. And because of my Baptist Protestant grandfather's example, that helped me get over the emotional hurdle. And so at this time then, I've ousted myself among my liberal friends. They kind of give me weird looks. We have these conversations that get really awkward and painful. But at the same time, though, they know that especially like my transgender friends, they knew that I wasn't going to oust them or treat them horribly.

Starting point is 00:22:37 They knew that they could come to me and talk to me about their problems. And I treated them with respect, you know. their problems and I treated them with respect, you know? Um, and so as time passed, um, I got into like this kind of spiritual wasteland because on one hand I saw that a lot of the conservatives I was listening to, they didn't want to talk about natural law theory. They weren't interested in what I was talking about, you know? Um, evolution, heck no, you know, they just threw that all out the window. And then, um, you know, I felt like, man, but is there anybody else out there who's like me? And I got on YouTube one time and I watched this documentary called Why Beauty Matters by Sir Roger Scruton on BBC. I love that.

Starting point is 00:23:14 I love that man. Yeah. Yeah. I actually, just quick story, reached out to him to see if he would endorse my book, The Porn Myth, because he had spoken so eloquently on pornography. And he wrote back and said no but i had an email from him and i was just thrilled yeah well i got to tell you more about sir roger but first you know um sure why beauty matters yeah right why beauty matters so he that that really got me enchanted because at this time you know i intellectually and

Starting point is 00:23:42 emotionally accepted the truths about the scriptures and what they taught about, you know, human sexuality and the dignity of human life. But I was just like, man, but I'm alone. And life is difficult. And then I watched this documentary about beauty and he talks about like the Christian tradition and how we used to emphasize the centrality of beauty in our everyday lives. And I was like, I want that view of the world. I want that enchantment that he's talking about, you know? And so I actually emailed Sir Roger Scruton, and I told him, this is when I'm about 16, I think,

Starting point is 00:24:13 and I told him, like, Sir Roger, you've changed my life because I found your documentary, I've been reading your books. And he responded back to me, and he said, Swan, you know, I'm so touched that a 16-year-old like you has read my works, you know? And so over the years, Sir Roger and I, we developed a friendship through email. And kind of a fun story too. I invited him to my graduation party after I graduated from high school. And he's like, he was like, you know, Swan, I'd love to come, but I'm right now on a lecture tour throughout Europe. And so I can't really come, but he said, I'm honored that you

Starting point is 00:24:42 invited me. And so, yeah, like he like he was really instrumental in me loving beauty. I just love that you somehow get on the email and just write to these big wigs and they write back. And see, like a lot of people think that, oh, these guys are too big. They're too busy. But if you really send them an email, I think like 70% of the time they will respond. Did you and Sir Roger ever speak about faith? Because I could never get a real read on where he was. I know he attended, I think, an Anglican church far from his home, but I don't think he was a theist. And I actually had an episode of my channel, Intellectual Conservatism,

Starting point is 00:25:15 with a student of Sir Roger, where we talked a little bit about his faith. And so I never talked about it with him, you know, formally face to face or anything like that. But when he was near his death, I emailed Sir Roger one final email. And I told him, you know, thank you for everything you did for me. Because if it wasn't for you, if it wasn't for your philosophy, I would have never become conservative. I would have never become Catholic if it weren't for you. And I said, Sir Roger, I know you said somewhere that you're not really concerned about the afterlife. And I said, but Sir Roger, I really want to see you in heaven. You know, I really want to see you in heaven

Starting point is 00:25:55 because we never got the chance on earth. And he said, Swan, thank you so much. Your email has given me the strength to endure this disease, this illness. And he didn't mention faith at all in his reply, but I still pray for him, and I still think about him. And honestly, when I talked to his student, Sebastian Morello, on my channel, he talked about how Sir Roger's funeral was very rich with the Psalms, with Scripture. And he said, this doesn't sound like the funeral of someone who didn't believe in God. I think my theory is that Sir Roger had a hard time believing in God, but because he believed in beauty so much, because he believed in goodness so much, and the enchantment and

Starting point is 00:26:34 wonder of a human person, of the delight of creation, I think Sir Roger, deep down, did believe in God, even if it was difficult for him to fully accept. Now, you said you became a Catholic last year, right? Yeah, yeah. You're 16 when you're telling Sir Roger that you're now a conservative. Yeah, yeah. What did that mean to you? What does it mean for you to have this sort of political transformation, as it were, from maybe you identified as a liberal to a conservative? Yeah, well, I mean, so I i think you know oftentimes uh people kind of complain like conservatives don't have a plan you know they don't have a strict set of principles or

Starting point is 00:27:09 like a general grand narrative right so usually like with the political left you know you'll have a narrative about a kind of grievance where you have this power struggle the upper class the oppressor has you know um structurally systematically disenfranchised a certain group of people, right? Whereas with the right, you know, it kind of takes for granted the history and traditions that are there, so to speak. And so I started realizing that conservatism should be better understood as just this general attitude where I think Sir Roger put it best in his book, How to Be a Conservative. Beautiful things are easily

Starting point is 00:27:45 destroyed but not easily created right and at the core of the conservative vision of reality is a kind of what's called a tragic vision so thomas soul is a famous kind of articulator of this in his book a conflict of visions um and basically with uh the tragic vision there's this idea that no matter what you do, there's just inbuilt human limitations. You have to make the best of sometimes the worst options, right? And I know it sounds pretty dark, you know, but I appreciate the tough realism of it, right? Because I had to go through that kind of tough realism in my own life. I couldn't just believe what I thought was emotionally convenient. And precisely because I love the people that I was talking to, the people that I wanted to help, especially the poor and those who have been

Starting point is 00:28:28 systematically discriminated against, I wanted to think about what is really actually going to help them. So I wanted to look at the research papers. I wanted to study. I remember I talked to one friend of mine who just said, yeah, I don't believe in economics. What does that mean? So he denied scarcity. He denied opportunity cost. He denied that economics was a thing, you know? And so he believed that you could just reconstruct society however you want it to be. And I'm like, but there are natural inbuilt limitations, right? Like human beings don't have this infinitely malleable human nature. Like we struggle with sin. We struggle with darkness. But we have this great capacity for

Starting point is 00:29:05 good. But that capacity for good has to be instantiated through virtue and habituation towards virtue, right? It's a very Aristotelian thought. But yeah, for me, conservatism, I think at the core of it is one, it's this recognition of human limitation. But it's also this recognition that there is a moral law and that there is something transcendent to which society ought to be oriented towards, right? And so conservatives are perfectionists. By that, it means that the government shouldn't be morally neutral on controversial matters, contra the classical liberal tradition. You know, the government should have a conception of public morality, enforce those morals, and ensure that the populace to the greatest extent possible follows through on that moral vision.

Starting point is 00:29:50 And so because I was a natural law theorist, you know, a Thomist, I knew what that moral vision was. For those who are listening right now who think that conservatism is synonymous with the Republican Party, what do you say to them? No, it's not. Republican Party, what do you say to them? No, it's not. Like, the Republican Party, I'd say, oftentimes what passes as, like, conservative in America is just libertarianism. It seems that way. Yeah. But in reality, conservatism is a much richer view of the world. And, you know, I started reading the works of Edmund Burke during this time. And, you know, Roger is considered the spiritual inheritor of Edmund Burke. And Burke talked about how society is a covenant between the dead, the living, and the unborn, right? So, you know, society is not all about just who we are now.

Starting point is 00:30:34 It's about those who came before us who, in a sense, sacrificed and gave up their lives and made certain sacrifices and changes so that we could be alive, so that we could have a society. And that at the same time, we hope to pass on our legacy to those who are yet to come. And so I would say that the conservative view of a society is inherently not suicidal. Whereas a lot of views of society, like for instance Thomas Paine, who was—was it—Yval Levin considers him kind of like the paradigmatic thinker of the contemporary left today. He believed that every society had the right to recreate itself on the pretense of reason. And no traditions, no superstitions, right? So do away with that kind of stuff. It's about you here and now recreating society in your image. And that kind of view of the world leads to resentment.

Starting point is 00:31:28 It leads to anger, it leads to hatred, it leads to bitterness of the past. It leads to a total disregard of those who are yet to come. You know, I just had a thought that was really fascinating because I remember when I was a kid and the internet didn't really exist right now. And then when it started to come in, I remember thinking about people who were pornography performers. And obviously a lot of my work is revolved around this. And I gosh you know one of the arguments would be like you don't want to be a grandma one day and like have have people know this yeah but i've noticed that it seemed to me from my perspective that people just don't care about what things will be like for them when they're older yeah so to your point about all that matters is right here right now

Starting point is 00:32:04 you do get the sense that a lot of us just to hell with like five years from now ten years from now how people will view me in the future yeah i mean i think a lot of young people today especially um this idea of thinking 10 years ahead gives them a lot of anxiety right a lot of pain and so what people believe now is because they don't believe there's a transcendent or higher reality to look to they just have to make the best of what they have now. And so, for instance, you know, this kind of laissez-faire view on human sexuality and social ethics or public morality, it comes down to this belief that, well, let me just be happy. I mean, I'm not happy now, but let me find something that'll make me happy. Maybe it's pornography. Maybe it's, you know, getting wasted

Starting point is 00:32:43 with my friends. Maybe it's, you know, making fun of the religious people and making myself feel better for whatever insecurities I have, you know? Or deciding I'm a different sex and having reassignment surgery. Yeah, that sort of thing, you know? Let me redefine myself totally. Because when you start telling people, no, there is a natural law, or no, there, you know, there is a real human nature the way things work exactly then they think oh you're imposing this on me right because um they view they view a lot of this kind of talk about objective morality as just a power game where for instance you know you and i right as men are imposing our morality on the bodies of women and hence you know we are anti-women because we're

Starting point is 00:33:22 pro-life stuff Stuff like that. Yeah, it's kind of like a football game where all the footballers start deciding that the rules don't apply. They can make up. Imagine the chaos that would ensue. You know, everyone's got a different idea of how things ought to work. And there's no overarching narrative. And so, yeah, it just leads to despair, leads to frustration, deep frustration. I mean, and most people would believe something like mill's harm principle right where it's like you know as long as you have consenting uh adults and you don't harm unconsenting third parties

Starting point is 00:33:54 then it's totally okay this seems to me yeah how we understand morality today yep yeah so the only thing that's immoral is you using your autonomy to infringe upon mine right the end the end yeah yeah and so i mean one of the problems there is that what is harm right um and then if you if you have a conception what harm is then what is the conception of flourishing right is it really just up in the air totally and then when i got into natural law theory one of the principal questions is what does lead to human flourishing? What leads to the good life? And that was the thing that I really focused on. And once I found that natural law vision, I just found this way more holistic and beautiful view

Starting point is 00:34:34 of the world. And the thing is, you know, I often say like the purpose in my life is to give people justified hope in Christ and in his church. Because a lot of times, you know, people think like, oh, you tell me that and it's just too good to be true, right? But what I found beautiful was not only the fact that I had this objective moral theory and it made sense of things. It was literally a science of human flourishing. You know, that's how Aristotle wanted to view his theory of ethics. But I also saw it was true. It made sense of things, right? And so it had a security to it that nothing else did, made sense of things, right? And so it had a security to it that nothing else did, nothing else that I'd believed before. During this time, were you introduced to the writings of Thomas Aquinas and what was that like? Yeah, so I started reading Thomas Aquinas and, you know, it was

Starting point is 00:35:17 really hard to read him directly because, you know, it's kind of a little old-timey English. And of course, I wasn't competent in Latin at all, and so I couldn't read him in his original writings. But I read a lot of people who commented on his work or who were explaining his work. So people like Ed Fazer, David Oderberg, who's a really good one, Rob Koons, Alex Pruss, you know, all these guys. I read Thomas through them,

Starting point is 00:35:41 and they also took Thomas into the modern context and showed why his ideas still work. How, okay, you've talked a bit about your friends and how they reacted to this. What about your family, if you don't mind me asking? Me being conservative? Well, I suppose they probably would have been happy with that. Well, so my parents, they like to keep their hands out of politics, you know. And, you know, my dad, he tells me his political opinions sometimes, but he wants me to keep quiet about them in public, you know, because he has to be careful about that sort of thing. Sure. But, I mean, they didn't mind. I think they were pretty

Starting point is 00:36:15 happy, actually, because at least it was based in scripture, you know. Yeah, yeah. Did you find some kind of alliances at the school you were at of people? Yeah. This sort of resurgence of conservatism? I had some, like, friends who were kind of, like, underground quiet about their conservatism. And they're like, yeah, Swan, we really appreciate how you came out and just said you're conservative, you know. And then even, you know, I did speech and debate in high school. Actually, I did it since middle school. But then I carried on until the very end of high school.

Starting point is 00:36:45 And, you know, I gave a speech. So there's an event called original oration where you write your own speech. And I think it's about maybe eight minutes or seven minutes long, if I remember properly. And I gave a speech about why I became conservative. And it was really funny because a lot of the judges in Kansas loved the speech, right? But then eventually, like, when I'd go to a college town and compete, and I had a judge who was, like, in their late, early 20s or late 30s, they didn't want to hear it at all. So, you know, but it was a fun time. It was a good time. So how did you stop being wooed into the Catholic Church? Yeah, that's a good question. Okay, so I started getting really into beauty. Sir Roger Scruton had a huge impact on me. I started reading Catholic philosophers and theologians.

Starting point is 00:37:27 And I thought, okay, Catholics, they're cool, but they're wrong. Yes. And about the end of high school, I really wanted to go into Princeton University. And I became friends with Robert George, and I emailed him and talked to him. And I applied early action, and they deferred me into just regular admission time. And so I said, okay, I'll wait for them. And I was super anxious. I was super worried. I was trying to always, you know, be the top at everything I did. And eventually I got rejected by Princeton and my whole worldview

Starting point is 00:37:55 just came crashing down. Okay. So even though I was conservative, you know, I hadn't worked on a lot of the inner problems that I had, you know? And so like still the ego was there and stuff like that. But then I was crushed by that rejection. You said earlier that you were full of ego then and you're not anymore. Was this part of that? This was part of the humbling process because, you know, people always say don't pray to God to humble you. Well, before I got rejected by Princeton, I did pray for God to humble me.

Starting point is 00:38:21 See, that's where you went wrong. And then that's when it happened, you know? So my ego was destroyed. I got rejected from Princeton. I had to completely, you know, reevaluate everything. And when I got into college during my first year at Kansas State, I was miserable every single day. Like, it was a palpable misery that I could feel. And it was during the second semester of my freshman year, I decided to sign up for a class called Medieval Political and Social Thought.

Starting point is 00:38:50 And just to give you a bit of a backstory here, like even though in high school after I became Christian again, you know, I started preaching ministry because, as I said before, especially after I listened to Sir Roger Scruton, I was really interested in re-enchanting people's view of the world. And so I preached about cultural evangelism. I preached about how do you reach people today who don't believe in grand narratives, who have lost faith and hope in God and institutional religion. And so the focus of my ministry, especially at the conferences and

Starting point is 00:39:20 churches I preached at, was how do you minister to people today? How do we go from Christendom to secularism? And so I took this class during the second semester of my freshman year, and that was the precise subject of the class. How do we get from Christendom to secularism? And so we read, you know, the greats like Aristotle, Socrates, Aquinas, and all them. And then eventually we read the book, Aular Rage by Charles Taylor. Excellent. Yeah and in that book we learned about how the Protestant Reformation led to secularism and it was

Starting point is 00:39:52 just like a brick fell on my head that's how it felt because I was like wait my tradition the thing that I've aligned myself with. What was his basic argument for how that happened? Yeah so there's a lot of inner working pieces of his argument and so I don't want to say that I remember them all. I don't remember all of them. But let me just reiterate at least what I got from the class

Starting point is 00:40:12 and what I think happened, right? So I think what happens is that one is that the Reformation is a fundamental break from the Christian tradition. It's a fundamental kind of recreation of yourself, right? And so we will create Christianity now in our image. We'll go back to the scriptures. We don't need the institution. We don't need the tradition. What we need is just the Bible itself, okay? And at that process then, you know, with that rupture of tradition, it goes down to the individual, okay?

Starting point is 00:40:39 So then it's not hard to see then how secular liberal democracy kind of came out of this kind of view of the world where you know you had people disagreeing all the time about doctrines and scriptures and they were killing each other over it because they had no universal authority they subscribed to anymore and they didn't believe that there could be a universal authority to subscribe to and so they had to develop these doctrines like let's agree to disagree let's tolerate each other you know especially in the writings of voltaire and others during this time, they're like, guys, let's just tolerate and live together despite our disagreements, right? There wasn't an urge to really settle the matter on a universal level. You know, you'd have private theologians write about it, but there wasn't a way to actually

Starting point is 00:41:18 settle it definitively for all of Christendom, right? And so at this point then, you know, you get the inner workings of a secular liberal democracy, a secular liberal democratic order, and at the same time also you lose a sacramental view of reality. Now this doesn't mean that Lutherans or Protestants don't believe in some form of sacramental realism, right? But that view begins to go out the window, slowly but surely, especially with Zwingli and others today and your own tradition the baptist tradition right exactly you know it's just a symbol uh the eucharist that is um and so at that point then the material world and the supernatural realm become two separate realities at least functionally speaking within your own liturgy right and of course the liturgy bleeds into society as well and so at that point then you know the idea that

Starting point is 00:42:05 like god's interaction with the world is kind of like in this epicurean model becomes popular right and so what i mean by that and this is something that nt right has proposed so it's not my original idea is that god has to kind of force his hand into the natural world in order to make things work and so you know take something like paley's watch right um you know like, you know, on its own, the natural world couldn't create a watch. And so you need this kind of exterior outside of the world designer to come in and impose order, right? That's what's going on here. And then in the process, like when evolution comes around, it's really easy just to do away with that view of the world. Because you don't have now this metaphysical sophistication

Starting point is 00:42:45 of let's say reality participates in god right and god has built order and natural law into things themselves right that becomes a harder sell right and then god slowly but surely becomes kind of pushed to the back he a lot of this view of like the of god as a fundamental metaphysical explanation kind of goes out the window you know you get the rise of voluntarism of divine command theory right that the dictates of god is what has to determine objective morality um and at this point too you know you have the scientific revolution happening not too long after the reformation and so at this point then you get a view of reality that is mechanistic so you get a philosophy of nature that believes that we're basically machines, that doesn't believe in kind of this top-down causation,

Starting point is 00:43:31 but that everything is just a conglomerate of parts. And so at this point, I remember, I think it's Thomas Hobbes, who's a famous proponent of the mechanical philosophy of nature. He says that Aristotle is a tool for the pope and so aristotle gets thrown out the window and of course like the scientific revolution a lot of things about aristotle get kicked out except for the metaphysics as other people would argue but a lot of the aristotelian science gets thrown out so in the process all these things are happening together and ultimately you know um the protest Protestant world is left without this foundation that it once had.

Starting point is 00:44:06 And so it gets hit harder than I would say than the Catholic worldview, so to speak, at that point. And so that's how secularism comes about, you know, because when you start saying that, okay, you know, Catholics are superstitious for believing in the real presence. Or you start saying things like Catholics are superstitious for believing in rituals and all that, you don't really sound that far off from the materialists who think we're superstitious for believing in the virgin birth of the death and resurrection of Christ or the incarnation. Yeah, thanks for sharing that. So during this study of Taylor, you began to be more open to the Catholic view? Yeah, I mean, well, I was just at first saying, okay, I need something new, you know?

Starting point is 00:44:47 So I didn't know where to go. And I had a friend of mine named Olivia reach out to me after class. And she said, hey, Swan, would you like to go to mass with me on Sunday? And I said, yeah, I'd love to go. God bless Olivia. I know.

Starting point is 00:44:58 Yeah, she's great. And Olivia invited me to mass, and I show up and I sit in the back by myself. And, you know, I've never been to a mass before, so I have no idea what's going on. I've been inside a Catholic church before. I went to a Catholic funeral once. But a Mass, I've never been to one where I can remember it fully. I sit in the back, and I'm watching the priests walk up.

Starting point is 00:45:20 They have the red book of the Gospels and everything. They have incense going. And I'm like, yeah, this is great. You know, this reminds me of what Sir Roger Scruton was kind of talking about and the beautiful pictures that I've seen of various churches throughout my life and my childhood. You know, I thought about all that. And, you know, the first mass ends. And, oh, by the way, I should give a shout out to my church, the St. Isidore's Catholic Student Center. Father Gail Hammerschmidt was the one who was giving the homily that day. And he's a big golf junkie. And so this homily was about golf somehow.

Starting point is 00:45:50 That's all I remember actually from the homily. So yeah, there's that. This is another reason we should be incorporating beautiful elements into our liturgy because people often forget the homilies and they're left with how they felt. Exactly. And so I kept on going to church every single Sunday. So, you know, in the morning I'd go to Baptist church. In the evening I'd go to Catholic mass. Do your folks know you're doing this? No, they don't. But I'm loving the double life, at least for right now, you know.

Starting point is 00:46:16 I was having a blast. And then, you know, summer comes by and, you know, I don't go to mass during the summer. And, you know, I don't go to Mass during the summer, but my dad, you know, he hires me to work at his ministry in downtown KC where he works with people from, you know, impoverished backgrounds and new immigrants, you know. And so, yeah, like, I have so much respect for my father because he really showed me what it meant to have hospitality towards other people. He really showed me the human dimension of Christ in, you know, in my own father. And so that was really important to me because he really did cultivate a love for humanity. And even, you know, I'll give a shout out to my mom because she also cultivated a love of children within me because, you know, ever since I became pro-life, I just began to love children more and more.

Starting point is 00:47:00 And then I thought to myself, like, man, how could anyone want to do away with a gift of a child's life? And I know that like children can be tough and they can be annoying at times. But like, that's another human being. That's what I once was. That's what you once were. Right. And so, you know, I noticed that when you spend more time with children, you see a very authentic reflection of your own humanity.

Starting point is 00:47:19 But you also gain a better sense of discernment. Because when I was around kids, it made me think about how I want to be a father. But it made me specifically discern what kind of father I want to be. And so we'll get to that later. But right now, you know, I'm helping out with my dad's ministry. And, you know, a lot of the kids are Hispanic. And, you know, a lot of them are from Catholic families, right? And so I'm exposed to that quite a bit over the summer.

Starting point is 00:47:44 And then I start praying. I start thinking about the faith. And near the end of the summer, I'm going to my Baptist church, and they have this moment where they're saying, all right, come on down if you want to be baptized again. So I didn't know at the time that it's a sin to be baptized twice. Right, it's a sin to be baptized, yeah. Right, but they were just chill about it.

Starting point is 00:48:00 They were like, yeah, come on down if you want to rededicate your life to Christ. And so I'd been baptized when I was younger, about maybe 12 or 10, something like that. But I felt like I didn't know what was going on. And so I was like, yeah, let me get baptized again. And so before I went up to get baptized again, I said, God, make me a saint. Give me the courage to do this because I felt kind of embarrassed. Like, oh, I'm rededicating my life and people think I'm really devout, but maybe I have things to work on. So I get baptized again and they tell me, you know, in a few months from now,

Starting point is 00:48:33 we'll send you your baptismal certificate and everything. Because when I was a kid, my church didn't have like a baptismal certificate. So like, I didn't get until later. And so I returned to the school year and I go up to Olivia and I say, hey, Olivia, I'm ready to start asking questions about Catholicism. She's like, Swan, that's great, but let me direct you to my friend Andy. Andy was a former Calvinist who became Catholic. He had a very similar background of mine because his dad was a Calvinist minister, and his mom was also, I think, Protestant at the time. Andy and I started getting coffee every single morning.

Starting point is 00:49:12 And I start bringing up my questions about the papacy, about Mary, about justification. It's funny, though, because I never had a problem with the Eucharist. And I know for a lot of people that that's a huge hang-up. But I'm like, hey, if that's Jesus, I want to eat him, okay? Like, I don't care, you know. And even growing up, and even growing up too, as someone from an Asian background, people always said like, Swan, why are you eating that weird thing or whatever? And so I was just used to just being like, okay, I don't care if it's weird to eat something. Right. And so that wasn't a problem for me. And so thank God for my Asian culture, because that made it really easy.

Starting point is 00:49:40 Yeah. So I asked Andy about Mary, the papacy, and justification, and one by one he shot down my objections and he showed me in Scripture where the basis was for these things. And in particular, he exposed me to the typology between the Ark of the Covenant and Mary. And so just to give some background on this, right? I mean, like, when the Ark of the Covenant is captured again, I want to see from the Philistines or something like that, and it's brought to King David. King David jumps, or he leaps, or he dances with joy, and he says, how is it that the Ark of the Lord has come to me? And then it says that the Ark stayed in the hill countries of Judah for, I think, three months. And then in the New Testament, when Mary visits Elizabeth, Elizabeth's child in the womb, John the Baptist, leaps with joy. And she says, how is it that the mother of my Lord has come to me? And then it says that Mary stayed there for three months in the hill countries of Judah. And I saw that and I was

Starting point is 00:50:34 like, dang, okay. And then I started looking more and I think the precise Greek word that's used in the Septuagint, the Greek Old old testament to describe god overshadowing the ark is the exact greek word used in the new testament to describe god overshadowing mary and this was actually by steve ray in his article on catholic answers and so shout out to steve ray um and i looked at that and i was like man you know i've been training myself as a philosopher to be intellectually consistent to be open and fair with the evidence because i was already conservative and i had to go from liberal to conservative i knew how to control emotions and bias to the greatest extent possible do me a favor yeah pass me that new king james new testament that little brown leather book right in

Starting point is 00:51:19 front of you yeah that one there it's that bottom one you You just pull that out. Because it is fascinating. Once people start making those connections to Mary being the Ark of the New Covenant. The other thing, of course, is Hebrews points out that in the first Ark, you've got three things. You've got the manna, which fed the Israelites. You have the rod that budded, Aaron's rod, which represented the high priesthood. And then you have the stone tablets. And, of course, in Mary, you have the fullness of these things,

Starting point is 00:51:48 not a symbol of the high priest, but the high priest himself. You have the word of God, and you have the bread of life. So that stuff's all really terrific. The other thing that I think blows people away too is when you come to Revelation, the end of chapter 11, which you may have got what we're going to speak about, but I want to pull that up as you did. Yeah. Well, and I'll mention something real quick too, which is that I know that some Protestants have raised the objection,

Starting point is 00:52:12 how about when Uzzah touches the Ark and he dies, right? So why doesn't anybody touch Mary in the New Testament and die? And it's like, well, in order for a typology to be valid, it's not necessary that everything carry over. Right. Because Christ is the new Adam. Well, where's his fall? When did he doom all of humanity?

Starting point is 00:52:30 No, it's like, no. You don't need to have a point for point. Right. Could I just read this for folks? Because I think what often happens, we don't realize that these chapters and verses were inserted in the, when? The 14th century? The middle ages at some point.

Starting point is 00:52:42 So we tend to read the chapters as end of this story onto the next story when you realize that those chapters are artificial then read this right this is the end of chapter 11 verse 19 and of course this is the king james so it might be a little different but and the temple of god was opened and in heaven and there was fiend in his temple. This is the old, old New King James. The ark, the ark of his covenant. And there were lightnings and voices and thunderings and an earthquake and great hail. And, of course, like as Steve Race pointed out, like it's been 500 years since the ark has been mentioned. It's been lost.

Starting point is 00:53:23 And so here you are. You've got the ark being mentioned for the first time here in Revelation. And that's the end has been mentioned. It's been lost. And so here you are, you've got the ark being mentioned for the first time here in Revelation, and that's the end of the chapter. So if that's it, you'd be like, dude, no. There's got to be more. Well, there is more. And so when you read that in context, right,

Starting point is 00:53:36 there was lightning and voices and thunderings and an earthquake and great hail, and there appeared a great wonder in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet and upon her head a crown of 12 stars. And being with child cried, travailing in birth and pained to be delivered. Yeah. I mean, your friend Andy, was he pointing this out as well?

Starting point is 00:54:00 Yeah, he was pointing that out. Of course, one objection people sometimes will have to that is, well, that's the church with the 12 apostles, or it's Israel with the 12 tribes. Yeah. And this is another point about typology that needs to be made, is that something can signify multiple things. That's true. That's true. And that precisely goes into the point about Peter being the rock of Matthew 16, 18.

Starting point is 00:54:20 D.A. Carson in the Expositor's Bible Comment know, D.A. Carson's a famous, I think, Protestant biblical scholar, and he goes to town on people who make this argument that, oh, well, no, only Christ can be the rock, and you can't have Peter be the rock, or Christ is the cornerstone, so Peter can't be the rock. He refutes all those objections by saying that, no, typology is quite flexible. You know, a type can be applied in multiple different ways. Yeah, and I want to save this wonderful papacy stuff until after the break, because I know there's a lot that we've got to get into there.

Starting point is 00:54:49 I'm really pumped to get into it. But okay, so he's knocking down these objections when it comes to Our Lady, the Eucharist. What do you think was your biggest objection? And I don't just mean generally, like the papacy or Mary. Was there a specific thing that you found very difficult to overcome? Not really. Like a veneration of statues or rosaries? Well, that was kind of weird.

Starting point is 00:55:10 That was kind of weird. But I mean, I was like, but if everything else is true, then I can overcome that hump. Sure. You know what I'm saying? I think the general thing that I struggled with is just, should I become Catholic? You know, like, I mean, why can't I just be a happy Protestant over here? You know, like, hey, you Catholics, you have great things in your liturgy, you have a great tradition. And I really love your saints. And I really love your philosophy and your theology. But I don't

Starting point is 00:55:33 need to become Catholic, right? That's, that was my impression. And so I really needed to be convinced to cross the Tiber, so to speak, and to become Catholic. But like things like justification, so to speak, and to become Catholic. But things like justification, when I was a kid, my sister, while I was in elementary school, my sister was really troubled with James, especially I think it's James 2, 25 to 26, when James talks about how, or 24, when he talks about how man is not justified by faith alone, but by works. And she's like, but Paul says, we're not justified by works, but by faith. And then James says this, and she's like but paul says you know we're not justified by uh by works but by faith and then james says this and she's like how do you harmonize this right and i was like i was like my sister's name is moi i was like moi it's not a big deal you know your faith is what unites you to christ

Starting point is 00:56:14 and then through your works you participate in christ and you endure until the end faithfully that's what my answer was and so when i heard andy me, oh yeah, that's basically the Catholic position, I was like, whoa. Because throughout my life, I heard various Protestants try to explain the theory of justification that they hold. And I just started noticing that when you put the beliefs logically together, it's basically the Catholic position if you're not just a total theological determinist, right? And you believe that there's some sense of participation in Christ. You have to remain faithful to him until the end. And then I started realizing that a lot of them, when I point this out, they'd say, oh, no, no, but it's not.

Starting point is 00:56:56 That sounds works-based. I'm faith-based, right? And I'm like, but logically speaking, you know, like your belief leads to this. And so it was kind of like a Protestant piety where they wouldn't admit that, no, you have to participate and remain faithful, right? And works is the way in which you do that by remaining faithful in the Lord. Yes. I think when Protestants hear faith and works, they think there's a certain amount of works that I have to do in order to be

Starting point is 00:57:21 good enough to be saved. And that's the misunderstanding we have to have. And, you know, the Council of Trent is just incredible. Because I recently, you know, I read it again, at least a part on justification. Yes, I love that. And it makes so clear that Christ is the one who begins the good work in you, right? And, you know, you can't merit initial justification. There is no work that you have to do in order to be invited into the family of God and be united to Christ, except for faith, right? And faith is a gift from God.

Starting point is 00:57:49 And so in the process then, as you endure towards final justification, towards final unity with God, you're being sanctified. The sacraments are giving you the strength to make it to the end. You are meriting grace in the sense that, you know, you're showing to God that you are a faithful son and daughter of his. And so God loves you as a father and that you're showing to God that you are a faithful son and daughter of his. And so God loves you as a father and showers you with grace to help you make it to the end. And scripture is so clear, like in 2 Timothy 2.12, that our goal in life is to one day reign over creation with him. But it also says that if we reject him, then he will reject us. And so I already knew as a Baptist that, yeah, eternal security is bunk.

Starting point is 00:58:27 Well, the other thing I think Protestants and even Catholics don't realize, speaking to your point about, is it the seventh session, I think, on justification at the Council? Something like that, yeah. And what Ludwig Ott points out is that Trent never said that a Catholic cannot have a moral certainty of his salvation, just that we cannot have a sort of infallible certainty. And I remember that being tremendously helpful for me when I was struggling a lot with scrupulosity, this fear that there's really just no way of knowing that I'm united with Christ. It's interesting because I actually never struggled with scrupulosity

Starting point is 00:59:02 because one is that I just have a really strong faith in Christ and I love him. And so I get, I just, when I look outside and I see a beautiful mountain or I see a beautiful sunrise, I'm just like, yeah, God loves me. And then that's all I need, you know? I'm like a kid in that way. And that's beautiful.

Starting point is 00:59:16 Oh, you know, I actually prayed when I got baptized again, God, make me like a child. So make me like a saint and make me like a child. And so I've just always like valued that kind of simplicity. But yeah, when it comes to scrupulosity, you know, because my dad's a pastor, I had already been kind of like doing proto confession with him, you know, so I was just like, I'll just be like, hey, dad, I've been really struggling. I don't know with I've been cursing, or dad, I've been kind of mean to my sister, you know, and then I just confess those things, and he would give me advice.

Starting point is 00:59:46 And so I was already used to talking to my dad. And so it's like, oh, I'm just going to the confessional talking to my father. It wasn't a huge leap for me. That reminds me of something I wanted to share. I remember hearing a talk from Scott Hahn, actually, back in 2003, I think. When were you born? What year were you born? 2000.

Starting point is 01:00:04 What month? January. Okay. I had my conversion to Christ that year in July. Oh, July. Isn't that amazing? But a few years after, I'm at this conference in Canada and Scott's giving this talk and he had this great idea of having this year of Jubilee for your kids, basically. And basically saying, alright, today, if there's something you've done wrong that you feel bad about, you can come to me and you get no punishment at all. Wow. No matter what it is or what you've done, there will be absolutely no repercussions.

Starting point is 01:00:34 Yeah. Well, I mean, there might be a you need to say sorry to your sister or mother or something like this. A penance, right? Yeah. Yeah. But I thought that was great. And so there's been a few times in my life, speaking of children confessing to you, that I've said that to them. And I think it's about time that I do that again.

Starting point is 01:00:49 Like, hey, I love you. And as a kid, I remember making mistakes and feeling really bad about it and being afraid that I'd be in trouble. So I want you to know you have till the end of tonight to come up to me. You can pull me aside, tell me anything you've done, and you will have zero punishment. Isn't that beautiful? That's beautiful that's beautiful yeah go scott harm yeah yeah so i mean at this point then you know andy and i've been talking about the faith and um there's there's one day where i'm sitting okay and it's really i'm

Starting point is 01:01:18 really weird in this way too so like i was i was texting andy and i was like i am 75 certain that i'm going to become Catholic now. And Andy later, he'll say, why the heck, Swan, were you telling me percentages or whatever? I don't know. I'm just like that. Maybe I was like- I'm a math guy. I hate math, actually.

Starting point is 01:01:35 Asian guy who hates math. But no. I think it was like I was really reading Richard Swinburne at the time and Bayes' theorem for the resurrection. And so I was just using probabilities to describe my dispositions. Can I ask, who was Andy converted by? Like, what was he reading or who was he looking to that helped him, I wonder? So from what I remember of Andy's conversion story, you know, he was kind of like the cage stage Calvinist. And he'd go to my parish, St.ore's before i was there and he would kind of be obnoxious and talk to the priest and ignore

Starting point is 01:02:08 annoy the focus missionaries and everything yeah and then one day like i think it was elizabeth mugler who's now elizabeth lees um she like began like kind of challenging him i think and then he started asking questions and slowly but surely he became catholic oh that's great i'm just so grateful to god for people like Carl Keating and Pat Madrid and, you know, Scott Hahn, who really did a lot of this work. I imagine if you were to ask Andy or ask this focus missionary, it was because of the blessings that they have been. Yeah, definitely.

Starting point is 01:02:37 No, no, no. But let's see here. So, you know, one day Andy and I are sitting down and we're talking and I'm like, okay, if I become Catholic, right? Like, uh, what do I need? And so we talked about like, um, baptism and I said, oh, well I was baptized a second time, you know, but I don't have a baptismal certificate, you know? And I get a text from my dad and my dad says, hey, something came in the mail just now while

Starting point is 01:02:59 we were talking and in the conversation. And I was like, oh, okay. And I said, just bring it up, you know, when you come this weekend. Um, and my dad brings it up and it's my baptismal certificate. And I'm like, whoa, okay, God. So do you want me to become Catholic? Okay, let's see. And so that kind of blows me away.

Starting point is 01:03:18 But I'm like, I'm not sure. I'm not sure just yet. I'm not sure just yet. And then one day, Andy and I are in a bookstore, and I just start crying all of a sudden. I know it's not very macho to admit, but I start crying. I start getting emotional. And then I realize that I was made for the Catholic Church. Like, Christ did not intend for us to be without a home. And, you know, a big part of my life has been, you know, kind of

Starting point is 01:03:43 reclaiming my traditions as an Asian American, right? Going back to my roots and who I am. And I realize that the saints are my ancestors in the faith. They're my family. They are the ones in heaven who are praying for me, who are watching out for me. And the church and her traditions,

Starting point is 01:04:00 the history of the Catholic church, no matter how difficult and messy it is, that's my family history. That's my church, you know? And so I was like, why have I not been home? Why have I lived the first 20 years of my life homeless? And I told Andy that, and Andy said, you know, Swan, God is not going to waste the time that you've been Protestant. And so I, at that moment, said, yeah, I'm going to become Catholic.

Starting point is 01:04:24 But that doesn't mean that it was easy that doesn't mean that I was finally over all my objections because I was still struggling with some things in particular what is it going to be like when I tell my parents that I became Catholic what's going to happen to my childhood friends and the people who knew me in church and what's going to happen with things like, you know, the papacy and all these other things that I'm supposed to believe now, right? Like, am I going to be okay with that? And so, funny enough, I start reaching out to some Protestant theologians that I know, and I'm like, hey guys, convince me to not become Catholic because I don't want to tell my mom and

Starting point is 01:05:04 dad that I've become Catholic because it's going to to tell my mom and dad that I've become Catholic because it's going to be so embarrassing. It's going to be so painful. I was really well known in my Baptist community, and I just don't want to be an embarrassment on everybody, you know, because as soon as you start telling, you know, if the Protestant Baptist minister's son becomes Catholic, that's embarrassing, you know, because it's like, dang, like, were you not a good enough minister to your son? Or did you not raise him properly, you know?

Starting point is 01:05:29 And that's not what happened. Right. Precisely, that's not what happened. But anyway. So who are you reaching out to? I'll keep them anonymous. Oh, yeah, that's fine. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 01:05:36 But people who are teaching in universities. Yeah, these are actual, like, theologians and philosophers who are published in this area, especially against Catholicism. And so I call up this one guy, and I'm like, hey, tell me why the papacy is false because I know you've written on this. And he goes through his objections and I'm like, I know how to answer all these objections because of the things that I'd already studied on the papacy in scripture. And I'm like, man, why is this not working? Why can no one refute these objections? Because you see, the thing is, I was no longer interested in kind of the stock objections.

Starting point is 01:06:11 I knew that Protestants kept on, a lot of Protestants kept on almost willfully misunderstanding what papal infallibility means, or willfully misunderstanding what the church believes about the sacraments, about justification. And so I was like, I'm done with the nonsense. I'm done with the straw men. Give me, you know, steel man the other person's position and show me why it's false. Now, as this person was offering objections to the papacy and you thought, gee, I've heard these, I've responded to them. Did you respond to them? I was really nice. And I just said, oh yeah, thanks. Thanks. You know, like, I didn't want to get into a debate. The I mean, did you think, because the reason I ask that is I think sometimes you have to begin with the simpler objections and advance from there. Is it possible that he would

Starting point is 01:06:51 have had better objections had you have pressed him? I mean, that's a possibility, but then, I mean, there were times where I kind of responded and I was just like, oh, but I'm not sure if that argument works. And then so he would just, and then he would just drop the argument or move on to another one, right? And also I've read read this person's work, and so I know the more advanced versions of the arguments, and that's all I'll say about that. Okay. But, yeah, I was just like, God, why can no one refute what's going on here? Because most of the time, people were just responding to straw men. And so I started reading about St. Thomas Aquinas.

Starting point is 01:07:23 And, you know, St. Thomas was 19 when he secretly wanted to join the Dominican order. And I was 19 when I secretly began wanting to become Catholic, you know. Oh, actually, so then I was 19 confirmed when I was 20. Okay, so I got the timeline a little mixed up. But anyway, I also heard about how St. Thomas' parents react when he wanted to become Dominican. And I was like, yeah, St. Thomas is my man, you know. Can't be worse than what she did. The mother did at least.

Starting point is 01:07:45 The father may have been deceased since about that point. Right. So, you know, I prayed to St. Thomas. And I was like, okay, St. Thomas, are you listening to me? Because if you're there, I need help. Because I now know I need to tell my parents that I'm going to become Catholic. And I remember as soon as I ended my prayer, I heard this voice respond to me. And it said, Swan, you've been a

Starting point is 01:08:05 good son to your mother and father, but now I want you as my own. And that voice I knew was from God because like when God speaks, you know, because God doesn't go through temporal succession, you know, all time is just instantly there for him in one single moment, so to speak. I felt like it just hit me instantly and, you know, like a ray of light, I was getting the words, you know, from the beam, so to speak. And so I knew it was God. And I was just like, wow, okay, I got to tell my parents now. And so I told my parents, and it was rough. Because my parents were in denial. And they said, No, you're not, you're not becoming Catholic. What are you talking about? And I was like, Mom, Dad, look, and then I was trying to argue with them and do my apologetic method. And they're like, No, we don't want to hear it. And it was just disappointing. It was sad, because for most of my life, you know, I was known as the good son. I was very faithful to my parents. They were very proud of me because I did speech and debate. I was really good at that. I had excellent grades, excellent behavior. You

Starting point is 01:09:05 know, I was a very good, obedient son. I was always there to help my mom and dad when they needed help. And now they see the son who they raised, who they love, just kind of betray them. If I could put it bluntly, they felt like they were betrayed. And so time goes by and I talked to my Protestant, a Protestant minister, who's like a mentor of mine um and you know we get breakfast together and i'm talking a lot about saint thomas aquinas i'm talking a lot about the catholic church and then i tell him oh by the way i think i'm going to become catholic and my protestant spiritual director he says swan i think this is the holy spirit leading you and so this protestant minister you know, gave me the reach.

Starting point is 01:09:46 Were you expecting a lot more pushback? I was, I was. And he just was so sweet and so kind. And he heard my story and I was telling him about all the things I was learning and discovering about the Christian tradition. And he said, Swan, I think this is the Holy Spirit leading you. And so I was driving back to my college town. And I remember I started playing the Ave Maria ave maria in my car and it started raining you know and and then like the rain went away and as the ave maria climaxed i looked up at

Starting point is 01:10:12 the sky and i saw and i mean maybe this is just me being kind of a pseudo mystic i don't know but i looked up at the sky and i saw the cloud like i saw the clouds form like a woman's eye i could see like the individual eyelashes looking down at me and everything. And I was like, whoa, mom, you know, like, is that you trying to reach out to me? And so, you know, as time goes by, I pray the rosary. And one time while I'm praying the rosary, this word comes to me and it's thanatos, right? And I'm like, what is this? You know, it's so weird. And then I check it up and it's like, it means nonviolent death. And I'm like, why is this coming to me while I'm praying the rosary? Sorry, this word is a word you hadn't heard before.

Starting point is 01:10:49 I had never heard of it before, and it just came to me while I was praying the rosary. Explain that to us slower, because that's going to confuse some people. So you're praying, and this word comes to you. And this word comes to me. I've never heard it before. I haven't studied Greek. I don't know a lick of Latin, right? And the very next day my sister and

Starting point is 01:11:06 i are going to the library and my sister says hey swan did you hear the news last night and i said what and she said one of our friends fathers passed away peacefully in his sleep and i was like whoa and then i told her about my experience with the rosary and she's like you know get out of you know i don't i don't remember what she said but she was surprised, to say the least, right? And so I was like, okay, God, you know, I knew intellectually speaking that the Catholic Church was true. Do you think that that was a word for your future or about this friend's dad? I think it was for the friend's dad. I think it was just showing me that, like, the rosary can really reveal things.

Starting point is 01:11:42 That the Blessed Mother is really active in the world. And that she can allow me to see things before they come. And also, like, it was a very peaceful death. Like, it wasn't bad or ominous at all. And so, you know, the prayer... How did you figure out what that word meant? I Googled it, as one does. Nice.

Starting point is 01:11:56 Yeah. I was hoping you were going to say you went to the library with your sister and pulled out a big dusty book. Yeah. Googling is fine. Right. The Hollywood version will be like that. I was kidding. Yeah, Googling is fine. Right. The Hollywood version will be like that. I was kidding.

Starting point is 01:12:05 Yeah, one day. Yeah, okay. And so more time goes by. I'm still reading. I'm still learning more about the Catholic faith. And in particular, I start doing research on the papacy, like really hard. And this is the point where I discover the Isaiah 22,

Starting point is 01:12:20 Matthew 16, 19 parallel. And I start really cranking that argument up and doing all the research I can. This is even before you've been confirmed into the church. Before I've been confirmed, right? So I started really doing hardcore research on this just to confirm that am I in the right direction, you know? And at this point, I was expecting, you know,

Starting point is 01:12:36 I might see a commentary that says, okay, Peter's the rock, but there's nothing else to it, right? But the deeper I saw it, you know, there were Protestant scholars left and right who are recognizing the matthew 16 19 isaiah 22 22 parallel in which in isaiah i want to get to that later do you mind if we just put a pin in that for now sure so yeah i was studying that you know and i got deeper into it i was like whoa okay there's something here right and then i have my adopted grandmother come over for uh for dinner one night and um you know my family's a bit estranged at this point because of my conversion to catholicism

Starting point is 01:13:13 but we haven't told her yet and so at dinner i tell her because i trust her you know this is the woman who's basically my grandmother she raised me my whole life and i tell her grandma i'm going to become Catholic. I already had the right of acceptance or something like that. And she said, Swan, your dead grandfather would be ashamed of you. Oh. I was hoping that was going to go in a different direction. Yeah, I'm sorry to drop it.

Starting point is 01:13:39 I'm so sorry. Yeah, she told me that. And she said, show me in scripture while you're becoming catholic and so you like sit down lock the door right let's do this so i got my laptop and i was getting ready and she's like oh no no no get me a real bible yep and so i got i went downstairs and i found a bible and i brought it back up and i said okay grandma look here and i showed her the isaiah 22 matthew 16 19 parallel and she was quiet at first but she didn't really have anything to say. And then I forgot what exactly happened.

Starting point is 01:14:09 Oh, when I was going up and down, rummaging through the house to get the physical Bible, I kind of cried and I told my grandma, are you trying to humiliate me? And then I think she realized at that point that she had gone too far, but I mean, the damage was done. And even like the next day when I visited her again, I still felt like she had, she

Starting point is 01:14:29 was, I still felt embarrassed and still felt the pain. And that was like the lowest point of my conversion because that point, you know, my parents let me really know that they were really upset that I was becoming Catholic. And my sister who was not discerning, well, she was interested in Catholicism, but she was seeing how I was being treated. And she was like, Swan, I'm really scared. You know, like, you're just being beat up, so to speak, right? And I really needed God's help to go further. And so, you know, I start thinking about how Christ died on the cross for me and he never let go of me on that cross. He said, you know, it is finished, right? He took the fourth cup. He didn't finish

Starting point is 01:15:13 until the very end. He endured the cross for me. And who am I to turn back from his church and abandon her when Christ never abandoned me? And it's precisely because of Christ that I am Catholic. It's precisely because of Christ that I remain Catholic. It's precisely because of Christ that I was willing to be humiliated and embarrassed, lose childhood friends, and start my life over. Because I began reading passages like in Matthew and Luke when it talks about how you have to love me more than your own mother and father in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. Or Jesus says, if you hesitate on the plow, then you're unworthy of me. And I had to choose at that moment between Christ or my parents. I really had to make that decision. And I said, Christ, I'm yours. And so I made the choice to become Catholic.

Starting point is 01:16:06 Can I ask what your relationship is like with your mom and dad and grandma now? I haven't talked to my grandmother since. And I know that that relationship needs to be reconciled, but it's still painful. Because as I told you before, my adopted grandfather, he was the one who really helped me in my journey to see Christ and to have her say that he's ashamed of me. Cause I remember like, you know, after school I'd go to his grave and cry because I loved him so much. And you know, when my adopted grandfather died, he wanted to be buried so that his body faced the east, so that when Jesus returns, he could beat everyone to Jesus and have him first. And so he was the embodiment of Christ to me. And to have her say that, it almost destroyed me, if I'm being honest.

Starting point is 01:17:02 But, you know, I have to forgive her. but you know i have to forgive her and uh ever since then my my parents they they become more accepting they're they still they still don't want me to be catholic but they they've kind of accepted that this is what i am now i love the compassion that you have towards your mom and dad and understanding how difficult it must be to have a son of a Baptist pastor become a Catholic. I think that's right. I think that would take a great deal of courage to look that square in the face. And so I'm sure that's beautiful that y'all are kind of reconciling somewhat. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 01:17:35 It's been a lot better. And my dad, he actually had a Catholic priest over for dinner one time. And so we're making moves. We're doing what we can. Anyone in your close circle looking into the Catholic Church since your own conversion last year? I mean, the conversion was prior to that, but you came into the church last year. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think she'll be okay if I say this. My sister joined the church. That's why I was asking in a circumspect way. I didn't want to.

Starting point is 01:17:59 I see what you're doing, Matt. No, like my sister entered the church and so she has such a great Marian devotion and I'm so proud of her for all the things that like my sister entered the church, and so she has such a great Marian devotion. And I'm so proud of her for all the things that she's doing. And so, yeah, I mean, she's been discerning. But also through my ministry on intellectual conservatism and doing debates on other channels, various people have reached out to me and said, Swan, you've been helping me become Catholic. You've been helping convince me of the papacy and so on and so forth. And so what I always try to do is I always try to reach out with these people

Starting point is 01:18:25 because one thing I learned that I didn't really like about sometimes, you know, the big evangelists is that they brag about like, oh, I converted 20,000 souls yesterday or whatever. I don't want to treat anyone like they're a number, right? Because they are God's beloved. And so I want to keep in touch with them. I want to help them. And so I have been getting a lot of people who have been helped

Starting point is 01:18:44 by the things that I've been doing. And so I really appreciate it. Yeah, glory to God. Now, I suppose because you did such a deep dive into the papacy, orthodoxy probably wasn't even an issue necessarily. A lot of people kind of leave Protestantism for something fuller, and those are the two options before them. Without getting into the Isaiah-Matthew thing, was that a thing for you? Yeah, I mean, so for a while I kind of thought about like, huh, why don't I become Orthodox, right?

Starting point is 01:19:09 And then I looked into the papacy, right? And then I was convinced of it from Scripture. And also personally for me, like, because of my Protestant background, I really wanted Scripture to be the first line of proof. And then whatever comes later can be made sense of through Scripture or, you know, that sort of thing. And so whatever comes later can be made sense of through Scripture or that sort of thing. And so I really cared about Scripture. And what I saw in Scripture was precisely Christ rebuilding David's kingdom. Yeah. Okay. Very good. Well, what I want to do now is take a

Starting point is 01:19:37 three-minute break. We want to come back. We want to talk about the papacy. We're going to do a deep dive into the papacy. So if you're watching right now, don't go anywhere. And sea we're going to do a deep dive into the paper sea so if you're watching right now don't go anywhere and then we're going to take some questions from uh super chatters and and patrons sound good all right sounds good all right sweet all right i want to say thank you to ethos logos investments for supporting this show el investments.net slash pints i guess when I was a bit younger, I thought that investing was something that only rich people did or old people did or rich old people did. I didn't realize it was something that I should be looking into as well. And when I began looking into it, I realized I don't want to invest in companies that are doing immoral things.

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Starting point is 01:21:07 and 403b options as well. So yeah, go check them out. elinvestments.net slash pints. Securities offered through Securities America Inc. Member Finra Sipic. Ethos Logos Investments and Securities America are separate entities, advisory services offered through Securities America Advisors Incorporated. Yes! The second group I want to thank is Halo. Halo, H-A-L-L-O-W dot com slash Matt Fradd. Halo dot com slash Matt Fradd. Halo is a fantastic app that will help you to pray and meditate. Halo is a fantastic app that will help you to pray and meditate.

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Starting point is 01:22:29 hallo.com slash Matt Fradd and sign up there. Thanks. All right, we're live. We are live, Swan. Great to have you back again. Thanks, man. I often get made fun of because this show is, of course, called Pints with Aquinas. And it's quite well known now, I think, that I'm not a big beer guy.

Starting point is 01:22:51 But this was given to me by Derek Cummins, who you met last night. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who I met as a patron. And he showed up. We had a beer together. So this is that. Nice. I'm a stout guy.

Starting point is 01:23:03 Do you like beer or no? Yeah, I do. Good stuff. You're 21. I keep forgetting it. This is a relatively new thing. Yeah, everyone thinks I'm like a PhD student or a grad student or something. That's because you're more brilliant than most PhD people we've met.

Starting point is 01:23:18 Yeah, man, what a gift. What a blessing. So I'd love to do this. I'd love to kind of maybe have you kind of what do they say the 5 000 foot level i forget 50 000 foot level help us sort of understand the basic argument for the papacy from scripture in a kind of more general shortened way okay and then maybe we can kind of go into it a little more specifically so the case for the papacy fundamentally rests upon the messianic identity of jesus okay okay so the

Starting point is 01:23:45 messiah comes from the hebrew word messiah which means the anointed one okay and so the people who would be anointed in ancient israel were the prophets the um king and i believe it's the um the judges that might be wrong though but like those those people were the ones specifically ordained the prophet the priest the king yeah i think it's those three but anyway so um yeah it's a prophet the priest and the king so these three people are anointed with oil and in particular we know that jesus in the new testament is the son of david he's coming to fulfill the davidic covenant made in second samuel chapter eight i believe it is or or 7, 2 Samuel 7. And so in this case, then, the case for the papacy is based upon Jesus rebuilding David's kingdom in the New Testament

Starting point is 01:24:32 and fulfilling what was yet to come. And so, I mean, that's where I'd begin, at least to start off with. I kind of stumbled through that. No, no, that's all right. I mean, you didn't expect to be kind of put on the spot, I guess, about that. Yeah, yeah. All right. So when a Protestant says to you, where's the papacy in the Bible, how do you start leading them through it? Right.

Starting point is 01:24:52 Okay. So I begin by just talking about that typology between David and Jesus. And I'd say, okay, look, let's look at the Davidic covenant here. All right. And so in 2 Samuel chapter 7, we see that that God, through I think it's the prophet Nathan, is giving all of these promises to David. And these aren't conditional promises. So it says that even when your son sins or fails and is corrected by the rods of men, my love, my patience will not leave him. So some people have made the objection that the Davidic covenant is conditional and not unconditional.

Starting point is 01:25:24 No, this is going to happen no matter what. And in particular, it says that one of these sons will establish the Davidic throne and house forever and that this son will be God's son. In the New Testament, that's clearly fulfilled. And especially in Luke 1, verse 32 to 35, it's explicitly laid out that Jesus is the foretold Davidic heir who's going to establish his father's kingdom forever. Both, and it describes both God and David as his father to just kind of sweeten the deal. You know what I'm saying? And even Matthew's gospel makes such a big deal of Jesus being the heir of David. Okay, so then at this point, then I'd say we agree then, okay, that Jesus is the son of David.

Starting point is 01:26:04 He's going to rebuild David's kingdom. And they're like, yeah, okay, I'd say, we agree then, okay, that Jesus is the son of David. He's going to rebuild David's kingdom. And they're like, yeah, okay, I agree to that. And then I'll point out the different passages, you know, where Jesus is called the son of David. Or, for instance, when Jesus says in Matthew and Luke's gospel that I'll give you 12, to the disciples, I'll give you 12 thrones on which you'll judge the 12 tribes of Israel. And then in the Old Testament, in 2 Kings, Solomon has 12 governors over all of Israel. And other people have made this parallel. It's not just a Catholic swan trying to draw any parallel he can, right? There's a paper called When the Apostles Became Kings, but I think

Starting point is 01:26:37 Jonathan Wells or somebody like that might have gotten that wrong, but that's the name of the paper. And so he makes the parallel, right? And the whole point is that Jesus is reviving the Davidic kingdom. And then I say, okay, let's look at Matthew 16, 18 and 19, right? So this is the famous declaration at Caesarea of Philippi where Jesus says to, you know, to Peter, you know, thou art Peter and upon this rock, I'll build my church. The gates of hell will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom point out, okay, I mean, there's several different directions I can go at this point, right? At this point, let's do the objections to the rock thing.

Starting point is 01:27:22 Can we do that real quick? Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You are Peter upon this rock. Right. So some Protestants have made the objection that the rock is Peter's faith, that the rock is Peter's confession, or the rock is Jesus himself, right? And so this objection has effectively been buried in scholarship. It's been the consensus since the 1970s that Peter, the person of Peter,

Starting point is 01:27:47 is the rock of Matthew 16, 18. This is explicitly stated in Charles Talbert's commentary, his Paeda commentary on the Gospel of Matthew. He points out that, at least back to, I think, Charles Burgess in 1976, the quote is, Yeah, the majority of scholarship now today accepts that the person of Peter is the rock of Matthew 1618. And if anyone's familiar with Abingdon Press's The New Interpreter's Bible Commentary, specifically Leander E. Keck's commentary on Matthew, or Keck E. Leander, he states, and I think this was published in the late 90s, that the consensus, or early 2000s, the consensus is still that the person of Peter is the rock of Matthew 16, 18. Okay, so on what grounds is there this consensus, right? I mean, one place to begin is by pointing out that, you know, Matthew 16, 18 parallels Peter's declaration about Christ.

Starting point is 01:29:00 Because Peter says, thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And then Jesus says, thou art Peter, right? And so it's directly to Peter now in parallel to what Peter has said about the identity of Jesus. So just as Peter blesses Jesus, right? Jesus now blesses Peter and reveals his identity, right? And so at this point then in the Greek, the Greek word that Jesus uses is taute. Now, I'm not saying that Jesus spoke the original sentence in Greek, but at least in the Gospel of Matthew, right?

Starting point is 01:29:27 So taute in Strong's Greek, I believe it's 3778. It means this and it means same, right? So when you're going to say like, you know, for instance, in the beginning of Matthew's Gospel, it talks about how Joseph had a dream, right? About the Blessed Mother and how it was okay to be married to her, right, even though she was already with child. It says that Joseph pondered these things, and I think the Greek word there is tauta, right, which is a variation of taute in the plural. And so it means, when it says these things, it means the same things that were referred

Starting point is 01:30:00 to before. Elsewhere in Jesus' gospel gospel in the gospels when jesus mentions for instance the laws uh the law of moses and he says if you break any one of these things he uses tauton there right and so in each of these instances taute is used to convey that the same thing previously referred to is carrying over okay so now in the g, Jesus is saying thou art Peter and upon this rock, this, okay, same taute. Okay, so in the Greek, the word is petros and petra, right? If Jesus spoke Aramaic in this particular passage, it would have been kepha, kepha. So there would have been no distinction. And so that's why Landry Keck, and I think it's Michael J. Wilkins in the NIV application

Starting point is 01:30:46 commentary on Matthew, they both say that to our English ears, the Gospel of Matthew should actually be read like this. You are rock, and upon this rock, I will build my church, right? So in reality, in our English translations, when we see Peter and rock, and we think, oh yeah, those are two separate things, that's not really accurate to the original language right and this is not just swan saying this right and so who was previously called rock peter okay so then when we get to the petra so we already have someone called petros or rock and then we get to petra then we have taute used which means this same rock who was just called rock, the person of Peter.

Starting point is 01:31:33 This is a very simple point, but for those who are unfamiliar with why Petros and Petro were used instead of Petros and Petros, just very briefly. Yeah, okay, and so this is also recognized by scholarship as an insignificant difference. So in the 2011 IVP commentary on Matthew by Craig S. Keener, he points out that by Jesus' day, Petros and Petra were basically interchangeable. There was not a sharp distinction between both of them. And I think even Oskar Kuhlman, the famous Lutheran scholar, he says that this is really a distinction, it's a poetic distinction at most. Like, it's not that major. So the reason why there's Petros and Petra is because Peter's a man, right?

Starting point is 01:32:07 Whereas in general, I think rocks were referred to in the feminine, okay? And so the point is that Jesus is not saying, you are Peter, and upon this Peter, I'll build my church. He's saying, you are rock, and upon this rock, I'll build my church. So the rock is gendered for Peter, but then when he refers to this rock, he's just using the rock, right? The word rock without a gender for it, with the feminine gender. But that's not a significant difference at all in terms of the original language, and scholars know about this anyway. And even what's interesting too is that D.A. Carson, in his Expositor's Bible Commentary on Matthew, he even says that if the Protestant interpretation were correct,

Starting point is 01:32:49 we actually know what Greek word Jesus would have used to make the point clear. Is it lith? Lithos, right, which is a stone of any size. And Carson points out that Jesus precisely doesn't use lithos to preserve the pun between Peter as rock and the rock of 1618, right? Jesus is using a pun on Peter's name. And so, I mean, that's just some of the evidence there, right? But I mean, it gets deeper too. So one of the things that scholars look for is, you know, if there's a phrase in the gospel, is there something around the same time period where maybe someone's called rock or maybe this is used elsewhere, right? So we know that, let's see here we know based on a later midrash and a midrash is a rabbinic commentary on the scriptures specifically on numbers 2319

Starting point is 01:33:33 it's called the evraham petra midrash and in this midrash you know god it talks about god looking for solid soil on which to build the world and everywhere he looks it's fragile it falls apart it's not good enough and then god sees abraham and he says aha now i have found the rock on which i'll build israel okay so abraham is called rock abraham is viewed as the foundation of the jewish people and then you look and you see that uh in the thanksgiving hymn scroll of the dead sea scrolls it mentions the fact that the jew Jewish people are built on a rock. Okay. And then finally, in Isaiah 51, one to two, it says, you know, I think it's Isaiah saying, talking to the people and he says, look to the rock from which you were hewn and the quarry from

Starting point is 01:34:17 which you were dug. Look to Abraham, your father and Sarah, your mother. Right. And so the Jewish people already understood that Abrahamraham was the rock on which god had built old israel and so now peter becomes the rock of the new israel of the church and so there's that parallel there it's recognized by scholars you can't miss it and even um charles talbert in his commentary on matthew he points out that this is precisely what has convinced the vast majority of New Testament scholars to form the consensus today that the Petra of 1618 is Peter. And then you know way more about this than me, obviously, but Tertullian in his work Monogamy talks about Peter being the foundation that holds up the church. Other early church fathers, how are they also interpreting Matthew 16? Yeah, so I think Oscar Kuhlman was the one in his book on Simon Peter, Disciple and Martyr,

Starting point is 01:35:08 where he talks about how the oldest interpretations, the earliest interpretations that we do have, like Tertullian, as you mentioned, I can't remember all the fathers off the top of my head, but there was an early recognition that, yeah, Peter is the rock of Matthew 16, 18. The only difference then was how the fathers theologically expanded upon that. Right, right, right. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, even if you just, like, read through the New Testament, Peter obviously has a primary role.

Starting point is 01:35:36 Yeah. Even the fact that I learned this, you know, back in the day, Peter or Simon or Cephas, right, this person is mentioned 195 times in the New Testament. The next apostle after that is St. John at 48 times. Yeah. I mean, it's not that difficult to see. He obviously has a primary role. I mean, that's different to saying that he's the rock, perhaps.

Starting point is 01:36:00 Sure. Yeah, I mean, and so at this point, too, like, I don't think it's tenable anymore to deny the primacy of Peter. Some Protestant scholars have attempted to do that, but I think most are now recognizing, yeah, Peter clearly is the primary spokesman and leader of the disciples. You can't deny it. And so part of the reason why, you know, you can point out is, for instance, in, I think it's Matthew 10.2, when it lists off the names of the disciples, is, for instance, in, I think it's Matthew 10.2, when it lists off the names of the disciples, it calls Peter specifically first or protos. And Dale Allison, the Oxford Bible commentary, he states that this is not just first on the list, but first in the most privileged status.

Starting point is 01:36:36 I see. Yeah. And then there are other commentaries, too. Like, I read this one commentary, I forgot by who, but it's by a liberal scholar. And the liberal scholar complained, and here we are. This is where we get Petrine primacy. Matthew just had to put this in his gospel. And so it's kind of funny to think about. But yeah, there's clearly a primacy given to Peter. I'm trying to think about what else.

Starting point is 01:36:59 And when you're a Protestant and you're reading through the Bible, you miss all the times that Peter speaks on behalf of all the apostles. Because you just take it for granted. Oh, yeah. Okay. Peter's talking again. Peter's talking again. Let's just go through some of them just really quickly. Right?

Starting point is 01:37:12 I mean, he is, as we've already said, the rock upon which Christ builds his church. Yeah. It was from Peter's boat that Christ proclaimed his first sermon. At the end of John's Gospel, Christ makes Peter the shepherd of his sheep. We've already mentioned how many times he's been named. He takes a leadership role at the first council. It's

Starting point is 01:37:34 he who proclaims the first sermon at Pentecost. What else have we got? Well, also in Acts chapter 5, he's the only person... Well, so there are only two times that God kills someone in the New Testament in the book of Acts. And Peter is one of those only times when he rebukes Ananias and Sapphira. The other times God rebukes a public official, I think Herod, for claiming divinity or whatever.

Starting point is 01:38:00 And he sends an angel to do it. But Peter is the only human agent in the New Testament who can bring death with his rebuke. Cool. All right. So Peter plays a primary role. I'm wondering what those in the comments section are objecting to at this point. Well, Galatians 2 always comes up. Well, let's do that. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:38:21 So, I mean, what goes on in Galatians 2 is kind of interesting. And so, basically, you know, Paul says that he rebuked Peter to his face, and everyone's like, oh, well, Peter just got owned, right? Because this means that he's not infallible. And so, one is that that's a misunderstanding of papal infallibility, because what's going on in Antioch is Peter is dining with the Gentile Christians, and then James' emissaries, the Judaizers, come down, and they begin to pressure Peter to not dine with the Gentile Christians anymore. And so Peter kind of chickens out, and he moves away from them, right? And so Paul is really upset that Peter has gone back on his word in the Acts 15 Jerusalem Council,

Starting point is 01:38:57 where Peter very eloquently spoke on behalf of the entire church, beginning in verse 7, you know, and declared, you know, we are justified by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, not by verse 7, you know, and declared, you know, we are justified by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, not by circumcision, right? And so, what goes on here, then, is not a teaching failure on the part of Peter. In a very loose sense, you could call it a failing to teach moment, but it's more a moral failure on Peter's part, where he just chickens out, he doesn't have courage, but he's not going back on the doctrine that he taught officially in his capacity in the council, okay? That's the first thing to point out.

Starting point is 01:39:30 The second thing to point out is that the Greek that Paul uses here is really interesting. I think it's a kataprosopon or something like that. And so the Greek here, as pointed out by Philip Elsler in his commentary on Galatians, published by Rutledge Press, he points out that the Greek that Paul uses here is typically used when you are opposing someone to their face and you lose. So, for instance, in the book of Deuteronomy and elsewhere in the Old Testament, in the Septuagint, the Greek, you know, variations of kataprosopon is used to show when someone has done a military assault and they fail. And so what Paul, in effect, is saying is that I try, you know, I rebuke Peter

Starting point is 01:40:11 to his face, but I failed. And so it's really, it's not an instance of Paul dunking on Peter. It's an instance of Paul saying, I tried to oppose Peter, but I failed in some way, somehow. And so it's not this kind of triumphant, I opposed him to his face. That's an English misreading. I don't know if you're tired of making this parallel, but we want to definitely get to it, at least in this interview, between, you know, the prime minister and Peter. I don't think we've really dug into that yet. So do you want to do that? Yeah, sure. Okay. So, you know, I've given a lot of descriptions of this argument, you know, on capturing Christianity when I debated Gavin

Starting point is 01:40:50 Ortland on my own YouTube channel. But to basically go through, like, how I view the argument, right, what I'm trying to establish is first, you know, that Matthew 16, 19 is hearkening back to Isaiah 22. And what I'm trying to show there is that with this parallel, Peter and Eliakim are being compared to one another. And that comparison is significant. Okay. And so there are several different arguments I use to show why this parallel is not just a coincidence. But let me first respond to an initial objection, right?

Starting point is 01:41:20 So when I debated Gavin Ortlund on capturing Christianity, he mentioned the fact that he thought this was typology run amok right so i was just like you know finding this type and just you know milking it and trying to find whatever i can but i asked him during the q a like are there any other typologies that you accept that aren't explicitly made in scripture and he said he was open to being convinced of mary as the ark of the new covenant was open to that. And my point there is that if you're open to it, then you should at least be open then to the typology I'm presenting here, because the New Testament never straight up explicitly in very nice, clean terms calls

Starting point is 01:41:54 Mary the Ark of the New Covenant. But the parallels are so strong that you'd have to put your head in the sand to deny them, okay? And so when it comes to Peter and Eliakim, the parallels, I would argue, are just as strong. Okay, so one of the things to point out is that in Isaiah 22-22, there's a corrupt prime minister named Shebna who is being deposed by God from his office as prime minister because he had carved a tomb in a place that God did not allow. And so, God says, you know, I will strip you of your tunic and your girdle or your sash and your robe, depending on your translation, right? And I will give, I will put the key, and then he talks now about Eliakim, right? I will take my servant Eliakim, and I will put the key of the house of David on his shoulder.

Starting point is 01:42:37 And whatever he opens, no one will shut. And whatever he shuts, no one will open. Okay, so there we have it. Now, how do we know that these are parallels? The first thing to point out is that there's a common structure between both of these passages, right? Both Eliakim and Peter received keys. And with these keys comes a definitive kind of exercise of them opening and shutting, binding and loosening, right? And we know based on the rabbinic literature during the time of Jesus, or even, you know, a little after, during the Talmud, that binding and loosening was the rabbinic power to interpret scripture and discipline the

Starting point is 01:43:13 community and excommunicate heretics. This was the power to bind and loose. And you can even see this in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 18, verse 18, when, you know, Christ talks about, or actually 17 to 18, when Christ says, you know, and if he won't listen to the church, then 18, when, you know, Christ talks about, or actually 17 to 18, when Christ says, you know, and if he won't listen to the church, then cast him out, right? And treat him as a heathen. And then Jesus says, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven. Jesus is showing that the church has the power to excommunicate because of binding and loosing. But moreover, we know from Josephus, who's a Jewish historian during the first century

Starting point is 01:43:46 and records the destruction of the temple, he refers to the power of the Pharisees to bind the conscience of the people and to discipline them in public with their administrative authority as the power to bind and loose. So we literally know what it means. We have that parallel right there

Starting point is 01:44:04 in the first century from the writings of Josephus. And even like most Protestant scholars today, they don't deny that this is what it means to bind and loose. To interpret Scripture and discipline the community, that is to say, to interpret Scripture in a legal normative sense. In Hebrew, this is known as halakha, to give a legal, normative, definitive ruling on a doctrine of faith and morals, and then to bind and to loose, to excommunicate heretics. Okay, so there's a similar structure. Similar powers are given to both Eliakim and Peter. And then there are other ways in which we can trace similarities between Peter and Eliakim, right? So in verse 25 of Isaiah 22, Eliakim is compared to a firm peg that will one day give way, right?

Starting point is 01:44:48 Whereas Peter is compared in the New Testament as the rock of Christ's church. Okay, so both Peter and Eliakim are compared to objects. Eliakim receives his keys before the destruction of Jerusalem in the Old Testament. And in the Jewish calendar, this occurs on the 9th of Av. Which is the Jewish month Av. And the Babylonians. When they destroy Jerusalem. And surround the temple in Sacket.

Starting point is 01:45:14 They use the Romans. In the New Testament in 70 AD. Use the exact same strategy. And they destroy the temple. On the exact same day. And so both Peter and Eliakim received their keys before the destruction of Jerusalem. And so there's kind of an apocalyptic theme going on here. I mean, another parallel that I could point out is that in the Old Testament,

Starting point is 01:45:37 when you have Eliakim getting installed as prime minister, you have this theme of going from corruption to purity. In the New Testament, we know that in Caesarea Philippi, there was a giant rock dedicated to the worship of the deity Pan. And it was dedicated to Caesar Augustus. And also, we know that there was a stream that went around this rock and led to the gates of the underworld or the netherworld. Jesus mentions that in Matthew 16, 18, and 19. right jesus mentions that in matthew 16 18 and 19 and so in effect jesus is saying you know upon my rock upon my temple shall be the church right and he's kind of declaring war on the pagan powers whereas in the old testament you have shebna being replaced and god finally installing the good final prime minister all right and so i mean we have all these parallels that are going on between

Starting point is 01:46:23 the old and new testament we know in the gospel of Luke, when Jesus reveals that he is the Messiah in the temple, he cites from the book of Isaiah. And so in Matthew, when his messianic identity is revealed, it makes total sense that he referred back to Isaiah again. So I think I can go on and on with all these parallels, but the fact is that there's also widespread recognition among scholars who aren't Catholic of this parallel. So for instance, let me see here, Patrick Gray in the 2017 Rutledge Guidebook to the New Testament, he states the fact that many scholars discern an allusion to the Israelite practice of a king granting a prime minister authority over his house and to make binding decisions on his behalf. Even R.T. France, in his commentary, Matthew, Evangelist, and Teacher, explicitly states that it's generally recognized that the keys of Isaiah 22 are the general metaphor for what's applied here in Matthew 16, 19. Craig L. Blomberg, for crying out loud, in a commentary on the New Testament use of the Old, he says it is almost certain that the keys of Matthew 16, 19 are identical to Isaiah 22, 22. In the New Bible commentary published in the 1970s, edited by Donald Guthrie and others,

Starting point is 01:47:42 it's also said it's almost certain that the keys here are the keys of Isaiah 22, 22. And so I can go on and on and on about all these parallels and all the hours that I've studied on this, but yeah, it's there. Why is it then, what's the reluctance in accepting it for like this fellow you debated on Cameron's channel? What's his name again? Gavin Ortland. I really enjoy him. He seems like a very reasonable, even tempered fellow. He's a good guy and I like him a lot. Yeah. So, so what's the, what's the name again uh gabon ortland i really enjoy him he seems like a very reasonable even-tempered fellow he's a good guy and i like him a lot yeah so so what's the what's the problem because it doesn't seem like typology run amok right i mean yeah at all and you've got all these other protestant scholars agreeing with you right why not just accept it and i think i know the answer but like why not accept it and then yet try to show that Peter didn't have the gift of infallibility or that he didn't succeed?

Starting point is 01:48:29 No one succeeded him in that role. And then also I wanted to ask you, Matthew 17, doesn't Christ give the power to bind and loose to all the apostles? To 18. 18. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so that's a good question. Maybe answer that second one first if you don't mind. Right.

Starting point is 01:48:44 Okay, so yeah, all the apostles get the keys, excuse me, the power to bind and loose in Matthew 18, 18, right? And so doesn't that mean that Peter doesn't have a unique function? I think the first thing that I point out is that it is unique that Peter receives it singularly, right? And so, for instance, when Jesus says, you know, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. When he says it in Matthew 16, 19, he uses the Greek word sao, which means you singular. But then when he mentions the other apostles, he uses the word himos, which means you all, right, basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 01:49:20 And so, I mean, that's one thing to point out. The second thing is that I remember reading in Dale Allison and W.D. Davies' commentary on Matthew 8-18. It's the international critical commentary in the New Testament. They point out that even though the apostles are also given the power to bind and loose, the way in which Christ speaks of Peter can only be said of Peter alone. Because remember, as we said before, Peter makes the declaration about Christ and then Christ makes the declaration about Peter. And then Peter is spoken of in terms that no one else can be spoken of.

Starting point is 01:49:52 His name is specifically changed from Simon to Peter, right? Rock. And then Jesus says, I'll give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Jesus never explicitly says that of anybody else. Now we can talk about the book of Revelation, but that's the point that I'd make there, right? I think there are plenty of ways to distinguish between Matthew 16, 19 and

Starting point is 01:50:10 Matthew 18, 18. But even some Protestant scholars, like Ulrich Luz and others, they make the argument that—so they're redaction critics, and so a redaction critic kind of tries to look at the way in which the writer of the gospel edited or redacted certain things toaction critic kind of tries to look at the way in which the writer of the gospel edited or redacted certain things to fit their kind of theological agenda or whatever. And so some people have made the argument that, well, it looks like Matthew 18, 18 is the older, more primordial phrase, and that originally Matthew 16, 19 just didn't happen. That's what some will say, right? But Ulrich Luz points out in his book, in matthew that even if that's the case what that means is is that matthew has concentrated the power of the binding and loosing of the apostles into one man into peter and so even

Starting point is 01:50:56 if you take the redaction criticism route we still have a good case for petron supremacy and infallibility um and so those are some of the things that I'd point out in response that doesn't detract from the uniqueness of Peter. But I could see some Protestants saying, well, it's obvious that the apostles had this role of teaching and excommunicating. I mean, obviously, I mean, they wrote some of them, wrote letters in the New Testament, books of the New Testament, which we know to be inerrant. But the idea that this passed down is the problem. Is that a tactic that many take, or is it mainly just the, no, he wasn't given primacy? And so even, you know, to kind of go back to the original objection

Starting point is 01:51:35 that you raised about, like, you know, why doesn't a Protestant just grant it, right? I mean, for those who do grant it, what they'll say is, but yeah, there's nothing about succession here. You know, and so, I mean, there's a way to respond to that as well which i'll get to later um but let me see what else i wanted to say um i wanted to point out too that some protestant scholars who do accept it they'll just say you know still it doesn't get you to the papacy it doesn't get you to everything that you need to order to establish, you know, the Roman Catholic doctrine. But even, you know, D.A. Carson in the Expositor's Commentary, he does

Starting point is 01:52:10 mention the fact that in Matthew 16, 19, when it says, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven, you know, it has been interpreted, and it can be interpreted as saying that Peter receives infallible communication of God's authority or God's rulings from heaven to earth. And so you can still get Petrine infallibility and supremacy from these particular passages. Yeah. I think the other thing I point out too is that, what is it, in hard sayings of the Bible edited by F.F. Bruce and other prominent conservative Protestant scholars, they point out that Peter's binding and loosing authority is most dramatically expressed in Acts chapter 5, I think.

Starting point is 01:52:49 Interesting. I think it's verse 11 and 6 when Peter rebukes Ananias and Sapphira. So we know that binding and loosing is the official declaration that an apostle can make in order to rebuke someone or excommunicate them. And so Peter is using his disciplinary functions to rebuke someone or excommunicate them, right? And so Peter is using his disciplinary functions to rebuke Ananias and Sapphira,

Starting point is 01:53:08 and both times they fall dead. And what F.F. Bruce and others point out is that this is fulfilling what Christ said to Peter in Matthew 16, 19, that heaven has ratified and has condoned Peter's judgment,

Starting point is 01:53:24 so much so that God dramatically backs it. And so as I mentioned before, even if the other apostles, which I do think they do have the power to bind and loose, none of them were ever as dramatically backed as Peter in his official rulings. Yeah. Let's talk briefly, though, about the succession. Right, yeah. Yeah, so this is a crazy thing. So I used to think that apostolic succession could only be established by a priori arguments. So for instance, you just say, yeah, I mean, like, but wouldn't it make sense if Christ

Starting point is 01:53:56 established this institution that, you know, there would be this enduring line of successors? You know, and so like that argument only goes so far with a Protestant who might be willing to just to deny straight up. Yeah, after the apostles, the whole thing just ended, right? And then you just had the general dispensation of the gospel among these bishops and presbyters. But what I discovered was actually, I was going on a debate, I was doing a debate on Sola Scriptura on the channel, The Gospel Truth. And as I was preparing for this debate,

Starting point is 01:54:26 I was looking through The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah by Alfred Edersheim, who's a famous Jewish convert to Anglicanism. And Edersheim pointed out that the lower tribunals and the greater tribunals of Second Temple Judaism, that is of the Sanhedrin and the lower courts, they originally were ordained by the laying on of hands. Okay. And whenever they were ordained, they had three men present.

Starting point is 01:54:52 And at least one of the men ordained had to be able to trace his ordination through Joshua and to Moses, or else he just didn't have the same authority. Wow. Right. And then I started looking further into, I think it's Lois Jacobs' book, The Oxford Companion to the Jewish Religion. And I read her entry on ordination. And she likewise pointed out that in the Second Temple period, which is the time of the New Testament, they believed that you had to have ordination through Joshua and to Moses in order to be able to serve on the Sanhedrin and issue valid binding rulings on all of Israel. And so at that point, then I realized that, okay, in the New Testament,

Starting point is 01:55:31 clearly the laying on of hands was used to ordain people. And we know that Paul himself was once a Pharisee. And even in the Acts 15 council, there were Jews, there were Pharisees who had converted to Christianity who were present too. And so this is really part of the makeup of the church, right? You have the Jewish legal structures being implemented into the ecclesiology of Christ, into the church that he built. And so, you know, even the words binding and loosing were words to describe the rabbinic power to interpret scripture and discipline the communities, right? And so at this point, then I started realizing that when Irenaeus and others are talking about this doctrine of apostolic succession, they aren't making it up.

Starting point is 01:56:08 I see. Irenaeus is not just using a tool against the Gnostics. This is in the Judaism of the time of Christ. And we know clearly that Christ passed on the teachings of the legal structures of his time, right? Because in part we know because Jesus is the new Moses. In Deuteronomy 18.15, Moses says that a prophet like you, like me, will rise out from among you, and you have to listen to everything he tells you. In the New Testament, Jesus is constantly described as this prophet like Moses, who does things like Moses. In the

Starting point is 01:56:41 Gospel of Luke, Jesus ascends the mountain with the 70 or the 72, although 70 is probably a more accurate number. Because in the Old Testament, in the book of Numbers, when Moses ascends the mountain, he takes 70 elders with him. So, I also looked and I read the works of the Rabbi Araya Kaplan. I don't know if I'm saying his first name right, but it's the Handbook of Jewish Thought. I don't know if I'm saying his first name right, but it's the Handbook of Jewish Thought. And in the second volume of that compendium, he talks about how the Jews believed that before the construction of the third temple, right? Before the construction of the third temple, the Messiah would come and the Sanhedrin would be redeemed. It would be restored. And they base this on Isaiah 1, verse 25-27, when God through Isaiah makes the promise to the Jewish people that I will restore your judges as they were in the beginning, as they were in the days of Moses.

Starting point is 01:57:40 So, I was reading a book edited by Marcus Bachmuel called, I think it's Studies in Early Christian Ecclesiology or something like that. And there's a chapter by Michael Goulder, and Michael Goulder points out the Apostolic College of the New Testament is clearly a redeemed Sanhedrin. Wow. So Jesus clearly established and rebuilt the Jewish legal structures of his time. And so the Magisterium, Matt,

Starting point is 01:57:59 is not this Roman invention. It's a very old Jewish institution that goes back to Moses. As you were looking into becoming Catholic, did the current papacy and scandals within the Episcopate maybe cast shade or doubt on your studies? No. Why not?

Starting point is 01:58:19 Because I'm here for Christ. And I know that whatever happens in Rome, Christ will take care of his church. I know it sounds childish and simple, but that's what I am. That's what we're called to be, isn't it? Yeah, like I just trust Christ that he won't abandon his church because I've seen on the cross how he didn't abandon me. I've looked through Christian history, times where the church seemed like it was going to fall apart, where it was going to break, and I've seen, wow, Christ was there with his church. Or even when I was studying the New Testament, you know, and as I mentioned before with Apostolic Succession,

Starting point is 01:58:51 I doubted these doctrines, I had questions about them, and then I constantly found that there were answers that were right under my nose that didn't just demonstrate to maybe some slight extent what I was talking about, but to an incredible confirmatory extent. And so I said, Christ, I trust in you. Jesus, I trust in you. Now, obviously, this particular papacy, this is the only time we've ever had problems with a pope, right? I mean, every other pope prior to Pope Francis has been essentially impeccable. Right, yeah. And every prime minister of Israel was great, too.

Starting point is 01:59:20 Right, yeah. And every prime minister of Israel was great too, you know. Tell us about Pope, you know, was it Benedict IX or some scoundrels within church history, if you're familiar. Maybe you're not, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, so, you know, I've heard about these cases like the Borgia papacy. What is it, that one time they dragged a dead pope, his corpse, and just had him on trial. Sodomite popes, popes that stole the papal cutlery, popes that rode off into battle, popes that had mistresses. Right. I mean, there's all these, all these bad things.

Starting point is 01:59:49 Popes that were heretics. Yeah. Or who were condemned, like Pope Honorius, right? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, so, I mean, I was aware of these cases, but I guess I'll say two things here, right? One is that we already know, so two, I would say maybe three things, right? So one is that we, like, because I already knew about Shebna and how corrupt he was and how God punished him and replaced his office, I know that in the New Testament church, which we are in right now, that whenever the new prime

Starting point is 02:00:18 minister makes a mistake or is corrupt, God will punish him and bring in a new guy, just as he did in the Old Testament. So I'm not too worried. And we may have a series of bad guys in the future. Right, right. And I mean, even the book of James talks about how teachers will be judged more harshly. And even Jesus, when he talks about, I think in Luke 12, the steward who is going to be given all of his property and all of his possessions and all of his sheep or something like that, he'll be judged more harshly if he's not faithful. So I'm like, okay, you know, this Pope is bad. Maybe this Pope is bad, right? Not saying like this particular pontificate, but just in general, right? A Pope, right? He's going to get punished by God. And so that doesn't mean that he doesn't have a valid office or that he doesn't

Starting point is 02:00:58 have real authority. And it was kind of funny because, you know, growing up when I was politically liberal, my parents were always like, okay, Swan, I know that you don't like the current president or whatever, and you're protesting all the time, but he has a valid chair. He has a valid authority. And for me, in my mind, I was just like, no, you know, if he's morally bad, then I'm just going to dismiss his authority. But then I look at scripture, and Jesus says in Matthew 23, 2-3, Obey the scribes and Pharisees, for they are seated on the seat of Moses but do not do as they do for they preach but do not practice right and I was like oh dang okay and I'm right now trying to finish a paper describing why Jesus is not speaking just hyperbolic Lee there

Starting point is 02:01:38 but he's speaking literally but um let me let me see what else I was gonna say. Oh, the last thing I was gonna say too is that You know growing up in 2016 my family and I we became American citizens you know, so we've been living in America all this time and we were finally decided to become citizens and A lot of people were asking me Swan. Why are you trying to become American right now? Because everything is so bad You're a holiday. I need to become american i'm still oh shoot yeah but you know they're just saying like swan things are so bad in america right now and even though i was liberal too like i knew about like slavery and the the discrimination against minorities in america throughout history and all that and they're like why would you want to become american and i said it's because i believe in the principles of this country

Starting point is 02:02:23 like even though um you know things aren't good right now, I think back to what Martin Luther King said. He said, be true to what you said on paper, right? And that's the kind of patriotic kind of protest that I think I was trying to embody, right? This kind of be true to what you said on paper, be true to what you believe in, right? And so it was easy for me to become American because I love this country and I love the principles it stands for. When I became Catholic and people were saying, but why do you want to become Catholic with all the scandals and the bad popes and the bad history?

Starting point is 02:02:50 I'm like, well, it's because I believe in the principles of the church. I believe in its theology. I believe that it was founded by Christ. And so just as it was easy for me to become American, it was also easy for me to become Catholic despite all the things that have happened. Yeah. Yeah. All right. I want to take some questions now from super chatters and patrons.

Starting point is 02:03:08 Before we do, I have two things I want to let people know. The first is we have some new merch and these are t-shirts and badges and stickers and all sorts of things that say introverted, but willing to discuss to mystic metaphysics. They're currently $13 for a limited time, and they're going to go up a little bit, but the link is in the top of the description below. Click that, get a shirt, share it on social media.

Starting point is 02:03:32 We'll share it for you as well. We'd love to see you sporting that. Also, we'd love to hear what kind of reactions you're getting. Also, the second link in the description below is to Swan's excellent podcast. So click that and subscribe to him there i also want to let people know that if you are a patron so if you either give on patreon or directly at pints with aquinas.com slash give swan recently recorded a seven-part series on

Starting point is 02:03:57 the papacy in which he does a very deep dive uh so if you are loving this and you just want to go even deeper because you're crazy uh no because you love the this and you just want to go even deeper because you're crazy uh no because you love the church and you want to help defend it um yeah that you can get access to that right now just by being a patron or if you're not yet a patron you want to be a patron you'll get access to that right away so let's uh let's see here i've got some questions from patrons if we get uh uh super chat let me know you're coming up yeah yeah all right so austin says uh sarabia thanks for being a patron he says swan i shared your debate with gavin to a protestant friend of mine who is a biblical scholar and his biggest criticism against you was typology analysis

Starting point is 02:04:37 are shaky as he feels it is trying to fit square pegs into round holes due to this he mostly threw out your arguments. How do you recommend responding to this criticism? Okay, first of all, briefly, because we've talked about this a bunch, what is typology? And give us an example of when it has gone amok and how do we know that it's not?

Starting point is 02:04:57 Yeah. Okay, so typology is this idea that what is there in the Old Testament foreshadows and points to something in the New Testament. And so generally speaking, what counts as a type is a person, an event, or some type of symbol, right? So for instance, the manna that came down from heaven, Christ states in the New Testament that he is the manna that has come down from heaven in John 6. So an instance in which typology might have gone awry. I'm trying to think about if there are any historical examples of that.

Starting point is 02:05:27 Insofar as I can tell, I can't think of anything off the top of my head, like an instance in which typology has gone bad, at least historically speaking. Well, what about theoretically? What are the guidelines that prevent Catholics from drawing too much of typology? So I've been actually thinking about this in writing, about this in hopefully my upcoming book, right?

Starting point is 02:05:49 It's kind of tough to write a book while you're in university right now. But one of the things that I've been looking at and noticing, and I actually did a debate against Seraphim Hamilton where I discussed kind of the standards for typology. One of the things that you want to start off with is just the baseline orthodoxy of the scriptures, right? And so what you usually want to see is like, okay, the typology that I'm beginning with, is it based on something that is true about Christ?

Starting point is 02:06:14 So for instance, if I have to say, you know, for instance, Christ isn't, let's say, fully human because of maybe, I don't know, something that happened in the Old Testament, right, that I'm trying to draw from, then that's not a good place to begin in the first place, right? So you begin with orthodoxy. You begin with places in which typology is explicitly clear, okay? So there are times in which it's clear. Like, for instance, when Paul talks about how Christ is the new or the second Adam who is life-giving.

Starting point is 02:06:41 Or even when it talks about how in Acts chapter 5, I think verse 32, when Peter explicitly calls Jesus, you know, he refers to him as the Moses, as the new Moses who was prophesied in Deuteronomy 18.15. And then when I make my case for the papacy, what I actually think people should begin from, because it's fundamentally based on Christ, begin with Jesus being the son of David or being the new David, because that is so clearly there in scripture. And what I'm saying is, is that as a

Starting point is 02:07:11 consequence of Christ being the son of David and the new David, you get this typology affecting Peter. Just as for instance, you know, because Christ is, as we said before, Christ is our high priest, Christ is the bread of life, Christ is the word of God, we can also build in the typology to Mary and the Ark of the Covenant, these things bleed over. Or for instance, like, you know, in the Davidic kingdom, we know that the queen was the mother, right? And so when we call Mary the queen of heaven and earth, or, you know, Eve was known as the mother of all living things, right?

Starting point is 02:07:43 When we make this connection back to Mary through Christ, that's totally fine to do, at least if you accept that. I know that, and this is going back to something we talked about earlier, some Protestants don't accept any typology beyond what's explicitly stated, which to me seems like a totally arbitrary and loaded standard in the first place. Now, let me see here. So those are some of the standards, right? The other thing you want to see is that are there so many uncanny similarities that you'd have to be

Starting point is 02:08:12 putting your head in the sand in order to avoid them, right? And that's kind of the crude way of putting it. But could you at least see as a virtuous agent who's openly, honestly considering the evidence, there are so many parallels here that i can't just say there's nothing going on right and so one of the reasons somebody some have said swan just call it an illusion don't call it typology right um one of the reasons why i call it a typology is because i think that what's going on here is that um when you have multiple parallels conglomerating around you know two events or two figures or two persons whatever when you have multiple parallels conglomerating around you know two events or two figures or two persons whatever when you have all those those parallels conglomerating together and concentrating there then you can say okay that's the type the thing that unites it all together is the type

Starting point is 02:08:57 does that make sense and so it's kind of like the form matter distinction right you have all the matter there and then the form is what unites it and puts it all together, right? And so that's how I view typology there. Now, I mean, another thing you want to look for is whether or not other scholars who aren't Catholic, yeah. You know, what's interesting is this fellow says to Austin that your typology analysis is shaky. I think a question you could ask back is, what's an example of typology that isn't shaky? Like, I mean, he's taking on a burden of proof in saying this. Right, and that's a good thing to point out too. I'm trying to get through a lot.

Starting point is 02:09:30 Yeah, you're fine. Because I like being thorough, you know? Yeah. One thing is, I mean, consider this for instance, right? Suppose that you had Moses in the Old Testament in Deuteronomy 18.15 saying a prophet like me will arise from among you and you have to listen to whatever he says, right? And then you go into the Old Testament in Deuteronomy 18 15 saying a prophet like me will arise from among you and you have to listen to whatever he says right and then you go into the New Testament and imagine a Peter never said in Acts chapter 5 verse 32 you know this is Jesus is the one who

Starting point is 02:09:55 was spoken of suppose you only had the parallels between Jesus and Moses you would still have enough to demonstrate that Peter excuse me that Jesus is the new Moses, right? And so my point here then is that the parallel between Jesus and the new Moses, or Jesus being the new Moses, is so strong that you don't even need the Acts 5.32 explicit identification by Peter himself, you know? And I mean, I can go on and on about all the parallels. Yeah, yeah. Oh, there's a super chat.

Starting point is 02:10:24 Oh, sure. Yeah. Someone knocked on our door out there, but I locked it so they can't get in. Nice. Yeah. What's the super chat? Well, maybe I can see it. The super chat is from Ryan Pope.

Starting point is 02:10:31 Oh, I see it here. Oh, Ryan Pope. Ryan Pope. Good friend of mine. What a legend. Yeah. He says, thanks for your super chat, by the way, Ryan. What area of historic Judaic history are you currently mostly interested in?

Starting point is 02:10:50 Appreciate you, brother. Also, Princeton rejected me too. Hey, what's up, Ryan? Hey, okay. Yeah, I don't want to bash on Princeton, though. But so let me see here. I'm currently focused really a lot on Second Temple Judaism. And so the period after the reconstruction of the First Temple, during the time of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and then I'm also interested in Talmudic Judaism. So this is during the period in which the Talmud is assembled within the first, I want to say, 500 years after Christ. That's when the Palestinian and then the Babylonian Talmud are

Starting point is 02:11:22 brought together. And these are like the definitive texts of Judaism, the tradition of the fathers, the Jewish fathers that is handed down and codified. Those are the periods I'm looking at. Okay. Father James, thanks for being a patron, says, Swan, how would you respond to a historical critique of the papacy posed by Matt Whitman in a recent Pines interview? Now, I don't think you've seen that, so you can't comment on that directly, but the basic point is that the centralization of authority in Rome took far too long to be credible. Yeah, so I mean, when you talk about the centralization of authority in Rome, there are two dimensions to that question, right? This could

Starting point is 02:12:00 either be a question about when did the mona episcopacy arise in Rome, or the second question could be just the church at large, right? And so I am doing research on, you know, the mona episcopacy, when did it arise in Rome? But before I get to that, let me just get to the church at large, right? What you see throughout the Fathers is never a denial of the primacy of Rome. There's never a denial that it is the unique Petrine Sea. There's never a denial that it is the first among all the apostolic seas, right? And then even like, I think when they tried to install Constantinople as the new Rome, they just said, let it be second to Rome. They didn't try to replace Rome's primacy, right? And all those sorts of things. Or even,

Starting point is 02:12:40 you know, people like Pope Leo basically declaring that it's by divine right that rome is the first c among all of them right and so i think what what it's there's a there's an agree there's a sloppy kind of misreading of church history sometimes in which someone is trying to say like oh yeah rome was just kicked around and never you know treated with respect and dismissed right no i mean that's not clearly what happened what happened is that the church always recognized the primacy of rome but there was always a question on how then does that how do we work that in with the rest of the church right because for instance i remember i was talking to father patrick ramsey on a reason in theology yeah and he said but if rome is the one true like if rome is the supreme church right then doesn't that mean that antioch or Alexandria is less in the body of Christ, right?

Starting point is 02:13:25 Like, aren't they all fully the body of Christ? And that was an objection that he had, and I think that's getting at the heart of the historical question of the church on how do we receive this doctrine of the primacy of Rome and of the Roman pontiff. And so you have two ways of reconciling those two things, right? One is the Roman Catholic ecclesiology. The Roman Catholic ecclesiology is that, yes, all churches are the body of Christ with apostolic succession, right?

Starting point is 02:13:50 They are all the body of Christ. And just as if you attack my hand, you'd be attacking me, you know, if you attacked any one of the churches, you'd be attacking the body of Christ. Right. But if you were to attack my head, then you'd be attacking something unique and central to who I am. It's the fundamental vessel that is kind of controlling everything else. And that's, Rome is often referred to as the kaput of the church, the head of the church, right? And so that's how I'd use that body analogy to defend at least the Roman Catholic ecclesiology.

Starting point is 02:14:20 Now, I wanted to bring this up too. You had a debate with Ubi Petros, who is an Orthodox apologist, I suppose you'd call him, online. I thought it was this up too. You had a debate with Ubi Petros, who is an Orthodox apologist. I suppose you'd call him online. I thought it was an excellent debate. The two of you were very respectful, very knowledgeable. What was something that Ubi brought up that shocked you, or was there anything that he brought up that shocked you or caused you to think more about this question? So he didn't cast any serious doubts on my belief or acceptance of the papacy.

Starting point is 02:14:44 What surprised me though was that he was so open to using the jewish evidence and the jewish sources because usually a lot of the orthodox that i've interacted with at least online they've said i don't care what some rabbi said i don't care what josephus said in the first century and it's like okay so you want me to quote mind the fathers that's what you want me to do but like as a historian you're wanting to look at the earliest sources. And especially since Christianity came out of Second Temple Judaism,

Starting point is 02:15:10 you'd want to look at the sources there to get on the ground on what the apostles and the disciples are talking about, what they believed. Yeah. And also like a lot of the Orthodox are really happy when I was defending apostolic succession based on Second Temple Judaism.

Starting point is 02:15:24 And so it's like, oh, but don't use it for the papacy, you know. And that's not all the Orthodox, by the way, just to be fair. Yeah. Okay. All right. Let's see here. Lindsay Clark. Thank you for being a patron, Lindsay.

Starting point is 02:15:37 She says, Swan, with the extent of your knowledge, I cannot, yea, will not accept that you are 21. With the extent of your knowledge, I cannot, yea, will not accept that you are 21. Michael and Amy Beaumert, thank you. They say, Swan, as a convert, what are some of the major hinges that need to be oiled for someone to willfully open themselves to the early evidence for the papacy and scripture tradition and the writings of the first millennium put another way what are some of the defeaters that prevent an openness in the first place among protestants yeah i think so but a lot of protestants believe in sola scriptura right and so they'll say you know i remember i was listening to and i love michael lacona to death like he's so great and i had him on my channel before actually um and I was listening to, and I love Michael Lacona to death. He's so great. And I had him on my channel before, actually. And I was listening to Michael Lacona and Lee Martin McDonald, who I've also had on my channel, both incredible New Testament scholars.

Starting point is 02:16:32 And they were talking about the Deuterocanonical books and the Apostolic Fathers. And they said, yeah, it's not scripture, but it's good for reading, right? But I'm like, what Clement says is not just good for reading like he's making a claim about what Jesus and the Apostles taught and it's incredible and so you know I didn't realize this at the time but when I was in the process converting by learned this later so Clement in chapter in first Clement chapter 44 verse 1 to 3 of his letter he says so too our Apostles knew through our Lord Jesus Christ that strife would arise over the office of Bishop and He says, should die, other approved men should succeed to their ministry. Now, scholars have traditionally

Starting point is 02:17:26 dated 1st Clement around 96 to 98, 99 AD, right? But recent scholarship from Thomas Heron, and even I talked to Matthew J. Thomas, who recently has published, what is it, Paul's Works of the Law in the Perspective of Second Century Reception, scholarship is now moving towards identifying the letter of Clement, the first letter of Clement, that is, before the destruction of Jerusalem in 68 AD. Okay. So, I mean, that is to say that the letter was written before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, probably 68 AD, or 69 AD is some of the estimates, right?

Starting point is 02:18:01 This is to say that this letter by Clement is so early that it predates some of the Gospels, depending on what you believe about the data of the Gospels. It predates, or, well, it doesn't predate Paul's letters, but it's so early that Clement is clearly a reliable eyewitness to what the apostles taught, and you can't dismiss him right off the bat, right? This is so early, because I remember when I was, like, you know, thinking about becoming Catholic, and you can't dismiss him right off the bat, right? This is so early, because I remember when I was like, you know, thinking about becoming Catholic, and I was like, okay, God, can you find me a source that's outside of the Bible, but knows the apostles and is trusted by them? And then you see, I think in Philippians 4.13, Paul says that he's sending a group of women to the Philippians, and he says, and I'm also sending to you Clement, whose name is written in the Book of Life, right?

Starting point is 02:18:45 And Michael Lacona in his book, The Resurrection of Jesus, A Historiographical Approach, he not only defends the early dating of Clement, but he also defends that the Clement of Philippians 4.13 is Clement of Rome, who becomes the fourth bishop of Rome and is the one who writes first Clement, right? So what I'm saying is this letter is so early that either Clement just has a terrible memory or he's straight up lying to your face, right, about what he's saying here, right? And the thing is, you know, we have no reason to think that he was lying, especially if he was trusted by the Apostle Paul, right? And his name is in the Book of Life. Incredible, you know? And then Clement is saying the apostles taught the doctrine of apostolic succession, and Jesus told them to protect the office of bishop.

Starting point is 02:19:33 So, you know, let's say that you believe in Sola Scriptura, right? In 2 Thessalonians 2.15, Paul says, Obey the traditions that were handed to you, whether written or by word of mouth. We have the tradition of the apostles. Clement, it's right there. So what are you going to do with it? If you accept the infallibility of Scripture, then accept when Paul says, accept the traditions. And we have the traditions.

Starting point is 02:19:56 There's no excuse. Okay. Eric Melvin, who is a patron and a handsome fellow. I've never met him, but the fact that he's a patron, just I assume it. You know, that's the only people who support us are handsome people. I grew up Baptist, he says, converted in January this year. It seems like a lot of millennial Baptists left Christianity because of atheist arguments, and some come back after finding apologetics, Catholicism, or orthodoxy.

Starting point is 02:20:23 I say this with a bit of humor and a bit of hope, meaning no snark or offense. There was no question there? He just wanted to say that. Any thoughts? I mean, I love the baptist and um i would just say that they'd feel totally at home in the catholic church with his love for christ well look here we go we got another comment another patron here who is a baptist it always blows me away i've got like muslims atheists protestants people who support the show eric says my wife eric melvin so thanks eric my wife and much of my family and friends are still Baptist.

Starting point is 02:21:07 Oh, I see. So he's not. And I have a great deal of respect for Baptists. There is really a great sense of community in many of the Baptist churches I've been to. And many Baptists care deeply about their faith and evangelism. It's grand to hear from the other Baptist converts to Catholicism who followed a similar path than myself. You can't beat a Baptist potluck. There's nothing like it on

Starting point is 02:21:30 Earth. Yeah? Alright, cool. I just thought of an inappropriate Baptist joke. I'll tell you after the show. Andrew Boyle or Buley, you might know this person because he says, Swan, what is the best university in the country and why is it kansas

Starting point is 02:21:45 state oh sweet yeah andrew um i mean i think what makes kansas state so great is saint isidore's i think that's an orthodox answer yeah that's okay yeah yeah all right oh the philosophy department is also really great and the professor who taught the class on medieval political and social thought, she's great. Yeah. Man, this is fun. Who do you most enjoy grappling with when it comes to the papacy, Protestants or Orthodox? I really like Protestants who are open to the Jewish sources, who understand New Testament scholarship, who have read New Testament commentaries, and they're like sophisticated, right? So when I read D.A. Carson's commentary on the Gospel of John, and he was critiquing the

Starting point is 02:22:35 Catholic interpretation of John 21, I really just enjoyed reading what he had to say, because Carson knows the Jewish sources, right? And he knows, you know, a lot of the, he does a good job defending sometimes the Catholic position against Protestant straw men. And so I really enjoy reading those types of scholars a lot. Because it's like, it's kind of funny, because sometimes when I'm doing all these debates, I'm dealing with Protestants who are like really anti-Catholic, or who are saying like,

Starting point is 02:23:00 I don't want to hear anything about no midrash and Mishnah or whatever, you know? And then when I had Lee Martin MacDonald on my show, who's a prominent New Testament scholar, we were like talking the same language. Like, we got along so well. And I felt like, yeah, like, we get along really well, you know. And so it was really nice. Yeah, I really love Protestants who take the Jewish sources seriously and want to have that discussion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Benjamin Handelman, who's a patron, an all-around great guy, says,

Starting point is 02:23:32 does Swan have a Patreon? Would love to support him. Yeah, I do have a Patreon. You know, just intellectual conservatism. I remember at first I was really hesitant to make a Patreon account because I was like, yeah, I'm not doing this for the money, you know, and also I'm discerning with the Dominicans. We'll talk about that. Right, and so I was just like, I don't want to, like, yeah, I'm not doing this for the money, you know, and also I'm just starting with the Dominicans. We'll talk about that. Right. And so I was just like, I don't want to like get wedded to money at all or anything like

Starting point is 02:23:49 that. And so, I mean, I just appreciate whatever you can donate. I think I have someone right now giving like 70 cents. That's great. Like, honestly, it's, anything is really valuable to me. Yeah. Well, you're putting out great work. Thank you.

Starting point is 02:24:02 It really is excellent. And I've got people who I really respect who are like, have you heard of Swan Sona? So you're doing great stuff, brother. We have a question here in the live chat. I'm not going to try to say this person's name, but can you ask Swan. Swan. Why do I keep saying Swan?

Starting point is 02:24:18 Swan. Swan, like the bloody bird. They can be black in Australia. Can you ask Swan for his favorite work by a church father? Yes, you ask swan for his favorite work by a church father yes i can what is your favorite work from a church that is a good question man oh neil thank you this is see catholic jamie is crushing it he just put up your patreon in the live chat oh snap thanks man man i think think Irenaeus against Heresies is just really good. I know that's kind of a boring answer, but I love just seeing his mind,

Starting point is 02:24:55 and I love seeing, you know, especially like when he gets really down and dirty defending the necessity of apostolic succession, and he says, if you have fallen away from this primordial succession, then you've lost the truth. I'm like, dang. Okay. Sarah just sent in a super chat. She says, how do you react to Catholics who openly criticize the Pope?

Starting point is 02:25:18 I mean, it's not wrong, I think, to criticize the Holy Father and to disagree with him. But I think I really take problem with when they're using bad arguments or they're using arguments that would basically lead to set of a contism. I respect the authority of the Church. I respect the authority of the Holy Father. And I don't believe that Christ would abandon his Church into nothingness. You know, the seat of Peter is not empty and never will be until the end of time.

Starting point is 02:25:43 And so, yeah, I mean, like, I'm okay with people saying, like, oh, I don't like when Pope Francis issued the motu proprio or something like that, right? But when they use arguments that are not well thought out, they're misleading other Catholics, or they are using arguments that could basically lead to set of a contism, it's game over for me. Benjamin Hanlon just started donating on Patreon. Look at that right now dude you just made an extra 70 cents a month yeah yeah um all right so everyone in the chat is asking me if they can hear the baptist joke so i'm going to say it but i'm going to say it in a way that if there was a kid in the room it wouldn't be too scandalous oh no but if you do have a kid in the room you know you might want to pause it but here it is um why won't baptists engage in the marital embrace while

Starting point is 02:26:26 standing up i'll put it that way okay no the answer is why why because it may lead to dancing oh yeah okay all right uh good so So Swan loved that one. So you're just saying, I'm going to pour myself some Lagavulin. You sure you don't want a bit of Lagavulin? I'm good, yeah. Have you ever had scotch Lagavulin? It's the greatest scotch in the world.

Starting point is 02:26:54 Yeah, yeah. That's cool if you don't want to accept it. Good. You can just drink your water bottle filled with vodka. Yeah, yeah, no, no, no. All right. So you're discerning the dominicans i am tell us about that yeah okay so i got to finish out my conversion story and then i'll give you the

Starting point is 02:27:10 rest of the details yeah yeah yeah because it goes into um some of the stuff that happened um here's what i'm gonna do i'm gonna light this cigar but i'm afraid it's just way too smoky in here when i do that no do it do you think go ahead it's not too bad. All right. So if it gets too bad, this is where we're going to see Neil, a.k.a. Catholic Jamie, although I've been told by your friend, I guess, that you know what I mean when I say Catholic Jamie? Yeah, I know what you mean. That soon Jamie from Joe Rogan will be just called Heathen Neil. So Neil is going to work around the cameras to see that my smoke

Starting point is 02:27:43 doesn't invade the set too much. But if it does, just let me know and I'll put it out. Conversion story, brother. I'm excited to hear about it. Okay, so this is like coming into the final few months of my conversion, right? And so I've done, I've had the rite of initiation. The bishop knows who I am and all that. And so I go to confession right before Pentecost, right? Because, you know, because of

Starting point is 02:28:06 COVID, we had to kind of basically cancel Easter Vigil, or the priests had to have it separately, you know? And so, you know, I'm getting ready to go to confession. I confess my sins. And then as I'm walking out, I hear that same voice that spoke to me when St. Thomas, when I asked for the intercession of St. Thomas, and the voice says, Swan, I will give you intimate access to my body and you will never hunger for love again. And for a lot of my life, you know, I'd struggled with, am I good enough as a man? You know, am I desirable? Am I ever going to be a father? Because I really desired fatherhood, right?

Starting point is 02:28:43 Right. And, you know, I thought more about that. And and when i heard that voice saying you'll never hunger for love again i was like okay i'm gonna be okay so i go up and i receive the eucharist for the first time during pentecost and i bite down and i hear like this loud crack as i'm chewing down the host and then the first image that comes to my head is the body of Christ being broken on the cross. And then I realized at that moment, like, this is the real thing. This is Christ, you know, this is my savior. And as time passes, I begin talking to a Dominican priest. And, you know, because of St. Thomas Aquinas, I love the Dominicans. And so I reach

Starting point is 02:29:21 out to Father James Dominic Rooney, who I had on my channel of the Central Province. And he's talking to me, and he says, Swan, you know, you should be thinking about how religious life is a marriage to God. And I thought about that. I was like, huh, that's interesting. And then I thought about it on my own. And I thought about how, you know, like the Dominican vows, right? You know, poverty, chastity, and obedience, right?

Starting point is 02:29:44 When you're married to someone your property becomes their property right your body belongs to them so that's the way of chastity and um obedience right so god is my superior of course and so i'm being married to him and so i'm submitting myself to him and his will and to helping his church. Right. And so I said, yeah, I want to be married to God. I want to give my life totally to Christ. And, you know, when I was back in high school, actually, and I was dealing with, you know, telling my LGBT friends that I'm now a traditional Christian, I prayed, you know, because I thought about what, what, what am I telling them that they need to accept? They need to be celibate, you know, if they're not going to live out the natural office of marriage.

Starting point is 02:30:28 And I was like, dang, can I really handle that? Or can I really like, you know, tell them to do that and change their lives in that way? And then I prayed when I was in high school, God make me celibate so that I can show the world that you can complete a human soul. And there are times that I regret that because I'm like, oh, you know, there's a nice lady.

Starting point is 02:30:47 I want to take her on a date. But then now, like, I'm just becoming so comfortable with that vocation. And every single day, like, I'm walking down campus, and sometimes I'm like, I don't want to be in these civilian clothes. I want to be in a habit, you know. Or even like – You'd rock a habit. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 02:31:01 You'd look great in one. You know, it's funny, too, because, like, you know, this phone that I have, I used to not have a smartphone at all. Or I had the smartphone, then I switched to a habit. Yeah, yeah. You did great in one. You know, it's funny, too, because, like, you know, this phone that I have, I used to not have a smartphone at all. Or I had the smartphone, then I switched to a dumb flip phone. And eventually, like, I learned my lesson about poverty. And I was like, I can't live with a flip phone anymore. And so I switched back to the smartphone. But ever since I've been discerning, like, poverty, chastity, and obedience, it's changed my life.

Starting point is 02:31:25 Because now, like, you know, sometimes I regret saying this, but sometimes, like, I'll show up to Mass, and because I really don't care how I look, although I should because it's Christ, right? But, like, you know, coming from a Baptist tradition, you just show up as you are to church, whatever that might be. Yeah. I just sometimes show up as I am, and I don't care if I look nice. I don't care if my tie isn't fully together or whatever. If my cufflinks aren't shined. Because I care about Christ. That's what I'm here for.

Starting point is 02:31:54 And so sometimes when I'm distributing the Eucharist during altar, when I'm altar serving, right, sometimes I'll see people walk up, and some of them are welders, and so I'll see oil on their hands, or I'll see people walk up and, you know, there's some of them are welders. And so I'll see like oil on their hands or I'll see like through their hands, then the roughness, the age and, and all that. And I'm just like, that's beautiful. Cause that there's a, you can see someone's whole life in their hands and I'm giving you Christ now.

Starting point is 02:32:16 And then one day, you know, uh, there's a group of kids who are coming up to receive the Eucharist and I give, I put the Eucharist in someone's hand and I'm like, this is the kind of father that I want to be because I want to give them Christ. Yeah. And then one time during mass, I'm praying and then I see like these two fires in my head, right? I can see that one fire is like the fire of like my desire for biological fatherhood. And this other fire is spiritual fatherhood. And it's like huge.

Starting point is 02:32:42 It's humongous. It's all kinds of colors, you know? And I'm like, wow, I want to be a priest. I want to give up everything for Christ. And, you know, when I was in the process of converting and I was going through a lot of the difficulties, I said, I'm ready to lose all things for Christ who completes me. And I really do believe that, you know, a human being can be truly happy with only Christ. You don't need the things of this world. You don't even need to be married, right?

Starting point is 02:33:11 You can find total happiness in him alone. That is a, that Christ is enough, not just to complete, you know, your life now, but forever. Do you have to wait a certain amount of time after being brought into the church before you can be accepted into seminary? So I heard it was like three years or something like that. So I've only been Catholic for two years by the time I, you know, I think apply. But the Dominican said, I think we can make an exception for you. Nice. Have you looked into the different provinces or are you stuck on the central?

Starting point is 02:33:39 I'm loyal to the Midwest. I'm loyal to the central province. Good for you. Yeah. Although I have a friend of mine who's asserting with the eastern province, and so I give him hell for it. But, you know. No, I love the eastern province, you know. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:33:51 Oh, man, that's beautiful. Yeah, so what comes next these next couple of years? Finish the undergrad? Keep publishing in academic journals? Yep. God willing, you'll be accepted into the Dominicans? Yeah, yeah. And then from there, I'm going to continue you know

Starting point is 02:34:06 doing research on the papacy i really want to finish my book but i used to i used to say like december is probably when i'll have the draft finish but i kind of doubt that now and so we're just going to see i'm just going to try to work and see what i can do maybe i'll take a gap year who knows what will come next but uh you know one thing i learned from my priest father gail hammerschmidt is you know discernment is just taking like one step on a pond and waiting for a stone to appear and then you take the next step and the next step and wait for the next stone to appear and so i'm really just going day by day uh i'm not terribly worried about what comes 20 or 5 or a year from now yeah yeah awesome and what do you got coming up on your excellent podcast?

Starting point is 02:34:46 So I'm going to have a philosopher by the name of Daniel Bonovic talk about a conservative vision of economic justice. So that'll be a lot of fun. And let's see here. I recently had Eric Ybarra, Elijah Yossi, and Michael Loftin discussing Vatican I in the first millennium. And so this is basically just to give a little teaser, right? They effectively show that in an ecumenical council, the East actually accepted the supremacy

Starting point is 02:35:12 and infallibility of the Pope. And so, they provide multiple examples of this and through Orthodox saints, you know? And so, what will probably happen now is we'll, you know, I'll have them back on again to defend their thesis against several objections. We kind of structured it like a mini conference, you know? And so, yeah, I'll continue to do work on doing work on the papacy and then Catholic theology and ethics. And you might be hosting a debate on your channel soon. Can you talk about that or not? Not yet because we haven't confirmed it. All the more reason for people to subscribe so they don't miss out. So that's the second link in the description below. And also Catholic Jamie, just put up your link in the live chat

Starting point is 02:35:49 so people can click that and subscribe. Yeah. Well, thank you, Matt. Yeah, yeah. I want to keep chatting. I'm really like self-conscious that this cigar smoke is too much. It's not too bad as long as you blow it away from the camera. You're holding the cigar right in front of the camera.

Starting point is 02:36:05 What if we do this? What if we wrapped up and then did a post-show wrap-up over on Patreon? Would that be okay? So we'll do that. And then if you're a patron watching right now, we'll publish it. And so you can watch it live

Starting point is 02:36:21 and you can even ask questions and we'll just ask their questions directly while I smoke and we don't see Swan anymore because he's in a cloud of smoke. Sound good? So everybody who's watching, thank you so much for being here. Do us a favour. Please click that thumbs up button. Please subscribe.

Starting point is 02:36:37 Please click the bell button. That all really helps us out. Be sure to subscribe to Swan's channel linked below. And then also we've got that wonderful Catholic swag, which we can show up one more time, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe. Introverted but willing to discuss Thomistic metaphysics. And if you are a patron, be sure to check out the post-show wrap-up. Also, I should let people know who are interested

Starting point is 02:37:00 that we're actually currently developing a Patreon alternative on pintswith aquinas.com so if you're someone who's been giving directly and you wish you had the patreon experience you're about to and soon we'll just be pushing people through to that but anyway there is uh that's that so good good good good um so anyway if you're a patron go over to patreon.com slash matt frad and we will be sure to post that video right away cool thanks so much

Pints With Aquinas - From Baptist Leftist to Conservative Catholic w/ Suan Sonna

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