Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 101 | Matt Walsh

Episode Date: April 19, 2019

Host of “The Matt Walsh Show” on The Daily Wire, Matt Walsh joins me to discuss the differing beliefs between Catholics and Protestants, heaven and hell, love and salvation.   Copyright Blaze Media All Rights Reserved.

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in, conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed. You can watch this D-Day Show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Hello, Relatable listeners. Happy Friday. Hope everyone has had a great week. Today on Relatable, I am going to talk to Matt Walsh of the Matt Walsh show on The Daily Wire. You can listen to that wherever you get your podcast. We are going to talk about theology a little bit. We're going to talk about heaven and hell, salvation, some of the differences that we believe he's a Catholic and I'm a Protestant.

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort.

We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Matt, thank you so much for joining me. Hey, Allie, thanks for having me on. Yeah. So we could talk about a lot of things. There are a ton of things that we agree on. But there are a few things that we disagree on. Number one, watermelon, number two, cargo shorts.

Number three, well, I actually think that I agree with you on dogs, but I think that you might be a little too harsh about dog owners. So I was thinking that that's kind of what we can focus on today. If you want to talk about cargo shorts, I'll talk about those all day. It's like one of them, it's one of the few things I support. You know, I criticize most things, but cargo shorts I'm on board with. Very practical and stylish, in my opinion. Stylish. See, I get the pragmatic argument.

I don't really get the style argument. Why do you have to go that far into it? Well, because I think a man's, we could really talk about this for 30 minutes if you wanted to. A man's style should, style for a man should not be like style for a woman. Style for a man is utility. And so if you see a guy, it looks like he's, you know,

he's ready to go. He's got the fanny pack. He's got the cargo short. That's a guy who's, you know, that's style because it is utility. So that's what I'm trying to say. It's one in the same in a masculine sense. So why, but why can't a woman have style that is synonymous with utility?

I mean, there's a lot of things that a woman needs, especially when she has kids. She could. Look, I would be perfectly in favor of that because what I was trying to explain is that my wife, you know, she doesn't like carrying a purse around. And she doesn't have pockets and whatever outfit she always has on. So then I end up carrying all of her stuff. And so that's where the extra pockets come into. Look, if the women, if you women want to take up the, the mantle of wearing pocketed items of clothing,

I would be perfectly climb with that. Okay, okay, I'll consider that. Number two, the watermelon, why don't you like, you said any melon, right? You just don't like melons. No, I just think that watermelon is, it's, yeah, no, people don't, people, when I call something overrated, people don't understand.

I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying it's overrated. Like, it doesn't deserve all the hype that it gets. Watermelon, I'm not saying it's bad. And you, in your experience, watermelon has just gotten a lot of hype. It's just got a ton of hot. It's like peanut butter. I mean, it's just, it's one of those things just gets way more credit than it deserves. Okay, gotcha.

And then the last thing is dogs. I would like you to clarify that just in case there's anyone listening to this that thinks that you are an evil dog hater. Well, I might be evil, but I don't, if I am, it's got nothing to do with my feelings towards dogs. I have a dog. It may horrify people to learn. I actually own a dog and he's fine. I'm fine with him. He's cool.

I like him. We get along, but he's just a dog. He's an animal. So people that humanize their pets are, you know, their dog is the most important thing in their life to them. I just think if your dog is the most important thing in your life, you need a better life. Yeah. I totally agree with you on that. Plus, I'm a cat person, but I do have a dog as well.

But the arguments that you were getting were crazy, how personally offended people were by you just kind of saying dogs are animals. People really don't want to hear that. Well, and the stupidest thing people do is they say, they say, well, dogs are, you know, a dog will never betray you, a dog will never hurt you, dogs are perfectly loving. Well, no, it's, he's an animal. He relies 95% on instinct. He likes you because you feed him. And I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to rain on people's parade, but let's just be real here, you know. Because here's the thing, if a dog is so, if we're going to give a dog credit for being courageous and loyal and loving, then should, what, should we be putting them in prison when they, when they steal something? Right. Or when they, I mean, if we're, if we're ascribing moral motives to them, then is it on the other end, too, do we blame them morally for doing the wrong thing?

No, we don't because they're animals and they don't really know most of the time what they're doing. Yeah. Whereas a human, a human can hurt you because a human has the power to make choices, but a human can also, when a human does something nice for you, it means a lot more. because that's someone who knew, who understood the sacrifice they were making for you and could have made another choice but really decided to do this because they love you. So it's just a lot more meaningful. Well, it seems obvious. And I think that we actually could talk about that for 30 minutes because I was thinking about this yesterday.

I feel like the elevation of the status of animals and the kind of like degradation of the status of children and a lot of human beings, especially those that you disagree with, says a lot about the moral status of where we are as a society right now, that we are exchanging the values of things and people. And it probably speaks to how, like, hyper individualized we are and just how little we actually interact with other people that we don't even see, we don't even see the inherent value of people, but could probably keep going on that. Yeah, well, I think it speaks to that. And it also speaks to the thing people like about pets, is that pets, or at least dogs anyway, is that, you know, dog is, it's all about you. Like the dog wants nothing more than to be around you and waiting for you to come home and he's

fawning all over you. And people that like dogs more than humans, what they're really saying is I want humans to do that for me and humans refuse to because humans have their own lives and their own interior existence. And so, you know, I think that's, I think it's sort of a self-centered thing, really. Yeah. No emotional sacrifice is required for loving your dog. Okay. So let's talk about some things that probably matter just a little bit more than dogs and watermelons and cargo shorts, although I do think that's very important. I want to talk to you about Catholicism, because even though you and I probably agree a lot,

even on religious matters, there are distinct differences between what you believe and what I believe, some of which we've talked about on Twitter, but a lot of which we probably never discussed before. So I kind of want to hear in your words, what do you think the biggest differences are between what you as a Catholic believe

and what a Protestant believes? Biggest difference as well. I mean, I don't know, the most obvious one is the status of the church, what we call the church, the Catholic church. I mean, that, of course, is the obvious one. And I go there because there are other differences. I'm just going to assume that a lot of the people listening don't know anything about Catholicism. So what do you mean by the status of the church? Well, the Catholic Church. Now, Catholic believes that, you know, what we call the church and what someone outside would just

call the Catholic Church, what we believe is that the Catholic Church has a historic church. What we believe is that the Catholic Church has a historical claim to being the church that Christ founded. And if you were to take the Catholic Church and just trace its history back year by year by year, for 2,000 years, you're going to get all the way to Jesus Christ. So I would think that that is the, really the main bone of contingent. I think there are other things that we consider differences between Protestants and Catholics that I think sometimes just come down to a miscommunication, like things like faith versus works. You know, I actually think that when you sit down, to talk to somebody, there's not as much of a difference there as maybe we think.

I think maybe sometimes we're just using different language to say the same sort of thing there. Well, that's what I want to talk to you about, because in my mind, that's really the biggest thing is this, you know, for Protestants, we've got the five solas. Yes, we have Sola Scriptura, we have Christ alone, by grace through faith alone, to deviate from the actual Sola, because I always get the end of them wrong. But I think the biggest thing that we probably disagree on is the by grace through faith, or at least it feels that way. But you might be right. Maybe it's just a matter of semantics, and I just kind of want to work that out with you. So describe to me what you think justification or what you believe justification in Christ means. So in other words, like how is someone

made right before God? Well, I think it does come down to faith. And I prefer to use the word faith than belief. Another problem is that we use those words interchangeably. I would argue that they are not interchangeable. They are sort of two different things. Or I should say, maybe it'd be easier to say that, more accurate to say that belief is one of the starting points for faith. You can't have faith unless you believe, but that's not the whole story. So, you know, it's maybe it's a difference between sort of believing in and believing that. So I could believe that aliens exist. That's just me assenting to what I believe to be a possible fact. And I think if you believe in God in that sense and that you think he exists and you assent to that reality just intellectually, well, that's a good starting point.

I mean, you need that at least, but that's not enough. You haven't actually put your faith in God in that case. You're simply just saying, yeah, sure, he exists. And I think, and even with Christ saving sacrifice and everything you read in the Gospels, it's not enough to just say, yes, I believe that's true. and then go about your day. So that's what I, that sort of belief. And then faith is an actual living of that belief. You're living out that belief.

You're living according to it. You're living in it. You're living by it. You know, any word you want to use. So it's all about living. And that's going to include what you do, which doesn't mean that you get to heaven by giving X amount to charity. It just means that believing in God means also with your whole body and your whole self.

It also includes your actions, of course. It includes your mind and your heart and everything else. Yeah. And I think that we would agree on that is that it's not just faith that. Faith that God exists, like you said, that's not enough. It's not just belief in. It is faith that he exists, faith in God. And that faith that he exists and faith in God does manifest itself.

throughout your life. Like James says, faith without works is dead. And so he says, show me a man with faith without works and I'll show you a man with works without faith. It doesn't work, basically. You can't have one really without the other. Neither saves you. I think the, I don't know if it's a disagreement or just a misunderstanding that we have between Protestants and Catholics, but Protestants certainly have the belief, even since the Council of Trent, that Catholics believe that the sacraments are necessary for, salvation, that baptism is necessary for salvation, and that in order for God's grace to be manifested in your life, you have to do certain things in order to prove your worth or prove yourself worthy

of salvation. And that's where a Protestant would say, well, no, that's not what the Bible says. Would you say that's an accurate kind of division between the churches or just a matter of semantics? Well, I certainly wouldn't say that the sacraments are semantics. And that is what I, I talked about the sort of the main difference being the church, and I would include, I'm not obviously just talking about the building there. I'm talking about the church itself and everything you get from it, which would include the sacraments. So from a Catholic perspective, no, I wouldn't say that it's a matter of semantics. We do believe the sacraments are necessary, but I'll add a couple of caveats there. Number one, not all of the sacraments. Like you don't have to get married, for instance.

Yeah. And you don't have to become a priest. Right. Right, that's obvious. And it's also not, so a sacrament is not really something you, it's not about what you do. It's something that your, it's about something God does within you, something that you receive. Now, it does obviously include your own actions and your own will, especially with something like marriage, but it's all about God working within you. Now, but, you know, if a Catholic were to say, well, we believe that, you know, every person who's never received the sacraments is going to hell, that's a Catholic who's, saying way more than I think he's really able to say because that's I don't believe that and this is you know it's maybe a whole different discussion but discussion I've been having over the last couple of weeks is you know how exactly does a person end up in hell um how does that work exactly and uh and then there's so that's a much more complex subject um well I would like to hear what you think about that because I do think that it goes hand in hand with with justification and I think that a Protestant would say at least most Protestants would say the cat or the

the traditional Protestant belief is that, yes, communion is an important thing to do. Baptism is an important thing to do. These are signals or symbols of a regeneration of the heart that the Holy Spirit did inside of you, but they're not necessary for salvation. We believe it's, you know, by grace alone, through faith alone, which, yes, does manifest itself in good works and having the fruit of the Spirit, as Jesus said. A tree is known by its fruit, but it doesn't earn you salvation. And that's what I was talking about semantics.

Not that the, not that the sacraments are semantics, but is it just a matter of semantics in that I am saying something that's different, or it sounds like I'm saying something that's different than you, but essentially we are saying the same thing? Or do you believe that communion and baptism are necessary for salvation? Yeah, well, it is, it's certainly a crucial distinction. I wouldn't use the word earn, like it earns you heaven. because again, that puts way too much of the emphasis on the individual rather than what God is doing within us. Yeah.

So something like baptism. Yeah, I do believe that, and it is a Catholic belief, that you need to be baptized to go to heaven. Now, that raises a lot of questions, right? Like, what about babies who died before bad? What about aborted babies? What about people who die, you know, never had the opportunity? People that died, you know, in the Americas in the year 900 before anyone ever even told. them about the gospel. Are all those people going to hell? Now, the first answer is none of us can say,

for sure, where anybody goes because we're not God, right? It's my personal belief, and it is just my belief, and it's a belief consistent with Catholicism, that, you know, there are different forms of baptism, and there is nothing that would preclude God from performing some sort of kind of spiritual baptism at the moment of death or in the moment after death. I mean, I think that these are all possibilities. And so when we talk about baptism being necessary for salvation, that doesn't mean that we're saying that every single person who didn't have the actual water poured over their head is in hell now. I don't, I'm certainly not saying that. That's not something that Catholics are required to say by Catholic teaching. And I don't think that's something most Catholics believe.

And I think that's an important thing to explain. That's certainly something that I didn't understand from a Protestant perspective because I think when we read the catacet, or when we look at the sacrament, it seems like, okay, well, these are the things that you have to do to be saved. And from an outside perspective, it does seem like, okay, well, even if you don't really have faith, but you go through these seven steps, or like you said, not all the seven steps would necessarily be required, but you have to show all of these outward signs of salvation in order to be saved, and that would be against scripture. but what you're saying is that that's, one, not how you guys see sacraments, and two, it's not just, it's not always the outward symbol.

It is more about the spiritual regeneration that happens when God baptizes someone, whether it is by water or by spirit. But of course, it's better that that person is baptized by water, which I think Baptists would agree with too, right? Yeah, well, and we're dealing with mysteries here. I mean, there is something, I believe, significant and real about the water in baptism. There's something real going on there. Can I explain exactly what that is? No, I can't. Just like, you know, when Jesus healed the blind man by, you know, spitting on his hand and rubbing mud on the blind man's face,

I don't think that that was just theatrics. I don't think that Jesus ever engaged in just empty theatrics. I think there was something real there. How does that work? I mean, why did he need mud to heal the blind man? I suppose he didn't need it, but he thought that was the most proper way to do it. Why? I don't know.

But that apparently is the case. So there is something to these kind of physical substances. It's not entirely symbolic, but it's also not strictly speaking necessary as far as God's concerned, because God is all powerful. So how do you think so? Yes. So how do you think someone ends up not being saved or going to help? Well, yeah, that's obviously a big question. The ultimate most simple answer is that you end up in hell by rejecting God. That's sort of like the one sentence answer, right, that I think everybody would basically give.

The follow-up question is, but what does that entail? And is it possible for someone, now we know that Jesus says, you know, no one gets to the father but through me. So that's very clear. The question is, is it possible for someone to get to the father through Christ without being consciously aware that that's what they're doing? Another way of phrasing that is, can Jesus allow someone to the father through him,

even if that person wasn't consciously aware of it. And I would say, certainly in some cases, I absolutely believe that is the case, going back to babies who die. They obviously couldn't have had conscious faith. Do I think that God sends every single baby to hell? Absolutely not. I don't believe in a God that sends babies

to be tortured for all eternity. So if we're willing to allow for that or consider that possibility, then it opens it up to other things. What about someone who knows, never really had the gospel preached to them and what so really wasn't aware of it. What about them? And so you start looking at all these hypotheticals. The overall answer is I don't know exactly, right, who goes and who doesn't. But I do know that God is all powerful and he's all merciful.

And that means something. And I don't think that anyone goes to hell on a technicality. That I'm pretty sure of. Yeah. I think that we mostly agree. I think so. Obviously, if we agree that it's only through Christ that someone can be saved, that it's not that, okay, they espouse that there's another God or there's another Messiah and they're just living pretty moral lives, but they reject the God of the Bible. They reject that Jesus is the Savior and the Great Reconciler and still make it there. I obviously don't believe that. I believe that it's only through Jesus. C.S. Lewis did make this argument that, okay, is it possible for someone, you know, in the Congo who's never heard the name of Jesus? Is it possible for him?

to somehow understand through the mysterious power of the Holy Spirit that Jesus, whether or not he knew the name of Jesus to be reconciled to God through Jesus the Great Reconciler. And maybe we don't know the answer to that. To that, I do think that we go back to the fact that it is Jesus, no matter what. And I agree with you on babies. And John Piper does. A lot of Protestants do as well.

We, of course, believe that babies, that all people are contributors to a original sin and that they're not necessarily innocent, but that because they don't have the capacity or the capabilities to be able to understand anything about faith, that there is mercy extended to them, but that at the end of time, when every knee bows and every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord, that that will be a reconciliation for them as well. So I think that we probably agree on that aspect, would you say? Yeah, I think we, I mean, I could, line up with most of what you just said there. I think now one thing on my show

what I've been talking about the last few weeks is this idea of maybe we, I don't know if you and I talked about this on Twitter or not. The question of, and I know with this I'm sort of going a little bit further than a lot of people are willing to go, but it's a question anyway and that is if hell is the absence of love,

well, if hell is the absence of God, then it is the absence of love, right? And if that's the case, then can someone who truly had love in their heart? Can someone like that even go to hell? Because if they can, then wouldn't that be to say that there can be love in hell? And doesn't that open up a whole can of theological worms? It also kind of reshapes our whole idea of hell. Now, if we say that, no, a person with love cannot go to hell because love is the absence of hell,

and so love simply cannot exist. That's what C.S. Lewis thought. that love essentially is just too big in a way to fit in hell. But if that's the case, then what about someone who did not, who was preached the gospel, said they don't believe it, yet really did love their children, really did love them, sacrificially, love them, just like you and I love our children, or your child that's on the way. Can that person go to hell? And, you know, that's, at first, maybe seems like an easier question than it really is when you stop and think about it. There's not such an easy answer

to that question. I don't know what the answer is. Well, maybe, I don't know, maybe I'm not fully tracking with you. I don't really see the question in that from a biblical perspective. I think it's a gift of common grace that people, people both in and outside of Christianity can be moral people. They can follow the law of God without even knowing they're following the law of God, just in the same way that you could be pro-life without saying that you're a Christian just because you understand innately somehow the innocent life should be protected. But that person without Christ being good enough or being loving towards someone, which I do think that you can be if you're not a Christian and reject Jesus, I don't think that's enough to get you to heaven because the Bible says that our righteousness is as filthy

rags. And so I think someone can live a very morally pristine life on earth. But if they reject the gospel, or I'm, I mean, I'm a Calvinist. And so we don't necessarily use those exact terms. But if that person is not saved, then no, they're not going to get to heaven. So I don't really see the interesting part of that argument. So do you think that love can exist in hell? No, because it is the absence of God. But I think that in hell, because it's the separation of God, it's not the same as life on earth. Life on earth, you are under the common grace of God, which means that even Saddam Hussein, probably enjoyed fine wine and good food. There's beauty in the world that all of us get to experience

whether we are Christians or not. And part of that is romantic love. Part of that is paternal and maternal love. And in hell, we don't get to enjoy that common grace. We're outside of the common grace of God. And so everything good that believers and nonbelievers got to experience on earth is no longer going to be in hell. But to me, that doesn't mean anything about whether or not a loving person on earth will end up in hell or not. Yeah, well, certainly emotional affection. I'm not talking about that. You know, things that you enjoy, the fact that you had a capacity to enjoy things.

Like, that's got, yeah, there's no problem there. Because you could be just a totally spiritually dead, evil person and still enjoy, as you said, wine or chocolate or whatever. But I'm talking about sacrificial, real human love between people. Now, so the question is, if love cannot exist in hell, which seems like we agree. and then you have someone who, again, really, let's take me, for example. I hate to use myself as an example, but let's say that I reject Jesus, but I really love my family, and I do, and then I die.

So I'm going to hell. Okay, well, so what happened to that love I have for my children? Does God remove that from me? It's like some sort of spiritual surgery where he cuts off the love so he can throw the rest of me in hell. Well, I think everything good that you got to experience on earth, which is love with your family, will no longer be there. You are in hell. If everything is separated from God, then we are enduring the worst parts of ourselves, the worst parts of our universe, worse than we could ever imagine for all of eternity. And I think love is a gift of common grace is what we call it. It's

common grace. So even unbelievers can feel that kind of maternal or romantic love, whatever it is, even selfless love towards someone. And yeah, that's not saving love. Well, but love, you're talking about love as if it's an external thing. Love is an internal thing. So, I mean, it's easy to say, well, yeah, I won't have the love in hell, but then how? I mean, what happened to it? And now I'm in hell, let's say.

It's me in hell, so I'm still me. Do I not remember my kids anymore? Or am I not? Is it just, has some sort of spiritual lobotomy taken place so that I can no longer conjure that experience of love anymore? Well, when we go to heaven, we no longer struggle with sin. We know that there's not going to be any sorrow. There's not going to be any jealousy. There's not going to be in strife, any strife once we go to heaven.

And so if heaven and hell are outside of time and space and this spiritual thing happens when we go to heaven, where I'm no longer going to look on the internet and compare myself to someone, I'm no longer going to struggle. with sin. I'm never going to wonder again, or I'm never going to have regret. I'm never going to have sadness again. I'm still the same person, but I become new. I am a spiritual being. And we, I mean, you could talk about eschatology and all of that. When I'm in heaven, it's the same thing when I go to hell. The things that were good are removed just as when I go to heaven, the things that were bad are removed. And it's much more magnificent and eternal than that. But in simplistic terms, I do think that that's basically what happens.

Yeah, and as far as the process into heaven, the process of going up and shedding those things that you're talking about, I don't struggle with that. That makes plenty of sense, because those are the parts of you that are not even real. I mean, those are such small, petty, just baggage that we all carry around.

And so being able to drop those and being, you know, leaving that load behind through God's grace. Well, that just makes a lot of sense. But now going in the other direction, though, ahead and south, this love is the most real thing you have. It's the most real and beautiful thing that you ever had in your life. And so what we're saying here is that God will take that so that the rest of you can go to hell. Now, C.S. Lewis's idea was that God's not going to do that. God's not going to, he's not going to get rid of the good so he can salvage the bad so that it could be tortured forever in hell.

No, if there's a good there, he's going to seize onto that desperately. And like a little ember, if you just have that little ember, he will blow that into a fire in a good way. But to me, that just sounds so relativistic. Why even be a Christian? Why be a Christian? Why deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Christ? Why believe anything that the Bible says if all you have to do is just love your husband really well? I mean, that sounds great.

I have a lot more time on Sundays. I don't, first of all, I don't think it's relativistic. I mean, it is, because I am not talking about love in your own way or, you know, we all get to define our own love. No. And I do think that, listen, I'm also not envisioning a scenario where basically everyone's in heaven because, hey, everyone loves someone. I don't think that's true. I think actually that even if I'm right about what I'm saying here, and maybe I'm not, I could easily not be. But even if, even if this is the case, there are probably still a lot of people in hell because I think actually a lot of people never love anyone in their life. And they feel like they do. They have emotional affection and so on. They're lot of people who don't love their own kids. That's very clear to me. So, you know, that all, you know, there's no problem there. But I'm talking about a real actual sacrificial love. And I don't, I don't think it's relativistic. I mean, it does, yes, it does raise questions like the ones you're, you're bringing up about, well, what's the point of this and that? And I don't think it makes it pointless. I can't answer those questions for sure. But I do know that, that, you know, with your,

with your way of looking at it, there are also some really, really difficult questions. Like, you know, here's an example I gave a few days ago. Just, you know, I don't mean to make this an emotional argument, but just one example, okay, of sacrificial love of someone who's not a Christian and who almost certainly knew about Christianity, but rejected it consciously. I read a story about a woman at Auschwitz, okay? A Jewish mother whose children were being sent to the gas chambers, and she was going to be sent to a labor camp so that, you know, because she was healthy and young, and she could have survived. She chose. to go to the gas chamber with her children so that she could comfort them in those their final

moments of life. It wasn't suicide. She just, being there to give them comfort in those moments meant so much to her that she would give up the rest of her life just for those moments. Now, that is pure, sacrificial love. I mean, maternal love. That is the realest thing in that woman's life. And so are we willing to say for sure that that woman who gave up her life for her children was then sent to hell for all eternity, along with all the other Jews in the Holocaust, by the way. And that the Nazis who killed them, if those Nazis, some of them were Christian, some of them really were Christian. So we're dealing with a scenario where almost all the Jewish Jews who died in the Holocaust went to hell while a lot of the Nazis went to heaven. Now, I just can't sign on to

being certain of that being the case. And I think that it's very, very possible that that's not the case. Okay, here's what I would say. Number one with Jews, I know that, I don't know, you probably agree with Romans 9 through 11 that talks about the full inclusion of the Jews at the end of time, that God does have a very specific plan for the Jewish people that is different than the plan that he has for other people and that the hope that Paul has is that they will all come to know Christ. maybe not in this life, but depending on your view of eschatology, that there will be a full

inclusion of Israel at some point, but it will have to be through Jesus Christ. But the problem with the argument of saying, well, okay, this woman showed sacrificial love, which I agree, that is Christ-like love. But the problem with saying that that is now the standard for salvation is that you take Jesus out of the equation, is that you say, okay, well, it no longer matters what Jesus did for us, as long as a Muslim, which I think that a Muslim could put, probably demonstrate the same kind of self-sacrificial love. Are you going to say that, okay, it's totally fine to be a Muslim. It's fine to be a Buddhist.

You're going to find your way to heaven because you truly loved someone. And I would not say, though, that the Nazis were saved just because they were nominally Christians. We both agree with the fact that a tree is known by its fruits. And if someone is an evil murderer, I mean, the Bible says if you hate someone in your heart, then you were a murder. That's how serious Jesus took sin. seriously. And so I wouldn't say that the Nazis who are killing Jews, even though they might have professed Christianity, were true Christians. And I believe that they are probably in hell,

although we probably agree that we can't ultimately say where people end up. We'd probably agree that they're not true Christians. But I just don't think changing the standard from what the Bible says is required for salvation, which is faith in Jesus Christ, to self-sacrifice. It just doesn't line up with Christianity. It lines up with relatives. doesn't line up with the Bible. Well, again, I don't think, I don't think love is, is relativistic at all. I think it's the least relativistic thing in the world. I mean, as far as the Nazis go, yeah, Nazism itself is not, despite what atheists

try to claim, was not a Christian phenomenon or invention. Not at all. It's an atheist one. Although, I mean, there were plenty of Nazis who I think were a Christian, not good people, but were Christian in any case. So I think, you know, what I'm talking about here is, and I would say this regardless of this particular aspect of the conversation, that the ultimate point in life is love. I mean, that is St. Paul says that love is the greatest thing. St. Paul puts love above faith.

Jesus says, you know, greater love has no man than this than he give up his life for his friends. So Jesus would have said that that woman who I mentioned, she had the greatest love, but not just any love, she had the greatest love, because she gave up her life for not just her friends, but her children. So for me, I've always believed, and I think that this is what we get from the gospel, that it's about love. Love is the point. It's not, not relativistic. It's not emotional attachment. It's not affection, but love, self-sacrificing love. I think it was St. Augustine who said, I believe it was St. Augustine who said, or one of the church fathers, who said, you know, that basically love and do what you will. And that's, that's, that's, that's, that's,

That's the point of life. That's how you live a good life is love and do what you will according to that love. As long as it's really love, you're not going to go wrong. You can't possibly go wrong. And God is love. So anytime someone is truly loving, they are experiencing that love. They are partaking in that love through God, whether they know it or not, they still are. So, you know, I don't see this as getting anyone off the hook or this is some sort of dreary vision of life. You can have any faith that you want to, unless you would say that a Muslim person is incapable of self-sacrificial love. No, I don't think that at all. So you think Muslims will go to heaven just as same as Christians if they have this self-sacrificial love?

And that's where I'm talking about is relativistic. No, it's not relativistic because it would be relativistic if I was saying that I get to decide who goes to heaven. I don't decide. I know that God decides, right? So I'm not really... Yeah, his objective standard is Jesus Christ, not, oh, did this person, did they really self-sacrificially love? Well, they never had to go into a gas chamber, but, I mean, they really loved.

It's just, it becomes this really weird thing of, okay, well, what is love? What constitutes self-sacrificial love? Why did God send Jesus to die a bloody, gruesome death on the cross, and then rise again three days later, if all he really cared about was that we were self-sacrificial and I love. Why did he have to die? Why couldn't he have just come and said, hey, just be really loving. You don't have to believe that I'm the son of God. You don't have to call upon my name. It's fine. Just love really well, Muslim, Buddhist, whatever, and then you'll be good. But that's not what the Bible says. Well, first of all, it is difficult for us to discern, you know,

who has self-sacrificial love, who does, and so on and so forth. which is why it's good that we're not the ones discerning it. That would be up to God, not us. I mean, I can't sit here and say who's loving and who isn't. I mean, I can have a good educated guess on some people based on how they behaved, but I could possibly be wrong on those two, like the one example I gave. But I guess what I'm saying is that I'm, what I can't sit here and do is say that God could not let such and such type of person into heaven.

Muslim, atheists, whatever. I'm not going to sit here and say, God couldn't do that. Do you think God couldn't do that? Well, it's not a matter of couldn't or could. It's a matter of wouldn't or would. And I think the Bible makes very clear the only intercessor to God,

the only reconciler, the only one that makes holy. If our righteousness is as filthy rags, as the Bible says, and the only one that can impute his righteousness upon us and can make us holy and make us acceptable before God is Jesus, then I just don't see how self-sacrifice, which a lot of non-believers I think have probably demonstrated throughout history, is sufficient for salvation.

I just don't see the evidence for that in Scripture. Well, but do you feel that you can really speak to what God would or wouldn't do for sure? Well, I think that the Bible speaks to that. I certainly don't, but the Bible certainly says, over and over again, that it is by grace through faith, that it is only Jesus. Jesus died for us while we were yet sinners. He gave us his righteousness, that we might be called righteous to God. And the Bible says, so that no one can boast. That is why Jesus gave us his righteousness. It wasn't of our own doing. It was his work, which I think you would probably agree with.

But Jesus is essential, is crucial, is the exclusive way to the Father. I am the only way, the only truth, the only life, no one can come to the father except through me. Not the Muslim who is self-sacrificial, not the person who is an atheist and self-sacrificial. No one can come to the father except through me. So I just don't see a theological way around. I think you added some qualifiers on there that are, you know, I mean, that's obviously you're paraphrasing the scripture there. I mean, he, yes, no one can come to the father except through me. What he doesn't say there is that every single person, by the way, every single person who comes through me is consciousness aware of it while they're living. That's the part that's not in there, right? And so that's the

question. Does it always necessarily require being consciously aware? I mean, you sidestep the Jewish Holocaust question here a little bit because you said, well, maybe in that case, it could work somehow, which seems like you're allowing for the possibility that maybe there are people who aren't consciously aware and still go to heaven. And so that's all I'm saying. If it's a possibility, then it's a possibility. I think it is. And so that's an interesting possibility. And from there, I can say no more than that. But I think there are two different questions. I think that there are two different questions. We might, I might be able to say that there's a possibility that I might. I'm not sure. I'd have to think about it a little bit more. The example that I gave of someone in the Congo,

okay, could they know that Jesus is their savior without knowing the name of Jesus, without ever reading the book of Ephesians, whatever it is, could they still be saved? Because the Bible does say that man is without excuse because God has displayed his divine attributes throughout creation. And so all men are without excuse, the Bible says. So it might be possible. I don't know, in the context of that verse for someone in the Congo who has never heard the gospel to somehow intrinsically understand the gospel. That's one thing. The other thing is to say that people who have heard the gospel and who have rejected the gospel, but still show self-sacrificial love that those people are going to be saved. I just don't see how you square that. Well, yeah, but I mean,

the problem there is you're still allowing for exceptions under the assumption that, well, maybe someone in the Congo could have inherently known the gospel. Well, I can tell you right now, for sure, that every single person who lived in the Americas prior to the European showing up here, none of them had any understanding of the gospel whatsoever, because that's why Jesus said, go out and preach to the nations, because they're not going to know unless you tell them. Now, we have an innate, the verse you're talking about, they're without excuse. There he's talking about our knowledge of God, not of the specific theological doctrines of Christianity. Of course, no one could possibly know that unless you tell them, which is why Christianity

didn't exist in the Americas until we brought it there. No one could have possibly known before then, unless they had a personal vision of Jesus Christ, and we're not aware of that happening prior to the Christian showing up. So, and that creates a problem. Now, if you want to draw a hard line and say, look, the Bible says you've got to have faith in Jesus or you're not making it in, then it seems to me if you're drawing that hard line. And look, I can respect that hard line. I understand where you get it from in the scripture.

I'm not saying it's without basis, but if you're going to draw it, then I think you have to exclude everybody who didn't have faith. including everyone that was in the Americas, everyone in the Congo, all the babies, all of that. You have to exclude everyone who died in the Holocaust pretty much. But if you're not going to draw the hard line and you're going to say, yeah, well, look, maybe there's, maybe it's a little more complicated than that. Maybe there's a little bit more to it. Maybe there are other ways.

Maybe it's possible for someone to live in Christ without knowing it. If you're allowing for that, which I think we should allow for it and I do, then from there, I don't know how you redraw a hard line somewhere else and say, well, yeah, okay, the people in Americas, people in Congo, the baby, sure, people in Holocaust, yeah, I bet that. But no, no, no, Muslims, no way, not them. At that point, the redrawing of the hard lines doesn't make logical sense to me. So, um, well, no, I don't think that, I don't think that that's my argument. I do believe that God is sovereign. And so I believe that he was sovereign over the Americas before we came. I believe he's sovereign over the Congo. I believe that he's sovereign everywhere

there is not the gospel. And you're right. The gospel does tell us, or Jesus does tell us to go out and to make disciples of all nations. And there is a verse that says, well, how are they going to know if they're not told? And yet, God's sovereign choice still stands. I don't think that he was like, shoot, what am I going to do with these people in the Americas? I believe that everyone who has ever existed has some kind of eternal destination and that God is in control of absolutely all of that. And I could be wrong about babies, but there is a theological argument to be made that, yes, babies,

because they are without the capacity to understand faith at all that they will enter into heaven, but that at the end of time, when Jesus comes back, again, depending on your eschatological view of pre-tribulation, post-tribulation, all of that, that everyone who enters into the kingdom and is enjoying the new heaven and the new earth will be confessing the name of the Lord, will be confessing Jesus Christ. And so I just, to me, moving the standard to just love takes the important aspect of that away. I do totally get what you're saying that, okay, if we say that there are concessions for certain kinds of people because they might not know, but there's not concessions for other kinds of people. But I don't think I'm making those concessions.

I think everyone has to have a knowledge of Jesus Christ, and I just don't think that that standard is just self-sacrificial love. Well, yeah, I mean, yeah, I get that that's your position. I guess we just go back and forth. I mean, I think that, like I said, it's, it's, you know, if you draw, if you draw the really hard line, then you, you are consigning a whole lot of people to hell that. Well, I'm not. I'm not. I know, I know that you're not. I'm saying that, that point of view would have that effect if it were true.

And maybe it is true. I mean, I can't say for sure that it isn't, but, but I don't think it is. And so what I'm trying to do here is what I'm looking at what I guess we agree could be possibly maybe are exceptions, what most Christians believe must be exceptions or could be possibly probably are whatever, babies, people that were never told about it, blah, blah, blah. What I'm trying to get at is, okay, well, then sort of what is the overarching thing here, the overarching point really? and it can't if we're going to include those people there's a possibility of those people being

saved that it can't just be conscious aware faith there's got to be something else something higher and then i look at scripture and i see that oh well saint paul says what the higher thing is he says it's love right and jesus says the same thing so maybe there's something there and and again i i don't i don't know but um what i do know is that love i'm talking about unfortunately unlike the Greeks, we only have the one word for love. And so it has taken on a sort of soft connotation. But you're probably talking about like agape love, unconditional love, I'm guessing. Right, yeah. And so the kind of love that it says is no small thing. And as I said, there are many people who live, I believe, and never experience it. And by the way, the flip

side of this coin is that, you know, the people who really do believe in Jesus but are totally without love and don't even love their own children, just completely self-absorbed human beings, I have no problem seeing those people burning forever in hell. Well, and I don't think that those people are Christians. Jesus said a tree is known by his fruit, and James clearly talks about faith without works is dead. And like you said, Paul says that, you know, it's impossible to love God and hate your brother. I've actually been convicted by that. I was reading a verse that, I was reading a quote by Jesus the other day that says, whoever says you fool is a murder basically.

I'm like, how many times have I called AOC a fool? And so it's something for all of us to think about. Love is important, but to me it is not, it is the fruit of a genuine faith. And so I don't think that you can be a true Christian and not truly love. I just don't think that that's possible. You might say that you're a Christian, as the Bible says, not everyone who says, Lord, Lord will be saved. And I think that probably speaks to a lot of what you're saying.

We see in Matthew 25, Jesus says, okay, there's going to be people who I look at you and I say, you never clothed me. You never gave me food. And there's going to be people that I did. But I still think the only standard for salvation is Jesus Christ. And I don't know, we might just agree to disagree on that. Well, I guess the last point I'll make on this is when I was having this argument, you know, over the last couple weeks, one thing people brought up to me to try to disprove my argument,

which I actually thought, which I actually think lends at credence, is. is the parable of Lazarus that Jesus gives, you know, of the rich man going to hell and Lazarus going to heaven. And I guess the point people were trying to make is, well, it seemed like that rich guy had some love and his heart because he was concerned about his brothers, and he said, hey, can you send someone to warn my brother so they don't end up here?

And he was told basically, no, your S-O-L on that one, just paraphrasing. Yeah. But what is it in that parable that sent the rich man to hell? We were not told anything about his faith or his religion or anything. There was nothing about that. He went to hell in Jesus' telling because he had no love for his fellow man. And because he didn't, he was, Lazarus was there starving and he never helped him. And that's why Jesus said he went to hell.

He didn't say it's because he didn't believe in me or he didn't have faith or he was an atheist. He went to hell because he didn't have love for his fellow man. And I think when you, Jesus, as you know, talks about hell quite a bit. sort of the startling transition from the Old to New Testament, where in the Old Testament it's not really talked about it at all. And when you find him describing hell and the people who end up there, it seems like it's always people who didn't have love for their fellow man and who didn't help when it was needed and all of that.

That seems like that's what Jesus describes. And I would say that's probably, I would say, yes, that is the signifier. of someone who doesn't have faith in Christ, not always, because I've already talked about common grace, I think it's possible for people of other religions to show self-sacrificial faith, but just because the people who ended up in hell or who didn't spend eternity with God were without love doesn't mean that love was the qualification to get them to heaven, which is made so evident throughout the New Testament that you are justified by grace through faith in Christ and that there's really no other way. The fruit of that is love. And a love, I think,

non-Christians can't really know because they don't know the greatest love that was ever shown, which is Jesus dying on the cross for our sins. I don't think they can ever fully know what that love is without really knowing Christ. So I would say it's a fruit of salvation, but it's not your qualification for salvation. I think that's probably where we differ. Yeah, well, I mean, I really don't like to use terms like qualification anyway because it, you know, it gives it this kind of bureaucratic feel to it. And I just don't, I don't think that's how it works.

Like, you know, I don't like images where you, where you imagine God sort of there with a checklist. And he's like, no, you didn't have that, you didn't have that box check. Well, me neither. That's why I think that Jesus's death and resurrection is so awesome, because he did that for us. Right. Well, and I would agree with you there. Well, here's the last thing I'll say. Here's maybe a way around it that some people have suggested.

And who knows, but, you know, it's all theoretical. But who's to say that you don't, that maybe everyone at the moment of their death or a moment after is given sort of a final choice, an awakening, a moment of realization. Maybe every single person is given that moment, which is what kind of what the Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis's book is all about in a way. Maybe everyone is. Maybe that's the solution here. Maybe that's how you deal with all these different, what would seem like outliers. Who knows? But there's, I don't think there's anything in the gospel that would rule that out. So maybe that's it. I don't know. I don't know. I would have to look more theologically into that. I can't say that I agree with that possibility, but I won't rule it out until I study for myself. Okay, there's a lot that I still want to talk about, but we should

definitely have another conversation because we didn't even get into Calvinism and predestination, is I know something that you disagree with, correct? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I do disagree with that. I guess I took us off on this love thing. Oh, no, it was fun. Well, we'll have to have another conversation about all of that because I think there's still a lot of theological debates

and discussions that are left to be had between us. Agreed. Well, thank you for taking the time. I really appreciate it. And I'm sure that I will talk to you on Twitter soon. All right, All right, All right. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. Hey, this is Steve Day.

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