Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 997 | Why Do Catholics Pray to Mary? | Guest: Trent Horn

Episode Date: May 6, 2024

Today, we sit down with Trent Horn from Catholic Answers to discuss the House's recent bill aimed at preventing anti-Semitism and some of the biggest differences between Catholic and Protestant theology. Is it anti-Semitic to say that the Jews killed Jesus? Why do Catholics pray to Mary and the saints? Why don't Catholics believe in sola scriptura? And how do Catholics and Protestants differ in their beliefs about salvation? --- Timecodes: (01:03) Trent’s story (05:50) Catholicism & Protestantism differences (13:58) Anti-Semitism Awareness Act (31:44) Praying to Mary (56:35) Sola Scriptura and the Gospel (01:13:59) Salvation --- Today's Sponsors: Range Leather — highest quality leather, age-old techniques and all backed up with a “forever guarantee." Go to rangeleather.com and use coupon code "ALLIE" to receive 15% off your first order. We Heart Nutrition — nourish your body with research-backed ingredients in your vitamins at WeHeartNutrition.com and use promo code ALLIE for 20% off. Jase Medical — get up to a year’s worth of many of your prescription medications delivered in advance. Go to JaseMedical.com today and use promo code “ALLIE". --- Relevant Episodes: Debatable: Catholicism vs. Protestantism | Trent Horn & Dr. James White (Use code 'ALLIE' for $20 off your subscription!) https://www.blazetv.com/watch/channel/series/series/d36O0ZN2Y3SO-relatable-with-allie-stuckey/episode/JZlvbyTwLNio-debatable-ep-1-v2-final--btv-?q=debatable Ep 672 | Should Protestants and Catholics Get Married? | Q & A https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/relatable-with-allie-beth-stuckey/id1359249098?i=1000578450694 Ep 995 | Anti-Semitism Ramps Up on College Campuses https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-995-anti-semitism-ramps-up-on-college-campuses/id1359249098?i=1000654214442 --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise – use promo code 'ALLIE10' for a discount: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckeyv

Congress is trying to pass an anti-antysmitism bill. It sounds good, but what's really in it? And what does the Bible say about this statement that, quote, the Jews killed Jesus? Also, what are some of the biggest differences between Protestantism and Catholicism? Why do Catholics pray to or through Mary? Well, we are talking about all of this debating many subjects today with Catholic apologist Trent Horn. This will be most. one of many conversations that I have with him because we went a long time in our conversation over an hour and we still have so many other topics to get through. But I hope that this is a good starter for you all. You guys have been asking me to have him on for so long and he is wonderful. I thought it was a great conversation. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to Good Ranchers.com. Use code Alley at checkout. That's good ranchers.com. Code Allie. Trent Horn, thanks so much for taking the time to join us today. Thank you for having me.

Yes. Okay. You're back. Many people probably saw you in the debate that we did on debatable with Dr. White. And now because I didn't get the chance to ask you so many questions that I wanted to during that exchange, I wanted to bring you back on for everyone. This one won't be behind the paywall. So everyone gets to access this. So many people have been asking me to have you on. So tell those who may not know who you are, though, and what you do. Sure. So my name is Trent Horn. I am a staff apologist for Catholic answers. So I'm a Catholic apologist, but I also speak frequently on other subjects, atheism, pro-life. I want to defend the Catholic worldview. So that includes some things that are unique to Catholicism. But in the post-Christian culture that we live in, a lot of the things that I'm defending are things Catholics and Protestants have in common. The existence of God, the divinity of Christ, marriage being something God created to bind men and women together, one man and one woman, the sanctity of life before birth. Even just general sexual ethics, things that people didn't question 30 years ago, now are really out on the

fringe for some people. So that's what I do. I have a podcast called the Council of Trent. That is a play on words for those who are not Catholic. There was a major ecumenical council held in the 16th century in response to the Protestant Reformation called the Council of Trent. So my podcast is C-O-U-N-S-E-L. council of trend. And it's very providential also because my parents are not Catholic, actually. I'm a convert. So it all came about providentially. So that's what I do. I write, I speak, and I just want to help people come to know our Lord, come to know the church he established, find salvation in him, and live godly lives that'll make them happy and holy people. And tell us a little bit about your

testimony, because like you said, you weren't raised Catholic. Right. So I was raised in a nominally religious household. We didn't go to church. The closest thing that we had to religious instruction were the old Hannah Barbera cartoons, the greatest stories from the Bible. Those are still my favorite. They are still my favorite Bible stories. I don't show my kids veggie tales. I hate that. Really? Oh, I hate it. It's just like, I'm sorry, a dancing cucumber and tomato can't get across the gravity of man's sin that demanded the flood of Noah, for example. Even for kids. Oh yeah, even for kids. So I love the Hannah Barbera cartoons. Yeah. It shows, like, you compare, like, the Veggie Tales Noah episode to the old Hannah-Barbera episode, and it opens, and God saw the world that had become wicked and sinful. Yeah.

And you see the dancing ladies and the tavern and a guy clubs another guy over the head. And God's, you know, and it's just, it brings a certain gravitas to this that this is, because to me, cartoons are for kids. Animation is for everyone. That's a difference there. Because there are animated things that are not appropriate for children. Yeah. kids. So when I teach my kids, so that's what, I mean, that's what I was raised on. But the time I got to junior high school, I kind of grew out of that, because we didn't go to church. I didn't get

religious instruction at home, beyond the very basics, you know, believe in Jesus. But I had questions. I asked my mom, you know, how do I know this stuff in the Bible that really happened? Yeah. Couldn't get a good answer. So I became a deist. I wasn't an atheist. I believed there was a god up there that made everything, but I didn't think he cared about us. Right. Then in high school, I met Catholic teens in a youth group there and also some Protestant teens in another youth group. It was befriended by them. And that started me on my investigation first into being convinced of Christianity and then looking into, okay, if I'm going to be Christian, well, what church am I going to belong to? Right.

And that all culminated in March of 2002 when I was 17. I was received in the Catholic Church. I was baptized, confirmation, First Eucharist. And after that, I started doing a lot of pro-life work. I got involved in the pro-life movement because there was a girl, she went to a very tiny, tiny Catholic school, only like 20 people in high school. So they wanted to have a prom. So to have a prom, they all said, okay, we're all going to invite someone who doesn't go to the school. And so that way they could have 40 people.

She invited me. I met her dad. He was the president of the state right-to-life organization. And he kind of mentored me, took me under his wings. And then I started doing pro-life talks and I traveled university campuses. And that's where I really cut my teeth on apologetics, was debating abortion, doing debates on college campuses. Those things can get pretty wild, as we've seen recently.

So that's kind of my background. Okay, got it. I love hearing how people came to where they are now. And I think it's really interesting that you weren't raised Catholic because most Catholics, I know, you know, they would call themselves cradle Catholics, whether they really believe in Catholic theology today, most people who identify as Catholics today, it's a long-standing tradition in their family. Maybe they're from Italy or they're from Ireland,

and they've just always kind of grown up in Catholic culture. And growing up in Texas, that Catholic culture really wasn't very prominent or pervasive. I went to Christian school. I think I knew literally one Catholic. And then I went to college, and I went to college in South Carolina, which is still in that Bible Belt,

not a ton of Catholics there. And yet that was like really my first encounter. with a lot of Catholics. I had a roommate who was Catholic. I didn't even know that people actually put ash on their foreheads on Ash Wednesday. The first time that I encountered that, I had no idea what was going on. And it's really interesting how Catholics and Protestants seem to kind of occupy in some ways different universes. Like I was talking to a Catholic who lives in the Northeast. She had no idea that we Protestants, when we say the church, that we're not talking about, the Catholic Church. Like we would say, I think you said earlier, you know, the church that Jesus

established, I would say that too. But I'm talking about the universal body of believers, whereas you're specifically talking about the Catholic Church. She had no idea that there was a difference when we say those things, which, you know, it's just kind of fascinating. Catholics and Protestants have been together for a long time, and yet there are a lot of misunderstandings about the two. There are, I remember once, when I was just, doing pro-life work, the organization I worked for, we were half Catholic and half Protestant. So it was a great opportunity to dialogue with each other, but we were traveling in the south, I think in Alabama, staying at a host family's home while we were doing pro-life outreach on

university campus. And we spoke with them. And it was funny, they said to us, wow, I didn't think Catholics believed really in Jesus. You're the first really Catholics I've ever met and talked to. And I've seen that. So, well, of course Catholics believe in Jesus. They got a big picture of him hanging on the cross because he died on the cross to redeem our sins right in the front of church. We received Jesus in the Eucharist. So I think that you're right that, and that's why dialogue is always important to get past the misconceptions so that we can really understand the things we agree on. Yeah. And then the areas where we're still dividing where there's disagreement, and we're hopefully, maybe we can bridge the gap on some of that. Yeah. And I think

it might go back to kind of what I said about a lot of Catholics having just a culture of Catholicism, maybe even more so than Protestantism. Most Protestants that I know don't even really know that they're Protestant. Like they wouldn't call themselves Protestant. They don't really know about the Protestant Reformation. They might call themselves Baptist or Methodist or maybe even evangelical. But most Protestants just think of ourselves as Christians. Yes. And a lot of Catholics, because it's really something that has been more past down to them. It's part of the culture, maybe in the countries where their ancestors, grandparents came from. They are very culturally Catholic without necessarily, I don't want to

say not practicing it, but not knowing why they practice it. I'm not saying all or even most Catholics, but that I think is a lot of the experience that we Protestants have or evangelicals have with Catholics, that it's our friend in college who made sure to go to Mass every week but for the rest of the week didn't care about it or didn't go to Bible studies or things like that. It wasn't a very personal relationship, it seemed. So I'm just saying that that's kind of the impression that I think a lot of us Southern evangelicals have, which might sound weird to a Catholic who, like you said, is like, of course we believe in Jesus. What are you talking about?

And that's why it's important because the same thing happens on the Catholic side. You'll have Catholics that will meet evangelicals, people who call themselves Christians. you know, someone who says they're Protestant, but they have no problem posting really immodest pictures on their Instagram. And they go around saying that they're, well, I'm Christian, I believe in Jesus. Like, well, okay, but what about where are your other actions conforming? And that's why when we analyze and try to understand another faith, another church, what we should always do is take a look at what does that group officially teach? Right. And also, who are the best representatives of it?

Yes. and always make the comparisons. If you're going to compare, it should always be worse to worst, best to best, not worse to best. I totally agree with that, that you have to look at what is actually being taught and then look at the fruit of that actual teaching, because there's always going to be hypocrites, and there's always going to be nominal Christians. I mean, definitely in the Bible Belt, there are plenty of evangelicals and Protestants, maybe less so today, because it's just less popular and convenient and comfortable to be a Christian. But certainly throughout the past 100 years, cultural Christianity, cultural Protestantism has been extremely prominent.

Plenty of people who are Christian in a name only from all different denominations. Well, we're kind of sifting through the wheat in the chaff right now. I would say that we live in a post-Christian culture in the United States, that there was a time when Christianity was, it was the given. Maybe it wasn't always celebrated, but even as recently as I would say the 1990s, I remember watching, it was like the old, I was watching with my kids, X-Men 97, the reboot of the cartoon that I loved as a kid. And I remember on the old X-Men animated series, there is an episode where the mutant nightcrawler, he's a German Catholic and he's talking to Wolverine about Jesus. I'm like, yeah, I've got to have that. And, I mean, I haven't finished the series yet.

I don't know if that'll come back in X-Men 97, but probably not as much. So they're trying to be faithfully original. but you could have that more, whereas nowadays it's very clear that there is another worldview that is seen as an opposition to Christianity that has to be defended, a worldview, LGBT pride, abortion on demand, radical feminism, radical individualism, that that has become, it's become essentially a counterfeit religion for people to belong to. It has rituals, it has it's so funny. People will say, oh, you religious people, you're narrow-minded, and, you You know, you Catholics, you burn people at the stake.

But today, if you go against modern wokeism, you can be excommunicated that you said the wrong thing. There's dogmas and secular heresies you can hold to. So you can take someone out of religion. You can take man out of religion, but you can't take religion out of man. They'll always just make something else to fill the void. Yeah, that's absolutely true. Okay, before we get into some of the things that we might disagree on or the questions that I have, I want to talk about a couple of things that either we agree on or I just want your insight on.

And one of them is this anti-Semitism bill or anti-Semitism bill that is in Congress right now. The House of Representatives passed the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which like most things going through Congress, has this very innocuous title to make you think, of course. If you're against anti-Semitism, which I think we all should be, then you'll support this kind of legislation. But you have to dig deeper. And what people are concerned about without getting into the weeds too much, just because we don't have time, people are concerned that this violates the First Amendment, that this seems to be policing speech and specifically speech that is found in scripture. So one of the things that the bill tries to ban or tries to punish is speech that says that Jews killed Jesus. And they add something to that, a caveat that basically says,

if someone says Jews killed Jesus in order to indict Israel as a whole? Like how, I don't even know how. They call that classic, using classic anti-Semitism, such as the claim that Jews collectively or totally killed Jesus or blood liable, the claim that Jews have some kind of secret conspiracy to kidnap Christian children and use their blood for rituals and things that have been thoroughly debunked, to use that to impugn Israel, modern. Jews. So what they're saying, yeah, is, well, I'll let you explain more and I'd definitely give more of my thoughts on it. No, that's okay. You can go ahead. Yeah, so how I feel about this bill is,

and I am someone, I mean, I'm ethnically Jewish. Half my family is Jewish. They're Russian Jews that immigrated here. And so I am aware of a growing problem about anti-Semitism, both on the far left and the right, seeing malice towards Jewish people, a unfounded concern that Jews are a threat in danger to society that have to be dealt with sometimes by any means possible. That is legitimate anti-Semitism. That being said, though, I don't support this bill for a variety of reasons. First, when you're talking about the First Amendment, I think this bill is related specifically to discrimination, Title VII. Because, for example, I mean, under the First Amendment, you can say racist things, for example.

It's not illegal to say things that are racist. But if you go to a public university and a professor is saying racist things towards you and is creating a hostile educational environment for you as a student, well, you can say, hey, or they're allowing whether it's, you know, whites being racist to blacks or blacks being racist to whites, or to whatever racial minority group. We would say, no, a university should protect people from racial discrimination. And so in the context there that, even if you can say that stuff under the First Amendment, we could say, look, if you're at a publicly funded university, if you're at this place of employment,

you should be able to be protected from racial harassment. So I don't think it's a First Amendment issue per se, because what it's dealing with is the idea, okay, well, if you're protected from racial harassment, like no one should be able to racially harass you because you're white or harass you because of your sex because you're a woman or because you're religious. People shouldn't be allowed to do the same if you're Jewish. Now, the key here is how do you define anti-Semitism? And I think my big- But also how you define harassment, I would say, is a First Amendment issue.

Absolutely. And what I would say is the best goal to understand you're defining it well is that you can apply it evenly across the board, that you don't treat groups unequally. So, for example, if the protesters, on campuses here are allowed to, you know, pro-Palestinian protesters, pro-Hamas protesters, really, can encamp, occupy buildings, can do all these things without repercussion, but Christians can't even put up crosses to show children being killed by abortion. You know, that's unequal. We should treat everyone equally. So it shouldn't just be when Christians do it, it's harassment, but for everyone else, it's them expressing their views. I think that's a good marker to help

determine that. But I think you and I would agree, there are some things that are just legitimate harassment, that if it was done to Christians, we should, you know, people shouldn't do it to anyone else. So then the problem I have with the bill, though, is that it doesn't have a, it has a fluid definition of anti-Semitism. It just says anti-Semitism is whatever the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance says is anti-Semitism. But I don't like that because what if they change their definition of what it is? Like the definition should be in the bill itself. And if you want to change it later, we have to go through Congress to change it later. It shouldn't be allowed for a non-profit, you know, a non-governmental organization, they could change the

definition, then that changes the law. So I don't agree with that. So there are elements within it where, for example, like I would say anti-Semitism is wrong, but not everything is anti-Semitism, saying that the nation of Israel did something immoral in its conflict with Hamas. Well, it's not anti-Semitic to simply criticize the nation of Israel, even if you're really against Israel. There's a difference between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. So people should be allowed to make these good, you know, these good faith criticisms. It's certainly not anti-Semitic. Unfortunately, those two things seem to have a lot of, a lot of crossover. I agree that there are some maybe nuanced criticisms of maybe what people would call anti-Zionism. I've found, though,

that typically when you dig deep enough, most anti-Zionists really just don't like the Jewish people. And that's where you would look for, is there a double standard here? Are you treating the nation of Israel differently because you already have a prejudicial attitude towards Jewish people? Right. So some of the other, I'm trying to think some of the other elements that are, oh, well, one thing, like, for example, if I were to say, you know, Jesus is the Messiah and Jews should accept Jesus as the Messiah, some Jews would consider that anti-Semitic. I would say, well, no, it's the truth. Yeah. Jesus is the Messiah for everyone, and he's come also to the chosen people. but there are other things. So for example, saying that the Jews are Christ killers to say that all Jewish people bear a collective, yeah, all Jewish people or even all Jewish people at the time of Jesus, to say that all of them have a collective responsibility and thus a unique guilt for the crucifixion that regular sinners do not share. I would say it's anti-Semitic. In fact, the catechism of the Council of Trent,

remember the Reformation Council I referenced, they put out a catechism in 1566. And in that, this is even, this is not a modern thing. This goes back 400 years, say, or 350 years, saying that the guilt, sinners, like Catholics, Christians who sin, bear a more enormous guilt for the crucifixion than the Jews did. Because the catechism quotes what Paul says in 1 Corinthians, saying, if they had known Christ was the Lord of Glory, they would not have crucified him. they crucifed, Jesus was crucified by the Jewish leaders because they falsely believed he was a false Messiah. Yeah. But think about us, we know Jesus is the Messiah. We know this. And yet we still sin.

And yet we still do, we still commit sins, which are the reason for which Christ died on the cross for us, that we even knowing this bear more of responsibility. So there's a balance here. On the one hand, it would be incorrect to say there is no Jewish involvement whatsoever in the crucifixion. That just contradicts a biblical narrative. You'll have some critical scholars saying, oh, it was just the Romans. Well, no, this is very, this is very clear. That is a popular belief that I've seen on X a lot from all different stripes of people who identify as Christians. And that's not quite right either. I agree. It depends on kind of what your motivation is. And by the way, I don't think whatever your motivation is and whether you're right or wrong, it should be banned by Congress,

even if you do have malicious intent behind what you're saying, I can think it's repugnant without thinking it should be illegal. But, I mean, the Bible does use explicit, and I would even say uncomfortable terms when it says in so many words, the Jews killed Jesus. But as you said, it's not an indictment on all Jewish people or saying that Jewish people today bear that responsibility. Or even all Jews at that time, because we have to remember that the word translated the Jews in scripture, Hoye, the Jews. It has a variety of meanings. It can refer to all of the people who are descended from the kingdom of Judah or in Hebrew, Yehuda. So after the Davidic kingdom split into the northern and the southern kingdom. The northern kingdom was assimilated. Those are

the Samaritans. The southern kingdom going into exile. The Jews of Christ's time, you know, all Jews are descended from those tribes in the southern kingdom. The Judah, it's the Jews. But in scripture, Eudaoi can also mean a subset of Jews. It can refer to the Judeans. So for example, in John 7-1, it says that Jesus remained in Galilee because the Jews were seeking to kill him. But that doesn't quite make sense because there were plenty of Jews in Galilee, right? Jesus would have associated primarily with Jews in Galilee. What makes more sense there is that, to translate it, Jesus remained in Galilee because the Oudioi, the Judeans, sought to kill him. And so in First Thessalonians, too, for example, when Paul says he gives encouragement to those who are

being persecuted by the Macedonians, saying, you know, resist them, just as your countrymen in Judea resisted the Jews who killed our Lord Jesus. But what's Paul talking about here? What he's saying, he's not saying all Jews did this. He's referring to the fact that the church was being persecuted by a particular collection of Jews in Judea, resist the Judeans who are persecuting the church, which Paul was once a member of. So that's something that's a nuance there that can be lost in the translation

that if you don't see that, you just run with that and say, oh, in Jesus' time, all of the Jews, all of the Jews who were not Christians were killing, killed Jesus, wanted to kill Christians, when there were factions and differences among them. And there were those who were, you had Rabbi Gamaliel, for example, who said, no, let the Christians be that if this is from God, it will succeed. If it's not, it won't.

So I think that you're correct that the way it was worded just to say Jews killed Jesus, well, no, some of the Jewish leaders were certainly involved. In John 11, Caiaphas makes it clear it's better for one man to die than for the whole people to be subjugated and killed. Some Jewish leaders were involved, but it doesn't follow that to use the phrase and then to use it to say, oh, all Jews. Jews bear this guilt. And therefore, all Jews can be mistreated or punished, which Jews throughout history have been called Christ killers, have been denied civil rights, for example. People would, you know, Jews will tell stories about, you know, on the playground and kids call you a Christ killer and they bully you. That's where it moves in anti-Semitism. You take something as a kernel of truth and use it to hurt others. Right. And there's also, there's Acts 22 through 23, Acts 530,

Acts 752. For example, Acts 2.22, it starts out, men of Israel hear these words, Jesus of Nazareth, and then I won't read everything. And then at the end of verse 23, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. And so that still is not saying that literally every person in Israel or of Israeli descent crucified Jesus. But he is saying that, look, just as our forefathers killed the prophets that God's, sent to you, so we mistreated Jesus. And so it's still not saying that every single Jewish person that has ever lived is responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus, but in the same way that we would say, wow, when we see, for example, the mockers and the scoffers and those who stood before Jesus,

like we say we did that. Like it was our sin or we can see ourselves reflected in those who mistreated Jesus that we were also dead in sin and didn't realize the sacrifice that Jesus had made on our behalf. There is kind of some kind of collective guilt and collective responsibility we see when they are sharing the gospel to the Jewish people in Acts. But again, it's more of a, wow, we bear this kind of, this dereliction of duty. We mistreated the one who God sent to us. And so, as you said, it doesn't, it shouldn't lead to the actions, the discrimination, the hatred that you just described as kind of a consequence of that mentality. Right. There are going to be people at the time that their historical culpability is going to be different.

I mean, obviously there were Jews at the time when Jesus was crucified who weren't anywhere near Jerusalem when this event was taking place. So they certainly can't be held responsible for that happening. That's just what's important to remember in scripture, especially in John's Gospel, when it mentions the Jews and the Jews. Jews. In many of these cases, it's talking about things like the Jewish leadership. So, for example, in John 922, you remember the story about the man born blind that Jesus healed. And then the religious authorities, the priests say, oh, well, let's go to his parents. Was he really born blind? And they're like, we want nothing to, we don't want anything to do with this right now. This is controversial. Go and ask him. He's an adult. He can talk to you. And there's a curious line.

It says, they said this for fear of the Jews, which is weird because they're Jewish. It's just such a weird thing to say. But what's referring to, of course, is the leadership, especially the leadership within Jerusalem and Judea that was trying to cozy up to the Roman Empire and maintain their own particular established order. And so they were reticent to want to welcome to the kingdom of God because it didn't fit within their paradigm of how they, well, they said, look, we've got everything basically working the way we want. We're not going to upset the apple cart with the Romans. And we've got a pretty good deal here under their views. And they had grown stiff-necked and hard-hearted to listen to God to say, well, what's God's plan for his people? And that's why, of course,

Jesus came to inaugurate the kingdom of God. Yes. So just regarding this law, as we wrap that up, even the ACLU, which is now unfortunately a left-wing institution, they have come out and they've said, we're just, we're against this. Of course, they said, it's got to be pretty bad when the, I like to call them the anti-Christian liberties union. Yes. Or the American Communist Lawyers Union. That's perfect. That's perfect. In an April 26th letter, they said that this, This act will chill free speech on college campuses, equate criticism of the Israeli government with the anti-Semitism. And they made a statement about that. And even if I don't agree with the ACLU on most things, I do agree that this is just, this is not what we need.

I think that there are other things that we can do to fix the absolute rot on college campuses and just the ideology that is making their brains mush rather than chilling the free speech of everyday people. even when that can mean, especially when that can mean indicting someone who repeat something that the Bible says because you're reading into their motivations behind saying it. That's just too much. I agree. And I think, as I said earlier, the key here is going to be equal treatment, right? If we're treating everyone equally, we know then we're treating them justly in this regard. So while people have freedom of speech, if I go to a university, like I remember I was in a university class once and the professor who was doing a lecture on stereotypes. And they showed us a documentary about it. And the documentary, everyone who was an example of making stereotypes was always like a white male Christian. Right. And I was like, okay, that's cool. And the teacher actually at one point cracked a joke, cracked a joke saying something, something,

said, well, about pedophiles. She goes, oh, unless you're a Catholic priest. And then I was like, you know, professor, I thought we were saying stereotypes are a bad thing. Yeah. She got really embarrassed and red face. But it's like, look, yeah, there's free no speech. But if I can say, hey, you calling me saying is, oh, there's Trent, who's Catholic, he must be a pedophile enabler. Or there's Ali, I bet she helps those prosperity swindling preachers, tell evangelist scammers, say, no, I don't appreciate being maligned that way. With the very worst people who claim to represent what I believe. Right.

So if I should be free from a religious stereotype that makes it hard for me to go to a university where professors or students can pick on me in that way and make it hard for me to go to school, if I and you as a Christian should be protected from that on campus, then that should be the same for everyone else who's just going there and who's trying to learn, you know, the same thing, Jewish, Muslim, whoever it may be. We protected from these, you know, malicious forms of harassment, and we have an ironclad understanding what that is, but then open it up to we have open debate about ideas.

Like, you know, does God exist? Which religion is the true religion? Is there one that is the true religion? That's not harassment to debate those. And college is a place where you should debate those kinds of important questions. Right. Okay, I wanted to get into the United Methodist Church split or the division and the change, but I don't think that we have time. I want to get into some of my Catholic questions. Maybe if we have time at the end, then we can get into that or we can have you back and we can discuss that. We've got plenty of our own issues in the Protestant world. But I want to talk to you about genuine questions I have about Catholicism, disagreements that I have. I can't say that I don't already have kind of some pre-seppism. about what you're going to say because I do. But there are a lot of, there's just a lot of genuine curiosity I have about Catholic theology.

And so I'll just go through them. Let's try to go through them like as quickly as we can because I have a lot of questions. Okay. First one is about Mary. I would say this is one of the biggest points of confusion for us as Protestants is Catholics praying to or through Mary. And it's important to me to try to use language that Catholics would agree with. I don't want to misrepresent.

And so if I do that, it's not on purpose. And I've had a lot of Catholic friends tell me, well, we don't worship Mary. And while I want to be careful not to say that Catholics worship Mary, because you all say that you don't, I would say it looks a lot like worship. I would say that it looks to me like praying the rosary, praying to Mary, which is something I completely disagree. with. It looks a lot like worship, and I don't see this veneration of Mary, this level of honoring Mary supported by Scripture, the Gospels, the epistles, revelation, Jesus himself, at all. So where does Mary and doctrine come from? Well, I would say that the doctrine related to Mary comes from the Word of God. And when you look in Scripture, the phrase Word of God, primarily, if not entirely, actually

refers to the spoken word of God, what God speaks, what the apostles speak. So 1st, Thessalonians 2.13, for example, says that Paul went and they recognized the word of God had been spoken to them, not the words of men. So I would say that what we understand, and this is where when you start with Mary, of course, we have to be careful not to look at it through, like, what is the framework we're using to determine doctrine? Because if we start with an assumption related to Soliscriptura, which I'm sure we'll talk about. Well, I would say, well, if we're going to analyze something, we have to make sure the framework we're using is a fair one. So we would say that it comes from the word of God,

both spoken and written. And when you see in scripture, Mary herself says, all generations will call me blessed for the mighty one has done great things for me. We recognize just even from logic that Mary is the mother of God. She is the mother of the creator. She didn't give Jesus' divine nature, but she is the mother of the godman. So that makes her very close in relationship to Christ. I guess if I'm, I could go back. I guess there's two ways I could go about this. One is giving you a little bit more of the reasons for,

but also, I mean, I do have some of my own questions. Because I think sometimes if a Protestant looks at this, like I said, if you don't have the great, if you don't have, it depends on the framework, how you look at it, right? Because you say, well, where is this in the Bible? I would say, well, where does the Bible say? Everything a Christian believes or does has to be found in Scripture. Yeah.

So for example, like, let's take the sinner's prayer, for example. You say, Lord Jesus Christ, I am a sinner. I believe you died on the cross for me. Forgive my sins. And I accept you as my personal Lord and Savior, you know, the sinner's prayer. There's nothing like that in scripture. Like, would you agree? I mean, there's no one.

There's no. And I don't believe. that the sinner's prayer is some magical incantation that brings Jesus into your heart. Now, to be fair, I was raised believing that or thinking that. But I think it's more about acceptance and belief in confession, which we do see reflected in scripture, but not that that particular incantation is found in scripture and that it must be said in order to validate or guarantee or salvation. I'm not sure that any Protestant believes that. But would you agree that it's appropriate, it's okay to say that prayer as long as you're not superstitious about it?

Yes, I would say it's okay to say that prayer. Even though it's not in scripture, it's still... Not explicitly, but we would certainly say that we find the idea of acceptance and belief and confession in scripture. In the same way that we would say the word Trinity is not in scripture, but we can see from John 1, for example, or even in the very beginning, that God is three persons but one God. And so I would say that Protestants accept that, that not everything is verbatim in Scripture that we say or believe. We have our own creeds. We have our own Westminster Catechisms that we believe are an accurate summary of scripture, but that scripture must be our standard. Of course, we believe in interpretation.

I believe in preachers and teachers. I like to use different acronyms and alliterations to remember biblical ideas. But of course, I believe that it's our, that scripture is our inerrant and inspired standard. And that's what I would say about the so-called sinner's prayer is that it's not inerrant. It's not infallible. I would be open to even saying it's wrong. It should be changed. But by what standard am I comparing that prayer? Scripture. So that would be my issue with like, that would be my issue with praying to Mary is that no, I don't think that every prayer that we has to be explicitly found in scripture, but I don't even see the idea of praying to Mary in scripture. That's my issue. Okay, so I'm trying to understand your standard when it comes to,

because you're saying we should use the Bible as our standard to determine doctrine and practice. And what's funny is, as a Catholic, I could actually agree with that in some sense, because I could say I agree with you that as a Christian, nothing we do should ever contradict what is taught in Scripture. Yeah, and that's what I don't like about the praying to Mary. But then where is that there's a difference between it not being in Scripture? Yes, totally. And it being contradicted. For example, no one in Scripture prays directly to the Holy Spirit and says, come Holy Spirit and kindle in the hearts of your faithful, the love of God. You know, Holy Spirit, guide me today. That's not in Scripture. But he's God. So we could at least make the

deduction. So I would actually even be satisfied with some kind of like deduction. But when I look at, for example, which I think we talked about maybe in the debatable, so let me, maybe I can explain my view and you can respond to it and you can kind of break it apart. Maybe that would be the easier way to go. So when I'm looking at scripture and I see, for example, when Jesus has given the opportunity to treat his mother in a special way. So I'm looking at Mark three, for example. And his mother and his brothers came, and standing outside, they sent to him and called him, and a crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, your mother and your brothers are outside seeking you. And he answered them, who were my mother and my brothers? And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother. We don't ever see any kind of special honor, special veneration of Mary by Jesus. We don't see it in any of the epistles, you would think that she would come up in Revelation, like when we're looking at the last supper and the marriage supper between the bride and the bridegroom, you would think that if

Mary was this important, if we needed to pray to her, if she was watching over us, if she was protecting us, if she was really this person carrying our prayers to Jesus, like we would be reading about her a lot more in scripture and we just don't. And even when Jesus is given the opportunity to pay special attention to his mom. He basically brushes her off and says, I don't even think that she's more special than any of these other Christians out here or any of these other followers of me out here.

Well, I don't think that's what Christ is saying here because it reminds me also of the episode where the woman says to Jesus, blessed are the breasts that nourished you. And he said, rather, blessed are those that hear the word of God and obey. Yeah, that's a great other example of that. But I think what we can misstress.

read that because Jesus, like, one could take that so far as to say, oh, you know, your mother doesn't really matter. You don't have to worry about your mother. What matters more are other believers. But the Bible is also very clear you have special obligations to your parents. Like Jesus railed against the religious authorities for the Corban rule for donating money to the temple when they were supposed to care for their aging parents. Paul says the person doesn't care for their relatives is worse than an unbeliever. Yeah, exactly. So I would worry that to take one narrative episode and try to draw more out of it than is being taught. That's just one example for me.

Sure. But both of those examples, I'd say what's going on here is Jesus is saying that to have a special relationship with him, it is not necessary to be his biological kin. Anyone can have a special relationship with him through faith in him. Whereas at the time, you would think, oh, to really have a special relationship with the Messiah. If you're the brother than Messiah, you know, I could never be that close. Just, no, we all can be close to Jesus. But that's kind of what Catholics are saying about,

Mary, that she's so special to him because we don't just pray to anyone in heaven the way that Catholics pray to Mary. And so you guys are saying that, yeah, all Christians can have a relationship with him, but Mary has the special, special, special relationship with him. Well, what I would take from there is what I'm saying is that in order to have that relationship with Jesus, you don't have to be biologically related to him. But some people have more of a relationship with Jesus are closer to him than others. I think that's very clear from Scripture. So, for example, in James 516, it says that the prayers of a righteous person are very powerful. Or if you look in the book of Job, for example, at the end of Job, when God deals with Job's

friends, he tells them, have Job pray for you. I will hear his prayers because you've spoken ill of me, spoken poorly of me. That when you see in Scripture, and that those who are are holier, they're closer to God. Their prayers are more efficacious. So Hebrews 12, so who are the holiest people? Hebrews 12 says that those who are in heaven, they're the spirits of just men made perfect. So those who are in heaven who are perfectly united to God. And we see this in the book of Revelation talking about the angels carrying the prayers of the saints to the throne, that they have that special relationship with God, a special efficacy. I think to understand praying to Mary, to the Saints, that's language that I find to actually be not very helpful. In fact, when you read

the teachings, the official teachings of the Catholic Church, you don't have phrases like pray to the saints. Rather, the phrases are seeking the intercession of the saints. So for example, like, let me ask you, what would you say prayer is? Prayer is pleading with God. Prayer is, I mean, it can be praising God. It can be making requests to God. And of course, we have access to the Father through Christ, and that is, you know, a Protestant retort or a retort that I would have, is that we have one mediator in his name is Jesus Christ. We have the Holy Spirit as our intercessor who, when we don't have the words to speak, Scripture says, the Holy Spirit intercedes on our behalf. And I also, I love Ephesians 312, that through Christ

Jesus, we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in Christ. So when I read, for example, James 5, that the prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. Well, I think of that verse that I have boldness and access and confidence through what? My good works? No, my faith in Christ. And Christ, he who knew no sin became sin so that we could become the righteousness of God. So that means it is my prayer that has great power as it is working.

It is every Christian's prayer that has great power as it is working. It is not that the quote unquote holier person has greater power. It is that those who have been made holy by Christ and his perfect righteousness, that our prayer has great power. And so, again, I just don't see a need to use an intercessor of Mary one, because I don't think that she can hear our prayers. And I don't think that's in scripture at all. But also, yeah, I just don't see that biblical support that because she's holier or because she's relationally closer, that she has some kind of special access to Jesus and therefore we should pray through her.

Do you ever ask other people to pray for you? Yes, but not because I think that they have some kind of special power, but because the prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. And so I want, you know, I want people praying and I want. But why when you can just pray to God yourself? Why involve other people when you're righteous enough just to pray and ask God for it? Because I think there is encouragement in that. And I don't know that it necessarily, we don't read in scripture that it sways God to have a certain number,

a certain critical mass of people praying for something. But because we are all called to pray, it's an act of obedience. and through an incredible preordained order that I don't think we fully understand with the sovereignty of God that he's also in control of all things, and yet he asks us to evangelize and pray. I don't totally understand that mysterious conundrum, and yet he commands us to. So I think it's an act of obedience.

I think it's encouragement and God hears our prayers. You're not sure if our prayers actually affect what he does? No, I do. I think that it's mysterious, though, for us to say that God, is omnipotent, that he's not suspended by linear time, that we can't, that no plan of his can be thwarted, Job 42, too, and yet our prayers actually do something. I'm just saying that all of that is true, and I'm not sure it's within our finite ability to perfectly be able to explain that. That's what I'm trying to say. I think the difficulty that comes when Catholics

and Protestants discuss this is going to come down, I think, to language. I asked you, when I asked you what prayer is. The definition you gave is interesting that prayer is making a request of God. That's one of the things that prayer can do. What's funny is, if that is what prayer is, then asking Mary to pray for us, that actually wouldn't count as prayer because I'm not directing that request to God. I'm requesting it to another creature. So what's the, when you pray the rosary, what is that? When you pray the rosary? Yes. Well, I would say what prayer is. Prayer is just a request. So we've restricted the word prayer in a modern sense to mean exclusively making a request of God. But traditionally, the word prayer comes from the Latin word

praire. Like pray tell. Yes, if you've listened to all kinds of pride and prejudice. Yeah. I pray thee tell. Pray this. Right. So prayer to the saints, that would just fall under, I ask. I ask, I ask this. So you can pray. So you're asking Mary to carry your request to Jesus? So the idea here is that we have agreement that it's good for members of the body of Christ, here at least on earth, who are in communion with one another, to pray for one another. That that's a good thing.

And it's good to seek out intercession among other members of the body of Christ. What Catholics believe is that the body of Christ does not exist solely on earth, that there is only one body of Christ. There's only one body, not two bodies, not three. There is one body, and that is made up of believers who are on earth, as well as those believers who are in heaven or being prepared to enter heaven. They're all connected through Jesus, who is the vine, we are the branches, he is the resurrection in the life, even though you die, you will live in me.

So we believe the saints in heaven, while their bodies lie in the earth, they are more alive in Christ now than we are even right now. The book of Revelation says the souls in heaven are aware of the sufferings on earth and cry out for God to do something about them, what's happening to the martyrs. So our belief is just that if you can ask for intercession from members of the body of Christ in this life, and we're still connected to the body in heaven, through the power and love of God, we can ask those in heaven to pray for us, that there's nothing wrong. So for example, if you have a boy at his mother's tombstone who's died and he says, you know, mom, pray for me, I think you'd agree there's nothing, I think most Protestants say there's nothing wrong with that.

Wrong with. Like asking, for example, a boy asks his deceased mother and father in heaven to pray for him. Oh, no, we would say that there's something wrong with that. Why? Oh, we would not. We don't pray to the dead. And I know that they are spiritually alive, but we don't pray to the physically dead. We don't believe in that.

We just don't because we believe that Jesus is our mediator. And you're saying we can't ask Christians on earth to pray for us. We can't ask Christians in heaven to do that. Yeah, that would be the Protestant belief that we don't believe that the dead are hearing our prayers and have the ability to carry our prayers to God or that they are inter, because that would be intercession, right? that they are interceding for us. And we don't believe that the dead or that we would call all Christian saints. So the saints in heaven are interceding for us or that Mary is interceding for us.

Yeah, I don't think that we necessarily see that reflected in scripture. And yeah, so the Protestant would say that there is a problem with that. We would say, oh, we don't pray for the dead. We could think about them and consider them, but we wouldn't pray to them, no. You seem very confident that the souls in heaven, do not know anything on earth or can't hear our requests. What is the source of your confidence in that? No, I didn't say that I'm confident that they can't hear or that they can't see.

I didn't say that. Okay. I said that we don't see that rule supported in scripture that they are carrying our request to God. And I think my other piece of confusion about that, I guess not this, this piece of confusion wouldn't apply to that example that you gave the grandparent because I'm guessing that maybe the child would be the, only one praying to that grandparent. But when you've got Mary and you have all of these millions of people asking her for intercession, is Mary in the Catholic view omniscient? Like how does she, how does she order all of these prayers? If she is a human who is, of course, now in heaven,

it almost would, it would necessitate ascribing to her godlike characteristics of omnipotence in omniscience if she can hear the prayers of millions of Catholics at once. Well, I would say that Mary's ability to hear multiple requests in different languages, that doesn't fall under omniscience because omniscience means that you have all knowledge, all truths. Like you know, for example, the solution of every single possible mathematical equation. Yeah. The saints in heaven don't need to know that.

They don't need to know pie, all the decimal places of pie. So it's not omniscience. The knowledge of the saints in heaven, even if it is vast by human standards, it's still infinitesimally small compared to the infinite knowledge of God. But you believe that there is some kind of not just spiritual transformation, but that there is an incredible expansion of people's capacity to know and to do. when we get to heaven, that includes the ability to discern, sorry, to discern millions of prayers at once in all different languages, somehow prioritize order, carry those requests to God, and that Mary has achieved that kind of transformation and expansion of her capacity and all of the saints as well. Where does that idea come from? Well, I would say there is nothing to restrict

and omnipotent God from allowing his creatures to have more cognitive abilities. Sure. Yeah. Nothing can restrict God from doing anything. So I'm not sure if that's necessarily, if that answers my question. How she does that? She couldn't do it on her own. And I would say God allows her to do that, that just as God can give humans on earth supernatural knowledge of the future, for example, like to be a prophet, or God can give people knowledge. of things they wouldn't naturally have. God can give the saints in heaven knowledge and abilities they would not naturally have on earth or have in accord with just their own abilities.

So where do Catholics get that idea that he has granted Mary the ability to answer all these prayers and to kind of specially give them to Jesus? Well, I would say that there is a long tradition of this. Like if you go to the catacombs, for example, that the very first Christians, who were, you know, it's very difficult to find early examples of, like, like for me, when I was in my conversion, and what I did was first, I listened to all kinds of William Lane Craig J.P. Moreland debates. This is like early 2000s. Yeah. And I was just convinced. I was like, yeah, this makes a lot of sense. I believe in Jesus. He rose from the dead. Now where do I go?

And I looked at all the different churches out there. As I said, well, you know what? I just want to be like the first Christians. I'm going to go back and look at the historical records. What did the first Christians believe? But just to say, look, there's all these different churches that argue about stuff. What were the first Christians like? I want to be like them. And so that moved me a lot into the Catholic direction. At least it moved me a lot away from a lot of forms of modern Protestantism that I felt were very a historical in that regard to say, look, there were the apostles. They gave the teaching this first generation of Christians. You know, they could, wouldn't have really bungled it that badly. Like, what, what did they believe? It's difficult during

this time period, though, to find a lot of reference, you know, finding liturgies, or, you know, you didn't have churches, you had house churches, you're in hiding, you're in persecution from the Romans. But even during this period, we have things like the oldest known liturgical prayer. Most scholars dated to the third century. Like, the oldest Christian prayer outside of scripture is called the subtuum presidium. Most scholars would date to the third or fourth century. And that prayer says, it's a prayer to Mary. It's a request to Mary. O Theotokos, Godbearer, mother of God, place us under the wings of thy refuge. It's asking Mary, who's the mother of God, to intercede on behalf of sinners. Or if you go to the catacombs, where Christians were hiding and where they were buried,

there's little inscriptions in there that say things like Peter and Paul, pray for Primus, a sinner. You know, little things like that. My concern, when Catholics and Protestants dialogue with each other, I think the concern that Protestants have is, hey, Catholic, you're not using Sola Scriptura, and I'm worried you're obliging us or permitting us to believe too much. Like, you've got all this extra stuff, you know, I'm worried about you bringing in.

Like, you know, prayer, seeking the interstition of Mary and the saints and these other Catholic doctrines, if you just said use the Bible in the soul of scriptura sense of we have to find it at least deduced implicit you know we have to find it here in scripture you're worried about too much coming in and the Bible will help cut out some of the extra stuff that's that's an accretion or ancillary that's what I see is one of the big pro the Protestant concerns where Soliscriptura has a benefit well I wouldn't now there can be a benefit in cutting out extra things that are just human traditions that are not divine traditions

that's why I would say you shouldn't believe anything that contradicts scripture. But my other concern from the Catholic perspective is that if we use Soliscriptura, if we just use that based on individual interpretations of Scripture, we risk failing to believe certain things, that certain things could get left out, for example. So we risk being able to distinguish, like, you might say, well, it's fine if you're a Calvinist and this guy's an Armenian. that's a difference that we can have.

But it's not okay for you to be a Trinitarian and someone else to be a modalist. Yeah. Like, but the Bible itself doesn't tell us when do theological disagreements become heresy? It's like there is a concern here that if we just use Sola Scriptura, which ends up really being individual interpretations, there becomes a problem there, I think. that you can fail to believe certain things. Say, well, but it's like, for example, and there's big things. There's also little things. I remember meeting a girl once.

I said, oh, what are you doing for Christmas? She said, oh, I don't celebrate Christmas. I said, why not? She said, it was not in the Bible. Yeah. So it's like- There are definitely some like that. And Jehovah's Witnesses are all like that, which we wouldn't include as a denomination,

we would say it's a cult. But where does that standard? Because the Bible itself doesn't say what theological beliefs are the minimum ones to be a Christian. That's a tradition later established at the ecumenical councils. We would, I think you and I would agree that there is a difference between not doing anything that is not explicitly said in scripture, which is not where I fall. I don't even know really anyone who falls on that because, of course, it doesn't say in scripture that you can use a piano in church and that you have to have an altar call and things like that. There is freedom among

denominations. And we do believe that scripture interprets scripture, that there is a a systematic way, an exegetical way to interpret scripture, there's a right and a wrong way to interpret scripture, that there is actually one meaning of scripture, even if there are many different subjective interpretations. And I hear this a lot from Catholics, that this is the problem with Protestantism, is that you've got all these different denominations, which is a myth that there are 33,000, by the way. Oh, I agree. That's looking at like all the different, yes, but just for anyone out there who might be confused about that, all the different subsets, there is a much smaller range of actual Christian denominations. But I see plenty of disagreement among Catholics,

too. Catholics individually, even how they would interpret the Bible. Now, maybe they're disagreeing with official Catholic doctrine. But there are certainly liberal Catholics. Yes. I just wrote a book about them. Yeah. Yeah. There's certainly Catholics. I would say probably, maybe particularly in the Northeast, who they go to Mass and they do all the things that they're supposed to do, but they're extremely liberal when it comes to abortion, when it comes to LGBTQ. And if you compare, for example, if you go to Pew Research and you compare what each religion in America, how they fall on these issues of abortion, LGBTQ, even like living together before you get married, Protestants in general are far more conservative on these issues than Catholics

are, people who identify as Catholics. Of course, we don't know people's people's. real beliefs and like how closely they align. But like there are a lot of Catholics who disagree. There are a lot of disagreements among Catholics. A lot of Catholics who do things that are not in accordance with scripture or Catholic doctrine. So I don't know. I guess I get confused about like if division is the argument against Protestantism, there are plenty of divisions among Catholics, don't you think? There are. But Catholics would recognize where we're divided on issues that the church hasn't spoken on, for example. Like, is there? Is it okay to go to a pride parade, for example?

Like there isn't an official teaching on that, but I would say it's scandalous to be there unless you're witnessing to people, which I've done before. The scandal is just to be there wearing the garb. Even you're saying, well, I'm just here loving people. It's like, well, but people are going to look at this and take a different message from it. It's a stumbling block, a literal scandalizzo. Scandal on, yeah. But when it comes to saying, can a man and a woman be married in church, even the most

liberal Catholic churches don't do that. You'll be, you'll get a priest who gets excommunicated. They try to give the sacrament of marriage to two men or two women, whereas in the Protestant world, we were discussing this earlier. You have the Methodist church in Methodist churches and other Protestant churches where the issue comes up, two churches just come into existence. Rather than even in the Catholic world, there are people who support so-called same-sex marriage. They're dissenters, but they'd say, yeah, but the church teaches this and I disagree, not this is actually the truth. you know. Is that so different than what Protestants do? If I say, okay, for example, United Methodist

Church, they decided that, sure, LGBTQ people active, not just people who struggle with that sin, but active, they can be clergy. And I say, but that's not what scripture teaches. That's not what scripture teaches. Scripture is very clear about this. So is that really so different than what y'all do, except for scripture is the Word of God? And the church, even though you believe it's been inspired by God, they're men, they're fallible men. Right. Well, I would say that the leadership of the church, the gift of infallibility is not something that is exercised in everything that the leaders of the church say. It's under special occasions and instances when it's invoked, such as at an ecumenical council when all the bishops of

the world gather together to decide to teach infallibly. Or if the Pope, using his power as the pastor of the church to infallibly settle an issue, like one of the Marian dogmas. But I think the difference there is that within the Catholic world, we do have levels of authority in church teaching to know what are essential and what are not essential. So even people who are pretty far left in the church, people that I know, would say, well, no, you can't deny that Christ is present in the Eucharist. You know, you can't deny the divinity of Christ. You can't say Mary gave birth to other children, for example. So we have, you know, certain teachings that would be essential, some of which are infallibly defined. Would it be a heresy to say that Mary gave birth to other children?

Yes, that would be a heresy. So are all Protestants heretics? Heresy is the obstinate post-baptimal rejection of something that's been divinely revealed. So yes. There's going to be, it's heresy, but the responsibility one has for it's different. if you are a Catholic and you reject this, it's going, and you, and as a Catholic, you're obliged to believe what the church teaches. That's going to be different than a Protestant. However, I would say that the Protestant reformers like Martin Luther or Ulrich Zwingley probably would have said, they would have said it is heresy to say that they might have. They absolutely, he definitely had it, Martin Luther had a different view of Mary than most Protestants do today. Well, even Thomas Cranmer,

John Wesley, and I've seen debate about Calvin, what he, he believed on this. He's, Calvin certainly rejected the idea that the Bible could be used to prove Mary gave birth to other children. He didn't think those texts were convincing at all. You know, not at all. So the difference here is what I would say is, and this would be my question, like, how do you, because you would agree that there are doctrines, Protestants can disagree about. Mm-hmm. Just as Catholics do. Sure. And there are Protestants, there are doctrines they cannot disagree about. There's essential and non-essential. Mm-hmm. Secondary tertiary. not primary. And that's a huge, that's a huge division. Yeah. And there are people who would disagree on that. That's kind of the nature of Protestantism. But the Bible never tells us which how to divide between the two. That's kind of scary. It's up to people's interpretation. Which is why we would say, which is why we would say, if I say, for example, in times, you might be a premillennialist, I might be a post-millennialist. And I might be a pre-millennialist. I might be talking to someone who's a post-millennialist. And I might be a pre-millennialist. I might be talking to someone who's a post-millennialist. And I think. think I would say, look, you're, you know, you're dead wrong on that. But I still appreciate you

as a brother in Christ. Now, how do I discern that? Do you believe in the gospel? Do you believe that by grace through faith, you have been saved in Christ? And he and only he has become your righteousness, your justification, your mode of sanctification. Do you believe in John 146 that Jesus is the only way, the only truth, the only life that no one can come to the Father except through him. Now, I think that there are issues like the LGBTQ issue that is not the gospel, but it gets to the heart of the gospel. So it's still essential. Now, there would be people who probably disagree with this. Now, do I think that you can be wrong on this and still be saved? I think that we are all going to die being wrong about some things. I don't think that your view of LGBTQ is what grants you or what

prohibits your salvation. But what I typically find is that someone who denies Genesis 1-27, that God made us male and female, is eventually going to deny John 14.6. And so I don't think that your salvation is predicated upon what you believe about LGBTQ. But I do think that that that speaks to a fundamental misunderstanding of God and his word. And therefore, you probably do not believe the gospel. Well, let me ask you a hypothetical. Suppose I had another woman here. She's almost like, she's identical to you.

We'll call her Mally. Okay. So Mally is identical to you in every way except for one. And that is she is married to a woman. Okay. But she's identical to you and she has all of your other same beliefs. She just thinks that the teachings on homosexuality don't apply today, just like the teachings on slavery don't apply today. But she still is against abortion.

She believes you believe in Jesus or you're not going to heaven. So could Malley be saved? I would say, okay, you believe that Jesus is the only way to heaven. You're against abortion, but you don't believe that the word of God is authoritative. That's what I would dig into. I would say, you don't believe in Romans 1. you don't believe in 1st Corinthians 6, you don't believe in Genesis 1,27. Why do you believe in John 146?

And how did you decide upon that? That's what I would ask Malley, because Malley's got some inconsistencies there. And I would say, you know, this is really important. And I would also say that she is living in, it's not just a belief for her. She is living in perpetual sin. And we do believe that you die to your old self. You become a new creation. And even though we won't fully stop sending, that's our belief until heaven, we do believe in progressive sanctification and that God is going to rid us of our idols. And if you see no fruit, no sanctification in someone's life. Let's try another one. Let's say Mallie's the exact same as you. And she's married to a man even. But she is also, she makes money being a gestational surrogate.

I wouldn't say that she's not saved. I would say that she is really wrong on that. But I wouldn't say. that she is unsaved. Okay. Yeah. Let me ask you then a question about, so you agree this. There's essential doctrines. There's ones that are not essential. There isn't like a biblical text or a principal that are saying the way you divided them,

you just gave a summary. Here just are the ones that are essential. Yeah. And Protestants will disagree. So you would say that homosexuality would go to the heart of the essential. It would go to the heart of the essential. So it's different than, let's say, contraception? You could, I mean, you could argue.

You could again argue that this speaks to someone's mistrust of what God has to say about the dignity of life and the dignity of the unborn. So you could argue that. That's one thing Protestants are known for is that we're open to. to argumentation based on the word of God. But I would not say that someone who believes the wrong thing about conception is not saved. About contraception. Yeah. What did I say? Conception. Yeah. Controception is not saved. Right. Because, but what's interesting here is that a hundred years ago, all Protestants would disagree with you because before 1930, before the Lambeth Conference, all Protestants believe contraception was sinful. So it's like, are Protestants right now or are they right back

that. Well, I also believe that it's sinful. I also, well, I believe that hormonal birth control is simple. Let's say just like condoms. Okay. Okay. Well, I don't think that most Protestants would agree with that today, but I don't know that those Protestants who believe that it was all sinful then would have said someone is not going to heaven or someone is not saved. And so there's a difference between sinful and a primary doctrine of that we would consider outside the bounds of Christianity. Like, we believe someone saying there's more than one way. to God. Or if you're loving enough or if you're good enough or if you do all the right things, then you'll go to heaven. Even if that person agrees with me on all other doctrines, I would say

you're not a Christian. Because Christianity, the crux of Christianity is the cross. The crux of Christianity is what Jesus accomplished on the cross. And outside of that, I think that we can have disagreements. Some bigger, some smaller, some with greater implications, some with fewer implications. But your salvation is not dependent upon those secondary and tertiary disagreements, even if I think that they're getting really, really close to the heart of the sinner, and that they probably do speak to a misunderstanding that you have essentially about God. But we still haven't found the mechanism to determine which are primary and which are secondary, that there's no place you, I couldn't ask you, where could I go in the Bible to find out which belong to which?

I don't think there's anywhere you could point me to. No, and it's not that Protestants don't believe in teaching or interpretation or councils or creeds or catechisms or debates or discussions or progress when it comes to that because we do. And just as Catholics do, but we don't have one institution. that we go to and say, well, what does this mean? We do believe that Scripture is the authority, that the church or the Pope is not the authority. And we also acknowledge that there will be very smart Christians, very solid, even denominations and churches that disagree on some of these things. But we believe that scripture interprets scripture and that very smart, brilliant theologians

over time have done us a great service and helping us understand what those primary, secondary, and tertiary issues are, the difference is that we don't have a church institution that we would look to and say, these are the categories, this is what they all fall into. But I believe every Protestant would agree on what the gospel is and that that is primary. What I would say the Catholic view of salvation is that we receive salvation as a gift of God's grace and you are saved as long as you do not permanently reject that gift before death. And so I think that if you looked at, like with a surveillance camera of like a Protestant convert, Catholic convert, the way they act is actually very similar. Let's say you have an atheist high school, atheist in high school, one becomes

Protestant, one becomes Catholic. On camera, you would see them, I believe in Jesus, go and get baptized. they live a life where they're not getting drunk, they're not fornicating, they're praying to God, and they don't reject faith in God, and then they die at the end of their life. I think we would see something very similar, whereas we would just disagree explaining how that salvation is happening. Well, and Calvinists wouldn't believe that a true Christian can ever lose their salvation, because we believe in the perseverance of the saints. Well, what we would say is from the camera's perspective, they would look the same. Both of them, they don't forever fall away.

but we would disagree about why that is. One, we would say that Catholics and other historic Christians, because there are many Protestants who traditionally rejected that view, would say that this person chose to not reject God, or if they did, they were reconciled with God, like the prodigal son, and they died in friendship with God. And the Calvinists say, well, no, he was, it would have been impossible for him to fall away.

But I would say that we really do agree about receiving through faith, through grace. The Catholic Church is very clear. You cannot merit initial salvation. That's why babies, they're saved immediately. Baby can't do anything. He's just baptized and he's saved. It's a reception. It's a gift of grace. Yeah, we don't, we, well, I, I, I, some Protestants. Yes, I'm a Baptist and we don't believe that baptism gives any form of salvation, that it's an outward symbol of inward regeneration. And so we do disagree on that portion, because we would say that's even like a work that you're kind of earning your salvation and we would just reject that. Well, that's why Martin Luther said, we're saved by faith alone. Baptism saves us. We're saved by faith, not by works.

Is what Luther said. And Luther said, well, baptism saves us. So Luther's conclusion was baptism's not a work. It's God's work. Let me just say something that I really appreciate about Catholics because we're definitely going to have Trent back on as long as he is available. We didn't even get to half of the questions that I wanted to. And we're well over an hour. There are lots of things that I appreciate about my Catholic friends, but I really appreciate how strong, traditionally strong, the Catholic Church has been on reproductive technology, on surrogacy, on, and even recently, the Pope making his statements about surrogacy about reproductive technology. He says it should be banned.

Yes, that is a huge failure, a huge lack of understanding among Protestants, among evangelicals, that I get absolutely reamed for that. every time I talk about it because I mean this is a weakness there is not a congruent and cohesive or authoritative teaching on reproductive technology I would say among most evangelicals it's going to be hard to get the Bible's take on that well again I would argue that it can be deduced from scripture in the dignity of life and just looking at what IVF is and all of that so we could go on and on and on but all I wanted to say is that I do appreciate how clear the church has been on that. And sometimes I look around and I feel like it's only Catholics, like, standing there

with me as we're talking about this stuff. And I appreciate that. Well, historically, when you look in the 1970s, even when something like legal abortion, the National Right to Life Committee was essentially founded by the Catholic Church that evangelicals and pro- like the Southern Baptist, for example, were allowing abortion in the case of rape up until the 1980s, that many Protestants were saying, well, scripture, there's some poetic passages about the unborn, but it doesn't talk about abortion or it doesn't talk about abortion in hard cases. So we're going to leave that up to consciences. And so that goes back to what I was saying before. And I do think that that's a benefit when you have an authoritative magisteria, meester's concerns, hey, this is too much.

But my other concern I brought up was by using Solis Scriptura, the danger of failing to believe certain things, like the wrongness of reproductive technologies or other elements like that. So I think that's this continual sort of tension between Catholics and Protestants. for us discuss in the nature of authority. I think that Catholics have, in some cases, like that case that you're talking about or this issue, have pushed Protestants to better praxis and to be more thoughtful in the application of our theology. I see that, you probably wouldn't agree with this, that Protestants and the Protestant

Reformation, in some ways even reformed the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church, that's why the Council of Trent, reform was needed. Yeah. but not revolution. And even pushed, I would say, like, Protestants love for Scripture and are just emphasis on Bible studies and studying scripture, I think has had a positive effect on Catholics and has had a positive effect on Catholicism. Whereas, like, I love that the Bible in a year podcast, I think, is like the number one

religion and spirituality. Father Mike Schmidt, I think his name is. Father Mike Movie Star. Yeah. He's got those wonderful cheekbones. Yeah. So I think that Protestants in some ways continue to reform and push and challenge Catholics in a positive way. And I would say on these controversial issues, Catholics continue to challenge and push Protestants in a positive way.

So I'm thankful for that. We'll definitely have you back on. Thank you so much. Thank you, Allie.