Truth Unites - Are Protestants Like Skeptics? A Response to Michael Lofton

Episode Date: December 20, 2022

In this video I respond to Michael Lofton's critique of my interpretation of the Roman Catholic teaching concerning "no salvation outside the church."  Michael's video: https://youtu.be/niuYKEYBs18 Truth Unites is a mixture of apologetics and theology, with an irenic focus. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai. SUPPORT: Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites One time donation: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://gavinortlund.com/

Sometimes Protestants are accused of being skeptics or of skepticism. This idea has come up recently. Skepticism run amok. You know, Michael Lofton made a response video that I'll link to. He references this and he has a concern that my criticisms of the development of the Roman Catholic idea of no salvation outside the church, these same criticisms could be applied if we were consistent to Christianity in general, to the Bible. It's kind of similar to, I've heard Trent Horn. talk about how Protestants argued like atheists that might have some similarities to that.

So I want to interact with this a little bit. Skepticism, this is not a good word. I mean, I think it's probably better to just leave our disagreements as disagreements. If you start saying you're skeptical that assumes the thing should be believed in, but that's the whole thing we disagree about. It'd be like if I said a Roman Catholic is skeptical of soul of scriptura, and you're a Roman Catholic, you probably say, well, I'm not skeptical. I just don't agree with it, you know. So I don't know if skepticism is the wrong.

right category here. But at any rate, what I want to try to do is distinguish my criticisms of various aspects of Roman Catholic theology, in this case following up on my last video, the idea of no salvation outside the church, and the change that happens from the medieval era to the modern view in the Catholic Church, distinguish that from other skeptical criticisms of Christianity and the Bible, because they are very different. Okay. So let me summarize the problem that I tried to articulate, basically in the context of giving an overview of the church's idea of no salvation outside the church, starting with Justin Martyr up to the modern day, I noted that Vatican II basically says it's much more open.

You know, those who, if you're inculpable, it's through no fault of your own that you don't know of Christ or the church, and you're moved by grace with sincerity to seek God. You can be saved, and it talks about Jews and Muslims attaining to salvation and so forth. There's maybe tiny little variations on how that's understood. but at any rate, it's definitely broader now. And then I had referenced in the medieval era, the view that seems pretty much universal in the medieval Western Church and Eastern. Both the Eastern Orthodox were saying all of the Roman Catholics are out of salvation

off of the Ark of Noah, and then it went in the other direction as well. Here's an example. This is in magisterial teaching as well. Here's a papal bowl from the Council of Florence that I quoted, the Most Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes, and preaches that all, those who are outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews or heretics or schismatics, cannot share an eternal life and will go into the everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels unless they are joined to the Catholic Church before the end of their lives,

and it proceeds to talk about sacraments, martyrdom, almsgiving, all of that is useless for salvation unless you are Roman Catholic. Then I referenced another ex-cathedra statement in the Unum Sanctum. We declare, say, define, and pronounce that it is absolutely not. necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman pontiff. Now, whether you call this a tension or a contradiction, the term that I had used in my video is a change in meaning as distinct from a change in understanding. I had quoted Vatican 1 in my video, I'll quote it again for the second time now in this video, which says, the meaning which our Holy Mother Church has once declared sacred dogmas to

have must always be retained and there must never be a deed. deviation from that meaning on the species ground and title of a more profound understanding. So the question is, from Florence to Vatican II, for example, is this a change of meaning? Or is it just a change of understanding? Is it a legitimate doctrinal development? Now, in Michael's response and others have said this as well, he's saying that the restriction of unum-sanctum does not rule out implicit subjection to the Pope and the restriction of the Council of Florence of Pope Eugene doesn't rule out informal joining to the church. Now, I won't really try to exhaustively work through this.

At a certain point, we'd just kind of let people work through it and think for themselves. My opinion would be that this is not an authentic or compelling reading of these texts because it interprets them in a way that is contrary to the intentions of the author and in a way that has no precedent among the original readers of these documents. for even hundreds of years. Now, the question, though, so I've already articulated that. We can talk more about that as well.

I don't want to try to give a lengthy defense of that to me. I kind of think that's a point that is not too radical, I could say. Question I want to address now is, does that make me a skeptic? Am I just trying to poke holes in somebody else's system? Would similar criticisms apply to the Bible? For example, Michael brought up the concern of geocentrism in the Bible, as though that were comparable. But I don't think that is comparable.

Geocentrism was not the intended meaning of the biblical author's assertions. The issue here is authorial intent. When you have statements like in Psalm 93-1 or Psalm 104-5, I've done some work in this area, the church's view of these, these are in poetry. Unim-Sankham and Eugene's papal bull are not poetry. Psalm 931 and Psalm 1045 are in poetry. This is not intending to oppose heliocentrism. Now, I do think the bishops of Florence were intending to oppose the idea that, well, just to put in their words, heretics, Jews, and schismatics can be saved.

That was their conscious intention, I think. I think that's how it was taken for several hundreds of years. I don't think the readers of the psalm or the author of the psalm intended to oppose heliocentrism and affirm geocentrism. These are poetic expressions of the goodness and stability of God's creation of the world for us as a place to live. You can read Psalm 104 is working through its following Genesis 1, recounting those days of creation, praising God for his good creation, the good world God has made. I don't think, you know, it's kind of like Psalm 18 where David is talking about when God saved him, the mountains were trembling, and the earth is shaking.

and it's not intended to be a literal description. It's not science. It's not literal. It's poetic expressions of God's work. And there are many examples like that in the Psalms. These Psalms are not intending to solve disputes about Copernicus and Heliocentrism versus Geocentrism. I do think the bishops at Florence.

And I do think the entire, medieval church to my awareness intended to say the Eastern Orthodox are damned if you're Roman Catholic or if you're Eastern Orthodox, the Roman Catholics are damned. That's a consensus view at the time to my awareness. I'll talk about a little more where my historical timeline has been a little revised based upon some good comments. Because I keep asking, can you give me any examples? And some people did give two examples of later on. So I'll talk about those. But to talk about the medieval era in his commentary on Psalm 48, Thomas Aquinas says he's a good example of this, where he compares Christians living in the east to, as a point of contrast, he compares them to

pagans, both of which are in contrast to where faith in Christ is flourishing. He says, faith in Christ flourishes principally among the people of the West because in the northern regions there are still many Gentiles. And in the eastern lands, there are many schismatics and heretics. So it seems to me, it seems like for Thomas, and this is generally how Thomas is interpreted, that the schismatics and heretics, they're outside, they're off the Ark of Noah, they're outside of salvation. My understanding of Thomas Aquinas, and this is consistent with the scholarship I've read on him, is that after the birth of Christ, you have to have explicit faith for salvation. So if you're seeking salvation, God will send you a missionary or an angel or something to provide a way to

get explicit faith. The catechumans can be saved because they have explicit faith, if they die before their baptism. But that's different from the Eastern Orthodox or the Oriental Orthodox. For Thomas, I think he thought they were damned. And I think that's the consensus view among the medieval Western Christians. So here's the situation. You have century after century after century passing, where the Oriental Orthodox and the Assyrian Church of the East, they're off of the Ark of Noah from the mentality of the Western medieval Roman Catholic Christians, at least a couple centuries with the Eastern Orthodox as well, if the statements in Unim-Sangdom and Council of Florence could be qualified to extend

outward from not just the Catechumans, but even to the Oriental Orthodox or the Eastern Orthodox, they could have an invincible ignorance as well, such that that's a legitimate way for us to think today, why don't we ever see that? Why doesn't anybody ever say that? Why should we accept this as an authentic way to reinterpret these passages if it lacks historical precedent. Now, one of the things people say is, well, at that time, it was assumed that everyone who was outside the church was culpable for rejecting the gospel. Today, we know different. So that's a way that people try to say, well, there's a justification in reading these documents differently. The timeline here does not fit. Okay. People in medieval Europe did know,

about un-evangelized pagans prior to the discovery of the new world. I did a whole video on the Christianization of Scandinavia, reading from Adam of Bremen, the medieval historian. He talks about how the church in Hamburg, Bremen, the northern part of Germany, received an official commission to do missions work in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, even up to Iceland and places. And there's lots of pagans up there, you know,

even the islands, on the islands outside Denmark, all kinds. I mean, you can watch my video and see all these bizarre things happening up there. Very violent people, the Vikings up there. Actually, that's a really fascinating topic. But the point is, people were well aware of comparable situations today where people are not aware of the church. It's not just they explicitly reject the church. It's not a new idea with the discovery of the new world in the 16th century, although that exacerbated the problem. Now, What you do have is in that once the new world is discovered, you do have some Jesuit theologians. This is what people have provided for me in the comments.

Thank you to those of you who did that. I've been asking, is there any precedent for the modern way of understanding no salvation outside the church? And there is a little bit. Not in the medieval era. But as you're getting in the early modern era and the various Catholic theologians, there's a cardinal. I can't remember his first name. His last name is Delugo. He's the one who goes the furthest out in speculating that perhaps most.

Muslims and Jews could be saved through implicit faith. There's a few others. Earlier than that, it's only the catechumans to my awareness who could be saved. And then so you don't, but here's the thing. This speculation by the Jesuits was rejected. It was controversial and rejected. It's not until the 19th and 20th centuries that you see real movement on this question. Here's how the Roman Catholic theologian Francis Sullivan puts it.

He says, the Jesuit view of salvation, where you can have salvation without explicit faith, but only implicit faith, quote, was a departure from the teaching of St. Thomas and the whole medieval tradition, which had required explicit Christian faith for the salvation of everyone in the Christian era. After the suppression of Jesuit order, hardly any Catholic theologians dared to question the traditional teaching on this point. And then that does eventually change, of course. So here's the thing. why does the change only come about in the 19th and 20th centuries? By that point, you've had almost a millennium and a half of separation from the Oriental Orthodox

and the Assyrian Church. You've got almost a millennium with the Eastern Orthodox. Century after century, after century, after century, now suddenly, why in the 19th century and 20th century? Why then? What new circumstance arose then that now causes people to say, oh, well, by the way, yeah, there could be invincibly ignorant, so we need to qualify the statements like that. Why did no one qualify it like that earlier? If that's an authentic reading of the text, why does it lack any precedent? Or any, or very much precedent. I guess you could say DeLugo would be a precedent.

See what I'm trying to get out here? I think a plausible reading of a text should not require a radically revisionist approach. and this is different from the Psalms and passages in Scripture because reading the Psalms as harmonious with heliocentrism is not overturning the intended authorial meaning. Those are poetry. They're not trying to. And there's lots of ways we can respond to similar objections that are raised against biblical inerrancy,

which are not as explicit and emphatic and problematic as the Florence to Vatican II challenge. One of the big problems with biblical inerrancy people don't understand that that biblical inerrancy means the Bible is true in all that it intends to affirm. It doesn't mean the Bible's true if you read it contrary to its intentions as a modern science book or according to the standards of modern historiography. The historical books in the Bible are more comfortable with things like discronology, putting things in different order for a theological purpose.

The temptations of Christ in Matthew 4 versus in Luke 4. you and Luke change the order of them. That's not an error because it's not contrary to the literary genre they're writing in. That's acceptable in ancient historiography. So that's one of the reasons why people think there's more errors in the Bible. So I think we can defend against errors in the Bible if there's other things. Let me address some of the other ones that Michael brought up. Michael brought up other examples of, you know, where I'm poking holes or arguing like a skeptic. I don't think that is correct. Some of the ones he mentioned are the problem of evil.

Psalm 16 as proof for the Messiah and the Trinity in the Old Testament. Those are three of the prominent ones he brought up. Now, I don't think these are comparable to the issue of no salvation outside the church in the Roman Catholic development. In each of these cases, problem of evil, for example, I think Michael and I would agree we have overriding reasons that compel us toward a resolution of the tension. And I wouldn't agree we have such overriding reasons to reconcile Vatican 2 in Florence. I personally have no, because I'm not Roman Catholic and I don't feel compelled, I actually, I just think counsels can err. So I don't have any overriding reason to do that.

With the problem of evil, there are lots of reasons why, as thorny as that problem is, actually, if you conclude from it that God does not exist, you lose your ability to call evil evil in any robust sense. And there's other responses we can give to the problem of evil, too. So those really aren't comparable. But let me address the two that he brought up, that would be more comparable, kind of matters of historical apparent revision historically. Jews believing in the Messiah and the Trinity being introduced in the New Covenant era. Are these comparable sort of revisions or changes to the movement from Florence and the medieval way of thinking about this in the Roman Catholic Church to Vatican 2. And I would say no. On Jews believing in the Messiah,

it's not just Psalm 16 from which we get messianic belief and hope even specifically focused on the resurrection. There's so many passages. We actually have a lot of detail about the Messiah. By the way, a lot of times when the apostles are quoting the Old Testament, they're not doing so for evidential purposes, but for theological purposes. They're not doing so to say, you know, this is true, see this Old Testament passage proves it. They're making a theological claim by quoting that Old Testament passage. So, and I think this is going on with Psalm 16. They're identifying Jesus as the Davidic king. So a good example of this is when Matthew quotes Hosea and says, out of Egypt, I called my son. And this is one of those classic examples where people, especially more liberal scholars,

accuse the New Testament authors of taking verses out of context. But Matthew knew, he was writing for a Jewish audience. He knew his readers would know that verse in Hosea. He's not trying to sneak something by them. He's identifying Jesus as the new Israel, because in its context, that verse was about Israel, and he applies it to Jesus. So a lot of these passages are like that. But here's their difference. I am not making an argument that is comparable to Jewish people rejecting the Messiah. by a wide stretch. If a Jewish skeptic said, Psalm 16, really, I don't buy it. The apostles could simply say, okay, open up your Bible and work through from Genesis

to Malachi and start looking at it. Let's turn to Isaiah 53. If you went to a random person on the street today and said, I want to read to you something, you read Isaiah 53, you didn't tell them where in the Bible it's from. You said, who is this talking about? Most people would say, Jesus. And then you can say, that was written 700 years before Jesus lived. This is a good apologetic for Christianity, how much targeted specific information we are given

about the Messiah that's fulfilled in the New Covenant era. We are given so many details about the timeline. In Daniel chapter 9, you've got the 70 weeks. And then in verse 27, there's the end to sacrifice. The apostles could appeal to this. You've got Micah 5, the location in Bethlehem. I even think you could make a case from the Old Testament that the Messiah is divine. Because Isaiah 96, for example, calls the Messiah El-Gibur, Mighty God.

The Messiah is going to be called Mighty God. You think, what in the world? I've listened to Jewish rabbis like Tovia Singer and others try to explain that. It's an amazing passage. Or Psalm 1-10, Jesus quotes this in Mark 12, in order to confound the expectation of a merely human Messiah, because he's saying, David calls the Messiah his Lord. How can you do that? I'll come back to that passage in a moment. Now, let's say you disagree with a

particular here about Daniel 9 or Psalm 1 10 or something. Fine. The point is there's so many scriptures. I traced through this one, starting with Genesis 3 and then Genesis 49, 10, the scepter shall not depart from Judah, going all the way up to Zechariah 12. They shall look upon me, the one they have pierced. A good book on this is Walt Kaiser's, the Messiah in the Old Testament, just traces this hope. a powerful apologetic can be made for the messiahship of Jesus from the Old Testament. And the apostles could work from that. So my concern about Vatican II in Florence is not comparable to Jewish skepticism of the Messiah. One doesn't have good reasons to believe it.

The other does. Similarly with the Trinity from the Old Testament, okay? So there's a concern here that Jewish people could be just as skeptical or someone who believes in the Old Testament could be just as skeptical? I don't think so. The movement from Old Testament to New Testament on the Trinity is not comparable to the movement from Florence to Vatican II on salvation outside the church. Recall that Florence specifically targets Jewish people, heretics, and schismatics,

and says they are damned unless they come into the Catholic Church. And then it rules out potential grounds for exception, including sacraments and martyrdom. Okay. What would be comparable to that is if the Old Testament said there are not three persons in the godhead. But it doesn't say that. Now, I know that Michael and others would disagree with me on that point. But I'm not persuaded that this way of, because Florence doesn't specifically rule out the idea of implicit faith, that therefore it's reconcilable.

Because I just think the idea of implicit faith was completely absent at that time in history. But here's the deeper point. The strict monotheism of the Old Testament is not at odds with the Trinity. The Trinity, so, for example, the word achad in the Shemah, the Lord is one. That does not mean absolute unity without qualification. The same word is used to describe how man and woman become one flesh in marriage, Genesis 2.23. More significantly, I would say that there are hints of the Trinity in the Old Testament. there are partial murky indications of some kind of differentiation or plurality within the one God.

And the New Testament Revelation relates to that like a flower relates to a seed. If you had explained the Trinity to devout, spirit-filled, informed Old Testament saints, I don't think the general response would be, how dare you, that's anathema, that's a contradiction to monotheism. I think the general response would have been, oh, interesting, that explains a few things. The movement from Old Testament to New Testament on the Trinity is like the movement from when sunrise has just begun, and it's almost completely dark, but a tiny bit of light starts to emerge from that time until when it's noon and the sun is fully shining. Let me document that, and I'm going to give four examples of where I think hints of the Trinity are in the

Old Testament so that this isn't like going from Florence to Vatican 2, actually for a couple of different reasons. Now I'm going to pass over the plurals of Genesis 1 because I think you could read that either way. I don't think that's as forceful. I'm going to pass over the personification of wisdom in Proverbs 8, 22, and following. Same reason. I'm going to pass over Abraham's three visitors in Genesis 18, even though that passage is actually

really interesting. And I'm going to pass over Daniel 7. and I'm just going to focus on four examples. Again, the claim here is not that these explicitly teach the Trinity. The claim is that they are enigmatic and perplexing until you have the Trinity. In other words, the doctrine of the Trinity in the New Testament, as it's worked out in the early church, is a resolution of tension, not a creation of tension. For examples, first, the identity of the angel of the Lord, particularly how the angel of the Lord is portrayed.

For example, how he receives worship. In Joshua 5, it says Joshua was by Jericho. He lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing before him with his drawn sword in his hand. And Joshua went to him and said, are you for us or for our adversaries? And he said, no. But I am the commander of the army of the Lord. Now I have come. Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshipped and said to him,

What does my Lord say to his servant? And the commander of the Lord's army said to Josh. Joshua, take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy, and Joshua did so. Now, of course, some people see the angel of the Lord. This is a big disputed question. Who's the angel of the Lord? Is it a pre-incarnate manifestation of Christ?

Or is it an angel or something else? I think it is the pre-incarnate Christ. And in this passage, I would just note that he receives worship. Angels should not be worshipped. Second of all, the ground is made holy because of him. and Joshua takes off his sandals as a result. And that recalls, of course, the burning bush with Moses in Exodus 3. Yet he's also referred to as a man,

implying that he's appearing to Joshua in a human form or human-like form. So you could say, well, is this just a general theophani or appearance of God? But his title is the commander of the armies of the Lord. That seems to differentiate him from the Lord himself. That's why he's called the angel of the Lord in some passages, or messenger of the Lord, the Malac of the Lord. So the angel of the Lord and the Lord are not the same person. So this seems to hint at some, again, it's like it's not clear, but it's like, okay, there's

something here. What's going on? Second example, Psalm 110, this is what Jesus referred to in Mark 12 and elsewhere. One of the most common passages quoted in the New Testament. David is writing, he says, the Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies, your footstool. And then it goes on and describes him in priestly terms. This is a big passage in the epistle to the Hebrews.

I'm sure this passage puzzled the rabbis. Oh, man, it's so interesting getting into these progressive revelation because it makes you ask questions like, well, what today is going to be further clarified in the way that this has been clarified? Because at the time, you would have thought, who is this figure? He's differentiated from Yahweh. The word Lord there is different, and I apologize if anyone is offended by me pronouncing the divine name. My position on that is it is okay to pronounce the divine name, but I apologize that that gives offense.

But the first Hebrew word is Yahweh. The second is Adani. The Yahweh says to my Adonai. So the question is who is Adani? Who is David's Lord? He's over the king. And he's ruling the nations. And he's this kind of king priest through whom God will rule the nations.

The question is who is that? And that's what Jesus is saying in Mark 12 is David calls the Messiah his Lord. So how is he David's son? Again, it's not teaching you the Trinity per se, but it's giving you something that doesn't quite make sense until you have the Trinity, because you're wondering, who is this Lord? Example number three, Zechariah 1210.

I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy so that when they look on me on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him as one weeps for a firstborn. Okay, the context of this passage is Yahweh is the one speaking

and the word me, who is pierced that's Yahweh. Now, by the way, the Hebrew word for piercing there implies a piercing that results in death. So how is Yahweh being pierced to death? Now, this is a tough passage, but on the basis of John 1937 and also Revelation 17

and also the fact that other messianic verses in Zechariah are equally cryptic, like Zechariah 9,9, and 137. If I can remember, I'll put these up. I think we're justified in seeing a reference to the crucifixion of Christ here. But how do you have, unless you have an incarnate Messiah who is divine, how do you have the Lord being pierced? another inexplicable passage at the time until you get the fuller revelation. Remember what I said? Very dark, but a tiny glimmer of light. Now it's full light.

See, I'm not against development of doctrine in general. That's just progressive revelation. Last example. Psalm 45, 6.7, your throne, O God is forever and ever. The scepter of your kingdom is a septer of uprightness. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness. Therefore, God, your God, has anointed. you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions. If God is, if God was thought by the Jewish

people to be necessarily and exactly a strict Unitarian God, who is God's God? I know that some, I'm not trying to foreclose working through these passages. Some Christians see this as a, as a reference to David, the Davidic king's throne and his scepter. But that feels unnatural to me reading through these verses in the flow of the entire Psalm. And I have a warrant in Hebrews 1, eight and nine, which references this text for reading this in the way where it does look like it's saying, it's talking to God and then says, God has a God. So you'd say, what in the world does that mean? And then in the revelation of the, now I've written about this elsewhere. You can see how I'm quoting from Derek Kiddner and others to support this. In the space of this video,

I can't go through every possible objection to these passages. But hopefully this is enough to just suggest to a sympathetic viewer that we have some data to work through with respect to the Trinity in the Old Testament, not to get you explicitly to it, but to show that it is harmonious with the New Testament. Again, the doctrine of the Trinity is a resolution of tension, not a creation of tension. Okay. And in my reading of each of those four texts, I have a lot of commonality with Christians through our church history and a lot of commonality with the New Testament, with the exception of Joshua 5. So the point I'm trying to make is I'm not a skeptic.

I'm not just trying to poke holes. The reason I reject something over here, Roman Catholic councils and their deliverances, is because I really sincerely have concerns that they're not true. I think those concerns are understandable. The reason I don't reject things like the Scripture or the Trinity or the Messiahship of Christ is because I think they have a much better foundation. So I would like to protest the label of skepticism or skepticism run amok that has been put upon me. Another context for my usage of typology, but my usage of typology is thoroughly classical.

I'm just doing what Christians have always done with typology. I'm not a skeptic. As a Christian, I'm not primarily just trying to poke holes. I believe in the Trinity. I believe in the virgin birth. I believe in the resurrection of Christ. I believe in the resurrection of the body. believe in the forgiveness of sins. As a Protestant, I believe in doctrines like Sola Scriptura,

Sola Fide, happy to defend these doctrines. I want to commend them. As a Baptist, I believe in delaying baptism until a person understands what's happening to them when they're being baptized. I believe in congregational church government as a Baptist. That each individual congregation is a manifestation of the visible institutional church of Jesus Christ. These are my positive beliefs. I'm happy to defend them. I'm not just trying to poke holes. out there. So I'm just simply convinced that Florence and Vatican II, we have a development of meaning, not a mere development of understanding. And in light of the utter lack of precedent from the time in question, I would say that my concern of a change in meaning is pretty understanding.