Truth Unites - Where Do Catholics and Protestants Agree? With Erick Ybarra

Episode Date: November 15, 2023

This dialogue between Gavin Ortlund and Erick Ybarra explores where Catholics and Protestants agree about atonement, creation, classical theism, and responding to secularism. See more about Erick here: https://erickybarra.com/ Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. 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/

Hey everyone, welcome or welcome back to Truth Unites. Truth Unites is a place to go deeper into theology for the sake of assurance in the gospel. And I'm going to talk today with my friend Eric Ybarra, whom I respect and admire. We're going to have a great conversation about areas of agreement. So this would be a little bit of a different kind of video in some respects. We're going to just go through. And it's okay, too, if we also hit points of disagreement. It's not like we can't talk about that. But it's just, you know, the goal here is basically just to explore where we have some common ground on some of these issues. So Eric, thanks for taking. the time how you doing today oh yeah thank you this is a thrilled to have gotten a chance to sit down with you i'm doing well thank you so much awesome well we've we've become good friends over the last couple of years i've always i've kind of been amazed at how much you can become friends with people through yeah online because we've never met in person but we've we've had lots of great conversations back and forth so this would be great now people should know we've

not scripted any of this i just mentioned to you i'm going to mention four topics for us to explore but I actually don't know your views on these things. So I really don't. Maybe I'm framing it as agreement and I'll be wrong. We'll see. But, you know, both of us, for me, my day has been absolutely crazy bouncing from taking care of kids and doing different things. And then right after this, I'm going to pick up one of my sons. So we haven't had time to script the flow of thought here.

But that'll make it fun to just explore these things. So I thought we talked about atonement, creation, classical. theism and then responding to secularization. And these are not areas, these, they're kind of fun because they're not areas where our different traditions necessarily have butted heads against each other as much as if we were talking about justification or something like that. So, but I really think we can learn from each other on some of these things. So maybe just, well, let me ask you a fun question first. What, what's something that you like to do for fun that people who watch your YouTube videos may not already know about you?

Hmm. Well, I love to play chess. I give all of my free time to my kids nowadays. For those of you who don't know, I have six children. I have six boys. The oldest is 15, but the other, they're all still in younger, younger years. So I just spend a lot of time with them. I got one into computer. programming recently, so we're going through classes online with him. My eldest is struggling in algebra two, so I find myself at night teaching algebra two, which that was my missed calling, I think, is teaching mathematics. I love mathematics. And then also just playing piggyback. I'm the horse, and I got three kids on my back running around the house. So yeah, I'm certain that some of my online readers and viewers would be shocked to see me doing some of the stuff I do here in the house. I totally get it as a fellow dad. So I've got five kids. Mine are age ranged from 10 down to one. What's the age spread of yours? 15. 10, 10, 8, 7, 4, and 2.

Okay. So not too far off from us. Pretty similar. stage of life, yeah. Well, let's dive in and talk a little bit about theology. We've had great conversations in the past, and I thought of the atonement as an area that would be kind of fun to explore. Part of that comes out of my own experience of feeling as though I have learned in specific ways when dialoguing with the non-Protestant traditions on this topic, not even necessarily areas where we have to disagree, but just sometimes there's differences of emphasis in terms of how we understand the atonement. So for people watching this, you know, as we're talking about the atonement, we're talking about how Christ has reconciled us to God. So all Christians can affirm,

you know, 1 Corinthians 15.3, Christ died for our sins. But if you ask, well, what does that mean? And how do you understand that? We start to get into these different theories or motifs about the atonement. So people will be familiar with words like penal substitution or the ransom theory or recapitulation or Christus Victor. These are different labels for different ways of understanding. How is it that Christ has reconciled us to God? So I'll share more kind of about my own appreciation for where I've learned from some Roman Catholic theologians on this. Maybe just I'll keep it broad as I let you start off here. Where would you see overlap? And I want to clarify something, too, that when we talk about agreement, obviously not all individual Protestants and Roman Catholics

will agree pretty much on anything. So, I mean, you can find somebody out there, right? But we're talking about kind of the mainstream of our different traditions. And then also, we're not necessarily looking for total agreement on every tiny nuance, but just where we can see substantial overlap. Where would you see that on something like the atonement? Well, here I'm going to have to distinguish my personal views with what you're going to find in Catholic academia nowadays. I find myself seeing a lot of Catholic theologians today having a problem, if not with the substance of penal substitution, at least with the terminology. And so what I would say, I'd have to look at something else besides penal substitution to say there's overlap with Catholicism and Protestantism. But Protestantism is able to field a wide range of perspective on the atonement.

So certainly the Christ, the victor, overcoming the powers of the age and overthrowing Satan and the dominions. of the, you know, the prince of the power of the air, putting down the powers as, you know, NT Wright likes to emphasize and bringing in the new age and the new creation. So there's a, I see overlap there. And, you know, the ransom theory, you know, that could be interpreted differently with different authors. You know, the early church fathers have a couple of days. different ways of looking at that.

But what I have found in my reading of Protestant literature on the Atonement is that there's a sincere overlap on this issue of Christ meriting salvation through a substitutionary act where he takes on whether it's coming from a corporate representational model, a federal headship model. One is doing something in place of many and yielding a result for the many, even though the many do not have an ontological physical participation in the accomplishment. So I see overlap there, you know, with representation and substitution. But, you know, for me, I find that, you know,

In my own research, that penal substitution is a legitimate terminology because what we're talking about here is the punishment of death that was issued upon the human race as a result of sin. Yes, you know, Satan is said to have, you know, the author to the Hebrew says he's got the power of over, you know. So Satan was definitely making use of the instrumentality of sin in order to bring about death upon human beings. But it's still considered a punishment, I think, in scripture. And the early church fathers, they're, you know, it's replete that they understand that this sentence, they call it a debt of nature or a debt of humankind that Christ, Christ voluntarily took upon himself. And by him dying for sins, he wasn't dying for his own sins.

He wasn't taking up a debt that he owed. He was taking up a debt that we owe. And so if it's a punishment that was sentenced upon Adam and therefore all of us, and Christ comes in voluntarily both father and son working together in harmony, for the son to voluntarily bear our sins on his body on the tree. Then I think a penal substitution is definitely within the feet, within legitimate terminology. How we flesh that out may be different.

But as far as I can see, especially with like classical reformed systematic theologians, I think they've made well enough distinctions to block them off from, some excessive explanations. Yeah, yeah. And I like the word, the adverb voluntarily that you brought out there because I think that's where some Protestants can, and maybe you see this in Catholic circles as well, I know the Protestant circles better, but they can fall into trouble with penal substitution where it starts to get to a point where the father and the son are divided against one another in some

way. And that gets into trouble. But I'm with you on penal substitution, and I realized I threw out that label and didn't define that maybe we could just say broadly, it has something to the effect that Christ is paying the penalty of sin. And, you know, what I've found is that this can be defined in different ways, and it can be put in crude ways. I found that a lot of times preachers get into trouble with metaphors sometimes that, you know, just don't, they don't get it right. It's not helpful sometimes. But the core idea, I'm with you, it seems like it's hard to deny that death is a penal,

reality. In Genesis 3, death is a penalty, and Christ pays that penalty. And so the core idea, but this is my great interest in the atonement is that it seems to me that a lot of these different motifs are not mutually exclusive. And so like you mentioned, you know, with Christus Fichter, that Christ is the conqueror as well as the one who pays the penalty of sin, I would go to Colossians too. And I would say those two things have a very harmonious logical relationship. he has disgraced and defeated Satan because he has taken away the written record of debt that stood against us. And then, you know, we can even involve some of the other theories as well there. So it seems like there's a lot, it seems like there's a lot of common ground.

But this is where it's interesting is that, you know, it's almost like the tensions come up within both of our traditions. Because from progressive to conservative side, whether you're in a Protestant context or Roman Catholic context, you can find lots of people who are really uncomfortable with any kind of penal substitution, and you can find a lot of people who overfocus and make that the only real way of understanding atonement. And that's where, you know, what you were saying at the beginning, that there's a kind of irreducible core we can agree upon that has to do with substitution, I think, is a helpful starting point maybe for us. Yeah, absolutely. I think that, I think we could even go further and say that there's a there's a driver or propeller that kind of gives meaning to these other effects,

like the achievement of conquering over evil, right? That's achieved by this propeller of substitutionary satisfaction. You know, he pays the debt of our sin. Well, if he pays the debt of our sin, well, that puts Satan out of business because Satan is working upon the debt being welded to each individual. man. And so that, in order to see humanity run its course into death

by forgiving our sins and reversing our fate, our eternal life, that puts Satan out of business. So he loses his grip upon the human race. And then also, you know, one of the things that I've seen a lot in like Eastern

Orthodox authors and some contemporary evangelical authors, just that he's an exemplar. You know, like, you know, you've got this in the motifs of first and second Peter, mostly in First Peter, where, you know, he suffered willingly without complaining, without speaking a word against his accusers, setting an example for us, you know. That's obviously in the orbit of atonement theology.

And, you know, so I'm very much with you on this integrated. these various views. And I think Catholics, and I've seen it time and time again within Catholicism where you've got, you know, maybe a Catholic apologist or a Catholic academic, a theologian who is concentrating on penal substitution as some sort of a distortion of the biblical and patristic and traditional doctrine. But I've never seen them do, I've never seen, seen that done with any kind of support from the Magisterium. It seems to be a live debate, to be honest with you. Yeah. And I like the, I've used the word mechanism at times, maybe just for lack of a better term of, you know, what is the mechanism that actually achieves reconciliation

between God and sinful human beings? And then what are the effects of that? And so people, you know, another one of the theories out there is moral influence theory that through his atoning work on the cross, Jesus reveals the depth of God's love for humanity. But again, I think we can integrate that, just like you use the word, I think, lever or something like that. That's harmonious with speaking of penal substitution. And it's by paying the penalty of our sin and doing other things as well, that that love is manifested. So it's like, again, I just see this dangerous. of false dichotomy as a huge huge danger here. Let me share one way where I've benefited from engaging with Roman Catholic theologians on the atonement and that is there's more of an emphasis

in some definitely historic Roman Catholic contexts on the life of Christ and on the resurrection of Christ the Protestants have at times gotten onto that as well. But sometimes we put all the focus just upon the cross and we don't talk at all about about the broader kind of narrative arc of Christ's saving work and the importance of his burial, the importance of his resurrection, of course, the importance of his session, his seated, being seated at the right hand of God the second coming, but then also his incarnate life prior to his death. And, you know, the great, my interest in atonement is how much can we integrate both what I see in Anselm and what I see in I Renéus? So Anselm's got the

great emphasis upon satisfaction that Christ satisfies divine honor and Irianus on recapitulation that Christ remakes human nature but I think those are harmonious I think those are just you know emphasizing two different things that are both the case and we need to be wary of them being mutually exclusive between the two so you know even just reading Thomas Aquinas on the transfiguration helped me a great deal because he's talking a lot about basically how even prior to his resurrection, Christ's body possessed a kind of divine glory. And he's basically emphasizing that all of Christ's incarnate life was of one piece with his atoning death, even though that's kind of the climactic moment.

And actually some of the reformers talk like that, too. So that's just an area for me where I felt like, because even in the Catholic Catechism, there's a lot of emphasis upon the transfiguration. but I never really thought about the transfiguration of Christ much just growing up, you know, in going to churches. So that, yeah, diving. Yeah, that's a good, that's a very good point. Yeah, likewise, you know, I grew up in a Catholic household. So I was baptized when I was six months old.

I became a Protestant as when I went to university. But growing up in a Catholic household, we always had this really big, big, huge. huge Bible in the middle of the table in the living room. And I would always open it up to the pictures where there was, you know, pictures. And it was just beautiful, the pictures of Christ's death, burial and resurrection. So from a very young age, I had these vivid depictions of Christ, you know, as going through the whole course of the passion and his glory. But I wanted to add that from the Protestant side, I've gained a lot from some of those who are following from like the Dutch reform contribution of Herman, Herman Boving, Gerhardis, Boss, and there's another one. I can't remember his name. He wrote Paul an outline of his theology. He's a famous Dutch guy. I forget it. It could have been Ritterboss.

Ritterboss. There we go. Well, yeah, his call and outline on his theology and some of his commentaries like on Galatians and the kingdom of God, he has a whole volume on that. That motif really helped me see how the reforms were saying a lot that is in similarity to what Aquinas and even some of the earlier fathers that emphasize resurrection and union. And so I benefited from the reform, and I still do. I still would recommend some of their writings to, even Catholics to read, to get an emphasis on the resurrection and union. So a guy today who's writing, well, not today. When I was reformed was Dr. Richard B. Gaffin. He was picking up on that legacy and emphasizing on that.

I don't know who maybe if somebody else picked up the baton since 2010-ish. But if they have, I'd love to see who. I think Robert J. Fesco, maybe he might be another one, but I can't think of another one off the top of my head. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to link to a book by Richard Gaffin. It's called The Centrality of the Resurrection. It's about the resurrection in Paul's theology.

That is to me, like in the top 10 books I've ever read from a contemporary theologian, it just, it really was kind of a life all. altering experience in terms of just how I think differently about union with Christ and about the role of Christ's resurrection in our salvation. So people might be interested in that. What about where do we disagree, you know, not just you and I, but Catholic to Protestant, are there any irreducible points of disagreement on the atonement specifically? I can't actually think of anything. I mean, obviously we disagree on, you know, how the atonement actually becomes to be applied to our lives in all the details of that. I mentioned justification. You know, we have to, but the actual, you know, this kind of the meaning of the atonement itself,

I can't actually think of anything where we, we are divided from one another in that we're bound to certain views that conflict. I mean, I think we have different emphases, but I don't see in this area any major necessary disagreements. What do you think? So the only thing I can think of, you know, from a Christological Trinitarian or triological point of view is some, I know some Catholics have pointed to Luther and Calvin and the language they use about the wrath of God being poured out on Christ. and another you know the late uh dr r c sprawl you know in a number of his presentations he did dramatically you know present the atonement in you know the son of god being a you know a mass of just on you know a something that was um evoked the wrath of god because sin was put on him And I think a lot of Catholics might, you know, take issue with the language.

And if if what is meant, you know, is that somehow the father pours out his wrath on the sun, creating some sort of a disjunction in the essence of, you know, God, the Trinitarian relations, that's the only place I've seen Catholics really lodge a serious objection. you know, when I read some of the, you know, the reform systematicians like Francis Turriton or even, even later, like Louis Burkhoff and A.A. Hodge, son of Charles, I saw their clarifications on the atonement as bridging and not separating. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah. Yeah, that would be an interesting. area to kind of explore further sometime, which is maybe the word propitiation, which means usually

that's contested, but a lot of times that means averting of wrath. And I'm, this kind of comes back to what I said earlier about the language, the crude language that people can get into trouble with and how that can be articulated. But I myself from Romans 321 to 26 and other passages, I just think, you know, there's, there's so many references to divine wrath in the scripture. God does have wrath against evil. And that is a problem that is for those who are in Christ that is solved at the cross. So then we get into, okay, well, what's the language by which we articulate that and understand that? I guess to me it seems like the, if we're not veering off, I know some Roman Catholics will disagree with any notion of propitiation, just as some Protestants do.

Again, that gets back to like the progressive conservative spectrum in both our traditions. But to me, as I'm looking at it, it seems like there's at least in our best moments, we have possibility for overlap even there. But I don't know. Yeah, I think, you know, that the translation and some of it goes back to like old, in interpretation of the Atonement in the Old Testament. You know, you'll probably recall C.H. Dodd, you know, and some of the contributions he had to the, um, the, you know, the LXX, LX, he lost Moss, he lost on as exclusively the mercy seat,

nothing to do with, you know, quote unquote pagan mechanisms to avert the wrath of God or the gods. But I was very much on the side of Leon Morris in that debate. And I wasn't contemporary with it. I was reading about a years later, you know, But Leon Morris is one of my favorite Protestant expositors on the language of Helostarian and the lexical usages, you know, and the Hebrew term that was used to, you know, the original that they were using for the mercy seat. I think propitiation was a standard term in all the way up to the late medieval times.

You find it in the Council of Trent, for goodness sake. So I think it's more of a modern issue to be quite honest with you. Right, exactly. Yeah. See, same same as me. It seems like we've got more overlap there because certainly throughout the tradition, that language is common and that understanding is common. So it seems like we have the, it seems to me like we've got a common foundation there on the atonement.

But then the details would be in kind of like how we flush it out and how we work it out. And I, so that's kind of an encouraging area where I don't see. And actually I do think, in fact, I wanted to go back and say, too, since we're talking Protestant to Roman Catholic, the Eastern Orthodox have, I mentioned the Transfiguration. In several of the Eastern traditions, they really emphasize the transfiguration. And it's from some of those modern Orthodox scholars, actually, I've learned a lot about that topic. So that's kind of a fun area where we have a lot of common commitments, at least in principle. There's nothing that is necessarily dividing us. That's not to say we'll always end up at the exact same spot. But what about, let's talk about creation. a little bit. And this is a fun one because all I'm going by here is a vague memory that you would be more in the Young Earth camp. And I can't even 100% say if that's

sure or not. Yeah. So I would be considered a Young Earth creationist. But it's not a subject that I've devoted any kind of particular time to

to really get ready to defend. But I can tell you this that I have heard the perspective of other exegetes who go to Genesis, for example, and find internal reasons to see that this is not really about an old or a young. It's got a very much different literary function. And obviously, at first, it was kind of something that I saw as more of an attempt to bridge the Christian faith with modern science. But as I listened to it more, I realized that these people are not just trying to. I mean, I think the first person I came across who was doing this was Bruce Watkey.

This is going back to like 2007 or 2008, where I picked up his, I think it was either his commentary on Genesis or it was his biblical. theology volume and and he was you know he points out reasons within the text and um so i've always kept my uh to-do list with getting back into studies on that um i'm i think i can defend young earth from the scriptures but um whenever i've talked to experts on the other side you know it seems like there's so much more to learn on my eye. So I'm very, I'm in the minority as a Catholic because most of my friends, most of my academic colleagues and different apologists that I've known over the years, they all seem to be, they all believe in the theistic evolution. and they understand the narrative of the Bible, especially like the first 11 chapters, Genesis, along with its meta-narrative to be more theological. It's got a tapestry of theological intent and not so much, you know, scientific, biological, cosmological.

And so I don't think it's a dividing issue. I think if you read the Church Fathers, for example, which is, I don't want to say it's my domain, but I've read a lot of the church fathers. So I, invariably, you're going to come across the views on, you know, the Old Testament, whether it's origin or even St. Gregory of Nissa or other writers who you see. They're not all reading this as some sort of fixed. There's no fixity, especially, you know, on the first for three chapters of Genesis. It's not as fixed as people think it is. There are, you know, like St. Siffram, the Syrian, and other writers, you know, Ambrose seems to, or I think it's St. B, the venerable in the 7th, 8th century. You do have authors that take a strict, you know, literal reading of Genesis, and you've got a lot of chroniclers, especially like in the Syriac tradition, they were counting the years of creation based upon Genesis. But I can't, for the life of me, think it would be something to divide over ecclesiastically.

Yeah, yeah. So this is a great example and a fascinating example for us to talk about because here I am not a young earth creationist, while most of my, well, most, probably a slight majority of my Protestant viewers are. Oh. And you are a not, and you are a young earth creationist, but mentioned being a little bit in the minority in your context. And what is manifest from those two points together is that, you know, there isn't just one required view. And there isn't necessarily a barrier in terms of how you understand this. Though, of course, some people would say that there is, especially more in the Protestant context. But that, and I'm with you, people will be familiar with my views upon this among the church fathers from my work, especially in Augustine.

But I've looked a little bit and I've talked about a book by Andrew Brown called The Days of Creation, wonderful survey, going through all church history, just laying out views. of Genesis 1. His thesis statement on page one of the book is no modern view of Genesis 1 in substance is new. They're all anticipated throughout the tradition, so it's really interesting. So what would be your, how controversial is your view, and I'm just curious about this within Roman Catholic circles. I mean, are you representative of an extreme minority or just a mild minority? So I would be in a mild minority, but those holding to a young earth, that gets close to an extreme minority. So a lot of the Catholics who are willing to believe in the literal six days of creation, for example, they are tending to be in a smaller minority. But people who are willing to believe in

an old earth, but they believe Adam and Eve, from Adam and Eve onward, you know, it is literally as chronicled by the, you know, the standard Jewish calculation. That's going to broaden out more. So I, and I really think that on any given day, I could be an old earth or a young earth, depending on the day. So I'm not really fixed on the, you know, the word yam. But, yeah, so I think that what you see now is a growing trend, especially like in the Dominican tradition, attempts to reconcile a lot of science with the historical atom.

And see, I would not go down that road, not because I don't know. I'm so much against it, but I just don't know enough to really engage with it. But some of the things I hear about how the human population got as large and diverse as it did. Some of the theories are a little just too bizarre for me, you know, to understand. So, yeah, I think that it's an area that's not so much of a focus anymore, I think. If there are, some of your listeners know of any good Catholic theologians that are working in this area, I'd like to know, because it doesn't seem to be an area of any kind of focus in my field of discourse. I haven't seen it.

So I see the works of like Ken Ham and some other young earth creationists on the side of Protestants that are really, you know, this is a hot issue still. But over on my side of the boundary, I wish we had more people, you know, writing about it. One Roman Catholic theologian I've learned a great deal from across the board, especially on creation, is Matthew Lebering, who I really trust as a theologian. I mean, he's so well-read and so brilliant and such a good synthesizer, but I also trust his instincts, you know, and his book, he wrote a book called The Doctrine of Creation, which I've benefited from greatly. But I'm curious, so is being a young earth creationist controversial,

in Roman Catholicism in that there are people who just say, oh, we really disagree with that view? Or is it controversial in that there are people who feel it should be not held by Roman, faithful Roman Catholics? Because my impression is you really are free in terms of any required teaching to go either way. But I'm not sure about that. Yeah, you're free to go either way in Catholicism. where I've run into conflict is people accusing me of making the faith suffer from unneeded ridicule by, you know, contemporary scientifically tuned inquirers.

So, you know, they pick up from Augustine, you know, this is this one very powerful statement in Augustine where he's talking about how foolish it is for somebody to be talking about, you know, nature and science and the cosmos and thinking to derive it from scripture and having no idea what they're talking about and then how foolish they're going to look in front of people who know and how you run the risk of making like a contradictory disjunction between God, God's Word and in creation. So I've had a few people, you know, try to take me out to the theological woodshed over making the Christian faith, you know, look like it's silly, you know. But I haven't been persuaded by what they said, you know. But I've not had an inquirer lambast me that way yet.

So maybe when that happens, I might have to like. like, you know, get that Andrew Brown book that you just referenced. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's okay. The, I put out a response to Ken Ham recently and that I referenced that passage in Augustin. And it does, yeah, this, at least in evangelical contexts, the doctrinal creation is one of the most white, hot, controversial theological issues. Wow. Maybe it's abated a little bit, but it just, just over the last 10 years as we've just because we've been fighting about so many other issues like politics and stuff. But it's very, so I'm just kind of fascinated at the sociology of that. Like, why is that the case?

But it isn't as much the case in Roman Catholic circles that it seems to be as so present. But I will say that I think an area we can agree upon as one who affirms a historical Adam and Eve and a historical fall, I think we can agree on a kind of common core there in terms of human uniqueness and then pushing against the tendency toward reductionistic evolutionary explanations for all of human psychology that come at us from a secular standpoint. So there's a common foundation. I think we can agree upon there to say nothing of other areas in creation like creation ex nihilo and lots of other things like that. Yeah, absolutely. I think that, you know, man in the image of God, Imago Day, you know, we are vocation, you know, and that's very much still, I mean, we have quite a few dogmas that are related to, you know, the anthropological creation of man, not least marriage, you know. But certainly, you know, the 19th century, early 20th century, papal decrees were dealing with some of those evolutionary views where they were, you know, trying to extend it to, you know, learning new things and correcting old

views and trying to move on with the new era, with a completely different understanding of things about, man. Yeah, that's that, we've put a cork in that in the early 20th century. people try to get the cork out still even within the Catholic academia but yeah I think we're a solid agreement there you know on historic Adam historic Eve and the fall and the the future the promise of glory right what about let's talk about classic theism classical theism a little bit and as we get into this I'll just throughout some of the issues involved in this and I'd say divine simplicity, the belief that God is without parts, divine immutability, God is changeless in some sense, divine impassibility, so God is not subject to passions, God's eternity, there's probably

a few other things, aseity that God exists from himself. So things like this, now, here's why I think this is an interesting area for us to kind of compare notes, you know, Protestant to Catholic, is that I would say that historically we've had a common foundation with respect to that, but among a lot of contemporary Protestants, there's been a fraying at the edges away from classic theism. And I'm one who's eager, along with a lot of others who are kind of in these retrieval movements of trying to call contemporary Protestants back to our roots in this respect. So it would be fun to talk a little bit about this and just why is this important, you know? you know one thing I can say right out of the gate is for something like divine simplicity it really has pretty much in one form or another to my awareness universal at a station throughout church history

yeah uh you know there may be variation in how it's understood but i am dismayed at the ease with which sometimes people leave off these doctrines when you know and they may not even be aware that they are taking in effect a U-turn. So, you know, that that already might just push it forward a little bit in terms of helping see the importance of it. But maybe, let me let me let you start off and just say what you want to say about the importance of this area. Yeah, you know, and I took my departure from evangelicalism at a time when process theology was just, getting on his feet in regular publications. So, you know, it was there for a while in the academic journals.

And then it finally got to a point where, you know, this was starting to become handheld theology. And I want to say there was one, there's one theologian. I can't remember his name, Bruce something, but he took up the, he wrote God's lesser glory. It was a book called God's lesser glory. And what when I read that book, I realized this is this has got, to do with the essence of our faith, who are we worshipping? You know, that's really what it comes down to. If we don't have a first principle behind which there is nothing else, you know, and there is no partition or border or complexity, then we're not worshipping God anymore. And if that's the case, what are we worshipping?

So I think that that is what is at stake here is who is the other. object of our worship. And one particular book that I read, and I can't believe his name is escaping my mind right now. My short-term memory is going, it's not Robert Leithen, definitely not Lethetham, but he wrote a book called God Without Parts. And he himself is a reformed, he's a reformed It might have been James Dolazol, maybe. Dolazol. There you go. Dolizol. And his book, all that is God is another one where he

goes through some of the contemporary theologians who are questioning this in trying to bring in because they think what's at, they think that what's being risked here is the personality of God

and the experience of God's person and but man we have a much greater risk you know, not even considering that. If the creator himself is going to be analogous, you know, that's one thing. But for him to be on a level plane to the point where, you know, he himself learns, you know, that's an extreme, you know, extreme process theology.

Then, you know, we can't say we're worshiping God anymore. And I think it's a dangerous thing to do because it distorts the view of God that proved over time. You know, all the best, you know, reform guys, I think of like Charanox attributes of God, A.W. Tozer on the Providence, I mean, classical reform manuals. they all held to divine simplicity and passability. And I think, you know, getting rid of that is risking the, the godness of God. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's really what's at risk.

What helped me, I did a study on the divine simplicity in the church fathers. And that really is when I first, it sort of landed upon me all that's at stake, you know, all the implications. And that would be an encouragement for Protestants who, who, I have to say, I think some Protestants they because they are approaching it in a biblical frame of mind as opposed to a biblical frame of mind so by biblicalistic I mean kind of like the Bible is the end all be all for your horizon of concerns and categories of thought and it's just what do I see in the text and you did that's all you're thinking about but I would just encourage Protestants getting into church history helps you see some of the implications of an area like this because just over and over the church fathers are

saying, look, this is how we mark off the one true God. And, you know, trying to be charitable, we can probably come up with a continuum or spectrum of different kinds of error. You know, not every error is as equally damaging as every other. But with something like divine simplicity that God is without parts, you know, sometimes you see people jettison this today as though it's no big deal. And it helps for people to appreciate how much for not just the church fathers but all throughout the Christian tradition including as you say a lot of the you know classic Protestant theology like this is how you protect God's absoluteness that God is not conditioned by anything external to himself and if people ask for a biblical proof text I like to just say you know first

John 4 God is love uh that actually does start a thread of thought that leads to I think divine simplicity when you start thinking about the difference between saying God is love versus God is loving because this is the concern that if you say God is loving but he's not love, then you have to say, well, where does love come from? Right. And how is God now conditioned by something external to himself? So yeah, that definite absoluteness is key to what I'm trying to get at is, you know, in order to really nail down our view of who we're worshipping

and to take, you know, to our. grave, everything that he's revealed, we need to have this doctrine. You know, and, you know, I think that if the Holy Spirit, you know, granted wisdom to the church for, you know, 1,500 plus centuries, you know, it just seems to me that it would be doing violence to the Christian faith to toss this doctrine out. And the dangers are too much to count. if we do let's defend divine simplicity from an objection and that is how can we say god is simple if god is also the trinity if we have the father the son and the holy spirit we've got personal distinctions in the godhead uh and again i'm just tossing this out out of you know so we can we can

kick it back and forth but but you know because i've heard people raise this concern they're like how can you say god is without parts when there's three persons in god maybe we can just help help people navigate through that challenge. Yeah, it's a, it's a beautiful challenge, you know, and I was in the thick of it when I was writing my book on the Philiokwe, because, you know, the Phileoakway is a subset doctrine of the Trinity. So in order to introduce your readers, you invariably, you've got to go through classical trinitarian theology, which brings you back to the history of these debates, like with,

you know, the beginning of, you know, second, third, fourth century writers. And, you know, so yes, you know, Greek philosophy, metaphysicians, this was one of their objections, you know, God has a son. Okay, well, the son cannot be equal to God, right? And so it was, you know, something to tease Christians with. Well, Christians needed to come back with, you know, Greek metaphysical dress to explain how we can understand there to be a father and son. You know, that was the predominant question of the beginning of the fourth century was how can you have this duality with simplicity? And, you know, the answer of the of the nicenes, or even before the nicenes, really, is that you've got a single essence, but you've got two eternally subsistent relations. And so those relations don't make up the kind of part or parts that you would need to make a compound.

So the father and the son, the eternal father, he's always father. That was one of the points that Athanasis made. If he was always father, that means he always had his son. And if they're both eternal, then they have an eternal. relation and the father just is unbegotten and he eternally generates the son the son is eternally begotten and what you have there is two subsistent relations that's how augustine came you know starting to use that aristotelian um notion of relation as oh it's not an accident you know and it's not the same thing as substance, but it is not a part that gets compounded together. It's eternal. Then the Holy Spirit

comes and he is the, he proceeds. So that's the other thing. The sun is derived. So this is the, the term I used in my book was derived equality. So there's, you know, sometimes people get little fishy with the word derivation when it comes to the Trinity. But the son is not son in himself. He's a son because he was born from the father. And the spirit is not spirit in himself. He's proceeding from the father and the son. But all these are eternally subsisting relations. And so at no point in this explanation, do you have a prior and a subsequent? There's all. always this eternally subsisting relations between Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. And so what you would need to make a complex Trinity, one where it's truly complex in the way that

those who are opposing divine simplicity want to see affirm, they would have to see in fatherhood filiation and in spiration, something that makes a compound between them. And all of our theology in the Trinity avoids compounding because you've got one shared eternal nature, one substance, but which exists in these subsisting relations, which don't come at a certain point. but are always there. And so you've got this very tight absoluteness to the Trinitarian relations that do not, you know, make up a accidental feature or some sort of a contrast between each other that makes for, you know, a complexity. Yeah, yeah. In agreement with what you're saying, just to extend it a little further, that one thing that has,

helped me when I was doing my study on this is it was fascinating to me to see how frequently the Christians wouldn't really feel the same tension or concern that comes up so much in the contemporary literature. They weren't even answering the same questions a lot of times. So many times, you know, from Maimonides or some of the Muslim philosophers, Avicenna, people like this, the Trinity would be criticized. And so many times, you know, from Maimonides, or some of the Muslim philosophers, Avicenna, people like this, the, the Trinity would be criticized. And so many times you wouldn't even feel a sense of need to harmonize the two. Instead, they would use divine simplicity to ground the Trinity as monotheistic. So the consistent emphasis is this is why this doesn't fly into tri-theism and the as we are sometimes charged with. And that is each of the persons

partakes in the divine nature and there are no parts in the divine nature. They're, before there was one God. And so in other words, divine simplicity was the answer. It wasn't something generating problems. It was the solution to this conundrum. And I just found that interesting that the instincts are different and the questions are different. And there's a great passage in Basel where he basically says,

when our Lord taught us the Trinity, he didn't teach it to us in terms of human arithmetic. And then he appeals to the fact that the Jewish people of old wouldn't say the divine name. name. And he says, you know, heed their reverence before the divine nature. And that's also what I think you see in the tradition that comes through is just this sense of God is ontologically unique. So don't assume he's going to function according to your intuitions and your categories that that you're thinking in terms of creaturely reality. And that's just again a cautioning influence upon us that I think that

certainly that was one of the main things I got from just dipping into the tradition on a question like this. So I'm burden. I mean, I really in agreement with you, I actually think this is an area that's hugely important. And the reason that comes up for me in a where we can conversation where we're exploring differences is there are times where we learn from each other. This is an area where I think Protestants, well, we just have a weakness, you know, there is a, there's as I say, that fraying at the edges. So is there anything else you want to comment on this and then we can move on to the last topic? Yeah, no, I think it's an area where, you know, especially with the, you know, the rootedness of Augustinian influence upon Western theology, Latin theology, that's in the patrimony for Protestants. You know, I mean, they, if they're trying to respect tradition, which, you know, good Protestants should do that, then I think diving back into classical theism and classical trinity. theology is a must.

Yeah. Let's talk about one final issue, and this is kind of the one that probably for just most Christians day to day we might think of, and that is responding to the increasing secularization of our culture, and I might even broaden it even beyond secularization, because that term kind of implies, you know, a loss of religion to some extent, but even sometimes I kind of think it the problem is more kind of a paganism than than just secularism itself. I mean, it's that, but it's not just that. It's it. I read a book about de-churching recently, and it was talking about how many people leave the church

altogether. They stop, but they actually still have relatively orthodox theology, and they're just completely de-churched. And so there's another demographic. That's not really secularization per se. So it's like there's kind of several distinct challenges, I guess. But one of the things I read in that book is that it does seem to all the sociology seems to be that this is just throughout Western culture in general. A lot of people are leaving the church and it's not a uniquely Roman Catholic problem, Protestant problem, or or even outside of Christianity.

There's just a significant increase in loss of faith altogether. So I'm kind of curious what, how do you experience that as a Roman Catholic? I mean, for me as a Protestant, I'm looking at it and I'm saying I'm like a part of groups that are trying to think through apologetics. And we're trying to think through how do we respond to this crisis? And it is a crisis. But what is it like for you in your neck of the woods? How do you see this issue and what concerns you about it? Yeah.

It's very much in the same exact way. You know, we've got really good ministries out there right now, like Word on Fire, for example, and with Bishop Robert Barron. and then their focus is on going after the nuns. They call them the nuns, meaning they're nothing. You know, surveys gone out and, you know, they're not a Christian. They're not Jewish. They're not. They're just nothing, you know.

They're not even atheists. They're just nothing. And so that's, it's quite frightening. And I think it, I think what it is is that, and this could be a little controversial, but, you know, I think with, you know, human ingenuity and tapping into technological advances to make life comfortable. It's almost as if we've reached the stage where people are not as starving for theological explanation. They've already got what they need. We've got really good medicine. And so this perhaps why, people in their older years, if they haven't become bitter with their life experience,

they start to be more curious about things that they didn't think about before. And that's because the technology is no longer helping the fast pulse and the high blood pressure and things are falling apart with their body and they're losing control. And all of a sudden, now questions, you know, they flip through the channel and somebody's teaching the Bible, then you'll see them stop there to listen, you know. Whereas younger folks nowadays, you know, you know, teenagers, especially 20s, 30s, 40s, people who are in their healthy years, they're gorging themselves with all this, you know, what we have to give us instant gratification, that it just, there's no room for the question of resurrected body.

after death. It's like they've already gorged themselves so much with pleasure and there's new plans for more pleasure. I think that even people within a Christian home can run the risk of not teaching the ancient tradition of, you know, fasting, almsgiving, and sacrificing willingly and forcing yourself to experience loss and pain to practice. the body for an ascetic life. Now, this is something that I learned very much, very a lot from my Orthodox friends and some of the local Orthodox Church I used to visit every now and then. And I think that with all this instant gratification and, you know, there's definitely philosophical foundations for people's dismissal of God today. I think of the problem of evil is still one of those. It's still churning out skeptics left and right. I think that people are just, you know, they look at, you know, people back seven, eight hundred years ago versus people today.

And we have such better lives today. You know, for me to get from here to the other side of the planet, I can do it and enjoy myself while I do it. You know, whereas 7, 800 years ago, people suffered. They were stuck. They didn't have cold water. And what makes up the difference? Was it God? Was it divine intervention?

Or was it human IQ? And I say, well, it was human IQ because, you know, what looks like is human beings were building upon, you know, the best of the best ideas and whoever could put things together. And so I think today people look and they see. This is the product of humanity. The goodness of life today is not the product of God. You know, medical, medical accomplishment and achievement, scientific achievements, all these things that are making life better, they see it, they trace it back to man. You know, and so people don't have that exile from Eden experience as much.

you know and so to me it seems like it's it's it's not so much a willful like a volitional secularism it's it's almost happening autonomously um so i don't know if that makes sense yeah how do you think and this is a question i'll throw out as a general heading and then i'll give some thoughts about it myself and then see what you think what and it's it's tough so the question is how do we partner together in whatever ways we can do for the re-christianization of Western culture. And as I asked that question, I'm aware that it's kind of a challenging thing to think through because I want to be respectful of the disagreements we have. You know, people watching this video might be frustrated at how much we're, we're agreeing in this because they're,

they're wanting more fireworks and they're wanting to say, you know, dive into the, the, and, you know, we can talk about all that as well. And I want to acknowledge the legitimacy of, you know, we've got major differences in our traditions. So we're not trying to minimize anything. But at the same time, when, I think it was Peter Kreeft who talked about, or Peter Craft, I think you say, when there's a lunatic at the door, reconcile or estranged brothers reconcile. You know, so then you say, okay, at least for basic, you know, at first we think of social witness. So there's particular issues in the culture wars where I think sometimes a Roman Catholic Christian and a Protestant Christian can stumble into this sense of camaraderie and partnership and being co-belligerence. and that's all great. But even those things a lot of times are downstream a little bit,

even further back at the level of like basic worldview. I wonder if there's ways we just try to push against the nihilism that is out there. And, you know, like I'll give an example of Roman Catholic theologian that I admire Hans Erz van Balthasar, amazing theologian. And one of his points of emphasis throughout his writing is theological aesthetics or theological aesthetics or theology of beauty and specific like beauty viewed in a theological frame so like transcendent beauty beauty that has relation to the glory of god well i think that's really fascinating to think about how does that specific category apply to our efforts at evangelism apologetics public theology you know we need to help people

because and he talks about this a great deal that without beauty our apologetic is severely lacking and I think that's right I think we need the good the true and the beautiful and I just so it's kind of an interesting question that I don't have fully worked out of my own mind of you know as we're facing this upsurge of secularization and de-churching and ultimately you know you could even throw in the author go back to the word nihilism there is a lot of people I know who really do have no hope and they really don't have any sense of transcendent meaning in life and they're just they're going through life without any sense of any sort of transcendent framework. And it is,

it is wonderful to think about even while we acknowledge the legitimacy of our differences, what are ways we can kind of together push against that? And I think Roman Catholics often do very well at the beauty aspect of that. And von Balthasar is one example of that. Yeah, I think that Valthazar is a great example. I think one of the people following in his legacy is I mentioned again, Bishop Robert Barron, who emphasizes beauty and his mission of evangelization is bringing back the true, the good, and especially the beautiful, is very important. And I think that that's true. You know, with Catholicism, you know, the whole man is the subject is being redeemed.

And so from the head down and also to everything that we can see in creation. You know, interestingly enough, Pope Francis has contributed a lot of good stuff on, you know, the re-Christianization of the world through joy. You know, he speaks a lot about joy and how this showing people that, you know, hey, we're right there with you, but we have the beauty of God's presence and we're joyful about Christ. and expressing that in our kindness and our willingness to help and our willingness to just take our time and give it to other people. And when those other people who are the ones who have no hope, they get this dose of, you know, perhaps it's not even conscious, you know, it's subconscious. Man, this person, you know, there's just something different about this person. And, you know, they're not a stranger to suffering either. So what a beautiful thing to see somebody be able to crack a smile still even going through this or that, you know.

And I think that's vital, you know, in our day-to-day interactions with people. But, you know, in terms of, from another angle on, you know, re-Christianizing of culture is, and I find on the Protestant end, D.A. Carson was extremely helpful to me. when he was talking about how to bring the gospel to the postmodern world. You know, he wrote a book on culture, taking, you know, picking up on where he thinks Niebuhr, you know, needed fresh starting in the 21st century. But we as Catholics and Protestants need to realize that people today don't know the basics about the Bible anymore. the basics of the gospel, which is one of the reasons why he wrote his famous book,

The God Who Is, or I think the God who's there, where he basically starts from scratch, you know, just teaching people and spreading a message about who God is, who is the God that we call God. And, you know, he gave a lot of examples like if you go to Papua New Guinea, you can't just get up on the first day and talk about how. Christ comes in the order of Melchizedek. You know, that's not going to really garner a lot of understanding. You've got to go back to God doesn't need you, right? The aseity of God and that there's a creature, creator and who is, you know, standing above creation and, you know, orchestrating things

with his providential power and hand. I think that we need to realize that, you know, going back to basics will help people better understand the gospel nowadays because they don't have a category like that's how Carson used to describe it they don't even have a category for the major biblical themes and so I think learning how to revisit some of the basics for the people in our community And I remember when Mark Devere with Nine Mark's ministry, he used to open up his house for the neighborhood. You know, he used to put out signs for, you know, people to come, free Bible study. And I think that was beautiful. You know, if he was going through the gospel of Mark, but he would teach it in such a way where, you know, people who, again, they need to be re-familiarized with the categories of the gospel.

I think that's what we need to do to get people to understand and correlate the Bible with their lives. Because, you know, that's lost now. We can no longer assume that people know what people 100 years ago knew, you know, in terms of the Bible and Christ and God and all these things. So I think definitely evangelism and evangelizing to people. pagans as if we're doing it to pagans again yeah yeah exactly the way the way i like to put it is uh we're in act 17 not acts 13 you know in acts 13 paul goes to the synagogue and quotes from scripture and says hey this is talking about jesus repent um in act 17 he starts way further back just like you're saying he doesn't assume anything he just starts at the very basic idea of god and then createdness

and just built and it does seem like that's more than need of the hour right now let me let me ask you one last or one final question here that'd be fun to kick back and forth. How do we have, how do we sufficiently honor our disagreements and partner where we can without getting the balance wrong? Because, you know, there's some who will say, but look, you guys are talking about re-Christianizing the West and yet Catholics and Protestants have foundational disagreements about methodology, about how, you know, that they do touch upon the gospel. Now, it's not, it's not that we don't have the same gospel. I'm not saying that, but I do think they affect how we articulate, how we experience, how we understand, you know, justification be a great example. But then these issues of theological method,

I'd be, maybe this is the way, good way to finish off is how do we, you know, we've, we've celebrated lots of areas of agreement here in this conversation. Right. There's always this worry, though. I just want to honor the truth. You know, you just want to get this right where it's like, we're not downplaying these disagreements. But I, but, but, but, but, but, so, I'll give my answer to this, and I'll let you kind of speak to it, give us the final word. My answer is to simply, I would say a couple things. Number one is there is absolutely no compromise in dialogue and exploration. You know, we are not, that is not compromise.

That's actually necessary for disagreement, because we won't understand where we disagree. If we're not humbly talking and really listening and really saying, hey, they have things that I just can't see yet. and I've just really got to listen for a while before I'm going to get it, you know, before I'm going to see their point of view and how I'm coming across to them, you know. So that's one thing. And then another thing I would say is we have enough to go back to the craft quote about the lunatic at the door. We have metaphysical agreements and Christian classical agreements that are not to be despised in light of the unique challenge we're facing in the modern West right now. You know, the challenges coming at us, I mentioned nihilism, the absolute craziness of some of the trajectories of modern Western culture and the way it leads a lot of people into despair and the lock, the eclipsing of the transcendent.

That is such a problem that it puts into bold relief these significant areas where we do have such important agreements. And so I just think it's wonderful to try to get that balance right, try to try to celebrate those agreements even while we talk about the disagreements. Those are not complete thoughts. I'm just thinking out loud here. Yes, absolutely. You know, I think that what you said is true. And I think that it takes spiritual maturity. And I know this is going to sound, you know, odd because it's not, you know, hey, this is something you could do right away. Let's get it done. But I think in my own life, because I can really only speak from my experience when I was, I would still say I'm a spiritual midget, right? But when I was just, you know, coming to know the Lord, I converted in 2005.

I had, you would not see the same Eric Ebarad today that you saw in 2005, 2006. I was an open-air preacher on my university campus, and I used to jump on buses and grab the microphone and read out of Isaiah 9. And I was just kind of a wild preacher guy. And I really thought it was very important not to associate with those who disagreed on important matters. And so, you know, I was very much on the doctrine of division. You know, I read some of the older Baptists where, you know, they're very strict on association, right? But as I've, you know, matured over the years, and I've seen, you know, tragedies result from an unnecessary dividing spirit. And I've seen the balm and healing that can happen when you always have at least one strong bridge with somebody, even if the others, you know, those are the ones you fight on.

It's so important to keep that these are two human beings made in the image of God. I'm an eternal soul. You're an eternal soul. And I need to keep that bridge with you. Well, that means I need to respect you. and I need to assume the best of you and understand that your intentions are pure, and I don't need to condemn you out at hand. And I think one of the stories in the Bible that helped me is, you know, the good Samaritan.

You know, it's a classic story, but a lot of people don't understand that at the time, the Samaritans, you know, they were on the other side of a theological doctrine of division. the Jews, you know, even Christ when he spoke with, you know, he says, salvation is of the Jews. That is true. And yet he's able to say that a Samaritan is able to be beautiful in the eyes of God through charity, right? And just, just good old goodness. And I think that if we could just keep that, even within our strongest theological debates, yeah, we might go home thinking the other person is not going to heaven, maybe. But you still do whatever you can to make that other person feel like you would pick them up on the side of the road.

And you would pay the innkeeper to keep them there until they got better. You know, I think that that's important, you know. So that's on that end. And then also joining, you know, rubbing elbows and shoulders together on bringing the basics of Christian doctrine back to the world. I think that that's something we have to do in order to make it to the next step of re-Christianizing the world because if we keep our divisions, then the world is going to grow more in opposition to Christianity. Jesus said the world will know that you are mine by this.

You love one another, right? Well, if they see Christian division after Christian division after Christian division, then what you have there is, you know, anti-Christian views. will grow exponentially because they're not going to see the real Christ. And so I think to get to the next step of Catholic and Protestant and Orthodox dialogue, it's vital as we see the tide turning against theism and just Christianity in general. I think it's important for us to build a wall, you know, even if we say, hey, we'll schedule our debates later. Right now, now let's form a wall.

you know, a strong wall with strong fathers, strong men, strong families, raising strong kids that will teach the world and live out the gospel. And, you know, at least in that way, I think it's important for all to do that at once. And then we could, you know, at the same time, talk about our differences. Right. Fantastic. Yeah, beautiful answer. Your comments about the Good Samaritan in particular are I just wonderful note to finish on here. So thanks for that. And you do a great job embodying that. So, Eric, I'm grateful to be your friend.

You do too. For our friendship, dialogue learning, let's remain friends and keep talking over the years and that kind of thing. And yeah, and I'll put a link. Of course, I apologize. I forgot to mention your books and other things you do at the beginning. But Eric's got lots of great books out there and a great YouTube channel. I'll link to those things in the video description. So, yeah, thanks for the dialogue, Eric.

Enjoyed it, and let's definitely keep dialogues like this going. Yeah, I had a blast, Gavin. Thank you so much. Awesome. Well, thanks for watching, everybody. We'll see you next time.