Trent Horn answers a caller who objects to Catholicism, claiming it teaches things that are contrary to the Bible.
Tim Staples: Okay. So what is your question—hey, wait a second, now, I get to ask the question: why are you Protestant? All right, go ahead.
Caller: I’m not actually Protestant, but at the same time not Catholic. You could say non-denominational, in a way. I was actually raised in an Orthodox background, but that’s a different story. So basically my question is…okay, obviously there’s differences between the Protestants and Catholics, I have friends on both sides, and the things that they differ on are such things as the Rosary, purgatory, and praying to Saints, and infant baptism. Now my Protestant friends are saying that “No, those are not scriptural, it’s not in the Bible,” my Catholic friends are saying, “Okay, it may not be in the Bible, but that’s what the Church teaches.” So you got Church/tradition versus the scriptures. And my question is…okay, I can see both sides’ views, but…
Trent Horn: Why do we disagree if we’re all using the same Bible?
Tim Staples: I think it kind of boils down to, doesn’t it, I thought the most important thing you said there was: we supposedly use the same Bible, but you don’t see all these things like the rosary and purgatory and such—and you listed a few others—in the Bible. So what gives, Trent?
Trent Horn: Well actually, I’d like to ask Anonymous a little bit closer to figure out why we disagree. So Anonymous, is the reason you’re Protestant because Catholics do certain things that you don’t agree with?
Caller: Right. Like, for example…okay so the concept of purgatory, for example. It says in the Bible, I don’t know exactly, I know it’s the New Testament, when a person dies, to be absent from the body is to be with the Lord. So if that’s the case, I mean, you would think that when one perishes, their soul goes to heaven—I mean, obviously their physical body’s, you know, underground…
Tim Staples: You know it’s interesting, Anonymous, I actually wrote a blog post on that—the Bible actually never says that.
Trent Horn: Right. So Anonymous, I’ll answer this first objection, then I have a question to sort of go back to you. I would agree with you. Catholics, if we believed in something that—if the Bible is a revelation from God, it’s God’s word, and doctrine is found there, and Catholics believe something that contradicts what’s in the Bible, that would be a serious problem for Catholic theology. Sure. But I don’t think the Bible actually does that.
And to take your example with purgatory: what Catholics believe is that those who die with venial sins—so they’re in communion with God, they’re in relationship with God, but they have sins on their soul they have to be purged or cleansed of because Revelation 21:27 says nothing unclean will enter heaven—they will be purified in some way in the next life, or their sins will be forgiven in the age to come, as Jesus says.
Now the verse you mentioned, 2 Corinthians 5:8, is often paraphrased as “To be absent from the body is to be present from the Lord.” However that’s not what Paul says. In the NIV it says “We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it.” But notice what Paul says there, is that our goal—we would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. He doesn’t say “When we are away, we are definitely with the Lord.”
Tim Staples: He says that’s why we need to live right now, so that we can attain the goal, right?
Trent Horn: That’s right. So I don’t think that verse disproves the the doctrine of purgatory. But my second point would be this: so Anonymous, do you believe that all Christian doctrine is explained explicitly and only in Scripture?
Caller: Well I mean, I know there’s some concepts that the Church, you know, came up with. Like, for example, I mean to me honestly I consider God is the only one that’s holy, but yet Catholics believe the Pope—they call them “His Holiness.”
Trent Horn: Right, but Anonymous, the Bible also refers to Christians as a “holy people,” for example. The the word “holy” just means “to be set apart.” Now, I want to go back to my question, which is: it seems that you’re operating from the principle that if something is not described explicitly in the Bible, you won’t believe in it.
Caller: Pretty much, yeah. You pretty much nailed it.
Trent Horn: Ok. So Anonymous, where in the Bible does it say that everything we believe as Christians is explicitly described there?
Caller: Well, it’s not, but we believe that, since it’s inspired by God—like for example, the Old Testament—
Trent Horn: Okay, hold on. So you admit that belief that you have about doctrine, about the Bible, it’s not actually in the Bible.
Caller: You mean the example that I mentioned?
Trent Horn: No, when you said that idea that you only believe things that are explicitly described in the Bible, and yet that rule of faith can’t be found in the Bible itself.
Tim Staples: So isn’t that a contradiction?
Caller: Well, I mean, the part where it says, you know, “All Scripture is inspired by God,” we believe that it’s the Word of God so that’s why we believe it and have faith in it.
Trent Horn: Okay, so you’re talking about 2 Timothy 3:16.
Caller: I believe that’s it, yes.
Trent Horn: That’s right, Paul says that “All scripture is god-breathed,” or theopneustos, so it’s inspired, God-breathed, and as a Catholic, I totally agree with you. All Scripture is inspired. And Paul goes on to say it’s useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the man of God, or the servant of God, may be equipped for every good work.
I totally agree with you. What Paul was saying to Timothy in that passage is he’s telling Timothy “Look, you’re going to go out on your mission, you know, as a presbyter, as a bishop, you’re going to go out to lead your flock, you’ll need help,” and before this verse he says “Remember the scriptures you were taught as a child,” because Timothy’s mother was Jewish (his father was a Greek). He says, “You’ve known the scripture since childhood—” meaning the Old Testament— “and they’re there for you, God inspired them, and they’re going to be useful when you have to teach and correct people and train people to be righteous.”
But Anonymous, I’m not seeing in this verse where it says everything Timothy is going to believe is found in Scripture. Do you see it there? Because I don’t.
Caller: It’s not, it’s just an implication. Like for example, we know that over 40 authors wrote the Bible, but obviously it was their witness, true, but it was inspired by the Holy Spirit.
Trent Horn: Okay, well Anonymous, let me ask you another question, then. When Paul says “All Scripture is inspired,” how do you know what documents are Scripture and what are not? How do you know what Scripture is?
Caller: History. Basically…I mean, just the history. I mean, to be honest, one word: faith. I mean, that’s what we have, faith that it is the word of God. All the 66 books, or 73 if you include the Apocrypha.
Trent Horn: Right. But you know, it’s interesting there, Anonymous. It seems like you want to hold to this view, you only believe what’s written in the Bible, but you believe in things that aren’t even written there, like the truth that the letter of Philemon and the letter of James are the Word of God, but the first century letter of Clement or the apocryphal book of Tobit aren’t. Where in the Bible does it tell you to believe that?
Tim Staples: And Anonymous, if I could add real quick: there were many people in the early Church that didn’t believe 2 and 3 John, Revelation, Hebrews, 2 Peter, and other books should even be in the Bible! So where would you go to get the answer?
Trent Horn: Yeah. So I guess, Anonymous, that’s my question. I think what’s separating us is that I believe, as a Catholic—well actually, when I was just a Christian, a minimal Christian (I believed Jesus rose from the dead, that’s it), I was at a position to try to figure out “Okay, now what do I believe? I’ll just believe in the Bible.” But Anonymous, you and I agree, the Bible is a collection of books, right?
Caller: Absolutely And in answer to your question about the canon…
Trent Horn: Right, who decides? How do I know the books that are in the Bible are all equally inspired? For me, I can know that if Christ established a Church, and that Church has had a successive generation and has Christ’s authority, and then has ratified at certain councils, like the Council of Hippo and Carthage in the fourth century, that the books I read in the Bible are the Word of God, well, the Church has an authority to tell me. Otherwise it seems like you’re relying on what the Church did in history, acting as if it’s authoritative, but not really giving it that authority. Do you see what I mean?
Caller: Right, right.
Tim Staples: Well, I’ll tell you what, Anonymous—I tell you, we could talk the whole hour just with you, Anonymous. I really appreciate your call. I wanna encourage you to check out, if you haven’t, catholic.com, our website. We have a ton of information for you there. I’d recommend, in fact, go to the library, if you click on the library tab, you’ll get a drop-down, check out our tracts. Some of it, you know, it’s about a hundred and twenty plus tracts, it’s a good place to start to look into some of the questions you might have about the Catholic faith. And please don’t be a stranger, hope you call back again.