Infant Baptism, Catholicism, and The Church of Christ

In this episode, Trent sits down with Marco Arroyo, a Church of Christ minister, to discuss their agreements and differences on salvation, especially on infant baptism.

Transcription:

Trent:

There’s a funny story behind today’s dialogue. My friend Spencer told me there was a Protestant minister who does jujitsu at his gym, and he made videos about me on his YouTube channel, and I watched some of them and I thought they were pretty good. So I asked Spencer to get the minister’s contact information. I emailed him and I said, Hey, why don’t I come down to your gym? We could do a few roles together and then we could do a dialogue on your channel. So I went down, we got a few roles in, had a good time, and then I went to his church, which is the Church of Christ, to have a dialogue about the Catholic view of salvation and the Church of Christ view of salvation. And it ended up having a particular emphasis on the issue of baptism where we have actually a lot of agreement, but still important disagreements.

So I hope you find today’s episode really edifying. I also want to say I’m really grateful to everyone, our patrons and our supporters who helped us reach our goal of redesigning the studio to do these kinds of interviews here. We’re going to start work on that very soon to redesign our studio. But if you want to help fund our mobile studio, because there’s still some guests I would love to have who can’t come here, but I would like to be able to go to them and have professional interviews, and there’s some guests where there are certain states or cities or even countries where it would be easier for me to go interview three or four people than try to fly three or four people to come out here if they all live in the same place. So I’d love for you to support our mobile studio to do these kinds of interviews. Click the link, the description below. But thank you guys so much for all your support. We’re going to be redesigning the studio soon to have in-person dialogues. And with that said, here is my discussion with Church of Christ Minister Marco Arroyo on the issue of salvation with a particular emphasis on baptism.

Marcco:

A lot of this stuff, when I hear you talk about Catholicism and the one true church that Jesus established, we kind of speak the same way sometimes about the principle behind the idea of Jesus’s church and how it wasn’t meant to be branched off into all these different theological viewpoints, but the unity and theology and in doctrine is supposed to be in Christ. And so maybe we can talk about that too. Sure. But anyway, so long story short, I had a year’s worth of Bible studies with this girl and some members of churches of Christ, and then I was eventually baptized, but I’ve been baptized three times in my life. I was baptized in the Catholic church as a baby,

My dad’s side of the family, very Catholic, and then I was baptized in the Pentecostal church, just believing it was like I was already a Christian, just a good thing that Christians should do. And then I really believed that I needed to be baptized when I was studying with a member of the Church of Christ. I really believed that at that time I was becoming a Christian that before then with my ideas about baptism, especially in my second baptism, that it just wasn’t what the Bible teaches about baptism. And so I felt the need to be baptized. One more time.

Trent:

What’s interesting, a little bit about Church of Christ, because when we think about baptism, there’s really four possible views divided on two questions.

Does

Baptism save it spiritually regenerate us, and should we baptize infants? So for example, you could say, yeah, baptism, you say baptism doesn’t save. Let’s say you don’t believe in baptism regeneration, then many call a credo. Bt though the credo bap, you’ll say, okay, baptism doesn’t save and we don’t baptize infants.

Then

You’ll have other protestants who will say, yeah, baptism doesn’t save, but it’s a covenant sign, so we’re going to baptize infants. So some Protestants will do that as a sign of entering the covenant, even though baptism doesn’t save then. So that’s one side of it. Then the other side would be baptism does save, and so we baptize infants, which would be Catholics, Lutherans, Anglicans, and then the last quadrant would be baptism does save, but we don’t baptize infants, which is Church of Christ.

Marcco:

Hey guys, there

Trent:

You go.

Marcco:

It’s funny, I was watching your conversation with Gavin Orland, and at the time you were like, I don’t know, and he was churches of Christ, and then you’re like, oh yeah, that’s true.

Trent:

Yeah, that’s always the thing of the quadrants. I’m like, that would be, oh yeah, that would be the last

Marcco:

Part I thought about when I saw that video making a silly little edit, taking that, and then he’s like, yeah, churches of Christ too. And then just me being like

Trent:

Totally

Marcco:

For preparation for a conversation. Yes. I thought that’d be funny promo material. But I was going to say, have you ever spoken to someone had a dialogue like this with someone who believes that baptism is necessary, that it saves, but they don’t baptize infants?

Trent:

I have not. This would be a first dialogue with someone on that point, because usually it’s either it saves, so we believe in infant baptism or it’s one of the other ones, and most of the time it’s for those who don’t believe it doesn’t save. Nine times out of 10, it’s with somebody who doesn’t baptize infants.

Marcco:

Wow, that cool.

Trent:

Nine times out of 10. Yeah,

Marcco:

That’s cool to be again, the guy in that final quadrant.

Trent:

Yeah, yeah, right.

Marcco:

Okay, so I’ll let you say, what is the Catholic plan of salvation you have, let’s say this is the scenario, alien sinner is the term that gets used sometimes, doesn’t know Jesus or anything like that. And he goes, I want to know Jesus. Trent, what do you tell him? I want to become a Christian.

Trent:

Well, I would share the gospel with him, and the gospel is the good news of salvation through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And so to be saved, you just have to do three things. You have to repent. You have to receive Christ and remain united to Christ. So repent, receive, remain.

Marcco:

The literation is good.

Trent:

Yeah, rep, repent, receive, remain. That’s basically the three steps, not necessarily in that order, but repent, receive remains. So if it’s an adult, for example, I was baptized when I was 17 years old. I was raised in a fairly non-religious household. Dad’s Jewish mom, used to be Catholic, then became Christian. My dad didn’t go to temple or anything like that either. He was just your typical Jew doesn’t go to temple or anything like that. So we were raised in a very non-religious household. Then I met Catholic teens when I was in high school, it convicted me of Christianity. And then I did more research to look at which different denominations should I join. So in doing, I came to see, oh, the Catholic church is the church that Jesus Christ established. I’m going to be part of this. The word Catholic just means universal

Kaho according to the whole to be a part of. So if I said to just someone right off the street, you want to be saved, repent. If you’re an adult like I was, repent of your sins, receive Christ, and we receive the Holy Spirit, we receive that in baptism, you would repent, receive Christ in faith. Yeah, I believe in Jesus. I believe in the church that he’s established. I would receive the Holy Spirit in baptism, at the moment of being baptized, all of your sins are washed away. Original sin is removed. You go from being a child of Adam to being an adopted child of God, and at that very moment you’re baptized. There is absolutely nothing to hinder you entering into heaven. Then from that time on, however, there is a spiritual battle. There are powers and principalities, there’s temptations, there is the devil. There are things always trying to pull us away from Christ, and it is possible for us to forsake our salvation. I don’t like using the word lose salvation. You don’t lose your salvation like you lose your car keys. It just doesn’t happen like that. But you can make a conscious action. You can forsake it. The clearest example would be apostasy if you just leave the faith entirely because I don’t believe anymore. But you can also forsake salvation. Even if you say you believe, if you engage in grave sin, then that’s saying with your actions something different. It’s like a man who says, I love my wife, but if he cheats on his wife, he’s saying with his actions, he doesn’t really love her.

And so if he does that, he has to reconcile with his wife. He has to seek forgiveness. If we commit a grave sin, and the Bible’s clear that not all sins are of equal weight, and I think Christians generally believe this. There are some. We all sin every day. James says, we all make small mistakes. We all stumble in many small ways. James read two. But there are certainly some sins that are incompatible with the Christian life.

Graves sins like abortion, pornography, fornication, there are grave sins. And that to engage in these things separates us from God. And if we do these grave things, just take even just adulteries example I gave earlier. We would seek reconciliation with God. So as a Catholic, if you commit mortal sin, you would seek reconciliation with God through a minister of the church. So to be saved in the first instant, you go to a minister of the church, you receive baptism. If you fall away, if you reject God through your actions, you approach a minister of the church, a priest through the sacrament to confession and confess your sins, and he stands in the person of Christ. And through him, God forgives our sins. And so then moving forward, it’s just from baptism, there is no work. The only work you must do to be saved. There’s no work. Just don’t die in a state of mortal sin. Don’t die in a state of rebellion against God. So that means don’t do evil, we ought not do, but also fulfill the obligations you have as a Christian. So for example, God commands us to worship him on Sundays. You can’t just sleep in on Sundays and say, well, God doesn’t really care.

No, that’s an obligation given to us. The early church received this from the apostles that we are to worship God on Sundays and holy days of obligation. So for example, I’ve known some Christians who don’t celebrate Christmas because they say, well, it’s not in the Bible to celebrate Christmas. If Christmas happens to be on a Tuesday, I don’t have to go to church. So it is always funny when it happens to fall on a Sunday, but somebody you are like, why do I have to go? I just went on Sunday. It’s Christmas.

Marcco:

What happens when it falls on a Sunday?

Trent:

Oh yeah. Well, I think that

Marcco:

Must be rough.

Trent:

Well, I think, well, it falls if it falls on a Sunday, it’s a two for one. You celebrate your Sunday obligation and the obligation to celebrate Christ’s nativity. It’s more if it happens to fall, I think it was a year or two ago, maybe it was last year. It was on a Monday. So you go on Sunday and then you go on Monday. So not

Marcco:

Two days in a row.

Trent:

Yeah, not two days in a row. You look at Christians 2000 years ago, they think we’re such cream puffs today. How long ago, Lord? Yeah. So what I would say is that it’s repent, receive, and remain. So you can make it simple. Or if you say, well, what exactly do I have to do? You could enumerate, here’s all, if I were to enumerate, some people will say the Catholic planet of salvation, oh, it’s so complex. But really if you had to explain to someone and they said, I want to be saved, you say, well believe in Jesus, Romans 10, nine, confess your lips. And they say, oh, okay. And then they continue to let’s say, be an OnlyFans model and do pornography. You’d say, well, wait, wait, you can’t keep doing that. Well, okay, well can I do this? For example, this other grave center? Well, okay, not that are things. These are actions that are incompatible with Christian life. Or if they say, okay, great, I’m saved. I never have to go to church again. Well, hold on. If you’re really saved, you would be part of a local community. So that’s what I would call the enumeration problem, that the Catholic planet salvation can be summarized, repent, receive, remain, and still may say, well, what do you mean by all of that? Okay, let me enumerate

Marcco:

It.

Trent:

But I do believe Protestants have to do the same thing. They’re just going to describe it a little differently.

Marcco:

Yeah, definitely. So yeah, if you were to ask me what the planet salvation is, I was just talking with Caleb about this, that a lot of people in churches of Christ will say it’s like five things you got to do. And the origin of this was very interesting that Caleb was just telling me about that Walter Scott would say to children, this was like a memory device for children that it was here. Believe, repent, confess, be baptized. So there’s five things you got to do. And then he would have children tell that to their parents. Again, shout out to Caleb, smart

Trent:

Guy.

Marcco:

But that’s what he would do. And so a lot of people in churches of Christ, that’s how they put it. But you could also condense that down a little bit, very similarly, which you could just say someone you really, you could boil it down to believe repenting and baptism essentially. So when you said receive Christ, that was belief and baptism.

Trent:

Yeah, so well, for an adult, so we do have to have faith in Christ. We have to make an act of faith where we’re commanded to believe God is one, God is a trinity. And that’s interesting here. I think many Protestants might say, oh, you just have to believe in Jesus. But then once again, you drill down deeper. Well, can you deny the Trinity? Oh yeah. Well, you have to believe the Father, son and Holy Spirit are equal and that they’re distinct persons. And then you were telling me during the classes upstairs, you’re doing a class on the Godhead and how that can get complicated. Yeah, it’s funny. People will say, oh, Catholic is so complicated. But once again, it isn’t just believing in Jesus because we’d say, you can’t believe in heresy.

You

Have to be a true Christian. You can’t reject the Trinity, for example. So I would say repent, receive. So for an adult to believe in Jesus Christ, believe in his church, believe in God, the Father, son and Holy Spirit, but then to receive the Holy Spirit and receive God’s sanctifying grace. So what Catholics believe is that being saved is not merely a legal declaration. It’s not merely a judge saying not guilty. Now, God does make a declaration. There are forensic aspects to it, similar to how when God created the world, he said, let there be light. He made this declaration. Then there actually was light. So we would say that when God, we become saved through baptism, our souls really are changed. We become new creations in Christ, baptism leaves an indelible mark on the soul, and that’s why it is never repeated,

Marcco:

Indelible,

Trent:

Indelible in the sense it can’t be erased.

Marcco:

Okay?

Trent:

So the sacraments that we believe that they, so for example, if you receive the grace of confession, you go to God, you confess your sins, you can go to confession again if you commit another grave sin in your life, but three sacraments, baptism, confirmation. So receiving the oils of confirmation to strengthen you as a Christian and holy orders like becoming a priest, those leave an unchanging mark on the soul. So once you are baptized, so for you, you will always be a Catholic, that baptism was valid. You might have different theology and views about that. So for example, if you were to become Catholic, you would not be rebaptized,

Marcco:

Okay?

Trent:

You would receive the sacrament of confirmation, for example, to be in full communion. But if it was determined there’s a record, you received a valid baptism. So we would say for an infant, like I said, repent, receive, remain. It would just be more receive, repent, remain. So when an infant receives baptism, they receive the Holy Spirit. They are a Christian. There is absolutely a hundred percent, no doubt about their salvation.

Marcco:

Yeah.

Trent:

So interesting that when infants in the early church, if an infant were to die after baptism, the church bells would continuously ring for their funerals because it was treated as almost a mini canonization. That there is absolutely a hundred percent no doubt, this child who has been baptized is in heaven. And so it’s very interesting that you see, even in the ancient Christian catacombs, you’ll see inscriptions asking for children who had died. And of course 2000 years ago in the catacombs, this was a time when half of all children died before the age of five, there was a 50% mortality rate. Only half of all people made it past the age of five because of disease and harsh conditions. So in the catacombs, there are many examples of Christians asking my palos, please pray for me. He is one year in three months. And the idea is that these children were baptized. There was absolute assurance that they were in heaven praying for their parents who were on earth. And so that’s how they viewed it and sought for their intercession. There was no doubt these young children assuredly were in heaven.

Marcco:

Can you trace in your circumstance being baptized when you were 17 in that situation, can you find or track or point out the moment where you were justified? The moment of justification?

Trent:

Yes, I would say it was. So we would say justification and sanctification are really two ways of describing the same thing. We believe

Marcco:

Hatred. So Calvinists are different there, right?

Trent:

Very much so, very much. And in fact, the distinction of justification and sanctification really was born more out of the Protestant reformation. When you look to the early church fathers, they were really considered the same way of describing

Marcco:

Basically synonymous.

Trent:

Yeah. So if justification makes you right with God and sanctification makes you holy, well, what makes us right with God is that we become holy. We become holy as God is holy. So I would say that there was a moment where I received the gift of faith when I came to believe Jesus’, God before I was baptized. That’s something I didn’t merit. It just came into my heart through study and reflection and I recognized Jesus’ Lord. And then I wanted to seek baptism that it was at the moment that I was baptized, that I was justified, that I went from being Now if I were to have died before receiving baptism, the church has a very long tradition of something called the baptism of desire

That

If someone says, I want to be a Christian and I believe in Jesus and I want baptism and you get hit by a bus, or 2000 years ago, hit by a chariot. This is a very long tradition in the church that those people were still buried in Christian cemeteries because it was recognized that they were the term we use as a catechumen, one who is seeking to be baptized. And we would recognize that because they desired baptism, God is able to provide the graces of baptism to them knowing that they’re going to die before they receive it.

Marcco:

So we’ve got something similar like that by the way, that sometimes the example of Abraham has pointed out that God sees the action with Abraham and Isaac and the sacrifice as, okay, he’s going to do it. I know he’s going to do it. And so he sees that differently. Like old thing is the hypotheticals will get thrown out is like someone’s about to go get baptized, but they slip and fall, they hit their head, they die or something like

Trent:

That. And we would call that baptism of desire, and there’s a very long recognition of that in the church’s history. So I would say that I had the gift of faith and I sought baptism and when I was baptized, and what’s great about this is that we do believe salvation is a process, not a moment, but there is an initial moment when you go from being a child of Adam, someone who is an original sin, someone who by their natural powers can never merit heaven. There’s nothing special about you to merit it. That from there the waters of baptism wash away sin. You are born again as John three five says, and you receive the Holy Spirit is Acts

Marcco:

2 38. That’s so similar. Exactly. So similar.

Trent:

Yeah. So we would say that that that was the moment of initial justification. So as Catholics for example, we might quote James chapter two when it says a man is justified by works and not by faith alone. The church, the church, the Council of Trent, not my show, but the 16th century

Marcco:

Catholic.

Trent:

Yeah, the ecumenical council held in the wake of the Protestant reformation. That verse in James, A man is justified by works and not by faith alone. It is only cited in the council to describe works we do in cooperation with the grace of God after baptism

That

When we do good work. So Ephesians two 10 for Ephesians two, eight through 10, people will take that and say, oh, we’re saved by grace is not of any works, the works that were prepared for

Marcco:

Us, they try to use that against you as much as they try to use it against me. Right, exactly.

Trent:

Because what we would say is, well, no, we agree when

Marcco:

I don’t have a problem with that passage.

Trent:

And neither did Martin Luther because Luther believed that baptism saves. And Luther said, yes, baptism saves us. Ephesians two, eight through nine. We are not saved by works. All that shows is that baptism is not a work.

Marcco:

Yeah, exactly.

Trent:

It just shows then we are not saved by works. We are saved by baptism. So some Protestants will take from that argument, therefore we are not saved by baptism. And they would say, no, no, we’re not saved by works, baptism saves. Therefore baptism is not a work. It is just something that we receive. Otherwise if you put it as well, it’s something you do. It’s something you do to be saved by that definition. Every Protestant believes in workspace, salvation, something you do. Do I do something when I say I love you, Lord, I believe in you. When I listened to the gospel, when I thought about it, when I professed faith, you could always describe anything we do as a human action

Marcco:

Or Jesus said, this is the work of God that you believe in him whom he sent in John 6 29.

Trent:

Yeah. So is belief a work? Well, it is not a merely human work. It is a work that we do only because God’s grace makes it possible and we cooperate with that grace we choose to allow God. So what I would say is that a human being has no ability to merit heaven. There’s nothing we can do to earn heaven. But there are things we can do to demerit. There’s things we can do to earn hell, we can work our way to hell. You can’t work your way to heaven.

Marcco:

Wages of sin is death number 6 23. So

Trent:

When James 2 24 talks about we are justified by works not by faith, it’s talking about how the works we do after baptism genuinely pleases God.

And so in doing that, it makes us become holier. It increases our justification. So my friend Jimmy Aiken gives this analogy for justification, consider a light. So a light can have two qualities. The light can be its purity and its radiance. So you could have a light that is very, very white and pure, but it’s very, very dim. Or you could have a very radiant light that’s not very white. It’s kind of orangeish or reddish. It’s kind of a dirty light. So we believe that when we are baptized, we receive the pure light of Christ. It’s pure justification. There’s nothing we can do to increase that. The justification of Christ that we receive in baptism, however, the radiance of that in our

Lives,

How much that is evident and the holiness that we do, that radiance of it can increase or decrease similar. When Jesus says, let your light shine before men

Or the works that you do or how, God in Romans chapter two talking about those who be rewarded for their works, that Jesus even uses the Greek word me, those to talk about those who do good works will receive a wage or a reward. So the idea here is that after baptism, the works we do, God is pleased by them. God doesn’t have to pay us, he doesn’t have to reward us. So it’s not a wage we earn, it’s just the fact that he’s our father in heaven and he is said, I love you. It’s like when my kids do something good and I ask them to do something and they do it, I’ll reward them. I don’t have to legally, but it’s because I made a promise to them and I’m their father and I love them because if I paid them based strictly on the value of the work, they’re four, it’s not going to be worth anything.

Marcco:

But

Trent:

It’s worth something to me because they’re my children. If some other 4-year-old tried to get me to pay for something, that’s terrible.

Marcco:

Yeah. I talk about this sometimes that when your kid brings you home the macaroni frame thing objectively, it sucks.

Trent:

It’s

Marcco:

Not nice, but it’s so beautiful to you and you love it and you applaud them for it and yeah, you’re happy about it.

Trent:

And that’s what we believe then about works that are done after baptism. There are no good works you do to be saved after baptism. It’s not like I have to feed this many poor people or I have to do this many good deeds. That would be awful. That would be such a scrupulous nightmare to think I have to do an arbitrary number of good deeds. But when we do do works of holiness, it’s essentially in back to martial arts or weightlifting, whatever it may be. It’s essentially spiritual weightlifting because we live in a world, I mean Paul’s letter, the Corinthians says that Satan is the God of this world. We are really in spiritual danger. He can’t pull us away from God against our will, but he can tempt us to freely choose to follow him.

Marcco:

Yeah. You’re reminding me of the misuse by reformed people in John there. Jesus said, no one can snatch them out of my hand. He’s not saying anything about whether or not a believer could depart from Jesus. Just that a third party can’t come in. Exactly. The devil can’t drag you kicking and screaming.

Trent:

Right. Or people will say, my sheep hear my voice and they follow me. That’s absolutely right. But the question is, who chooses to remain a sheep? When you look at a lot of those promises, like my sheep hear my voice and they follow me. There was, his name is Dale Moody. He was a Baptist who was actually writing on this who came to reject the idea you couldn’t lose your salvation. He has a whole book on the subject and he points out these promises are always in the present tense. It doesn’t say in scripture, anyone who believed in me shall never fall away or will listen to me. He who believes me, he who follows me, that the promises are those who are the current followers of Jesus Christ.

Marcco:

That’s a great point.

Trent:

So that’s why when we’re talking about these kinds of works that we do, the only work one must do after baptism to be saved is to not die in a state of grave sin. Just don’t die in a state of grave sin. And we can look in our souls and say, okay, there’s some things I do. These are minor offenses, what we would call venial sin, the things we do every day where we fall short. But I think every Christian knows deep down there’s some serious violations of the 10 commandments. You’d say, wow, that was really bad. For example, we don’t ask God to forgive every individual sin we commit during the day when we get anything done, but there are some serious sins we feel like, oh, I need to ask God to forgive me for this.

Marcco:

Yeah, a hundred percent.

Trent:

And so what we would say is just don’t die in a state of refusing to ask for that forgiveness. So don’t do the bad things and stay in the bad state and don’t refuse to do the good things like worshiping God on Sunday in the community at church or receiving Jesus in the Eucharist. In fact, the Catholic church only obliges you to receive the Eucharist once a year Really? Well, I mean, there’s some part places around the world where there aren’t as much access to priests or someone could be in a state of mortal sin, not have not feel like they can approach the sacrament. So while you have to worship God every Sunday, you only have to receive the Eucharist once a

Year.

But we believe that because John chapter six, Jesus is very clear, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life within you. And so we take that just as the very first Christians did that Jesus, he is the Passover lamb. He died. His legs are not broken. He’s a male without blemish. He died as the new Passover lamb. So the old Passover lamb dies and then is eaten. We believe that Christ dies for our sins, so death passes over us and he is also received under the form of bread and wine. And so that’s a very important part of the Catholic plan of salvation, and it has been the very first Christians recognize the importance of Eucharist in this way. Very.

Marcco:

Okay. Well, that’s actually a good point to transition here. Now that we’ve spent a good enough time dunking on the Calvinists and everyone else who denies baptism as necessary. I think our biggest point of divergence now here is when it comes to who needs baptism, and this is where it gets weird, the language gets weird because yes, it does. We would both say baptism saves, baptism saves, but you would baptize everybody. Well, as far as age goes, and I would only baptize people who I would say are accountable or age of accountability, which that’s weird too. And I’m very happy about both getting your perspective, but also getting cross-examined a little bit about this because there are questions. I have myself about all this stuff. And a lot of people were like, are you sure you want to talk to Trent Horn or something like that? I’m like, dude, I don’t. Again, that’s fine. The church that I was part of when I was part of Pentecostal, that Pentecostal kind of church, when I really was convinced that the truth of about a lot of stuff, I don’t think the sinner’s prayer is in the Bible, and I don’t think that’s valid at

Trent:

All. There are other Protestants who have recognized that and say that.

Marcco:

I’ve been noticing there’s a little bit of a trend away from that. I think even Ray

Trent:

Comfort, the way of the master, what does Ray always, he always says, are you a lawyer? Are you a thief? All the 10 Commandments. I love Ray. Well, I’ve asked him to be on my show and he’s kept declining, but maybe one day, one day. But I think he also doesn’t prefer the sinner’s prayer.

Marcco:

They say, when I realized I wasn’t in the Bible and then I saw a much better path and what I believe the Bible teaches on how to become a Christian, when I started studying with members of the Church of Christ, I thought, well, this is going to suck this transition, but it’s what’s right. And I’m just not scared of the truth. I dunno why people, there’s some people that wouldn’t do stuff because of the scrutiny of it or they’re going to have people, I don’t know. It just doesn’t bother me. I’m not scared of it. So I’m happy to get, and I want you to cross examine me a little bit about it a little bit. So what is the basic reason for baptizing infants for you?

Trent:

The basic reason for baptizing infants is the same reason we would baptize every single human being

That we are born in a state of original sin. So this is not an actual sin that we have committed. It is a deprivation of God’s grace. So we would say that Adam and Eve, they had preternatural gifts given to them, the fact that they lived in friendship and harmony with God. And so those gifts would’ve prevented them from dying, for example, from suffering from disease. And they lived in friendship with God and had these gifts, this grace, this gift of God, but because of their rebellion and rejection of God, they lost those pure natural gifts. They lost that special grace and friendship with God, and they were to pass that on to their descendants. And so when the Bible speaks about Adam’s sin and about us, our relationship to Adam being described here, that because the Bible says that you do not punish children for the sins of their parents. So original sin is not God punishing us for what Adam did. It’s Adam essentially punishing us through his own decision. It would be like if a man won the lottery and his descendants are going to be set for life, but then he cheats to try to get more money, and then he’s caught and has to forfeit all of his winnings in doing that. His descendants now suffer because of that, but not through any fault, but just because they could have received riches. But instead now they receive a lack of it.

Marcco:

They were rich kids. Now they’re poor kids.

Trent:

Exactly. And so when Adam Neve were in God’s friendship, we were rich, but then when they were rejected, we became spiritually poor.

Marcco:

And

Trent:

So because of that, that’s afflicted every single human being. Every human being, with the exception of the blessed of Virgin Mary, that’s a separate bar issue we can always get into. But every human being is afflicted with original sin because of that. And so the antidote then to original sin is baptism. When we receive baptism, we receive the Holy Spirit. We receive God’s sanctifying grace. We’re no longer children of Adam. We become adopted sons and daughters of God, and nothing can ever undo that. No horrible sin you commit ever requires you to be rebaptized.

Marcco:

Indelibly

Trent:

Marked. Exactly. It leaves an indelible mark on the soul. And so we would just say that first Peter 3 21, if baptism is what saves us, and we would say every single human being including infants, stand in need of salvation because you cannot get to heaven on your own human merits because every human being stands in need of salvation. Every human being ought to be baptized. And so that’s what the church has taught for

Marcco:

2000 years. So it’s basically the second step in because the softest form of the answer of what we get from Adam is probably we get the fallen the world. We get the world where sin is introduced and stuff like that. I think that’s probably the softest form of where people say what we get from Adam. We just get the world where sin exists basically, and suffering and death and stuff like that. So this is the second step, which is it’s not just the world, but it’s us as well that we are not born with grace privilege, I guess in the sense,

Trent:

Although what I would say is that death existed before the fall. Oh, right, right. I would say

Marcco:

That’s right. I forgot about this.

Trent:

Yeah, I would say the death, and I think it’s very clear there was some kind of death whenever Adam and Eve invented the salad

That

God says, take these green leaves to eat. They’re not going to last long in your digestive system. There was death. But the death that came about from the fall was human death, that by the lacking these gifts of God, the human body became corruptible, human nature changed. Now, baptism doesn’t fully undo the change in human nature. We don’t become invulnerable, but it does restore our souls.

Marcco:

So is that basically how you would argue for the presence of death before Adam?

Trent:

Yes.

Marcco:

Because those guys like Ken Ham, who

Trent:

Were you there?

Marcco:

Yeah. Were you there 6,000 years ago? Yeah, there’s Ken Ham. That’ll be like, that’s the basic argument that it has to be six literal days because therefore you would have death before Adam before Adam’s

Trent:

Fall. Yeah, that’s one of the arguments. But there’s no reason to believe that the death, that what Paul is talking about, Romans five and what’s being referred to there is only is all death rather than just human death.

Marcco:

Interesting.

Trent:

It was human beings that received the special grace of God.

Marcco:

And Catholics can believe what they want as far as that, right?

Trent:

Yeah. Catholics are free to believe in young Earth creationism. There are Catholics who believe that the earth is less than 10,000 years old. They’re Catholics father, George LaMere. He was a Catholic man senior, a priest who essentially discovered what was now called the Big Bang theory.

He

Called it the prime evil Adam. The idea that the universe began from a single point and

Marcco:

Expanded.

Trent:

It was another physicist, Fred Hoyle, who was a di, not Diaz. He was an atheist, and he made fun of the theory because he didn’t like a Catholic priest saying there was a beginning. He thought the universe was eternal.

Marcco:

And

Trent:

So he said, this is just that big bang theory of Father la matra.

Marcco:

Really? So the memes always win.

Trent:

Yeah,

Marcco:

The memes always win.

Trent:

Yeah, exactly. And so he called it that, and the name stuck. He ended up becoming a deist, actually based on the design in the universe. He didn’t become Christian, but Hoyle came to believe there was a God. He couldn’t think that all of this happened without design.

Marcco:

Okay.

Trent:

So yeah. So Catholics are free to believe either thing. There was a cardinal during the trial of Galileo, Caesar Barones who once said that Was it him? No, it wasn’t. It was him. The Bible teaches us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go. So it’s like you’re free to believe either. But I do believe when it comes to baptism, especially, that it’s necessary to undo the curse of spiritual death that came to all of Adam’s descendants and that all of us stand in need of that.

Marcco:

Interesting. Yeah. That fascinates me. So grade my arguments a little bit or critique them a little bit. So basically I would say that God knows that children are born with this moral ignorance incapability. And I think that there’s enough passages for me in the Old Testament where God seems to, at the very least, desire to pass over them in judgment because that’s their state. And I don’t know how solid this argument is, but you probably hear the passages like the Deuteronomy one, they don’t know good from evil. They’re going to enter into the promised land. Not the rest of you who actually did rebel

Trent:

Against

Marcco:

God. Like in Jonah four, the very last verse of Jonah there, he says, there’s 120,000 persons who don’t know the right hand from their left. And much livestock, I have pity on them, and I used to think that there was 120,000 people in Nineveh, but I think that’s in reference to little children and babies. But I don’t know. I think I see this pattern in scripture where God wants to pass over them in judgment because they don’t deserve the same wrath as everyone else. And maybe this is a straw man that I have in my head, but it seems that the idea of infant baptism lumps, infants and every non-Christian together in a way that I don’t know that God does.

Trent:

So what I would say is there is a kernel of understanding here that I agree with. So in the catechism,

Marcco:

I’ll start with the kernel.

Trent:

That’s good. The catechism church, paragraph 1257. It says that salvation comes from the sacraments, specifically baptism, but that God is not bound by the sacraments. So God is free to save people however God wants to. So to say that, well, someone who is not baptized, for example, definitely cannot be saved. Well, God can choose to save whoever he wants similar to someone who, let’s say they were born in a time and place where they could have never heard of Jesus like a Native American

In the year 500 in the United States or something like that, who had never heard of Christ. Are they damned because of something they had no control over? And some Christians will say, yes, God chose that. And they have more of an exclusivist to theology, say, yeah, they’re a sinner. And God declared this, and praise be to God many other Christians that would hold to an in inclusivist view. And of course, that’s what I hold to is what the Catholic church holds to, and that’s what the Bible teaches in Romans chapter two. For example, Paul says that those who do not have the law written on stone, which would be the Jews, the 10 Commandments, he talks about how the Gentiles have the law written on their hearts and by their conscience, they will either be accused or excused. So God is able to judge people based on their ignorance. Were they ignorant through no fault of their own? Or did they choose to remain in ignorance saying, yeah, I could have learned about Jesus, but I don’t want to deal with all of that. That’s too much trouble. That’s the difference we would call between invincible. Ignorance. Ignorance you could overcome

If

You chose to at ignorant invincible. Ignorance. Ignorance you could not possibly have overcome.

Marcco:

Okay, so at this time, a little bit with sometimes I think you get this too, sometimes people will say baptism is not necessary because of the thief on the cross. And there’s a million problems with that. Number one, not only is it not new covenant that they were under, but even if baptism were required, I’m not going to be the guy that goes, Jesus decided to save that guy by word alone and go, Hey, Jesus, you can’t break the rules.

Trent:

It’s very presumptive

Marcco:

Because

Trent:

What we’re seeing here would be an act of God’s extraordinary mercy beyond the ordinary means. He gave

Marcco:

Us, who am I to tell Jesus? You can’t break the rules, Jesus.

Trent:

So if God, just because God can act via extraordinary means, does not give us the right to neglect the ordinary

Marcco:

Means.

Trent:

So for example, the fact that if an infant can go to heaven without faith in Christ, that there are some Protestants who believe infants can have faith, that’s a different subject to get into, but you don’t, no, I would not say that they have what we would define as faith in the sense of the kind that

Marcco:

You and I could have.

Trent:

Yeah. That we can have the act of trust in God. So just because a infant can go to heaven, even though they don’t believe in Jesus, doesn’t mean, oh, I don’t have to believe in Jesus because they can go to heaven. That’s extraordinary. God has given us the ordinary means. So from the Catholic perspective on baptism and infants, then I would say yes, for all people, God has made it possible for them to be saved because God loves all people. He wants all people to be saved. So he has made it possible for every single person to be saved, and God will judge them based on what they were given, what means of revelation they were given.

Marcco:

Do you treat it like a certainty?

Trent:

That’s the next step.

Marcco:

Okay.

Trent:

So however, just because there is a possibility, it does not mean that’s a certainty or even a probability. So the next question becomes, how do we make sure that for human beings, it goes beyond just a mere possibility to a certainty? And the answer to that is clear from the first century onward is baptism. Baptism is what gives us that certainty. Or at the very least, someone actively seeking baptism. Baptism is desire, but baptism is what gives that certainty. So I would say that I treat all people, infants or non-Christian adults in a far off country the same, and that there is a possibility for any of them to be saved. There’s a possibility for any of them to be saved. But to raise that from possibility to certainty, however, that would require baptism. So the church, for example, says, when it comes to unbaptized infants, the church teaches that we do not have a revelation from God, that they are definitely saved. But we can have a hopeful trust based on many of the things that you’ve described.

We can have a hopeful confidence, but not a certainty. So once again, just because God can intervene extraordinarily there, we know the ordinary means that God gave us. And I would say that for infants to say that they definitely will go to heaven. I would say, well, what is the reason for that? If we say it’s because they haven’t committed wrongdoing, well now we’re just appealing to their human merits. And no human merit can attain heaven. If we say it’s because God is not going to judge them like he judges others. If we say that with certainty, one must be careful to presume with certainty what God will or won’t do. I’m only willing to do that based on what God has definitively revealed. If we arrive at that, oh, well, God won’t judge infants. He’s not going to judge them. He’s going to save them. I would say, how do you know that? And if we’re just getting there by logical arguments based on God’s mercy and based on this, very dangerous to go that indirect route, indirect route to say, God will definitely do x,

Marcco:

I’m

Trent:

Only going to say God definitely does X. When God says He’s going to definitely do X, that’s where I would come

Marcco:

Up. Well, lemme give you the second side of the argument. The second part of my argument. I think that there’s two things that I’ve been able to put together that one, I see that God has this consistent desire to want to pass over in judgment on infants in nations with uncircumcision in the Old Testament, let’s say. But also though, at the same time, when I look at the things that merit wrath, we talked about meriting, God’s wrath or meriting death like in Romans. Well, you talked about Romans two a little bit in Romans one, two, and three, when there’s that indictment of the Gentiles and the Jews, it seems like everything that merits wrath. I don’t know how any of that applies to infants. I think that there’s an emptiness in a lack of what I just struggle seeing when I read scripture of God saying, here’s the problem that infants have in judgment in the Old Testament. God says, here’s the problem, and I want infants to be spared from this with Joshua and the conquest, for example. This is one thing I won’t get too ahead of myself, because there’s the, I don’t know if you’ve ever dealt with the morality of God doing that on infants. I guess the can be saved and leaving the room for that works, but

Trent:

Well, the conquest

Marcco:

Narrative. Yeah, let’s talk about that now.

Trent:

Well, the conquest narratives do talk, give commands about slang, young and old.

Marcco:

But what does that mean about God

Trent:

Leave none that breathes.

Marcco:

Yeah, but that’s what I mean. What does that mean about God? If these babies that never stood a chance, let’s say they’re just all completely at the mercy of hopefully God will do this.

Trent:

Now, are you talking about what does it all about God, about the commands given in Joshua or about their salvation after

Marcco:

Death? About their salvation after death based off of the killing that God was commanding?

Trent:

Okay, so that’s a little bit different, but it’s somewhat related because God knows either causes or allows the deaths of infants every day all over the world, far more than just in the conquest of Joshua.

Marcco:

I mean in the prescription of the conquest, like kill men, women, old and young. If these babies that are born with original sin, it just feels like they never stood a chance.

Trent:

But I guess then one would take the question back further and say, does God owe anyone heaven?

Yeah.

And in fact, the medieval theologians, they wrestled with this same question, and the concept they came up to resolve the tension was the concept of limbo because they had the same concern you have,

Which

Is, okay, well, what does God do? God doesn’t owe heaven to anybody. You can’t stand before God, like imagine boss baby who can talk, be like, I never did anything wrong my whole life. You have to let me in. God doesn’t have to let anybody into heaven, even a baby, to say God has to let a human into his domain. That’s not how it works. So God doesn’t owe heaven to any, God doesn’t owe eternal bliss to any of his

Creatures.

That is purely a gift. He does not owe it in any way, shape or form. And so the medieval theologians, well, Augustine on were really struggling to say, okay, yeah, God doesn’t owe heaven to these children, but they haven’t committed, I mortal sin. They haven’t committed. They may have died an original sin, but they didn’t commit a mortal sin. They didn’t commit actual sin. And so the resolution they came up with is limbo. Limbo is not a separate place from heaven and hell, limbo comes in the Latin word, which means edge or border. And so the idea is that limbus or limbo was the outer rim of hell, but it was a place of perfect natural happiness. So it was a place where you didn’t suffer. And in fact, you were perfectly naturally happy, but you did not experience the beatific vision. You didn’t have the supernatural happiness of doling with God. You just had unending perfect happiness.

How interesting.

And so that was how they resolved. So when people said, oh, they believe babies went to hell. Well, the outer border where you don’t suffer, but you don’t experience God,

Marcco:

The only thing I’ve known about limbo is inceptions, rendering of limbo.

Trent:

You’ll end up in limbo. If you die in this dream, you’ll be there forever. That was the idea behind limbo. Was that interesting? It was to resolve very tension you’re discussing here and limbo, however has not been, it was never infallibly defined by the church as a dogma. You must believe it was one that theologians propose as a solution to this problem. And it’s one you can still believe if you choose to. The church hasn’t resolved what happens. But I would say the more popular answer now among the magisterium and developing in its theology is a hopeful trust, but not a definite certainty for unbaptized infants.

Marcco:

Without straying too much from this part of it, what would you say? What does the idea of limbo, well, how do I word this? Is it something that they reasoned towards in saying, I think a place like this must exist because of this situation? You know what I mean?

Trent:

Yeah. It was a way of them trying to resolve God’s justice with what’s been given in divine revelation.

Marcco:

So they think by necessity there must be, it’s kind of like how Dennis Prager goes. If God is just then there must be an afterlife. He doesn’t really feel like he has any example of the afterlife in scripture, but it’s a logical conclusion.

Trent:

And now the argument though about wrath, I don’t think that gets you all the way to, well, we don’t have to baptize babies because they’re definitely going to go to heaven. At best, the argument would only show that they’re not going to hell, because you might say, okay, well, God, in his mercy, these children who have died, you might say, for example, either they go to limbo, which is they might get perfect happiness, or God may simply not give them eternal life. They’ve only had one life, they won’t suffer. That’s the annihilationist position. So someone could say, well, I believe these babies, they never committed a sin, so they’re not going to go to hell. But God is not going to resurrect them just

Marcco:

Cease to exist.

Trent:

They will just cease to exist. So they will not suffer for anything they’ve done. However, they won’t go to heaven because there’s nothing about them that merits heaven. So we can’t say that. So I would say that the argument about God’s justice and where wrath is inflicted, it does not get you to the conclusion, oh, well, babies will definitely go to heaven, rather, I think the only safe bet for that is to say, well, God has said baptism saves, it saves us some original sin. It is meant for everyone in the early church, for example. No, the only debate over infant baptism in the early church was there were some people who said, well, you should baptize infants eight days after they’re born

Because

Baptism replaces circumcision. And circumcision happened eight days later.

Marcco:

Of

Trent:

Course, that was just for health reasons for babies,

Marcco:

Right? The blood clotting thing.

Trent:

Exactly.

Yeah. And so what the early Christians said was, no, no, no. That was it replaces it. But because infant mortality rates are so high in the ancient world, they believe no baptized babies as soon as they are born. The only other abuse that tended to happen in the early church was because penances, like when you apologize for sorrowful for sin, you want to make up for what you’ve done. Penances for sin in the early church sometimes could be severe. So some people tried to game the system by just waiting to be baptized right before they die. And that goes against the entire spirit of God’s grace and what’s being given to us in the sacraments. But typically, when it came to infants, the idea here was no, the debate was just don’t wait eight days, baptize them as soon as you can. I mean, our third child was born unintentionally at home, so this was during Covid.

Marcco:

Oh, man.

Trent:

And we were,

Marcco:

What a rough time to have a kid.

Trent:

Yes. This was during Covid September, 2020, and we were waiting, so we were waiting home. I was just like, oh, we really didn’t want to go into the hospital. We were planning to go. We were just like, oh, I don’t know. And so we didn’t want to be there as longer than we had to. And then the labor just caught up with us, and suddenly we’re in our bedroom and here comes the baby, and we have the nine one one on the phone. And I

Marcco:

Baby shifted gears, he

Trent:

Comes right out. It was literally, it was like 40 seconds of labor.

Marcco:

You delivered your child.

Trent:

I am on his birth certificate, says Under who delivered? It’s my name.

Whoa.

So it was just me caught him, and I was worried for a few seconds. He didn’t do anything. And then he’s alert and he starts crying, and then we pass him off. And then I was thinking, okay, I want to cut the umbilical cord. So I’m like, okay, what do I, and I’m all frazzling starting to undo. I’ll use my shoelace to tie and I’ll get a steak knife and pour alcohol on it.

Marcco:

No way.

Trent:

But then the paramedics showed up right at that moment when I was about to do that, and they gave me the stuff to cut the cord.

Wow. What’s really funny about that, about our American healthcare system. Then we got in the ambulance, and so it was a very expensive ambulance ride at the hospital, and then they charged us for labor and delivery of the baby. No way. And we called the hospital and I said, why are you charging us for labor and delivery? We delivered the baby at home. And they said, oh, we will rerun that. They reran it. They gave us the same bill, but they charged us for labor and delivery of the placenta in the ambulance. Wow. Yeah. They always find a way to get you. But while I was prepared, if he was in danger, if it looked like he was blue or something, he was in danger. I was going to baptize him right then and there, right then and there as an emergency baptism. In fact, the church teaches because God wants everyone to be baptized. Normally it should be a priest or a deacon, but it says anybody can do it. Even an atheist. You have two atheists and one’s like, I want to be Christian and he has a heart attack. I always wanted to be baptized. His atheist friend can say, okay, I’m going to baptize you. I’m going to do what Christians try to do with this. And he knows it’s in the name of the Father, son, the Holy Spirit, and he does the right words and he just says, I want to do what Christians the church does with this.

We treat that that would be valid because God wants everybody. So I think that’s where I would look at it when it comes to infants that yes, they’re not morally accountable because they don’t commit original sin, because they don’t commit actual sin. But God doesn’t, God only owes heaven to those he has promised heaven to. He only owes heaven not by any law above him, but by the promises he makes that he binds himself by. He only owes heaven to the people he’s promised heaven to, and he has promised heaven to those who receive his sanctifying grace, receive his life and don’t forsake him. And he’s told us that life he gives us, it comes to us through baptism. So it’s interesting. So we do agree on that. It saves us, we receive God’s life through baptism. But I would say that the promise of heaven is only for those who have received that life from him. While God can extraordinarily save people who didn’t receive His grace in that way, we must not presume upon that.

Marcco:

Okay. Yeah, because basically my idea is if God’s wrath is this train that is on its way, and when God has decided for Jesus to come again and wrath comes to those who did not know God did not obey the gospel, like second Thessalonian says that’s when it runs everybody over. Basically. It’s a kind of silly sounding illustration, but the way I see myself, I used to be on the tracks. That’s where I wanted to live life, and then I received God’s grace and I was no longer there. But I just see babies as, or infants as they were never on the tracks because getting on the tracks, you place yourself there. But I see how we could maybe say that God could extraordinarily save them or maybe they’re not on the tracks, but they’re also not going to be in heaven. They

Trent:

Won’t receive when the

Marcco:

Train is gone,

Trent:

But they won’t receive beatification perfect supernatural happiness. The argument doesn’t lead that they will assuredly receive that only the promises associated to baptism would be connected to that. I think also at least classical theologians would say, I know Pope Bennett at the 16th discusses this, that phrases like God’s wrath. We have to be careful not that anthropomorphize God. So we would say, for example, the classical tradition is that God is just perfect being itself. So God doesn’t react to us. God is all knowing, all powerful, all present, all of his life is in one perfect timeless moment. That’s the classical view of God’s temporality. And so God doesn’t react to us because

He’s omniscient and perfect. And Benedict talked about how descriptions of God’s wrath are a way, not a describing what God does to us, but what we do to our relationship with God. That when we move away from God, that is essentially, that’s his wrath. So when we see a lot of descriptions of God in the Bible, we have to be careful. It’s very easy to anthropomorphize them that to say, oh, well, does the Father have a literal right hand and a backside? And did he actually repent of doing these things? Was he sorry he made human beings? That doesn’t sound very omniscient.

So we would say that other expressions like the wrath of God refer more to what happens to people who forsake God. In fact, an eastern view of theology that I really like is the idea that in the afterlife, and this is more amongst the Eastern Orthodox or Eastern Catholics than in the West, but it’s the idea that in the afterlife we all experience God, but those who are in God’s friendship, this is a very, it’s the best feeling possible. It’s pure bliss. But for those who die apart from God who are not in friendship with God, who do not have God sanctifying grace, it is misery to be around. So it’s like, for example, if my hands are hot and your hands are lukewarm and I hold them, your hands feel good in my hands. But if your hands are ice cold and my hands are hot and I hold them, it feels miserable. Even though I’m the same, you are not disposed to receive it in that way. So I find that an interesting way to look at the afterlife and what happens to believers. What’s interesting, it helps really solve a lot of the idea of hell is unjust.

I would just say no. Everybody after death receives God. It’s not unjust at all. But those who have trusted in God, they enjoy that reception. They’re friends with God. But then for other people, God doesn’t have to do anything extrinsic to be wrathful.

If

You are just not God’s friend, God’s mere presence

Is an agonizing thing. It’s kind of like, what was it? I think it was Brian Regan, he does a bit about people who won up at parties. I had a wisdom tooth removed. I had to have four wisdom teeth removed without surgery or someone. He’s like, I wish I could just be an astronaut to say, oh, you did that. I walked on the moon. Try to one up that there’s some people, if you ever go to a party and there is a really awesome person there, there’s two types of people. There’s people who love being with awesome person and they feel grateful like, this is so cool. We’re with this guy. And then there’s another type of person who can’t stand. They’re getting all that attention and they aren’t, and it just drives them crazy. So I think that’s a good analogy that for people who die apart from God’s friendship, even if they are before they reach the age of accountability, they still have just these natural human temperaments that they’re not able to really receive God in that supernatural, blissful way. It’s always like, well, what about me mean if anybody is, what about me? It’s an infant.

But I do believe that from a theological perspective, we can have a hopeful confidence, but just because we have hopeful confidence about things, we ought not be presumptive.

Marcco:

Okay. So yeah, I was going to ask you then, so in summary, your criticism of my point about God, I see patterns of him wanting to pass over them in judgment and the things that I see described as deserving of wrath in the New Testament, it seems to exclusively refer to people who make choices instead of infants. Is your critique basically that like, okay, I see a pattern, sure, but it’s not solid enough. It’s not sure enough.

Trent:

All we could get from that is that there is a precedent of God withholding punishment from certain people based on ignorance, but

Marcco:

It doesn’t get you the rest of the

Trent:

Way. Not God rewarding salvation because of ignorance. That’s where I would see some of the problem there, because some of the things you give me an example of in the Old Testament would just be, well, these people committed wrongdoing, so I will give them a temporal punishment or I will punish them in this life. They will suffer death. But these people did not do wrongdoing and so I will not punish them. That’s fair enough. But looking then at hell, I think sometimes can be helpful to view it. Not necessarily as punishment per se, though it is, but to see it as consequence, it’s a consequence of being apart from God.

And so there is a possibility for that for different people, and that’s why people struggled with that one. If you die apart from God, you cannot inherit eternal life. Now, we all have eternal life. People in hell have eternal life, but it’s not blissful. So you can’t inherit eternal life with God. But maybe there’s something else that’s where limbo would come in. So I think the argument you’re making, I think it is a good argument for the inclusiveness view, the idea that God is not going to damn people who through no fault of their own. However, when we apply, so if we apply that for example to, let’s say we had a group of islanders who the north sentinel’s

Marcco:

Of course.

Trent:

So the guys is like, you want to go there? They’re going to get arrows in your back. And it’s like one of the few lost tribes off the coast of India. You might say, well, they’ve never known Christ or the Bible. God’s not going to pour his wrath out on them because they’ve never known Christ. So one could make the argument, well, if that’s the argument, maybe we shouldn’t witness to them at all. Why would we give them a

Marcco:

Change?

Trent:

You’re making it worse for, we’re making it worse for them.

Marcco:

So

Trent:

You might say, oh, well then by that logic, yeah, we’re making it worse for them. We would say, well, no, that’s only if it’s a guarantee. So we’d say, well, it’s not a guarantee they’ll be saved. We’re saying that God will have mercy on them and it’ll judge them accordingly, but it would sure be great for them to raise their possibility of salvation to a probability or a certainty. And so I would say then if your argument would allows for I inclusivism for example, for these natives and also for infants, God’s not going to be cruel to infants who never had a chance to receive the gospel. But in both cases it only allows for possibility. And I would say that God has given us the means to raise that to probability and certainty. I would see it differently

Marcco:

Way. I’d have to go to the next step and try to prove heaven for them. That’s interesting.

Trent:

For the sentinel,

Marcco:

No, no, for infants,

Trent:

Yeah. And that’s where I would say, but even there about not being in sin, I mean you have David in the saying, I was conceived in iniquity, for example.

Marcco:

I dunno, I struggle with that one. It seems like that one’s not very literal. I don’t know the verses around it.

Trent:

They’re never literal when they’re a problem for us. Well,

Marcco:

The other ones where he says wash me and stuff like that. He’s not asking you how to literally wash him. It seems like in a heightened emotional state, it’s kind of like people say, I’ve always been a mess up or something like that. Not necessarily, not in this sense. I don’t know.

Trent:

I think he would deny though that he was conceived in holiness.

Marcco:

Yeah,

Trent:

That’s true. And I think the problem is that if infants were conceived in holiness and the Bible described them as uniquely holy until they reach the age of accountability, you could maybe get an argument for your position. But in scripture, I think you have to concede this. There isn’t dimension of the age of accountability at all.

Marcco:

No, and I think that argument and Deuteronomy is weak. The 20-year-old thing that they did back then is kind of weak.

Trent:

The idea. Oh, that would be hilarious. Most of us think of it around the age of seven.

Marcco:

So

Trent:

That’d be funny if you said, well, I believe in the age accountability just once you’re 20 before that you’re basically an infant.

Marcco:

No, I do struggle with the Psalm 51 idea. It just seems like it goes from, and then people say verse five is literal, then they go back to again.

Trent:

Well, I would say it’s not even necessarily literal that he’s conceived like in literal filth or something like that in the womb, but rather in some kind of a moral can

Marcco:

We both agree that it’s very emotional, all of it,

Trent:

All the languages are, and that’s why I don’t rely on the Psalms as much as proof text. But I would say, and that’s why for me, I’m not big on proof text theology in general. I believe the church has a teaching office that allows us to assemble all the data, divine revelations into a coherent hole and provide means for development. Like these questions about unbaptized infants. I think most people would say that it is certainly not clear from scripture that infants who die before belief automatically go to heaven.

Most

People would never say, oh, I have a biblical proof. They go to heaven. Most of them make a logical argument,

Marcco:

I guess for me. Yeah. It’s just that logically I haven’t come up with limbo and I’ve assumed heaven. I want to think about that idea of limbo a little bit more. It’s interesting,

Trent:

And it is still, it’s not one that the church, it’s not as the favored position as it was saying the Middle Ages, but that’s why so Catholic theology understands that there’s dogmas things that the church infallibly teaches. God divinely revealed this

Like that Christ is God, for example. Christ is truly present in the Eucharist. But there are other things where maybe it’s an unanswered question, how exactly does predestination work? That’s one where the church leaves as an open question. It just says it doesn’t work the way open Theists say, where God is ignorant to the future and it doesn’t work the way. Some Calvinists would say with a very strict view of double predestination or that God directly wills for certain people to go to hell, things like that. But between that, the church will say, well, theologians disagree about how to articulate and allows an open question similar with salvation of unbaptized infants. The church doesn’t have a definitive answer. So it’s allowed theologians to develop. So that’s why I find as a Catholic so helpful that a lot of times the magisterium, the teaching office of the church, some people say, oh, well it stifles you. You can’t read the Bible, you can’t interpret. Not at all. Biblical theologians, systematic ha theologians are always exploring theology. But the church gives us helpful guardrails. Say, yeah, explore this. Nope, don’t go over here. That’s a heresy. Nope, don’t go over here.

That’s

Heresy. But within these guardrails, let’s explore what God has revealed more

Marcco:

Interesting. Okay, to wrap up, I got some quick rapid fire questions. Let’s do it from some of the supporters on Patreon and stuff like that. Again, your answers don’t have to make ’em as long as you want to, but just think about it in rapid fire terms.

Trent:

Number

Marcco:

One, Ezekiel 1820, the son will not bear the guilt of the father. Is that a verse you hear brought up and what would be the typical answer? Is that out of context?

Trent:

Oh, well, what I would say there is that that is correct. And actually, oh, there’s a parallel verse in Jeremiah that talks about people who try to blame, try to punish children for what their fathers have done, and they ought not do this as each one should be punished for his own sin. It deals with the proverb, something about the grapes and about, I’ll have to look that up later, but it’s in my book, hard sayings. What I would say is that it’s very clear that God will not punish me for the sins. My grandfather is committed. I’m not morally at fault for what he may have done, however, in relation to original sin. So we are not punished for the sins of our ancestors, but we may suffer the consequences of the sins of our ancestors. Yeah, for sure. And I think that’s very clear in scripture.

Marcco:

This is from Braden. What do you think is the biggest misunderstanding Protestants have about Catholics?

Trent:

The biggest misunderstanding Protestants have about Catholics? I would say it’s the idea. Two things. One would be that we worship Mary. We do not worship Mary as a goddess. It depends how you define worship. We would say that worship means to offer sacrifice to someone, and the only sacrifice we offer is that mass we offer the son under the form of bread and wine to the Father. The only thing we can give to God is God. We offer the bread and wine as a sacrifice. We offer Christ the only sacrifice that takes away sins.

So we do not offer sacrifice to marry. There were heretics in the early church that did do that, that were condemned for that. So we honor and venerate God’s creatures who are examples of holiness to us saints in heaven who pray for us. So we honor Mary because Mary herself says in the gospel of Luke, she says, all generations will call me. Blessed for the mighty one has done great things for me. We do not worship Mary as a goddess. I think that’s one. The other one might be Catholics believe we’re saved by faith and works and Protestants only by faith. No paragraph 2010 of the catechism, the initial moment of salvation. Nothing can merit it. Neither faith nor works. When I was baptized, I didn’t merit that salvation. It was all a gift. The faith I had was a gift from God. The baptism was a gift. My desire to be baptized was a gift that I merely did not say no to, and I accepted it. So I would say that we do not believe you are saved by faith and works in the sense that you have to do an arbitrary number of good deeds to go to heaven. You just have to receive the Holy Spirit in baptism, be united to Christ in baptism, and then remain obedient to Christ in his church and not die in mortals sin.

Marcco:

Okay, next one. This one sounds a little inflammatory, but I know this guy

Trent:

Brandon or inflammatory.

Marcco:

Oh, that’s right. I know this guy, and he doesn’t mean it this way, but this is how it sounds. What is the incentive to live without sin? If a priest can redeem me each week by prescribing a penance?

Trent:

Well, what I would say is the penance is not what redeems you or forgives you of sins. I would say the same objection applies to every single Christian theological system. Where is the incentive for me to live without sin? Where as a Protestant, I could just go ask God for forgiveness. If I can always go and I commit a grave sin, if someone says to you, what do I do? I did this horrible thing and say, well ask God to forgive you of your sin. Someone could say, okay, why not just sin all the time and do that? So whether you approach a minister of the church to seek reconciliation with God or you approach God directly, and Catholics are free to do that as well. They can’t approach priest for example, but just as God gave us a minister to bring us into the faith, you can’t baptize yourself.

It’s interesting. You can’t baptize yourself. You have to go to a minister of the church. It’s fitting. We approach minister of the church to be reinstated into friendship with God. So it doesn’t create any sort of, if anything, the fact that you have to go to somebody creates an incentive not to commit sins. I love seeing a priest and confession saying in the person of Christ, I mean, it’s so funny, right? You’d be like, oh, I’m embarrassed to tell this sin to a priest and you can go to a priest anonymously, of course. But it’s like I’m embarrassed to tell a priest that, but then people aren’t embarrassed to tell God the sins they’ve committed.

Marcco:

It’s

Trent:

Like, shouldn’t that be what we’re really embarrassed about? But I think that it’s very telling there, and I think in God’s wisdom, giving us the sacrament to show how serious sin is, that the church wants to be there as a loving pastoral guide to bring us in a community with him. So I would say that this particular objection, any system, any way that God forgive sins can be abused. Well, why not be a horrible person then accept Jesus at the end of my life, any system can be abused. We have to look at what is the proper use of the gift of grace and salvation God has given us.

Marcco:

Okay, next one, and this is if you want to go back and look at the context of it, it’s fine. You don’t have to answer it. But in Romans seven, nine, when Paul said I was once alive without the law, but when the commandment came sin revived and I died, there was a question that was about Romans seven, nine where Paul basically says he was alive before the commandment came, which brought death to him. And so the argument would be that was before he ever learned about it when he was an infant young child. And then when he was preached to when the commandment of the Lord came, then he died because it exposed his sin.

Trent:

I couldn’t see that really applying just to his about childhood and about an age of accountability or of childly innocence, the context running all throughout Romans. What Paul is saying is basically this, you don’t have to be a good Jew to be a good Christian. That is the number one theme that he is talking about. So when talking about faith and works and we’re justified by faith apart from works of the

Law,

Many people have mistakenly believe that what Paul is talking about here is we’re justified by faith apart from good deeds. But that’s not what Paul is really talking about. Now, he doesn’t believe you do good deeds to be saved, to enter into salvation. But what he’s talking about here is that he’s talking specifically about doing works of you can translate works of law, you can trans the Nomos law. It can say we are justified by faith and not works of Torah. So that would be a better way to understand what Paul is saying. We’re justified by faith and not by works of Torah. We’re not justified by following the 10 Commandments because they’re the Torah. We still have to follow them. You can’t just stop following them as a Christian, but we don’t have to become a good Jew to become a good Christian. You don’t have to be circumcised. You don’t have to follow the Torah and then believe in Jesus. You can just be saved by believing in Jesus and receiving him through baptism. And Paul makes that clear in Romans six when he talks about how in baptism, he compares that to dying and rising again in Christ. So I would say that what is being discussed there, it’s not about child innocence, it’s that the Torah is not what gives us salvation. It was the helpful guide in Galatians. He calls it the pta, Gogos. He calls it the babysitter that led us to God.

But

Now that Christ is here, the Torah is not what gives us salvation. There are good things in the Torah. There are things we should still follow like the 10 Commandments, but you don’t follow them because they are Torah, because they’re the Old Testament law. That is not what saves us. In fact, to follow it as if it is what saves us. That is what brings death, where Paul is saying no, what brings life is Jesus Christ.

Marcco:

Okay, this one, I’m going to summarize it as well. This is something that you talked about with Gavin Orland about Cornelius being regenerated in Acts 10 prior to baptism. Mitchell here points out that in Acts eight you see that the Samaritans were baptized, then they received the Holy Spirit afterward after they imparted the gift of the Holy Spirit to them, the apostles did. So the question is how do you justify that Cornelius baptism was non wait. How do you justify that Cornelius baptism was non regenerative? How would interpreting Cornelius’s baptism as an exception, not make it another baptism entirely?

Trent:

Right. So what I would say here is that we have to look at the larger scheme in Acts chapter 10, going to Acts 15, that in all of this, and then going into Peter’s vision, that all of this is leading up to a very important moment where God is making an exception specifically to resolve a crucial problem in the early church, which is what Paul’s talking about with faith and works. And that would be the salvation of the Gentiles. That originally the idea is, well, this is something. This is for the Jewish people, for the chosen people to say no, the time has come now to break out into the gentile world, and apparently that hasn’t been clear to everybody. So I’m going to have to make a special intervention here to intervene to make that abundantly clear so that it can be made clear in that incident, ultimately culminating in the Council of Jerusalem, infallibly teaching this revelation that Peter has received and making it binding upon the whole church. So I think a lot of that, when you’re looking in acts of the apostles, it is very interesting. People talk about baptism and they want to stay in acts because a lot of people who do that also believe in Jesus only baptism

That

When they just want to stay there and they get so myopically focused on the book of Acts. I remember once I was having a dialogue with a Protestant actually, and he said to me, if we only had, could we save people? If we only had acts of the apostles and Paul’s letters, would that be enough that we have enough to save people? And I said, well, no, because we wouldn’t have the baptismal formula. That’s only in Matthew chapter 28. So the idea of trying to reducing, because they were talking to me about, well, could you have this or not have that? So I think it’s important there to look at the entire context and also looking at the sacrament of confirmation of receiving the Holy Spirit by laying on of hands, for example, by anointing. Seeing that in the other church, fulfilling one’s initiation into the faith also comes into play. So I would say that understanding the exception for Cornelius, it doesn’t create another kind of baptism. It just creates a unique moment that reaches its fulfillment in the declaration in Acts 15.

Marcco:

Awesome. Last one from Eric, who you actually met on the way in here. Three book recommendations for people starting out in Christian apologetics.

Trent:

So just in defending the basics of the Christian faith.

Marcco:

Yeah, existence of God, things like that.

Trent:

So many things. Well, one that I like.

Marcco:

This might be the hardest one. No,

Trent:

No, no. It might be the hardest question. Well, one that, here’s a few I can throw in there. So three, just to start off with one that I like that they might enjoy just for apologetics, it covers Christian apologetics. It also covers some Catholic apologetics, but it covers a wide variety of issues. My friend Jimmy Aikens book, A Daily Defense, and it’s like a flip calendar. It has one apologetic argument every day.

Marcco:

That is cool.

Trent:

So it’s 366 6, I think one for leap years also, and you just go through it covers God, Jesus, the Bible, and also Catholicism. I think it’s a nice start.

It’s

Just a nice start of just starting to understand apologetics in this way. I think then if you want to go deeper, that is a, I’m trying to think of a really solid Christian apologetic. I also don’t want to be self-serving. I mean, I could mention my own stuff, but I don’t want to do that.

Marcco:

Yours won’t count if you mention

Trent:

Them. I cannot mention them. One that’s kind of advanced, but I think it’s probably my favorite on atheism is Five Proofs of the Existence of God by Ed Faser. It’s a really great critique of atheism from a classical theistic perspective. At the very least. It’s kind of a heady book. Read the argument from Motion, and then his defense of natural theology. There’s just two chapters in it, well worth it to reply to atheism, and he’s got another good arguments in there as well. But when it comes to that, I used to talk about the Blackwell Companion Natural Theology, but that is a brick of a book.

But let’s see, other apologetic books. Well, case of The Resurrection by Lana and Habermas. I think it’s a nice introduction. If you want to go deeper on the resurrection, there is Mike Lana’s book, the Resurrection, a New Historiographical approach, 500 pages long, and we want to go real in depth. Gary Habermas has a thousand pages out now on Resurrection, but if you want to start light, if you want to start Light Case of the Resurrection by Habermas and Laona, I think it’s a nice start there. But I love five proofs. I think Reasonable Faith by William Lane Craig is also a good,

Marcco:

You’ve mentioned that was kind of a formative one for you in the beginning, right? Yes.

Trent:

Yeah, William Lane Craig, people who helped me become Christian. Really like Protestants, like William Lane, Craig, and jp. Wow. Honestly, that’s where, and also and some Catholics like Peter. So I think that that’s good. Also, the Catholic Handbook of Apologetics, it’s like 90% Christian. It used to be called the Christian Handbook of Apologetics, and then they added some Catholic stuff at the end in the next edition. So they called it a Catholic Handbook of Apologetics. But I think many Protestants still like it. It’s like 90%

Marcco:

Just

Trent:

Christian apologetics. Awesome. That’s another good one I’d recommend.

Marcco:

Thank you so much for taking the time. It means the world to me.

Trent:

Seriously. Thanks for having me. It was fun.

Marcco:

Thank you so much. I give me a lot to think about and I appreciate it. Anytime, and well, I’ll do an outro, but this is Trent Horn, council of Trent, the books he’s written very good. They’ve really been a blessing to me. The ones that I’ve read. And let’s see, Catholic Answers Professional Jujitsu Killer Destroyer.

Trent:

No, no. I got my four stripes. It took like three years to get to. So I am now at the point where I am just depressed at knowing all the things I don’t know,

And

I have enough of a squirrely game to at least survive with the blue belts for a decent while. And then purple and above is just, I’m out. I’m out.

Marcco:

Well, thank you so much. Thank you everyone. Talk to

Trent:

You soon. Thank you guys so much for watching. And don’t forget to this episode and subscribe to our channel. Thanks again, and I hope you have a very blessed day.