In this episode Trent reflects on his recent interview with Cameron Bertuzzi and shares how Protestants and atheists use similar techniques to defend their positions.
Welcome to the Council of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Welcome to the council of Trent podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers apologist, and speaker Trent Horn, and recently I had the privilege of speaking at the Capturing Christianity Conference in Houston. I debated Ben Watkins on the existence of God, and I gave two breakout sessions there on classical theism. And Capturing Christianity, that organization, its primary audience are Protestants, but a lot of Catholics and other Christians are interested in it because we have common ground. Capturing Christianity, which is run by Cameron Bertuzzi focuses on defending mere Christian theism. The existence of God, the resurrection of Christ. Though, Cameron, who is the host of Capturing Christianity, he’s very open to learning about Catholicism. In fact, he finds a lot of things about the Catholic faith to be beautiful, and praiseworthy, but he still has some difficulties related to Catholicism. So he’s actually had conversations with Matt Fradd, Tyler McNabb.
Trent Horn:
He visited Scott Hanh’s library, his 30,000 book library in Ohio and met Scott Hahn. And so, Cameron and I actually had an interview where I talked about why I’m Catholic, and we talked about Catholics and Protestants, and in the course of the interview, I noticed to Cameron that there are similarities between the way atheists structure their belief system, and the way that some Protestants structure their belief system.
Trent Horn:
Now I’m not saying atheism and Protestantism are equal. I mean, obviously, Protestants who are validly baptized are brothers and sisters in Christ, but, and Cameron seemed to acknowledge this, there were these similarities that were worth bringing up, and I think it is important to note these things so that Protestants can be aware of them so we can have more fruitful dialogues between Catholics and Protestants.
Trent Horn:
So, before I share what those seven similarities are, just a reminder, if you like the Council of Trent and you want to help it grow, be sure to visit Trenthornpodcast.com and become a premium subscriber. You can submit questions for future episodes. You get access to my video catechism study series that goes through the whole catechism. If you upgrade, you can also get my video study series on the entire New Testament. And if you’re a gold level member, or higher, you get a fancy mug that has the little Council of Trent logo on it. That’s always fun to have. Check that out at trenthornpodcast.com.
Trent Horn:
All right, let me talk about these similarities that I noted in my interview with Cameron. The whole interview with Cameron should be available on the Capturing Christianity YouTube page, probably in a few months, but this part really stuck out to me, so I just wanted to share with you all what I noticed.
Trent Horn:
All right. Number one, similarity between Protestantism and atheism, and that would be the burden of proof. I’ve noticed that a lot of Protestants, let’s say the Protestants of the Capturing Christianity Conference. They might be annoyed if they talk to an atheist, someone says, I’m an atheist, prove God exists. And those Protestants might say to that atheist, well, okay, I can offer a case for God, but what’s your case for atheism? Prove to me that I should be an atheist. And a lot of those atheists will say, well, no atheism is the default. I just lack a belief in God. So atheism is the default.
Trent Horn:
If you, Mr. Christian, cannot prove Christianity is true. You can’t prove theism is true. That God exists. I think a lot of Protestants and Christians in general, don’t like it when an atheist says, if you cannot prove theism is true, then it follows that atheism is true. I’m not going to get into the whole debate about the definition of atheism. That’s probably an entire other episode I definitely want to do soon.
Trent Horn:
But I think a lot of Protestants, like at the Capturing Christianity Conference would say, well, no, atheism is the denial or rejection of the existence of God. Atheism can’t just be not theism. You can’t say atheism is true, just because I failed to prove theism. You’ve got to make your own case. But then I feel like when it switches over to the disputes between Protestants and Catholics, Protestants have that similar burden of proof stance that atheist do. They’ll say, well, if a Catholic can’t convince me of the papacy, can’t convince me of the Marian Dogmas, if the Catholic cannot convince a Protestant, then the Protestant is justified in embracing Protestantism. But I would say, no, that’s not the default. Protestantism is not the default position, unless you define Protestantism as merely a lack of belief in Catholicism or orthodoxy, and so that brings me to similarity number two.
Trent Horn:
I think, once again, a lot of times Christians can be frustrated when they talk to atheists, and atheists only define atheism as the lack of belief in the existence of God. In order for atheism to be robust, to be interesting, to say something about the world, it’s got to make some kind of positive claims. Even if it’s just, there’s no good reasons to believe in God. But, the most robust atheism says, “God does not exist”. Or if you’re a materialist atheist, only material objects exist, or maybe it’s a kind of naturalism. And so, once again, Protestants might be frustrated with that when dialoguing with an atheist, but sometimes I feel like that happens in the dispute between Protestantism and Catholicism. So, piggybacking off similarity number one, this idea that, oh, well Protestantism is the default position. And so, if Catholicism and orthodoxy… If you can’t prove those things, I’m going to be a Protestant.
Trent Horn:
I don’t believe that’s the default position because Protestantism is not merely not being Catholic or not being Orthodox. You also believe things like a 66 book canon of scripture that is inspired, inerrant, and is the sole infallible authority, or Sola Scriptura. So you’ve got positive beliefs here. Now, some people might say, well, Trent, if you take Catholicism and orthodoxy off the table, only Protestantism is left. And I would say, that’s not true, because consider myself in my conversion experience. I believed in a God, and then in high school, I believed that Jesus rose from the dead. And in fact, Capturing Christianity and William Lane Craig, and these other Protestant apologists, I should say apologist for mere Christian theism, they’re not defending an articulated Protestantism like Sola Scriptura, Sola Fide. They just… William Lane Craig, and Cameron, and JP Moreland, and a lot of other people, they just want to get atheist to believe God exists and Jesus rose from the dead.
Trent Horn:
But if you believe those two things, God exists, Jesus is God, and Jesus rose from the dead, are you a Protestant? A lot of people would say, well, yeah, you’re Protestant, unless you decide from there to become Catholic or Orthodox. But imagine… Because here was the position I was in. I looked at the Bible as merely human documents, and I came to believe that Jesus was God. What if I said, you know what? I’m not sure which Christian church to belong to, or I’m not even sure about the Bible. I am just going to treat the Bible like human books, and if it records something that Jesus said, I’m just going to follow the words of Jesus and that’s it. Let’s call it a red letter Christian, like those older Bibles that put the words of Jesus in red. Are those Protestants? Even though they don’t believe in the Bible, the Canon of Scripture, Sola Scriptura?
Trent Horn:
And that was the thing that I said with Cameron. I said is Sola Scriptura and Sola Fide, are those necessary beliefs to be a Protestant? I read a survey recently that said 40% of Protestants don’t believe in Sola Scriptura. Now, that doesn’t prove Sola Scripture is false, right? There’s a ton of people who say they’re Catholic who don’t believe Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist. But here’s the difference, I can go to the Catechism and say those people who say they’re Catholic, but deny the real presence, they’re contradicting the Catholic faith. But there’s no Catechism for Protestantism, right? There are Protestant Catechisms for all of the individual Protestant denominations, but there’s no universal authority that says what is, and what isn’t Protestant? What about Unitarian universalism? These people say they only believe in the fatherhood of God, and the brotherhood of man. Are they Protestant?
Trent Horn:
When I brought these issues… These examples up to Cameron, he said he wasn’t sure, he had to think about it. And that’s why I think it’s super important when Protestants and Catholics are dialoguing with one another to remember this burden of proof. It cannot be if Catholicism cannot prove itself, Protestantism wins by default. Honestly, I think the more honest position is to say, well, you start at mere Christian theism, that if you follow the evidence, there is a God, and he raised Jesus from the dead. Mere Christian theism. And then from there, where are you going to go? Are you going to go to Sola Scriptura, 66 book canon, inspired inerrant Protestantism. Are you going to go to orthodoxy, larger canon, sacred tradition, also no Sola Scriptura, and you have the sacramental system? Or you going to go to Catholicism, with a different canon than Orthodoxy and Protestantism, but also has sacred tradition and the living Magisterium.
Trent Horn:
So it’s not just Protestantism starts out as the default. I really believe the default is God exists, Jesus rose from the dead, mere Christianity. And then do you… And then where does the evidence go from there? Does it go to Sola Scriptura, scripture and tradition in orthodoxy, or scripture tradition and a universal Magisterium we find in Catholicism.
Trent Horn:
All right. Number three, treating the Deuterocanonical books in a way you would never treat the Protocanonical books. This came up a little bit in my debate recently with Stephen Christy. Steve Christy on the Old Testament Canon. And I see Protestant apologists make this argument and it’s puzzling to me. What they’ll say is… One argument is that the Deuterocanonical books of scripture like Tobin, Judith, Wisdom, Ciroc, first and second Maccabees, they’ll say those are not the inspired word of God because they have errors in them.
Trent Horn:
And they’ll say, look, they have errors. They’re not the word of God. But what do these Protestants do when atheists say, Hey, the Bible is not the word of God, because, look, it’s got all these errors in it. Have you ever read… I mean, I’ve read websites like 1,001 Bible contradictions. The skeptics annotated Bible atheists have tried to find thousands of Bible difficulties. That’s why I wrote my book Hard Sayings: a Catholic Approach to Answering Bible Difficulties. What the Protestant here will say is, they’ll tell an atheist Norm Geisler, the late Norm Geisler said this in his book defending the Bible. He basically said, look, a Christian knows the Bible is the inspired word of God, so even if there’s a difficulty in the Bible, it doesn’t mean we throw it away. It just may be the case we don’t know how to explain this Bible difficulty.
Trent Horn:
So while Protestants might tell an atheist, Hey, even if there’s a Bible difficulty we can’t explain, that doesn’t refute the entire Bible, or show the Bible is not the word of God. We know it’s inspired, and so from there we know it’s without error. So any of these Bible difficulties, these alleged errors, are merely apparent. That’s what most Protestants will tell atheists.
Trent Horn:
Or they will go through a rigorous process to explain these difficulties, and provide an array of explanations for them. But then, some of these same Protestants will turn around, look at the Deuterocanon in Catholic Bibles, and they’ll act like an atheist and say, oh, see, there, there’s a difficulty. There’s an error. It’s not the word of God. And not go through any of the effort to defend the Deuterocanon and say it’s not without error in the same way that they would for the Protocanonical books.
Trent Horn:
So I just find that to be inconsistent, that if you are Protestant, and an atheist tries to pick out a bunch of Bible difficulties, and you’re willing to give the Bible the benefit of the doubt, because you know it’s the inspired word of God, then a Catholic should be able to do the same thing if you point to alleged errors in the Deuterocanonical books of scripture. We cannot settle the question of whether a PA writing is without… Is divinely protected from error, until we settled the question of whether it was divinely inspired in the first place. If you want more on that, check out my book, the Case for Catholicism, or my debate on the Old Testament Canon, available at Pints with Aquinas.
Trent Horn:
All right, here’s number four. They put on their skeptic hat when it’s a Catholic claim, and take the skeptic hat off when it’s merely a Protestant claim, or a claim of mere Christian theism. I remember when Cameron had Jerry Walls on, oh gosh, it was what like a year ago, offering the strongest argument against Catholicism. And basically, the argument was saying there was no first century Bishop of Rome, so there wasn’t a Pope, so you couldn’t have the Magisterium. I answer all that in, what is actually the most, at this point, the most popular channel on… I’m sorry, the most popular video on my YouTube channel, rebutting the strongest argument against Protestantism. But I remember there was a very specific clip where Jerry Walls makes his arguments saying, hey, this claim about there being a first century Bishop of Rome, there’s really not a lot of evidence for this claim the Catholics offer. And Cameron essentially says, yeah… He almost says it’s an extraordinary claim, as if it would require extraordinary evidence for this extraordinary claim, but he sort of catches himself. Watch.
Cameron Bertuzzi:
Another thing that you do, and I think this is important, and you even say it’s important, is that you basically are very explicit with what these claims are from the Catholic church about the papacy. And the explicit… The explicity is that no… It’s not a word. The explicitness. There you go. Thank you Doctor. The explicitness of these claims, and how… Yeah. How explicit they are, and just how wild they are. Some of these claims are really wild and you would expect, well, what I’m thinking of is that these claims are so specific, and so detailed, some of them, that you would need some really good evidence in order to affirm that, other than just tradition, or some sort of testimony.
Trent Horn:
Just to be clear, I’m not ripping on Cameron. Cameron is super open-minded, and he even challenges Jerry Walls in this interview that Walls… Some of Walls’ arguments are arguments from silence that aren’t super powerful, but I just find it fascinating that Cameron puts on his skeptical hat towards the rather mundane idea of there being a first century Bishop of Rome, when Ignatius makes it clear, he talks about first… He talks about early second century Bishops in other churches, so it would be strange if Rome didn’t have what these other churches have. Especially since Ignatius holds Rome in such high esteem. That he’s skeptical towards something that’s rather ordinary, of a Bishop of a church existing in the first century, and not as skeptical towards, let’s say claims of the resurrection. Like, 500 people saw the risen Jesus, as Paul says in first Corinthians 15. And all of us have to be careful of this, right?
Trent Horn:
We all have to be careful. That as a Catholic, we might accept Catholic claims of miracles very easily, and then be dismissive towards Protestant Christians having done miracles, which maybe it’s possible their brothers and sisters in Christ as well. So I would just say, when you’re putting your skeptical hat on, wear the same hat no matter the situation. Whether you’re investigating an atheist claim, a Protestant claim, a Catholic claim, just have the same standards of evidence.
Trent Horn:
So number five is fundamentally misunderstanding the doctrine that you’re criticizing. So I know a lot of Protestants are frustrated if they talk to an atheist and an atheist says, Christianity is just incoherent. It’s about a cosmic Jewish zombie that was his own father. That’s not what Christians believe at all. The resurrection is not the same as zombification, and Jesus is not his own father, God is. God is three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Trent Horn:
And so if you’re engaging someone who is a very vocal critic, but clearly has not read about Christianity to understand what it actually teaches, it’s hard to take that person seriously. And you would wish, Hey, if you’re going to criticize Christianity, at least fully understand what it teaches, and read the best defenses of it that are offered. But then, some of those Protestants, the same thing happens when they’re considering Catholicism.
Trent Horn:
I was talking to a Protestant Christian philosopher recently, a very good guy, very intelligent man, who said, well in Catholicism, at least if you’re going to go to hell, at least you have purgatory to get you out of hell. And I explained to him, no, no, no, that’s not what purgatory is for. Purgatory is not a second chance. If you die apart from God’s friendship, you’re damned. Everyone who is saved, who dies in God’s friendship, will go to heaven. Some will just be purified in purgatory to be fully cleansed from sin before they enter into heaven.
Trent Horn:
The same thing happens with indulgences. When someone says Catholics are so unbiblical that they teach that an indulgence is a ticket to get you out of hell and into heaven. But that’s not what an indulgence is at all. Indulgences can not help anybody who’s in hell. They remit the temporal punishment due to our sins that we will be purified of in purgatory. Now I’m not going to fully explain indulgences, and purgatory, and all of that, but I just want to underscore this similarity. And honestly the same thing could happen with Catholics. That we can say, I can’t believe Protestants think that you can commit any sin ,and you can’t lose your salvation, and you’re going to go to heaven.
Trent Horn:
Well, only a small percentage of Protestants believe that a saved person can commit any sin and they’ll still go to heaven. That’s once saved, always saved. That’s like Charles Stanley and his kind of theology. Most Protestants would say that if you say you’re a Christian, but you commit heinous sins and you’re unrepentant, that would just prove you were never saved in the first place.
Trent Horn:
So that happens to Catholics as well. They criticize Protestantism, but don’t fully understand all of the distinctions that are involved. I remember hearing somebody once say they could not believe in Calvinism because Calvinists believe in predestination, and that’s completely silly. And I reminded them well, no, go to paragraph 600 of the Catechism. All Christians believe in predestination, Catholics believe God has a plan for us and he predestined us, but we Contra-Calvinism. We still hold that our free choices are a part of God’s predestined plan.
Trent Horn:
So whether you’re Catholic, Protestant, or atheist, and you’re going to criticize another belief system, make sure you fully understand it. You might not be able to know all the ins and outs, but just make sure that you haven’t misunderstood a fundamental part of it. So Protestants, if you don’t like it when atheists fundamentally misunderstand Christianity in their criticisms of it, make sure you understand Catholicism. I would recommend reading… The Catechism of the Catholic Church might be a kind of a thick read. You can start with the compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and that will help you understand the basic teachings of the Catholic faith. Also, I recommend my book, Why We’re Catholic, if you want a nice introduction to that.
Trent Horn:
That leads me to point number six, actually. Arrogantly dismissing Catholicism without having studied it. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard an atheist say, there’s no evidence for God, all the proofs for God fail. And I asked him, okay, what’s the best book defending the existence of God that you have read? What was wrong with it? Or even, what’s the best book you’ve read? Tell me what have you studied of the best defense of theism, or Christianity, and what was wrong with it? Or just tell me what you read.
Trent Horn:
And a lot of them will say, I haven’t read any of that. I just know. I don’t need to read that stuff. And that’s an anti-intellectualism. If you’re a Protestant, I’m sure you would feel like, hey, if an atheist is so confident, Christianity is false, he should read William Lane Craig, Gary Habermas, Mike Lacona, JP Moreland, Sean McDowell. Andnd other philosophers and theologians who defend Christian theism.
Trent Horn:
If you’re a Protestant who believes an atheist before he says, definitively, Christianity is false, he should read the best defenses of Protestantism, then I would say if you’re a Protestant and you think Catholicism is not true, you should read the best defenses of Catholicism to see if they hold up or not. If you would want an atheist to read the best you have to offer for Christianity, I think the same is true for Catholicism as well. A lot of books out there. Not to toot my own horn… Pun, couldn’t resist it. My book, The Case for Catholicism, might be helpful for you if you’re a Protestant that wants a deep dive into the Catholic faith. In fact that the Capturing Christianity Conference I signed a fair number of those books that Protestants had, and they found the book to be very helpful.
Trent Horn:
And finally, number seven. Number seven. When I was with my interview with Cameron, he asked me, Trent, what should a Protestant do if he loves Catholicism, and he wants Catholicism be true, but he has doubts, and he’s not sure what he should do? And I told Cameron. I said, Cameron, I would tell him what you would probably tell an atheist. I said, Cameron, what if an atheist told you, I wish Christianity was true. I wish it was true, but I still have these doubts. I told Cameron, I’m sure you would tell him why don’t you just act like Christianity is true, just try praying, just read the Bible, pray and just give it a chance and take up Pascal’s wager.
Trent Horn:
And I’m going to do an interview on Pascal’s wager actually pretty soon here on the channel. So stay tuned for that. I’m interviewing a very smart philosopher, Liz Jackson, on the wager. But if you think about it, Cameron would probably tell an atheist, hey, you’ve got nothing to lose. If you embrace Christianity, and you have everything to gain. Even not just happiness in the next life, but happiness in this life.
Trent Horn:
So even if you have doubts, just try. Even try acting like it. Go to church, read the Bible, pray to God, and over time it’ll kind of sink in a little bit, and then maybe you’ll be able to move your will and get off the fence and say, hey, this is beautiful and I’m going to go for it because I have very little to risk and much to gain. And so I think that that is good advice for an atheist who really wants Christianity to be true, and there are a lot of Protestants who want Catholicism to be true.
Trent Horn:
Oh, and by the way, the atheism and Christianity… I would say, look, if you become Christian, you don’t have to give up the stuff you loved as an atheist. I mean you have to give up the non-existent stuff about God, but you can still believe in science, philosophy, critical thinking. And I would say to a Protestant who loves Catholicism and wishes, it were true, if you just try out Catholicism, go to mass, go to adoration, pray the Catholic prayers that resonate with you the most. If you’re not a fan of the rosary, pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet, for example, read the Liturgy of the Hours, the Divine Office. Seek out those aspects of Catholicism that fill you with joy, and rest in them, and enjoy them, and just kind of act Catholic and just see how that goes, and know that if you kind of take up, not Pascal’s wager, but Horn’s wager, if you’re Protestant who loves Catholicism and you think Catholics are going to heaven anyways, then you have very little to lose in becoming Catholic, and much to gain if it is the church that Jesus Christ established.
Trent Horn:
And you don’t have to give up the things you loved as a Protestant. You can do Bible studies, you can love scripture, you can love fellowship, you can engage in charismatic prayer. When I was at the… When I was at the conference, we did a Q&A session and people asked me about being Catholic, and what are the closest things to Catholicism? And I said a Protestant denomination that’s that’s close to Catholicism is Anglicanism, and some people cheered. And I said, but hey, if you’re a high church Anglican, check out the Anglican ordinariate. If you’re Eastern Orthodox, check out an Eastern Catholic church. If you’re a charismatic Protestant, check out a charismatic Catholic community.
Trent Horn:
And so I said at the conference, we got something for everybody. I don’t know why I said it in that goofy voice, but I guess I was just in a happy mood.
Trent Horn:
So seek out my advice. For an atheist who wants Christianity be true, give it a try, you got nothing to lose, enjoy the beauty of it and see what happens. Take Pascal’s wager.
Trent Horn:
My advice for a Protestant who loves Catholicism and wishes. It were true. Give it a try. You got little lose and much to gain, and try Horn’s wager. Just try it out for a bit, and rest in the beauty, and see what God reveals to you as you continue to discern your spiritual path.
Trent Horn:
So, hey, I hope this is helpful for you. And once again… I think this came across in the episode, but I’m not taking any digs at Cameron Bertuzzi, or Capturing Christianity. He’s an awesome guy. I’m so grateful he invited me to the conference, I hope to work with him more in the future, and Cameron should be commended for his open-mindedness towards Catholicism, and his fairness in engaging atheists and critics of Christianity. So I hope more Protestants would be like Cameron and have that open mind, and engage in these fruitful dialogues with Catholics so we can restore the unity to the one church that Jesus Christ established. So, hope that’s helpful for you guys. I’ll leave a bunch of links in the description of books and resources that I think will be helpful for you. And, hey, I just hope that you all have a really blessed day.
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