In this episode Trent responds to Protestant apologist Mike Winger’s claims that Trent misrepresented Catholic doctrine in a previous rebuttal. Trent also engages in a lengthy exploration of the doctrine of merit and shows where Winger misrepresented what the Catholic Church teaches regarding works and salvation.
Welcome to the Counsel of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Recently, Mike Winger responded to a rebuttal I did of him a while back. And he focused on the parts of my rebuttal dealing with issues like justification and merit. I’m not going to go through everything he said in his reply because I have a pretty strict policy of not doing rebuttals to rebuttals. I’ve offered to publicly engage Mike on all of this, and he’s declined. So it looks like we can’t move forward in that respect.
Trent Horn:
Instead, I’m planning to do a more comprehensive response to Mike Winger in the future that will include replies to the kinds of objections that he raises in his recent rebuttal. For example, some of the replies that Mike mentions regarding things like James chapter 2 on faith and works, Romans 2 on merit, those are actually covered. His replies, I have answers to those in my book The Case for Catholicism if you want to check that out.
Trent Horn:
So I’m not going to cover those topics in this video. What’s more concerning is Mike’s accusation that I misrepresented him, and more importantly, that I misrepresented the Catholic faith. So in this episode, I’m going to focus specifically on those accusations with a special emphasis on Winger’s critique of what I said about earning versus meriting salvation since that seems to be one of his biggest objections.
Mike Winger:
This next one is a real disagreement between us. This is a big issue. I’m going to labor on this issue for a while, because I think that a lot of our discussions, when you really debate back and forth with a really informed Roman Catholic, it really comes down to this idea of merit. Trent Horn’s going to really push back on me. I used merit and earn as synonyms. If you merit something, you earn it. That’s what I said, right? And he’s going to really push back. Now, there’s a reason why I said it that way. And I’ll explain that as we go. But here’s a real defense of his position. And I’m going to say he’s, I believe, misrepresenting Roman Catholic teaching.
Mike Winger:
And if you guys think I’m being arrogant or pompous or something, I just think this is true. I’ve spent a lot of time on this. I’ve read the Councils. I’ve studied the Council of Trent’s doctrine of justification. I’ve studied the Roman Catholic definition of merit. I’ve bought the… I’ve looked into ancient Scholastic common dictionaries for what medieval scholastics were thinking about the word merit. And I’ve even emailed Harvard professors to ask them what these medieval scholastics meant by merit in the Council of Trent. And I’m going to share with you some of the fruit of the labor there. I think that Trent Horn’s misrepresenting it. I think he’s the one, unfortunately, that’s guilty of misrepresenting Catholicism.
Trent Horn:
Oh, and just a heads up. This may get a tag confusing, because Mike is commenting on my previous rebuttal. So you’ll hear his original argument, my reply, his reply, and now my current reply. This is also why I really prefer direct engagement rather than rebuttals to rebuttal because it can get confusing. So here it goes.
Mike Winger:
Now, I know Trent’s worded weird, because what they do is they say, “If you say this thing we don’t like, then you’re anathema.” In that is an affirmation. What they’re saying is “Allen, if you’re a Catholic, you get baptized as an infant most likely. But you’re not an infant anymore. I’m pretty sure you’re a little older than that. Now you need to do good works. And those good works will merit an increase of grace.” Now, this from a biblical perspective is an incoherent statement. You don’t merit grace. How’d you get that grace? “Well, I earned it.” No way. What? Then it’s not grace.
Trent Horn:
To earn something, means that after doing a work, the other party is legally obligated to pay you. To merit something, means that after doing the work, the compensation is given because of the work but it’s not legally owed. When my yard guy mows my lawn, he earned the money I’m going to pay him. I have to pay him. When my five year old picks up the leaves in order to help, I might give him a treat. I don’t legally have to give him a treat. And if he had a snotty attitude acting like he legally deserved it, I might not give him a treat. But if my son genuinely pleases me through a good work, then as his father I recognize he merited a reward, but he didn’t earn it. So when it comes to salvation, you cannot earn God’s grace. But our actions as God’s children can merit an increase in the justification we received at baptism.
Trent Horn:
I’ll also add that this summary coheres with what the Catechism says about merit. It says in paragraph 2009, “Filial adoption in making us partakers by grace and the divine nature can bestow true merit on us as a result of God’s gratuitous justice. This is our right by grace, the full right of love making us co-heirs with Christ and worthy of obtaining the promised inheritance of eternal life. The merits of our good works are gifts of divine goodness.” So I don’t see how this misrepresent Catholicism when it’s a workable example to explain how merit isn’t like strictly earning something. Also, I’m not going to address all of Mike’s arguments like his faulty one where he talks about grace and works, because in this episode I’m focusing only on the accusation that I misrepresented the Catholic faith. However, Mike will raise a series of questions and arguments related to the subject. And it’ll give us a good opportunity to go deeper into this important topic.
Mike Winger:
All right. Let’s understand how this logic works. My point is simple. It takes 10 seconds to explain it. Look, hey, if you add works to grace, it’s not grace anymore, right? If you add grace to works, well then that’s not works anymore. It’s a true dichotomy. You can’t have works and grace combined. Because you worked for it, it wasn’t grace. But Trent Horn’s response is to hang on the word earn. The Catholic Church will affirm that you work for salvation, but he’s going to say the word earn doesn’t belong in there. And so his point is to say earn and merit have two different definitions. They’re very different. I’ll just make sure we understand his point clearly here. I don’t want to misrepresent him.
Mike Winger:
Earn is “After doing a work, the other party’s legally obligated to pay you.” Now, if you’ve ever used the word earn in a sentence, you probably didn’t mean legally obligated to pay. That’s probably not what you meant by the word earn. And if you look up the word earn on, say, I don’t know, a normal English dictionary like Webster here, you’re not going to see that as one of the definitions once my software lets it load. Man, my computer must be taxed at the moment. The definitions of earn do not include legally obligatory. Now, the word legal’s not in there. So to receive as return for effort and especially for work done or services rendered, that sounds like merit to me. To bring in by way of return, to come to a duly worthy or entitled or suited to, to make worthy of or obtain for.
Mike Winger:
Okay. This seems, in fact, if you go on Webster and you scroll down to synonyms for the word earn, guess what shows up? Or excuse me, synonyms for the word merit. Pardon me. Earn is there. So if you go to merit and look at synonyms, the word earn shows up. Think about this for a second. What’s happening here is we have a Roman Catholic apologist who’s defining merit in a way that does not fit with Roman Catholic teaching, but it’s a way that’s I think helps build bridges with Protestants because it makes sound like it’s not actually a threat to grace, but it’s I think purely a talking point that’s not supported. He says merit should be defined as “After doing the work, the compensation is given because of the work, but it’s not legally owed.” Okay, this to me makes little sense. Again, normal English definitions of words. These two are synonyms of each other.
Trent Horn:
Mike should know that a secular dictionary like Websters is not where you go to find out how a religious group uses a theological term. For example, Miriam Webster says that belief is a synonym for faith, but Mike would probably say faith and belief are not the same thing. After all, James 2:19 says, “You believe that God is one. You do well. Even the demons believe and shutter.” So the point here is that faith in Christ is not the same as belief in Christ or belief that Jesus is God or the Messiah. Even the demons know that. So when Christians use the word faith, they have a deeper understanding of the term than how it’s used in a secular context. It’s not just synonymous with belief. And the same is true for how Catholics use the word merit. It has a deeper meaning that what you would find in a dictionary, and it’s not synonymous with earn.
Mike Winger:
But let’s say that we take Trent Horn’s definition and evaluate it more. I’m going to tell you I have nine problems, probably 10 problems. I have nine problems with this definition of merit. And I spent a lot of time on this, because it’s not just Trent Horn. Jimmy Akin also presents merit as meaning… He defines that as meaning not earned. Now, this does not fit Roman Catholic teaching. These are I believe… And I’m open to correction here, but I spend a lot of time on this. I believe Roman Catholic apologists are presenting content that’s inconsistent with Roman Catholicism because it’s useful in getting Protestants to become Catholic. And that I find problematic. So here are my nine problems with defining merit as not earned.
Trent Horn:
Before I respond to Wingers nine problems, I’m going to point out the overarching problem with his critique is that he treats the word merit as having a univocal meaning. He treats the word as if it has only one meaning, and that meaning is defined in a secular dictionary as being synonymous with the word earn. But Catholic theology recognizes that there are many different types of merit. This is important because Mike would probably agree that theological terms can have different meanings in different contexts. In fact, everybody agrees, Catholics and Protestants, that Paul and James use the word justify in different senses. Otherwise, they would be in contradiction with each other. And once again, see my book, The Case for Catholicism, to see how Paul and James use justify in different ways, but both of which support the church is teaching on justification.
Trent Horn:
But in order to understand all of this, let’s talk about merit in a very general sense. I’ll also post a link to a great article on the description below by my friend, Jimmy Akin, that goes into this in more detail if you want to read more. So the Latin word meritum is a translation of the Greek word for reward. As you’ll see, the Bible talks a lot about believers receiving rewards. The Catechism defines merit this way. “The term merit refers in general to the recompense owed by a community or a society for the action of one of its members, experienced either as beneficial or harmful, deserving reward or punishment. Merit is relative to the virtue of justice in conformity with the principle of equality, which governs it.” So merit is basically what you deserve in virtue of what you’ve done, basically.
Trent Horn:
Catholic theology recognizes there are natural merits and supernatural merits. Natural merit is the natural value of a natural work. When I give gifts to my friends, because I like having friends, that says natural merit. I usually get friends. This is a kind of merit anybody can attain. Natural actions can have positive and negative value. We would call this a de-merit or demerit. Like in some older private schools, if you break a rule, the headmaster gives you a demerit. It’s a negative natural merit.
Trent Horn:
So how does this relate to merit in a theological sense? Remember when Jesus said in the sermon on the Mount, “For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?” Jesus is saying that even bad people can do good things that merit good consequences, but these naturally good acts are not enough to please God. They aren’t capable of producing supernatural merit. Supernatural merit is described in Catholic theology as one of three types: strict, congruent, and condine.
Trent Horn:
Strict merit means that the action I performed has an equal intrinsic value with what is received. So in my analogy that Mike’s critiquing, mowing somebody’s lawn, let’s say it’s as valuable as $20, under this view, the virtue of justice demands that the person who mowed the lawn be given something equal in value for what they gave. If a person hired me to mow his lawn, justice demands that person not only keep his promised to pay me, but to give me something that is of equal value with my work, okay?
Trent Horn:
Another way to describe strict merit would be, as I said originally, a legal obligation to compensate someone for the work performed because the work is equal in value to the compensation. Now, when it comes to God, strict merit would mean that we gave something to God that is equally valuable as the eternal life he gives us. And so justice demands God pays us. But that’s impossible. Human beings cannot give God anything that is as valuable as the eternal life that he gives us. This is why for over a thousand years, Catholic theology has recognized man can never strictly merit eternal life, or you can’t earn it. It’s why the Catechism says, “With regard to God, there is no strict right to any merit on the part of man. Between God and us, there is an immeasurable inequality, for we have received everything from him, our creator.”
Trent Horn:
So in some cases, Mike will point to where the Catechism talks about strict merit. Like when Christ merits eternal life for us, only he can strictly merit such a thing because he’s God. His death is infinite value. And he’ll say merit in that context means earning. So anywhere else the Catechism mentions merit, it must mean the exact same thing. But the word merit means different things. This approach would be like saying, “This is what the word justify means in the letter of James, so it has to have the same meaning in the letter to the Romans,” which it does not. Even Mike would agree with that.
Trent Horn:
And they don’t mean the same thing because there is another kind of supernatural merit human beings can have with God that is not strict merit. This is called condine merit. This occurs when God gives us something because he has promised he will give it to us if we perform a supernatural act of charity under the influence of grace. Now, Mike will make hay of this later because I didn’t originally put this in my analogy, but I’m grateful for his criticism because now I can make a better analogy, which is that’s always a plus.
Trent Horn:
So condine merit would be like if I promise my four-year old that if he mows the lawn with an old fashioned engineless mower, the little spinny ones, that I’ll give him $10, even though the value of a four-year old mowing the lawn, it’s not worth $10. The obligation to pay him, it’s not a legal obligation. Justice does not demand that he received $10. The value of his labor isn’t worth that much. That would be strict merit to say he earned $10. He can’t earn it from me. He has premature lawn skills. He can’t do it. Instead, the obligation I have to compensate him or to reward him arises simply because of the promise I made to him. Notice that the source of the reward is not the intrinsic value of our actions, but God’s promises about our actions.
Trent Horn:
In Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, Ludwig Ott writes, “On account of the infinite distance between creator and creature, man cannot of himself make God his debtor if God does not do so by his own free ordinance.” Ott then quote Saint Augustine who said, “The Lord has made himself a debtor, not by receiving but by promising.” Man cannot say to him to God, “Give back what thou has to received.” That would be strict merit, but only “Give what thou has promised,” which would be condine merit.
Trent Horn:
Aquinas even mentions the child-parent analogy in the Summa Theologiae when he says this, “Where there is no simple right, but only relative, there is no character of merit simply or strictly, but relatively, in so far as the character of justice is found there since the child merits something from his father and the slave from his Lord.” So it’s not something you earn through a legal obligation you receive through gratuitous promise. The Catechism describes this kind of merit when it says, “Moved by the holy spirit and by charity, we can then merit for ourselves and for others the graces needed for our sanctification, for the increase of grace and charity, and for the attainment of eternal life.” Now you’ll find examples of this throughout scripture where the Bible speaks of heaven as being a reward we will receive because of our faithful actions.
Trent Horn:
In the sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven. For so men persecuted the prophets who were before you.” In fact, the word translated reward in this verse or misthos, it literally means wage. It’s used as wage in James 5:4 when it talks about the sin of wage theft. Jesus is literally saying, “Rejoice and be glad for your wage is great in heaven.” But remember this is not strict merit. You cannot earn heaven like you earn a paycheck for putting in a day’s work. Instead, God rewards us for the good works we do and he keeps his promises.
Trent Horn:
One of those promises is that those who obey the commandments through the grace that he gives them, so under the influence of grace, will receive eternal life. Even many Protestant scholars have recognized this is an appropriate way to talk about the reception of each eternal life. Recall that St Paul says in Romans chapter 2, “For he will render to every man according to his works. To those who by patients and well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life.” The Protestant scholar Matthew Henry says of this verse, “The product of his favor, he will render to such eternal life. Heaven is life, eternal life. And it is the reward of those that patiently continue in well doing.” In other words, when we obey the commandments, we merit eternal life. Not because our obedience strictly merits eternal life, since our obedience isn’t of equal value to eternal life, but because God has promised this and God never goes back on his promises.
Trent Horn:
So there’s strict merit, condine merit. Finally, there is congruent merit. Congruent merit involves actions done under the influence of grace that please God. And so, God chooses to reward them, but God has not specifically promised to reward them. So in my example, that Winger commented on, even if I didn’t promise my son anything specifically for picking up the leaves in the yard, my son knows this is a good work and that doing this will please me. So it makes sense for me to reward my son for this act of obedience even if I did not specifically promise I would do that. So Mike tries to belittle my example by saying God doesn’t give a spiritual candy. But that’s just not true. When we pray for an enemy to be blessed or for him to convert, we do something good. And God may choose to reward our good work done through grace by blessing our enemy or by converting him. Or he may not do that, because it’s not in accord with his will.
Trent Horn:
Many of the good works we do every day have this character of congruent merit. They’re good, they merit reward, but not a specific promise of one. So let’s go through Mike’s nine objections. And I’ll note the different kinds of merit Mike is describing and how he falsely conflates them all as just to mean earning. Remember also that I didn’t define merit as not earned. I said to earn something like when people falsely say Catholics earn salvation. That that means you do something and the other party is legally obligated to pay you. I said when humans merit something from God, they don’t earn it in this sense, but they do receive it because God is good and he chooses to reward us.
Mike Winger:
If merit means not earned, then why is it that prayer… Let me take you to the scene where I got all this stuff. All right. Why is it that prayer in the Council of Trent is a free and unmerited gift? If merit doesn’t even mean earn, why do we need to say that prayer is free and unmerited? That wouldn’t make a lot of sense.
Trent Horn:
First, this quote isn’t from the Council of Trent. As far as I can tell, it’s from the Universal Catechism in paragraph 2728, which talks about our struggles with prayer. So it says, “Our battle has to confront what we experience as failure in prayer, discouragement during periods of dryness, sadness that because we have great possessions we’ve not given all to the Lord, disappointment over not being heard according to our own will, wounded pride stiffened by the indignity that is ours as sinners,” and finally something that hurts us in the battle for prayer, “our resistance to the idea that prayer is a free and unmerited gift.”
Trent Horn:
So Mike’s argument seems to be that I’m saying merit means not earned, which I didn’t say. So the Catechism is saying that prayer is free, not not earned, or prayer is earned. But I never said that merit is the exact opposite of earning. And second, there are many things that God gives us that are not the result of our own actions. The ability to pray to God is one of these things, as is the initial grace we receive at the beginning of our conversion, which the Catechism says, “No one can merit at all” in paragraph 2010. But that doesn’t mean that because there’s some things that are completely unmerited, that doesn’t mean that there are not some things that we do merit by cooperating with God’s grace.
Mike Winger:
In the Council of Trent, did you know that the word earn is never used? In The Catechism of the Catholic Church, this massive book, the word earn is never used. It always uses merit. Meaning where you would expect to find earn, it just uses the word merit, implying that there’s some synonymous relationship between the two words. So earn is never used in Trent or in The Catechism of the Catholic Church. They use merit when you would think they would use earn.
Trent Horn:
Well, that’s because merit and earn are neither synonyms or they don’t mean the same thing, nor are they antonyms. They don’t mean the opposites as I said earlier. Instead, the Catechism distinguishes different types of merit that we’ve already discussed. In my example, I was speaking of merit relating to the relationship between human beings and God, not the basic concept of merit itself.
Mike Winger:
Problem number three. If merit means not earned, then why does Trent and the Catechism say that Jesus merited our justification on the cross? That’s in chapter 617 of the Catechism. Jesus merited our justification. Well, you mean he didn’t earn it? Like what? That’s obviously not what the word is meant to be meaning in those passages. This is a Catholic apologist thing, not a Roman Catholic thing.
Trent Horn:
This would be an example of strict merit. Christ strictly merited our justification because his death has the same intrinsic value as our eternal life. It has infinite value. Remember, no human being can strictly merit eternal life. The Catechism makes this clear in paragraph 2007. I’ll say it again. “With regard to God, there is no strict right to any merit on the part of man.” Only because of God’s promises or goodness. Just because Jesus can merit justification through his own actions, that doesn’t mean we can merit justification through our own actions, because the church recognizes different kinds of merit.
Mike Winger:
If the word merit means not earned, then why does the Catechism say the following two things, organ’s donation after death is a noble and meritorious act and is to be encouraged? The free gift of organs after death is legitimate and can be meritorious. Does meritorious mean doesn’t earn anything? What exactly does that mean? These are strange things. They don’t fit the usage of the word.
Trent Horn:
This could refer to a natural merit, and that organ donation is a work of virtue. So in doing so, you get a natural reward like a good reputation. Or it could be a work of supernatural merit. If organ donation is done under the influence of grace through the virtue of supernatural love for our fellow man. So in that case, this would please God. And he would reward us for loving our fellow man. That’s why Jesus said in Luke 6:35, “Love your enemies and do good and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great.”
Mike Winger:
Why is it then in the Roman Catholic Catechism war crimes are said to merit condemnation? Now, I want you to think about this one carefully. “Every act of war where you have indiscriminate destruction of whole cities, vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation.” The word merit is used here. The Roman Catholic Church is saying, “Hey, if you murder whole towns full of people, you merit condemnation.” Do you think that they mean by that you don’t earn condemnation? Is it candy? In Trent Horn’s analogy, it’s candy. But not in the Roman Catholic teaching. This is why I like the sources like the Catechism and the Councils more than the modern proponents of Roman Catholicism because they’re often trying to get you into the belief system without necessarily representing it accurately at all times. And that is a problem. We want to know what we’re swallowing when we swallow Roman Catholicism. Merit, obviously there, means earned. You’ve earned condemnation.
Trent Horn:
Yes, this is a form of natural merit, or what I described earlier as a demerit. The negative intrinsic value of your evil deed is equal to the negative value of the punishment you will receive. But even here we can say that punishment can be something that is merited rather than earned. A civil authority could pardon someone of a crime and show mercy. Or a prosecutor could grant immunity to a criminal in exchange for testimony against his accomplice. So those cases would show that the act does not automatically entail a certain punishment. But regardless, this is talking about how natural bad acts result in natural bad consequences, like punishment. Just because some kinds of merit are grounded in promised rewards or loving care, like with God and supernatural merit, it doesn’t mean all of them are grounded in these things. Some are based on natural merit. So there’s no contradiction with what I briefly said about merit in my previous rebuttal.
Mike Winger:
All right, let’s look at the next one. How about this following quote? Venial sin merit temporal punishment. Venial are like secondary sins. They are like not… They don’t cause you to lose salvation on Roman Catholicism, but you’re going to get temporally punished. You’re going to suffer punishments for them. Are you telling me that my punishments are rewards like candy and that I don’t actually earn them? Is that what we’re saying here? It doesn’t fit Trent Horn’s analogy. His analogy is designed to get Protestants to become Catholic. It’s not designed to help you understand the Roman Catholic Church.
Trent Horn:
My reward analogy was talking about congruent merit. That’s probably the most common kind of merit since it involves good deeds we do like praying the rosary, making an act of faith, praying for other people that are not tied to any particular promise of a reward from God. But God can choose to reward us for doing these acts if he pleases. Now in contrast, the temporal punishment we merit when we commit a venial sin, that could be a natural or a supernatural demerit.
Trent Horn:
God’s law shows us how the universe is supposed to work. If you break it, there’s going to be negative consequences. And not just in the next life, but also in this one. It could be natural, but sometimes it could be supernatural. God does it directly, like when God took the life of David’s son in 2 Samuel 12 as punishment for the sin of adultery. Also, just like there’s no specific reward promised in congruent merit, there’s no specific punishment regarding natural or supernatural demerits. That’s up to God to decide in our individual circumstances. So, the analogy actually still holds and that this would be a case of meriting an anti reward for doing evil.
Mike Winger:
Number six. My sixth problem. Why is the same word used of Jesus meriting my justification and of me meriting eternal life, right? Here’s a couple different spots. Let make sure I’m finding it on the screen. Oh, there it is. “The merit of good works is to be attributed in the first place to the grace of God, and then to the faithful.” It’s used of both. I can give you guys a few other quotes here.
Trent Horn:
Because the word merit in Catholic theology, as I’ve already explained, is not univocal. It has different meanings. I was originally talking about the word as it’s applied to us and our relationship to God. And now Mike is saying, “But look how the word is applied to Jesus. Therefore, this must be what it also means for human beings,” but I’ve shown why that reasoning doesn’t work.
Mike Winger:
This is reason number seven now, in The Catechism of the Catholic Church chapter 1820, it says that these virtues are infused by God. Here’s the pitch for you. They’re infused by God into the souls of the faithful to make them “capable of acting as his children and of meriting eternal life.” Okay, it’s the same word used. And I’m meriting eternal life, just like Jesus merited my eternal life.
Trent Horn:
Mike was referring to paragraph 1813 of the Catechism which says this, “The theological virtues are the foundation of Christian moral activity. They animate it and give it its special character. They inform and give life to all the moral virtues. They are infused by God into the souls of the faithful to make them capable of acting as his children and of meriting eternal life. They are the pledge of the presence and action of the holy spirit in the faculties of the human being. There are three theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity or love. Through the virtues of faith, hope, and love, we do not earn eternal life. These virtues which come from God are what gives us the ability to obey God’s commandments. And as a result, we receive the reward or we merit eternal life. This is condine merit based on God’s promise, not strict merit based on the intrinsic value of our works.
Trent Horn:
That’s why the Catechism, quoting the Council of Trent, says this. I’ve said it before, but it’s worth saying again, “Filial adoption, being adopted sons and daughters of God and making us partakers by grace in the divine nature, can bestow true merit on us as a result of God’s gratuitous justice. This is our right by grace, the full right of love making us co-heirs with Christ and worthy of obtaining the promised inheritance of eternal life.” My child-parent analogy fits right in here. We don’t earn salvation like a laborer who does work equal in value to the wage we ought to receive. We merit it. We receive it as a reward from God, our loving father, who is the one who gave us the ability to follow his commandments in the first place. That’s why the Catechism says, “The charity of Christ is the source in us of all our merits before God, grace by uniting us to Christ and act of love ensures the supernatural quality of our acts. And consequently, they’re merit before God and before men. The saints have always had a lively awareness that their merits were pure grace.”
Mike Winger:
How about this one? This is I think a very good example of how merit seems to carry an earning connotation in the Catechism and in the Council of Trent. And it’s hard to get around because it uses the same word in the same sentence to refer to Jesus’s action of meriting [inaudible 00:34:31]. Same sentence. The reason number nine. “No one can merit the initial grace which is the origin of conversion.” Why can’t I merit it? Merit doesn’t even mean earn. So why can’t I? Well, because it means earned. That’s why. “Move by the holy spirit, we can merit for ourselves and for others all the graces needed to attain eternal life as well as necessary temporal goods.”
Trent Horn:
Mike’s constant error is really bogging down his ability to read these documents. Nowhere did I say merit is simply the opposite of earning something. Merit isn’t like a random gifting where having done absolutely nothing, you get a surprise gift. Mike seems to be assuming that I was defining merit as the exact opposite of earning. Something when I said that humans merit from God, is based on other grounds besides legal duties or strict principles of justice.
Trent Horn:
So in this example, what the Catechism is saying is that there is no action that deserves the initial grace of justification. There is no natural merit that results in getting saved. There’s also no supernatural merit, because you can only perform acts of supernatural merit, be it strict which humans can’t do, condine or congruent. You can only do any of them after you’ve been saved. In order to get saved, all we can do is accept God’s offer of initial justification. We do nothing to either strictly earn it or even merit it. So then after we are saved, the Catechism says, “Moved by the holy spirit and by charity, we can then merit for ourselves and for others the graces needed for our sanctification for the increase of grace and charity and for the attainment of eternal life.” This refers to condine or congruent merit that we can do only once we’re able to be partakers in the grace of God. And in doing so, we can receive the rewards that he gratuitously promised us.
Mike Winger:
Now, this is kind of a side note because the Roman Catholic Church has actually defined merit in a pretty official document, The Catechism of the Catholic Church. This is the definition they give for the word merit. And I want to work through this carefully, because I’m not at all trying to misrepresent them. Although I’m going to forever be accused of that. But I think I’m doing more to educate you on accurate Roman Catholic theology than Trent Horn is in his defense of Roman of Catholicism. Because it doesn’t help when you tell Protestants these things. We go, “Wait a minute. I can’t believe that,” right? So then they make it a can… It’s just God giving candy to us, right? That doesn’t work. So here’s their definition in chapter 2006 of the Catechism, “The term merit refers in general to the recompense owed by a community or a society for the action of one of its members, experienced either as beneficial or harmful deserving reward or punishment.
Trent Horn:
In my initial reply, I didn’t give a comprehensive definition of merit. I gave an example of merit. So Mike’s big argument has been “Trent misrepresents Catholicism” because he treated an example of merit that I gave as if it were the entire definition of merit. For example, in the definition he gives from paragraph 2006 of the Catechism, giving a small spontaneous reward to a child for a good work would be an example of merit under the definition. What’s important are all the paragraphs that follow the definition, which we’ve already talked about a lot, that lay out the conditions for what human beings can and cannot merit from God. And I’ve already discussed that at length. So I’m not misrepresenting anything when it comes to Catholicism, but I’m grateful to dive into the topic in a deeper way in this video.
Mike Winger:
It’s deserving, okay? It’s not reward like a candy. It’s like reward like, you get what you deserved. Merit is relative to the virtue of justice, which means it’s about just. It’s not just kindness, right? There’s an earning there. There’s equality that goes on there.
Trent Horn:
A reward is something you deserve. When my son does a good deed, the spontaneous reward I give him, it is deserving, it’s fitting. It’s not guaranteed by a law or a promise, but it naturally flows from my goodness as a father who encourages obedience. And that is the same for congruent merit. That merits rewards from God when believers choose to obey him under the influence of grace.
Trent Horn:
Mike is mashing together different concepts when he tries to make merit mean only one thing. All merit is relative to justice, because it’s based on their being a deserved connection between an action and a reward. Like getting a gift basket on your front porch because of a random act of kindness from a stranger, that’s not an act of merit. But in my example, my son doesn’t get a treat only because I’m kind. It’s because I’m kind and he did something worthy of being rewarded, but it is only strict merit, which says, “God owes someone something because there is an equality between the action and the reward.” And I’ve shown many, many times human beings cannot strictly merit anything from God. Only Christ can do that because he is God.
Mike Winger:
Now, Trent Horn should say this, but I’ll also acknowledge you guys. The doctrine of merit is a super complicated Roman Catholicism. So they will say that you merit salvation, but you don’t do it on your own, right? Stage one, God saves you. He gives you these things. So there’s three caveats, three things that they’re going to say you have to have, let me give you Roman Catholic theology, from God in order to then merit salvation. And first, God makes you and gives you abilities. That’s in the definition of merit in the Catechism. Number two, God gives you initial justification, which comes with enablement to now earn merits. So he saves me and he kind of empowers me to then work. But I’m the one that does the work. It’s like someone hires you, they train you to do the job, they give you the tools, but you better do the job or you’re fired. That’s a better analogy for merit.
Trent Horn:
No, it would be more like a father adopting street children and then giving them the materials and education they need to be good children. Now, some of the children might accept the adoption offer, and that would be like getting baptized and becoming an adopted son on daughter of God. But then later, the children might reject their new way of life and run away from home. This would parallel how damnation, it’s not like getting fired from a job, it’s like leaving a family like we see in the parable of the prodigal son. We merit eternal life because we freely choose to obey the commandments, but we can only obey the commandments in a way that pleases God because of the grace he has already given us.
Mike Winger:
… for salvation. Number three. And this is interesting. He freely chooses to make you work for eternal salvation. They say this in a weird way. “The merit of man before God and the Christian life arises from the fact that God has freely chosen to associate man with the work of his grace.” This is a super nicey, nice way to say it. I’m going to say it bluntly. God says “You better work or you’re not going to be saved.”
Trent Horn:
First, this passage is not saying that. It says the merit of man before God in the Christian life arises from the fact that God has freely chosen to associate man with the work of his grace. God chooses to use us to accomplish his will and giving grace. But the Bible does say we work alongside God, which includes in the context of rewards. For example, in 1 Corinthians chapter 3:8-9, Paul says, “he who plants and he who waters are equal. And each shall receive his wages according to his labor, for we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.” It then says, “If the work, which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.”
Trent Horn:
And as for Mike’s statement, Jesus is just as blunt about this. This is what Jesus says to believers in John 15, “As the father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love just as I have kept my father’s commandments and abide in his love.” This follows a dire warning that Jesus gave earlier. He said, “If a man does not abide in me, he has cast forth as a branch and withers. And the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned.”
Mike Winger:
Right? You are freely associated with his… Right. So it’s a promise. It’s his choice. He didn’t have to do that, but he chose to. You have to work in order to get your final salvation. Trent Horn’s explanation is different than the actual Roman Catholic doctrine. And his analogy about candy is really misleading. Merit isn’t like a job, he says. Let me work on his analogy now. There’s two sides of the analogy. Merit’s not like a job where they legally have to pay you. I disagree. That may be a little bit misleading. It’s not entirely wrong, but it’s also not entirely right.
Trent Horn:
I think Mike is starting to see that my example is a valid illustration of some kinds of merit humans have before God. It just isn’t a complete description of the theological concept of merit, which I didn’t intend for it to be.
Mike Winger:
Now, Trent Horn works for Catholic Answers. The same organization on their website has the following question and answer explaining the parable of the workers. You could read it on your screen there. This is Fr. Charles Grondin for Catholic Answers explaining that the parable of the workers has similarity to how salvation works. God promises the workers pay if they do the work. They all get the pay. And whether you think they deserved it or not isn’t relevant. They had a promise. They did the work, they get the pay. That’s actually related to final salvation. And I think that Catholics using Matthew 20 and that parable shows that Trent Horn’s statement that merit is not like a boss is an unhelpful distinction.
Trent Horn:
Actually, it’s right on target. In the parable of the workers in the field, the laborers who worked all day, earn a day’s wage. But the workers hired at the end of the day who only worked one hour, they also get paid a full day’s wage. They did not strictly merit the wage, because the value of one hour of work isn’t equal to a whole day’s wage. Instead, the pay they receive would be representative of condine merit. The workers deserve their pay only because their boss gratuitously promised he would pay them that much even if the value of their work is not worth that much. When the other laborers protest the employer, he reminds them he kept his promise to them too and says “I’m allowed to be generous to anybody I want.”
Trent Horn:
So if my son does a small act of charity at home, I can give him a small treat. I can give him a huge reward because I’m allowed to be as generous as I want with my child. And the same is true of God’s relationship to us. This includes extreme generosity in the form of God rewarding us for things he did not promise like congruent merit for obeying him, or extreme generosity in the form of rewards god did promise like condine merit where when we obey God, we receive each eternal life by acting under his grace, by doing things like keeping the commandments under the influence of grace.
Mike Winger:
The next one is, he says that when his five year old… And I’m going to quote him now. “When my five year old picks up the leaves in order to help, I might give him a treat but I don’t legally have to give him a treat.” Here’s the problems with this analogy. His analogy leaves out the promise element, right? There’s no promise there. This is from the official teaching of the Catholic Church, right? Eternal life is to be offered both as grace mercifully promised to the sons of God through Christ Jesus and as reward promised by God himself to be faithfully given to their good works and merits.
Mike Winger:
See, it’s not, “I can give you candy if I want to. And if I don’t want to, I don’t have to.” That analogy doesn’t work. It’s promised. If you do the works, you’d get the thing. This is is promised. Okay? I’m just trying to represent Catholic theology properly. Also, the second problem with his analogy is he pretends that eternal life is giving a treat to his kid and he might not give it to him like it’s no big deal. We’re talking about life and death. We’re talking about hell in heaven here. That analogy is meant to build bridges to Protestants through misleading analogies, unfortunately.
Trent Horn:
Congruent merit will involve rewards that aren’t identical to eternal life. You might call them spiritual candy if you will. But when it involves eternal life, we would say that this would be examples of condine merit based on God’s promises related to the reception of eternal life. And I’ve already shown this would be an example of congruent merit rather than condine merit, but we can adapt the analogy you with my son to show both kinds of merit. Notice also that Mike has spent about like 10 minutes rebutting about 10 seconds of my previous material. That’s why direct engagement, it just has the benefit of clearing up these kinds of misunderstandings. In fact, I want to skip ahead to something Mike says because it bears directly on the issue of misrepresentation.
Mike Winger:
He talks about the two stages here. Great. Finally, we’re really talking about two stages now. This is where really I want to focus the conversation to. On stage 1, we agree, mostly. We agree, though, yes, it comes apart from works, right? But I think there is just the one stage as far how you get saved, but the experience of what salvation does in your life is ongoing. Stage 2, though, here’s where we disagree. I say there is no second works based stage in the process of salvation. Trent Horn says the following, and I quote, “The process of justification has an ongoing element that can be increased through our actions.” Now, it’s not that this is an inaccurate description of Roman Catholic theology. It’s accurate. It’s just vague. And it’s so vague that it’s not helpful. The process of justification has an ongoing element that can be increased through our actions, they look at grace almost like it’s a substance and you’re getting more of it, and justification like it’s a substance and if you collect enough of it, you can then achieve that final salvation.
Trent Horn:
First, notice that when I use illustrations to help people understand Catholic teaching, like the analogy of my son, I’m misrepresenting Catholicism because the examples or the simplifications I’m using don’t exhaust the topic. But when I use technical terminology in order to accurately represent Catholic theology as I did here, Mike says I’m just being vague and unhelpful. So this kind of seems like a double standard to me.
Trent Horn:
Second, this section of his reply is probably one of the biggest misrepresentations of Catholic theology in Mike’s response. Catholics do not have to collect a certain amount of grace through good works in order to get into heaven. You just have to have sanctifying grace. Period. That means you just can’t be in a state of mortal sin. Because as the Catechism says, “Mortal sin ‘results in the loss of charity and the privation of sanctifying grace’ that is of the state of grace.” In fact, this is such a big misrepresentation that later in the video Mike denies he ever said such a thing and he accuses me of misrepresenting him. Here’s what he says.
Mike Winger:
He gives a weightlifting analogy and he says and I quote, “This doesn’t mean we have to do a certain number of good works in order to get into heaven,” but I didn’t make that claim, did I? Right? So defeating that claim is pointless for the sake of rebutting me anyways. And this is again and again, there’s this straw man set up. And I think that this gives a disservice to you.
Trent Horn:
That’s true. Mike didn’t say that in his original video. I was replying to a common claim Protestants make. But here’s what Mike says in this video. And it does sound a lot like that claim.
Mike Winger:
They look at grace almost like it’s a substance and you’re getting more of it, and justification like it’s a substance. And if you collect enough of it, you can then achieve that final salvation.
Trent Horn:
Once again, you don’t have to collect grace or increase your justification a certain amount to get to heaven. You just can’t die in a state of mortal sin. There is only one work we must do to merit eternal life, not die in a state of mortal sin. That’s it. And then Mike says this a few minutes later in response to Jimmy Akins analogy about our ongoing justification increasing.
Mike Winger:
Now, I think of justification as an on-off switch. You’re either justified or yanked. But the Roman Catholic theology holds that justification is more like an on-going thing and you can increase the intensity. Let’s keep in mind that until your justification is intense enough, you don’t go to heaven. And that all the justification that comes directly from Jesus isn’t intense enough for the vast majority of Roman Catholics on their theology. They have to add their works or the works of others so that their justification can be intense enough to inter heaven. That’s a pretty big deal.
Trent Horn:
And once again, this is just not true. As I note in my original rebuttal, James chapter 2 says works justify us. And Mike’s explanation about the works merely justifying us before men, that’s not true as I show in my book, The Case for Catholicism. Post baptismal works increase our justification, or they increase our righteousness that we originally received as a free unmerited gift. Protestants usually talk about this in terms of sanctification. They’ll say at least our outward acts become more righteous the more we obey God. Catholics just affirm the same growth can be seen in our souls. And the gift of righteousness we received from Christ initially unmerited, it becomes brighter or more intense, more evident the more we obey him. But all you need to get to heaven is just initial justification.
Trent Horn:
This is why we have complete confidence if a baptized baby dies, he will go to heaven even though he never performed a good work in his entire life. Simply because he has sanctifying grace. We know this because the Council of Trent taught the following. There is no condemnation to those who are truly buried together with Christ by baptism into death, who walk not according to the flesh, but putting off the old man and putting on the new who has created according to God are made innocent, immaculate, pure, harmless, and beloved of God, heirs indeed of God, but joint-heirs with Christ so that there is nothing, whatever, to retard their entrance into heaven.
Trent Horn:
This is what Jimmy writes on the subject. Jimmy Akin says this, “You don’t have to do a diddly-do-dah thing after being justified by God in baptism in order to go to heaven. There is no magic level of works one needs to achieve in order to go to heaven. One is saved the moment one is initially justified. The only things one then does is good works because one loves God, the only kind which receive rewards, and not choose to cast out God’s grace by mortal sin. And even if one does cast it out by mortal sin, the only thing needed to get it back was the same thing needed to get it in the first place: repentance, faith, and the sacrament. Except the sacrament in this case is confession rather than baptism.” People try to make the Catholic message sound complex, but it’s really simple. Repent, believe, and be baptized. Then if you commit mortal sin, repent, believe, and confess. Period. Even a five year old child can understand that.
Trent Horn:
Mike Winger also accuses me in other parts of his reply of misrepresenting the fact that Catholicism teaches that our works merit and increase in our righteousness or justification. But in this clip and a lot of others, I do talk about an increase in justification, but I share an analogy from Jimmy Akin that shows how this increase occurs, the analogy of the light. And Mike takes issue with the analogy. And if I replied to that, that’d be another rebuttal. I don’t want to go down that road because I don’t like doing rebuttals to rebuttals. But the point is, I’m not hiding or misrepresenting Catholicism. I talk about the increase in justification at multiple points in my original rebuttal.
Trent Horn:
All right. So let me address actually the charge that I misrepresented what Mike Winger believes. I’m going to be briefer on this point because it’s more likely people will misunderstand each other. And it’s not as serious as portraying Catholicism to be something that it isn’t. For example, in one part of his response, Mike says this.
Mike Winger:
Stage 1 salvation, they call initial justification. Stage 2 salvation, final justification, or you’ve actually get to heaven later on. And that difference is important for us to understand. So stage 1, initial salvation, it’s said to be by faith alone and not with any works that you perform. It does require baptism. Baptism is required on Catholic teaching, but they’ll say that’s not a work and then it’s just you’re saved by faith alone. Baptism usually applies to new babies or little babies, right? Or new converts to Catholicism. But if you’ve been a Catholic for longer than a few months or a few years or something, if you were an infant and you’re baptized, once you get old enough to be an adult, you are on Stage 2 salvation. You are not on, “I’m saved by believing and getting baptized,” which I don’t think baptism’s required for salvation but that is the teaching of the Catholic Church.
Trent Horn:
So that’s not just Catholic teaching though. It’s biblical teaching.
Mike Winger:
Okay. I want to point this out again. I’m not here being shown to be inaccurate. He actually heard my description of Roman Catholic salvation and he just affirmed it as saying it was biblical. I want to say this, because again if you were following the rhetoric, not the logic, the rhetoric of Trent Horn’s video, then you might be thinking that I was being inaccurate in my description of Roman Catholicism. And just to be honest on a personal note, I’ve spent countless hours working very hard to try to understand Roman Catholic theology and represent it correctly. And to be casually dismissed as misrepresenting is not helping. So he actually says, “No, it’s biblical.” He has not disagreed with any of my descriptions so far. I just want that to be understood.
Trent Horn:
I didn’t say Mike misrepresented Catholic teaching. I’m just saying he’s wrong to say baptismal regeneration is Catholic teaching but it is not true, because it is true. I don’t see what’s wrong with pointing that out, although the biggest misrepresentation Mike and others seem to care about is what I said at the very beginning of my reply about his original video, specifically about Allen Parr and Mike Winger saying Catholicism is a cult. Mike says that I poison the well, that he specifically said he does not think Catholicism is a cult. So first, I’ll play the beginning of my rebuttal and then I’m going to add some commentary.
Trent Horn:
In today’s rebuttal, I’m going to be talking about a video posted by Mike Winger and Allen Parr. They’re two protestant YouTubers. In the video, they talk about different groups that they identify as being cults, or non-Christian groups that claim to be Christian. And one of them are Catholics.
Mike Winger:
While I would say groups 1 through 4 we could identify as probably a cult, we would say those were cult groups, Roman Catholicism, I wouldn’t put that label on it. I wouldn’t put that label on it. So I’m playing now a clip from Trent Horn’s video responding to me. So he plays my clips and his clips. And now I’m playing… This is like clipception going on here. But obviously, again, that’s misrepresentation. Let’s go to the next point.
Mike Winger:
And when we say cult, we don’t mean the Oxford’s studies of definition of cult, which is like any group with religious rituals is considered a cult in that definition. In Christian theology, that’s… And that is a legitimate, scholarly discipline. In Christian theology, the term more denotes someone claiming they’re Christian, but they’re diverting from Christianity on these essential truths.
Trent Horn:
All right. First, notice that I included Mike’s own words, so I didn’t leave out anything he said. Second, the original video’s thumbnail says in big bold letters, “Cult or Christian” So it’s not a stretch to say these guys were talking about six cults. But notice I also said that what they seem to mean by cult is a non-Christian religion that claims to be Christian. In the beginning of their video, Allen Parr makes it clear that they are asking if these six groups are truly Christian.
Allen Parr:
Basically, what Mike and I want to do today is we want to take a close look at six major religious groups. All of these groups claim the name of Christ. If you ask them, do they believe in Jesus, they will say, “Yes, we believe in Jesus.” But I think that we’re asking the wrong question today. Not so much do you believe in Jesus, but what do you believe about Jesus? And that I believe is going to help you understand what a person actually believes and whether or not they are a Christian.
Trent Horn:
So now, I’ll ask, is Catholicism a Christian religion? In this video, all Mike says is that Catholicism is Christian in a sense.
Mike Winger:
And then they have their first earliest creeds of the church. And we would agree on all that. Some of the disagreement coming. Now, I don’t want to de discount that agreement. So you said, is Roman Catholic Christian? Well, in a sense, yes, it is. Like-
Trent Horn:
Well, what does that mean? You either are Christian or you aren’t Christian. You either are saved or you aren’t saved. You have a theology that leads a salvation or a theology that doesn’t. Here’s an interview mike did recently where he said that the teachings of the Catholic Church do not lead to salvation.
Mike Winger:
I even called friends, multiple people who are… They do theology, they’re theology guys. I even talked to the author of a book on Catholicism who’s a Protestant who affirms that Catholics are… That their gospel is good, their gospel is solid, right? And while I would affirm lots of Catholics are saved, lots of Catholics are saved I think it’s in spite of the teachings of Catholicism. I’m going to address the teachings today, not the salvation of every individual Catholic which is depending on what they personally believe.
Allen Parr:
Right.
Mike Winger:
But yeah, I don’t think that’s the case. I called these guys and I was like, “Please help me. Convince me. Please help me.” The Catholic gospel doesn’t compromise the essential gospel of Jesus Christ when it comes to working for your salvation. And what I found was that even the Christians that I talked to who affirmed that the Catholic gospel does save, that it’s salvific according to Trent, according to the official cannons of the church, those guys didn’t have any really good reasons. Like they just said, “Well you don’t have to have right theology in order to be saved or a perfect theology.” And I was like, “Yeah, well, I agree. You don’t have to have perfect theology.” But it seems to me that the Book of Galatians outlines that you do need to believe it’s by grace.
Allen Parr:
Right.
Mike Winger:
And that when you add works, it’s no longer the gospel of Christ, that this seems to be the clear teaching of Galatians. And the guys I talked to were like, “Yeah, that’s a tough one.” And I thought, “Here they are affirming that this gospel is true, which is a big affirmation.”
Allen Parr:
Yeah.
Mike Winger:
And they don’t even have a good reason.
Trent Horn:
So Mike has a dilemma on his hands. He says at the beginning of the video that a cult is a group that claims to be Christian but departs from essential Christian doctrine. So if Mike says the Catholic has a false gospel but it is not a cult, then that would mean the gospel is not essential Christian doctrine. But if Mike says the gospel is essential Christian doctrine and Catholicism does not have the gospel, then the definition of cult it would logically follow. Or he could just say Catholics don’t have a false gospel. He could just treat us like Calvinists or some other Protestant group he disagrees with. But he says that they’re Christians just like him.
Trent Horn:
Finally, let’s talk about Mike’s reasons for not debating or publicly dialoguing with me. Now, I would prefer to do that because it’s way easier than doing this kind of back and forth through rebuttal videos, but he has declined so don’t ask him. Now, one reason he doesn’t want to do a debate or a dialogue is he says it’s too much of a time commitment for him. And that’s understandable. But I still have concerns about people who publicly defend controversial positions, including Catholics who do this by the way, and then refuse to directly engage their critics. That kind of approach can easily lead to the person being kind of trapped in a bubble and being misinformed. But then, Winger says that he absolutely won’t dialogue with me because of the following reasons.
Mike Winger:
Will I debate Trent Horn? Absolutely not. I may debate people in the future if I really feel compelled, if a particular debate stands out to me as something really worthwhile. I’m not at all interested in debating Trent Horn because I think he’s misleading. I think he misrepresents me. I think he plays games. I think he side steps my points. He misrepresent even sometimes it seems Roman Catholic theology in places. And I’m like, “How am I supposed to debate this?” It ends up being a rhetorical battle that doesn’t promote clarity for people. And also, multiple times he’s gone to social media to try to stir up people who fled our inbox and make my assistant Sarah super busy. And it’s rude. Okay? So I’m not going to reward rudeness. I did that once before.
Trent Horn:
As I’ve shown, I haven’t misrepresented Catholicism. But if I did misrepresent anything, a direct engagement would be a good place to show me and to show everybody else, that would be good. I don’t really know what he means by saying that I play games. Your guess is as good as mine when it comes to that. I’ve never told people to flood Mike’s inbox to demand he debate me. I’m not saying he’s saying I did that, but it’s kind of implied. Here is what I have said on social media regarding debating or dialoguing with Mike Winger. I’ve gone back to try to find as many social media posts as I can. I apologize if I didn’t find all of them. I tried to do the advance search feature on all my different social media accounts, but this is what I came up with.
Trent Horn:
So back in January of 2020, oh simpler times, Shannon Q online, an atheist on Twitter said “Trent Horn and Mike Winger, you guys should speak together about this sometime. That would be interesting to listen to.” My reply, “I’d definitely be happy to do that. Perhaps in the future, Mike and I can have a public discussion on the matter. Even a private one among Christian brothers would be fine too.” So I think it’s the earliest I referenced engaging Mike.
Trent Horn:
Fast forward to May 28th, 2020, Mike says on Twitter to a general post, “Do you want to have a debate with me? I’m probably not going to do it. It’s not my gifting or my ministry focus. I may do rare debates, but I get invites. Many of which are rude and hostile to debates every few days. For me, debates will be few and far between if at all.” Then someone, Catholic friend, writes underneath. “I understand you not wanting to do debates, but there are big holes in your theology. Would you rather use a debate to find the truth?” Mike replies, “Debates aren’t primarily about the debaters themselves finding out much of anything. They are about persuading audiences toward one view or the other. To change my mind, one can make a very careful and thoughtful reputation of my views in video or writing.”
Trent Horn:
To which he then replies, Catholic friends says, “You should check out Trent Horn’s videos then.” Mike says, “I have. The problem is the wandering nature of the rebuttal combined with incomplete responses to my central arguments and quite a few digressions into arguments I never made. It’s more for those who just want to hear someone say I’m wrong about everything.” Then I replied under this. To Mike, I said to him, “I’m happy to offer a comprehensive response to your position outside of a spoken debate. We could do a written debate for example, and then release it as a free ebook for people. That way the issues are addressed more thoroughly.”
Trent Horn:
Mike replies, “Thank you for the offer, but I’m not up for it. I’d recommend you take up James White’s offer to debate you on the papacy or justification. He’s an accomplished debater like yourself and well versed on the issues.” Then I ended that exchange by saying, “Well, if you change your mind, you can always let me know. As for James White, I’m not familiar with an offer he’s made to debate me. If he has, I’ll certainly consider it. So far, I have a standing offer to James White to debate him on sola scriptura, and he can debate me on apostolic succession.” I’ll talk about that more in a future episode if you guys want. “If he has, I’ll consider it. I reached out to his colleague, Jeff Durban, to debate sola scriptura, but never heard back.” That was in May.
Trent Horn:
Then I think if you fast forward to the end of June, July… I don’t know the chronological order of these. Some of these are YouTube posts, they don’t have the exact date. But this was when I did a… I posted another rebuttal to Mike Winger. And so I let people know. When people see that I’ve posted a rebuttal to him, a lot of people ask, “Hey, why don’t you just debate him? You should debate Mike. Debate Mike.” So I put a post on YouTube. I said, “I am more than willing to sit down with Mike Winger and publicly engage him on Catholicism. Mike has said in the past that he doesn’t feel called to do debates anymore. And I am happy to accommodate that preference. We can instead do a moderated dialogue or a prerecorded debate where we share our opening statements and rebuttals, and each person has plenty of time to record a response.”
Trent Horn:
I then tweeted, this is June 29th, 2020, I think related to this, that a user on YouTube said to Mike… I tweeted this image. He said, “Trent Horn, the Roman Catholic, kindly requested to have a debate with you to challenge you on your claims, why haven’t you got back to him if you’re so confident? This is a sincere question. I’m not trying to be rude. I’m a Protestant who’s doubting Protestantism. I’m wondering why most Protestant apologists turned down debates against Catholic apologists.” Now, if that’s referencing the YouTube post earlier, I tagged Mike, but I wasn’t directly reaching out to him per se. I was just letting people know and him know indirectly, “Hey, you guys want me to engage Mike, I’m happy to do that.” That was my public declaration on the matter. And Mike was free to publicly say, “No, I’m not going to do that.”
Trent Horn:
So then Mike says under it, “He asked me a number of times over the past year and I’ve answered. He’s got me on messenger. It seems like he’s just posting publicly to stir people like you to come onto my channel and post comments.” That’s really reading into people’s motivations. And I certainly was not motivating that. People ask me, “Will you debate so and so or so and so?” And if it’s someone I would like to debate, I let people know that that’s the case.
Trent Horn:
My intent is not to encourage people to go and pile on somebody. In fact, that is why in this Twitter post, I wrote, “Per pastor Mike Winger’s comments below, I don’t support bullying people into debates. I offer public forums as a courtesy to avoid endless cycles of rebuttal videos and because I think in person engagements, either through debates, dialogues, or even written series of exchanges are more productive. But it seems that pastor Mike doesn’t want to do that, which is fine. It’s his right to decide where he’s called to engage people as an apologist. However, if a critic like him continues to go after my faith with new videos, as he’s done recently, then I will rebut him as my schedule allows.”
Trent Horn:
And so, then I tweeted this and included a YouTube conversation with Winger around the same time I think, that people were saying… Here’s what I tweeted. “Some people tell me, ‘You should just sit down with someone and not make rebuttal videos of them.’ I think both are helpful, which is why I offer public engagements to the people I rebut. However, Mike Winger has refused to do that, which is his right, but I will still rebut him.” And then included under that, I included my reply to Mike in a YouTube comment. I said, “Yeah, I’m happy to debate him.” He said, “Not interested as I’ve explained numerous times. Please stop hounding me.”
Trent Horn:
And this was the last exchange I’ve had with him on the matter what I posted underneath. I said, “Mike, as long as you keep publicly accusing Catholicism of being false, I will keep publicly correcting your flawed arguments. I just wanted to offer the courtesy of being able to engage one another directly on these issues, but I will respect your decision to not do that and will not make any future offers for a public engagement. However, the door is always open if you change your mind.” I don’t know. Does that seem rude to you?
Trent Horn:
Well, it’s unfortunate that Mike has joined the ranks of other people who don’t want to publicly dialogue with me. I don’t understand why. I think that… And I’m open to a wide variety of formats to make it comfortable for the other person. It doesn’t have… It could be written. It could be moderated dialogue. It could be lots of different things. And I think these kinds of engagements are helpful to get at the truth, to produce more light than heat. Mike doesn’t want to do that. I don’t really understand why. Some other people don’t want to, but other people do want to dialogue with me. I’m really excited to have some dialogues and debates set up for 2022. And I think you guys will really like them.
Trent Horn:
But in any case, I hope that this video was helpful for you. And by the way, this is not about Mike Winger in particular. I’ve addressed it a lot because Mike’s arguments against Catholicism have reached a lot of people. He’s done a good job growing his YouTube channel. He has a significant reach via podcast and YouTube, but when he leads people away from the church Jesus Christ established, something has to be done. And so that’s why I want to charitably engaged him. And if I misrepresent him or I’m not clear about something, I’m open to feedback to produce a better reply.
Trent Horn:
So that’s all I want to share for now. There were other things in the video. Once again, I’m not doing rebuttals to rebuttals. I think what I would like to do is, one, self-contained reply to all the things that Mike Winger has said about Catholicism. Heavy task I know, but I think it’ll be very helpful. And I would love for Mike Winger to help me make sure that that reply at the very least does not misrepresent him.
Trent Horn:
So thank you guys for watching. If you want more rebuttal videos like these or you want to support us, definitely go check us out at trenthornpodcast.com. So thank you guys. And I hope you have a very blessed day.
Trent Horn:
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