Audio only:
In this episode Trent sits down with Fr. Gabriel and Fr. Anthony of Coptic Orthodox Answers to address the errors of sola scriptura and transgenderism.
Transcription:
Trent:
Happy New Year everyone. To kick off 2025, I want to share with you two clips from two interviews that I had recently with the priests who hosts the YouTube channel, Coptic Orthodox Answers. Father Anthony and Father Gabriel are great men of God. And we talked about things that we share as apostolic Christians. So in this first clip, we talk about the issue of transgender identity and in particular pronouns and how we can address that by presenting the truth, but doing so in love.
Fr. Gabriel:
Are we mandated as Christians to voice our opinion? So not so much the idea or are we mandated to? I mean, I find a lot of views sometimes within our communities that know their faith, understand their faith, they live their faith, but they have this idea that everybody should live freely, which is absolutely true. However, that pushes them from speaking up and being the light of the world,
Trent:
And
Fr. Gabriel:
They rather choose to stay in their own corner. Can we be Christians and look at this darkness in front of us and just remain silent?
Trent:
I think one can be a Christian, but they would be one that the Lord would disapprove. The Lord would say that you are taking your light and hiding it under the bushel basket, and that’s not what we’re called to do as Christians. Now that doesn’t mean we have to say something at every single opportunity. We have to use prudence to discern, is this a good opportunity to raise the topic or is it not an opportune time right at this moment? But there can be sins of omission if to a grave scale, you’re simply refusing to speak up for the truth or speak up for those who are being harmed, for example, in the world today. So we have an obligation to do that, but each of us has to look to our own conscious and discernment to determine what particular circumstances we should speak up in or not.
Fr. Anthony:
Well said. I think that’s especially important for people to feel empowered to be able to speak the truth and love now more than ever because I don’t know what it’s like where you live right now in the United States, Trent, but we happen to live here in Canada and in Canada now. It’s reached a point where a child who’s not allowed to go watch certain movies because of their age, a child who is not allowed to be able to go purchase alcohol or even person who’s not even allowed to sign to be able to rent a vehicle, is allowed to walk into a hospital and to say, I want to sign up for vendor affirming surgery, which will ultimately lead to some really, really drastic and devastating effects.
Trent:
Yeah, it is ultimately inconsistent. And many of these people say, well, some of those other things, they’re not as important. But we understand that if something has lifelong consequences for someone, that we don’t allow children to do it. That’s why we don’t let children enlist in the army. We don’t let children enter into contracts. Even in a lot of schools, you can’t prescribing even over the counter medicines parental approval. This is something that I’ve seen so many tragic cases of young people who when they’re 17 or 18, go and do this when they’re eventually allowed to do it. And then when they’re 25, 30 realizing they made the biggest mistake of their life, and it’s something that is truly tragic, that at the very least children should be protected from these lifelong mistakes that can be made if not all people.
Fr. Anthony:
And one thing that I think both of our traditions, the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church have in common is that we firmly believe in spiritual warfare. And it’s very clear. It’s very clear that there is a spiritual war that is targeting our children right now because now we’ve reached a point to where a school needs my permission to be able to take my child across the street and go to a park and do a field trip, but they don’t need my consent to be able to have conversations about their sexuality and their gender without my consent. It’s reached a whole other level of targeting and propaganda and indoctrination, and it’s very sad to see and to remain silent to your point on this, to remain silent in face of this evil would be for the Lord to look at us and say, but I gave you a light. Why wasn’t it shined?
Trent:
Right.
Fr. Anthony:
Yeah. Let me ask one last question about this whole subject of gender and the societies that we live in today. Gender and gender ideology and everything that revolves around transgender rights has also caused us to ask questions regarding language and the use of pronouns. And obviously here in Canada, I’m sure you’ve heard of Dr. Jordan Peterson. He was involved in quite a bit of a debacle when it came to him taking a stance as to how it is that we should not force people to speak in certain ways when it came to pronouns and the use of pronouns because it’s such a sensitive thing. What advice would you give the Christians who want, they really do want to love and honor their neighbor, their brother and sister in Christ, but they feel disingenuous about the use of pronouns with trans colleagues or trans friends, and is there exceptions, in which case we have to use wisdom in their sermon where it’s okay, what are your thoughts on this?
Trent:
I think that Christians have to make a firm stand on this issue. And so we shouldn’t lie. We should not. If I say refer to a woman as he or a man as she and I know clearly that’s a man or that’s a woman and I’m lying about an essential part of their identity, Christians shouldn’t lie about that. So I feel very firm that they should not go along with that, that at best they could maybe accommodate, they could say, all I will use the singular, instead of saying he said that, I’ll say they said that or refer to them by their name, even their new name. People can get all kinds of names. There’s men with feminine names, women with masculine names, but the pronouns I think are much more problematic in that they are really lying about the nature of the person. And it can be scandalous for others who see us using incorrect pronouns. We might think, oh, I guess Father or Trent doesn’t think that’s really a big deal when it is a big deal. So I believe Christians need to take a stand, but you can work with people to say, can I accommodate you? I want you to feel comfortable. I’m not going to lie about you, but I could use words that you might be more open to hearing.
Fr. Anthony:
And it’s that second piece that you mentioned there that most people I think don’t realize how important that is for you to have a conversation with the person and to say, I want to accommodate you. I want to meet you where you are. I don’t want to make you feel disrespected. Here’s what I am willing to do. And in so doing, I think you’re actually showing much more love than bigotry, although the people who are in the audience looking at that conversation might think otherwise, but their opinions don’t necessarily matter in that relationship.
Trent:
And in this next clip, father Anthony and Father Gabriel and myself discuss the issue of Sola scriptura and we find some common ground here as well in some of the finer points of engaging this doctrine and the scripture versus used to support it.
Fr. Anthony:
I’m very curious, and I know that a lot of people like to reference back two Timothy three 16 when it comes to soul of scripture, but is there any other scriptural texts that they refer to to be able to demonstrate even from scripture that scripture points to scripture alone?
Trent:
There’s very few. Second Timothy would be the primary one. All scripture is inspired and useful for teaching reproof correction, training and righteousness, which we firmly agree. Scripture is useful for all those things. But Paul doesn’t say Scripture is sufficient or it’s the only thing that we need because there’s other things that we need to, we need prayer. We need holiness, for example. We need to pursue that. We need community in the body of Christ. A few other verses that might come to mind in Acts chapter 17, some Protestants will say that the Berean were considered more noble than the thesal and aikens because it says they searched the scriptures daily to see if what Paul said was true. But that doesn’t follow that the Berean only believed in scripture alone because they had to accept Paul’s oral proclamation of the gospel, rather what made the Berean noble the problem here?
That story would work for a Protestant if the problem was that the Thess and kins were gullible and would believe any doctrine and didn’t check it, and the Bereans were noble, and when they heard a doctrine, they checked it against scripture. That was not the dispute in Acts 17. The dispute was that the Thesal and Ekins heard Paul and didn’t want to give him a fair hearing, so they ran him out of town. But the Bereans were more noble because it says they searched the scriptures daily. They had a love for scripture and a love for hearing God’s truth. And so they were open to Paul’s message. They were noble in that regard. That’s what’s going on here, has nothing to do. Let’s talk about solo s scriptura. And the only other one might be Mark seven, where Jesus condemns the traditions of men of the Pharisees in relation to the core bond rule. But here that doesn’t prove solo S, all it proves is there are bad traditions that does not disprove that there are authentic traditions from God. Two Thessalonians two 15 says, there are traditions handed on by word of mouth or by letter just the same. There are Paul warns about counterfeit scripture. He warns about forgeries, and there were apocryphal gospels in the church. But the existence of false scripture doesn’t negate true scripture. The existence of false tradition does not negate true tradition.
Fr. Gabriel:
But a scripture here, is it speaking about New Testament scripture like in these verses you quoted?
Trent:
No, it couldn’t possibly be talking about that here. So in Acts 17, that can’t be solo scriptura because the Berean were looking at the Old Testament to see, oh yeah, what Paul is saying, it doesn’t contradict the Old Testament, but what Paul was preaching that the Messiah would be crucified and rise from the dead three days later. They had to take Paul’s word for that. That was not in the Old Testament, at least explicitly. And so they had to take Paul’s word that yes, this is the fulfillment of these prophecies. And then second Timothy, when Paul tells Timothy that scripture’s inspired and it’s useful, he’s talking about the Old Testament. He’s talking about its abilities. Once again, there is no scripture that says all of the Apostles teaching would eventually be confined to the episodic writings.
Fr. Gabriel:
I think potentially the only scripture that can speak about New Testament is two Peter three 16 potentially, right?
Trent:
Yes, yes. And that’s ironic because here Protestants will often say that scripture’s the only infallible rule of faith, and the church is not needed to understand it. There are things that are difficult, but the main things God wants us to know in scripture, any man with do means can come to know ’em. But the problem is, second Peter three 16 says that there are things, Peter says there are things in Paul’s letters that the ignorant and unstable twisted are own destructions as there’s confusing things in there that they don’t understand and they twist to their own destruction. And anybody going through Paul’s letter to the Romans, to Galatians these theologically sophisticated works, and many people have gleaned all kinds of heresies from them because they can’t read it in its original context.
Fr. Gabriel:
And what I find very interesting here is that St. Peter, here he is showing the authority of the church. So he’s telling them that we understand what scripture means, right? So don’t twist it in a different way. So it actually goes against the understanding of soul scripture.
Trent:
Exactly.
Fr. Gabriel:
Are there, Anthony, any comments on this one? I
Fr. Anthony:
Just think it’s super interesting for us to maybe contemplate a little bit on that second Timothy three 16 where he talks about this God inspired or God breathed, depending on how it is that you understand that Greek word theto or however it is that you choose to say it. I know many people say it in different ways. No,
Trent:
But you’re pronouncing it correctly because you obviously, I find that more people from the East that have this connection, I hear a lot of people pronounce it, and I used to pronounce it this way, I heard Protestants pronounce it, but there isn’t a, in coin, a Greek, there isn’t a silent pie.
Fr. Anthony:
That’s
Trent:
Right. So it’s not, for example, we say Numa, but it’s pma.
Fr. Anthony:
Yeah, that’s
Trent:
Right. So that’s the,
Fr. Anthony:
It’s very similar in the Coptics or the Coptic and the Greek are, they share that in common. And that word is especially interesting because the Ima part of is meant to be understood as God breathing life, right? And hence why they say God inspired, which really holds me back to the end of the gospel of John, where the Lord breathes on his disciples and he gives them the Holy Spirit. And they are the ones who are granted the authority to have life and to be inspired because they are the church. And it’s interesting, the commentary of the Fathers, they would say that that’s them before Pentecost receiving the Holy Order of Hood. And it’s interesting to me how it is that we miss that the God breathed scripture or God inspired scripture that Paul will speak about in two Timothy, but we miss the reception of the Holy Spirit in the church through the apostles at the end of that gospel. And so there’s something there to be said about how it is that you cannot divorce scripture from the church and you cannot divorce the church from scripture. To do so is to annihilate what it is that the Lord intended to have as his kingdom here on earth.
Trent:
Thank you guys so much for watching. If you want to check out the full interviews that I gave, click on the links below and be sure to go and check out Father Gabriel and Father Anthony’s channel, Coptic Orthodox Answers. I’ll link to that as well. Thank you guys so much and I hope you have a blessed day and a blessed 2025.