In this “open mailbag episode” Trent answers his patron’s questions about a wide variety of subjects from deep theological questions to controversial issues like Santa or “pineapple on pizza?”.
Welcome to The Council of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Hey, everyone. Welcome to The Council of Trent podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answer’s apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. I’m recording this episode from my hotel room in San Antonio. I’m sitting at the St. Anthony down here in San Antonio because that’s where Catholic Answers is having a meeting with a group of donors who support us a lot. They’re part of the founders circle. So I’m down here. It’s a really cool hotel. It reminds me a little bit of the hotel from the Tower of Terror. It gives me that 1930s, looks nice, might be haunted kind of vibe.
Trent Horn:
Then later somebody told me, “Oh yeah, I think this is actually on the ghost tour of San Antonio.” I’m like, “Great. That’s exactly what I needed to hear,” but it’s been really great to meet a lot of our supporters here. I should be going out soon, actually, to interview our president, Chris Check, on the real story behind Galileo. So hopefully I’ll be able to do that and that air as our podcast episode for tomorrow, hopefully, if everything goes smoothly and according to plan.
Trent Horn:
But today what I wanted to do was to do something that I haven’t done in a really long time, and that would be open mailbag. We have a really diverse community of supporters at trendhornpodcast.com, and from time to time, I’ll take questions from our patrons there. And if you want to support the podcast, please consider checking it out. Trenthornpodcast.com. You get access to a lot of great bonus content. So every patron there at any subscription level gets access to my catechism study series. It’s a video lecture series that goes through the entire catechism. Next up from that, you can get access to our New Testament study series, a video lecture series that goes through the whole New Testament.
Trent Horn:
I also get suggestions for episodes. I love interacting with people in the comments there, and people can submit their questions for future episodes, and that’s what we have today. We’ve got a lot of great questions that were submitted. I’m going to be with some of the questions submitted by our gold level subscribers. Thank you guys for being able to submit those. And if you’re gold level, you also get a mug with The Council of Trent logo on it. That’s always a lot of fun. So let’s jump into some of these questions, then.
Trent Horn:
Question number one: I was just reading a book on Eastern Orthodoxy, and one of the points made was that since St. Peter was Bishop of Antioch, that bishop would be Peter’s successor just as much as the Pope of Rome. How should Catholics respond to this?
Trent Horn:
It’s an interesting question and objection, though the people who raise it, what I would find interesting is if I ask them, “Okay, so you think that Peter’s true successor is the Bishop of Antioch, not the Bishop of Rome because church tradition and history tells us that Peter was the Bishop at Antioch before he became the Bishop of Rome and died at Rome,” I would ask them, “Well, do you think the Bishop of Antioch has Peter’s universal primacy over the church?” So would you be comfortable saying, “Okay, maybe the Bishop of Rome isn’t the Pope, but the Patriarch of Antioch,” for example. His successor is the Pope over the entire church.
Trent Horn:
I think many of them would say, “Well, no, of course not. We think all of the patriarchs and the bishops have equal authority.” There are some patriarchs maybe more eminent than others, but I don’t think that they would … They’re not going to say that suddenly it’s the successor of Antioch rather than Rome who is the Pope because they deny the office of the papacy itself or they have a very limited view of the role of the papacy among the other patriarchs in the church. But I would say that I don’t find this objection to be a strong one because here’s the explanation.
Trent Horn:
Peter had a successor at Antioch after he left for Rome, but after leaving Antioch, he still retained his unique charisms, or gift, his unique office and primacy over the church. So even after leaving the Sea of Antioch and going to be in Rome at the end of his life, he still retained that unique office. His successor in Antioch received the bishopric, or the episcopacy at Antioch, but did not receive Peter’s unique charisms because Peter retained them because he was still alive at this point when he went to Rome. So Peter still retains these things. Then he goes to Rome, and then in dying at Rome, his successor in Rome receives the full primacy over the church that Peter once had and that Peter no longer has because he’s been martyred in Rome.
Trent Horn:
So I think that would make sense to say why the successor of the Bishop of Rome would have primacy over the church rather than successor of whoever holds the Sea of Antioch, even Peter did hold both … He was bishop over both cities. The final claim would lay in where Peter died. That’s why there are a lot of Protestants who have spent a lot of time arguing saying that, “Oh, well, Peter was never actually in Rome, and Catholics made that up.” No, actually, when you read people like Sean McDowell, he is a Protestant apologist, and he focuses more, though, on mere Christianity, about defending the existence of God, the resurrection of Jesus. He has a wonderful book on the historical fate of the 12 apostles, and he says the historical evidence is very clear that Peter died in Rome. And so he’s a Protestant and he sees nothing problematic with that assertion.
Trent Horn:
All right. Here’s number two. Do you guys do Santa with your kiddos? Why or why not? Now, there’s the controversial question, right? Do you guys do Santa? And then of course, now that Halloween is done, it’s like Christmas is kicked into high gear, basically, or it’s like, “Oh, we’ve got to start,” and I’m seeing Christmas lights going up, things like that. It’s a loaded question. “Do you do Santa?” Because if you say, “No, I don’t,” “You don’t even do St. Nicholas? You won’t teach them about St. Nicholas, how he punched Arius and left gifts for impoverished children?”
Trent Horn:
Well, of course I tell them about St. Nicholas. Do I tell them that there is a jolly rotund man dressed in red who flies in a magical sleigh and commits millions of acts of breaking and entering every year in December to give kids gifts? No, I don’t. I don’t do it. I’m not going to raise a big stink, though, about parents who do do that with their children. It’s their kids can do what they can do what they want within reason. I don’t do that. “Well, Trent, why don’t you do that?” You know what’s funny, one of the big reasons I don’t do Santa? Some of you might think, “Oh, it’s because lying is a sin,” and all those other serious reasons. And actually, those are valid reasons.
Trent Horn:
Look, I bought the presents. I saved up the money. I went out and shopped. I don’t want this fictional character getting credit for something that I did. It’s not Santa that got you those presents at the bottom of the tree. Dad did that, okay? So you know where to direct your thanks and everything. But in all seriousness, the modern mythos of Santa, it’s not [inaudible 00:06:57] support for me and my family. That’s just how I feel. The lying part, I don’t like. I want my kids to know that when they ask me, “Is X real or not,” they know they will always get a straight answer from me. And so I’ll tell them, “Darth Vader is not real. Iron Man is not real. Jesus is real,” and then when they about other people, they’ll say, “Is Buddha real?” Well, Buddha was a person who lived and who tried to do what he thought was right. But he’s not God. He doesn’t have divine powers.
Trent Horn:
I can tell them about these different things, what are certain things? Are aliens real? Maybe. It’s possible. God made other creatures in the universe like us. Some of them, maybe they sin, maybe they didn’t. But there doesn’t seem to be evidence that they do exist, but maybe. I want to be as legitimate with my kids. When they ask me, “Is X real?” They know they’ll always get the correct and straight answer from me. So they ask me, “Is Santa real?” I’ll say, “Well, no, he’s not.” But what’s interesting is that we just don’t bring it up. We just don’t really bring up Santa, and the kids don’t get into it. I mean, they know who Santa is, but I think they put Santa in the same slot as Mickey Mouse. He’s a really fun character. They like stuff involving him, but they know that.
Trent Horn:
Honestly, the biggest thing with me and Santa, what’s the problem with me and Santa, our problems? Is some people say, “Well, Trent, don’t you want your kids to have more magic in their Christmas experience?” For me, the idea of the incarnate eternal Word becoming man, becoming a little one-celled organism within the womb of Mary and then being born to shepherds and having a star and an angel announcing his birth, that the creator has become a creature to save mankind, is that not magical enough for you? Are you not entertained? Is this not magical enough for you? I think that’s how I feel. I think that we can have enough magic.
Trent Horn:
One thing we did, actually, at our Byzantine Catholic church a few years ago was they did this Saint … Well, was it? Well, we did a St. Nicholas party, but they also did an epiphany play. So we did a play talking, and I was actually Herod in the play. So they had the parents involved with the kids, and I could do my villain voice to be Herod. Ha, ha, ha, ha! Oh, some of the kids were in it, but the kids got to watch, and they thought that that was just the best thing ever. And so I think as Catholics, there’s more than enough in our tradition to make it magical without Santa. But if you like telling Santa and leaving out carrots that get eaten and cookies with a bite taken out of them and the reindeer, hey, that’s your family. Do What you think is most is responsible and prudent. That’s just an insight into our family, and I hope it’s helpful for you.
Trent Horn:
Speaking of which, I’m going to jump ahead to a question since I brought up the Byzantine stuff. I’m sure I’m going to butcher this. I’m going to do my best. Slava Isusu Christu. “Hey, Trent. I’m curious,” and that of course is a praise to Jesus Christ. So I think it’s Ukrainian. I’m not sure. “Hey, Trent, I’m curious as to why you don’t talk about Eastern Catholicism more. It would be nice to see it, to be honest.” I mean, I think I mentioned Byzantine when we go to divine liturgy, and that’s something we enjoy.
Trent Horn:
We’re still discerning a bit about parishes and things like that, but we’ve really enjoyed going to St. Basil The Great here in Dallas and the Irving area. There’s a lot of great churches here in the Dallas, Fort Worth areas. It’s one of the reasons we chose to move here. There are so many great Catholic churches. And for people who are considering moving, let’s say you want to get out of certain places like I did, I’ve really enjoyed the Dallas, Fort Worth area. They have Byzantine, Maronite, many great Novus Ordo parishes. They have extraordinary form. They have the Anglican Ordinariate, which is not far from us. So it’s been great.
Trent Horn:
But why don’t I talk about it a lot more? Because I’m still learning. I’m not really an expert in Eastern Catholicism. I really enjoy the Byzantine Rite, but I don’t feel that I’m in a place where I can just expound upon it for lots of episodes. Perhaps I’ll invite an expert to come on the podcast and we can talk about it more, but I find it be beautiful. I haven’t talked about it a lot because it’s just not a source of expertise. I love it. I enjoy taking part in the worship, but I’m still learning about everything. So a good podcast related to that is Light Of The East.
Trent Horn:
So Light Of The East is a wonderful podcast that talks about Eastern Catholicism. We also have a 20 answers booklet from Catholic Answers called 20 Answers Eastern Catholicism. I’d highly recommend that if you want to grow. It’s by Father Deacon Daniel Dozier. I think he might be a priest now. Oh, by the way, in Eastern church, they have a very broad view of spiritual fatherhood, so deacons are actually called Father Deacon. So if you’re a deacon, you’re called Father Deacon, and then when you become a priest, you’re just Father. But he wrote that. I think he is a priest now, but it was called 20 answers Eastern Catholic Churches. Definitely check it out. You can get it at shop.catholic.com.
Trent Horn:
All right. What are some of the next questions here? Does pineapple belong on pizza? I used to say it does, and now … I’m not going to say no. I’m going to say I have a lot of doubts. I’ve had a crisis of faith. I’m not so sure anymore. Ham and pineapple used to do by favorite pizza. I haven’t eaten it in years. So I’m a fallen away ham and pineapple person. I fell away many years ago. Maybe I could have a reversion. I don’t know. So we’ll just have to see if the ham and pineapple people can do something to really bring me back to that faith. But I think I’ve fallen away. Then eventually, I might become someone who argues against it, but I’m very skeptical of that. That’s the one fun one we had to put in there.
Trent Horn:
Here’s another one: I’ve got a Protestant friend who is trying to argue a Christian cannot lose his salvation using Romans 8, specifically versus 38 through 39. “For, I am sure,” this is where Paul writes,” For I am sure that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor things present nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God and Christ Jesus, our Lord.” So when you read that verse, it sounds like, “Oh, well, Paul is saying nothing can separate us from God, right?” Well, he doesn’t say nothing. He talks about a wide variety of things, of powers. He talks about there are no powers that rival God that would take us away from God or make God incapable of saving us.
Trent Horn:
Now whether there are things that happen in this world, whether it’s angelic powers, whether it’s death itself, there is no power that rivals God that would prevent Him from saving us, prevent Him from exercising His will from showing His love for us. But notice that in this list, there’s one item that’s missing that I find very interesting. He says, “Death, life, angels, principalities, things present to come, powers, height, depth, anything else in all creation.” He doesn’t say sin. Isn’t that interesting here in Roman’s 8, 38 through 39? He doesn’t say, “Neither death nor life nor sin will separate us.” Doesn’t say that. He doesn’t even say, “Or we, or ourselves.” So he is talking about how between us and God, we have nothing to fear that will come between us and God, except for ourselves.
Trent Horn:
The only thing that we should take care and concern about is will we come between our relationship with God and ourselves? Will we turn away? I just find that interesting. Romans 8, 38 through 39, he doesn’t say sin, but that is what sin is. Sin separates us from God because we’ve broken God’s law. We have offended him. We have loved the creature more than the creator, and Paul’s very clear about this. You go ahead three chapters in Romans Chapter 11, Romans 11:22, and Paul talks about how the … He talks about the Gentiles and the Jews and how he has hope that the Jews will be saved, even though many of them rejected Jesus as the Messiah. And he talks about the Gentiles being grafted into the covenant, just like how you take an olive branch, you can graft it. You can get it to grow into an existing olive tree.
Trent Horn:
He’s saying that is what God has done to the Gentiles. But then Romans 11:22, God says, “Take care that you continue in God’s kindness.” He talks about the other branches in the tree that had been cut off before. Jesus uses that example of branches being cut off in John 15, “You must be united to Him, remain Him. I am the true vine. There are others that will be off who do not bear fruit and will be gathered and burned.” In Romans Chapter 11, Paul says the same thing, but he’s talking about branches being cut off. He says, “Continue in God’s kindness or you, too, will be cut off,” if you choose to not continue in God’s kindness and choose to dwell and manifest in sin, especially until the day of judgment, whether it’s the end of time or a personal judgment at the end of one’s own life.
Trent Horn:
So if you want more on that, by the way, in my book, The Case for Catholicism, I have a whole chapter on eternal security, the idea that you cannot lose your salvation. That is something that was unknown in the church prior it to the time of John Calvin. In my debate with James White, I challenged him to produce a citation from a church father saying that they believed you could not lose your salvation prior to Calvin. He gave offhanded reference to Fulgentius, I think, but he couldn’t produce a citation, because you can’t. It was a reformation era doctrine. It was a very Calvinist doctrine. Even Luther didn’t accept it.
Trent Horn:
All right. Let’s take a look at some of these here. Why are Protestants so afraid of the crucifix? It seems like a barrier before they can appreciate Catholicism. I remember actually when I did a video a long time ago, I did a video where I responded to a guy who did this whole rap, “Why I hate religion, but love Jesus,” and I did a response to it, and in the background I had a crucifix on the wall. Now I was reading in the YouTube comments, Protestants saying, “Take down that crucifix. Jesus is risen.”
Trent Horn:
I think there are two reasons that Protestants have given for why they don’t traditionally want the crucifix. Well, three reasons. They prefer, oftentimes, the cross without the corpus, without Jesus’s body on it, though there’s different reasons. One would be graven images. They’ll say, “Well, we shouldn’t make statues or images of God or of holy people because that violates the commandments, to not make graven images.” Except that actual command, you took it literally, it says, “Don’t make images of anything, on earth, under the earth, above the earth.” So it’s not like, “Oh, you can’t just make an image of God. You can’t make an image of anything.” So even the image of the cross would also be considered, if you took that very strictly, to be a violation of The 10 Commandments.
Trent Horn:
So I think that’s one reason they might be concerned about graven images, which doesn’t make sense here because we don’t worship a crucifix like it is God. It is an image that reminds us of what God has done, just like the cross reminds Protestants of what Jesus has done. Some of them will say, “Well, the crucifix only makes us think of the crucifixion. We want to know that Christ has risen.” I actually find that to be kind of the weaker. It’s a weaker reason. “We want to focus on the resurrection, not the crucifixion,” to which I would say, “Well, and empty, bare cross without Jesus on it, that’s not a symbol that Jesus has risen from the dead because Jesus was going to come off the cross, whether he would rise or not.”
Trent Horn:
There are many other atheists and other people who would agree, “Well, yeah. There was a cross there and he came off of it. Doesn’t mean that he rose.” If anything, you should make an image of a cave with a stone rolled away. That should be your image of the resurrection, if you want to celebrate the resurrection rather than the crucifixion. So I’ve heard that. They’ll say, “Well, no Christ is risen. Don’t have the crucifix. Have the empty cross.” Well, no. An empty cross doesn’t communicate that anyways, and besides celebrating the passion of our Lord, that he could not have risen from the dead if he had not died and offered himself as the Lamb of God sacrificed on Calvary …
Trent Horn:
I think for Catholics, we see everything Christ, his trial, his suffering, his death, his burial, his resurrection, we see it in more of a continuous hole that we just refer to it as, “The Paschal Mystery,” instead of seeing it in broken up chunks. I’m not saying Protestants necessarily do this, but in talking about the crucifixion, we don’t just isolate it there. We see the whole. We see how Christ offered himself on the cross for us, and in dying, he rose, Romans 4:15, he rose again for our justification, and then we receive Jesus under the form of bread and wine, and so we receive that which has been gloriously resurrected, but we receive that one sacrifice that was offered on Calvary. That one sacrifice in the unbloody form. We receive it under the form of bread and wine.
Trent Horn:
And so here, at the Mass, we have the perfect merging, if you will, of both the crucifixion and the resurrection put together at the Mass because we receive the glorified body of that one sacrifice, which was crucified for us. We do not crucify Christ again. That’s a common caricature. Christ had one bloody sacrifice, and now he has re-presented to us, he’s re-presented to the Father on the altar, under the form of bread and wine. Through his glorified body, he is able to do that.
Trent Horn:
And that, I think, is the real reason, when you go back to the reformers and others as to why Protestants abandoned the crucifix, because the crucifix was associated with the fact that Catholics believed that the Eucharist is a sacrifice, that we are offering the worship to God, we are offering the only acceptable sacrifice. Bulls, cows, they won’t take away sin. Only one, the God-man, Jesus Christ. That is the only acceptable thing to offer to God, and we offer that. The priest offers that. He is the one who makes it possible. You who cannot have sacrifices without a priest.
Trent Horn:
I mean, you’ll have some Protestants say, “Oh yeah, we believe in the real presence. I believe it’s Jesus at my communion service,” to which I’ll say … And it gets a little bit harder with Protestants who acknowledge a priesthood, like with Anglicans, but I’ve heard even Baptists and others say, “Oh yeah, we fully believe it’s Jesus,” to which I’ll say, “Well, do you have a priest? Do you have a priest or a pastor?” “Well, no, we have a pastor.” What’s the difference between a priest and a pastor? A priest offers sacrifice.
Trent Horn:
That’s why in modern Judaism, there are no priests anymore. The priesthood ended with the destruction of the temple in 8070, because there is no temple anymore to offer sacrifice. That’s been destroyed. Instead, Judaism became a religion of mastering the written word, and so the masters of the written word, the masters of the Torah were the rabbis. And so now it’s a religion focused on learning from the rabbis rather than offering sacrifice with the priests.
Trent Horn:
So same way, in much of Protestantism, you don’t have priests because you don’t believe there is anyone who has specific graces to offer sacrifice, whereas for Catholics, for Eastern Orthodox, and for others, we do acknowledge that those successors of the apostles have the ability to offer sacrifice. So I think that’s the big thing for some Protestants, why they don’t like the crucifix is because it goes back to the question of “Is the Mass a sacrifice or not?” Again, if you want to go deeper with that, definitely check out my book, The Case for Catholicism, where I have another chapter on the Eucharist and sacrifice.
Trent Horn:
Well, you know what? This was fun. We got through a lot of questions. I have a lot more questions here. So I am going to hang on to some of these and I’m going to save them for later in the month to answer some more because there’s some really good ones here. So why not do another episode soon? I haven’t done one in a while. Yeah. So hopefully, we’ll do another one soon. Thank you guys so much. Hope this is helpful. If you want to submit questions for a future episode, definitely go to support us at trenthornpodcast.com. But thank you guys so much, and I hope that you have a very blessed day.
If you liked today’s episode, become a premium subscriber at our Patreon page and get access to member-only content. For more information, visit Trenthornpodcast.com.