DIALOGUE: Do Protestants Act like Atheists?

In this episode Trent sits down with Geoff from “a Goy for Jesus” and Steve Christie, two Protestants who critique his claim that Protestants act like atheists when they make arguments against the Catholic faith.

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Welcome to the Council of Trent Podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.

Jeff:

All right. So Trent graciously, we did a review, I forgot, a month ago or so of how Protestants argue like Catholics. I liked how you were fair and even-handed even when we disagreed with you on stuff.

Trent:

You mean like atheists?

Jeff:

Yeah. Like atheists, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, sorry. And I think you’re writing a book on that, right?

Trent:

Yes. So I’ve noticed these parallels and similarities in exploring them more. I think there’s enough material to write a book about it. And my point is essentially, and I know that it’s somewhat of an inflammatory title, I don’t know-

Jeff:

Yeah, yeah.

Trent:

But it gets to the point. And I also, I don’t know what the press will eventually call the book, but my point in noticing these similarities of Protestant criticisms of Catholicism and atheistic criticisms of Christianity, my goal in talking about these is not to say that Protestants and atheists are morally on par. I believe Protestants who have a valid baptism are Christians just like I’m Christian. And that’s something the church has recognized for a long time that even people who are specific heretics can still have… can still validly baptize and things like that.

Trent:

So it’s not to try to say, “Oh, you’re just bad like an atheist, rah, rah, rah.” That’s not… What I’m trying to do, more of my concern is that in trying to refute Catholicism, I would be very concerned about an argument who, if the premises were followed to a logical conclusion, could undermine the Christian faith itself. And so-

Jeff:

I got you.

Trent:

One would not want to… it would be a puric victory to use an argument that would refute your enemy, but also refute you as well. We wouldn’t want to do that. And as I’m writing the book, I’m probably going to send copies of the book to other Protestants to get their review before I finish it up, I’ve also tried to think, “Okay, well, where are Catholics sometimes acting like this as well?”

Jeff:

That’s where you’re fair. That’s one thing I wanted-

Steve:

Yeah. I wanted to jump in and say that’s one thing that Jeff and I did actually appreciate. That within your videos that you made, you did make it a point to say, “To be fair, Catholics do do this like the 33,000 Protestant denominations.” I mean, we’ve heard that many times. I’ve even heard people say, “Well, I’ve heard this from Catholic Answers.

Trent:

Oh.

Steve:

And I know recently you have clarified that you used to use that when you first converted and got in to apologetics, but you don’t do that anymore but that’s still kind of out there. And I think the concern that Jeff and I had when we talked about this is that at the same time, Catholics use a lot of these same arguments where you can act like Catholics as well. And the title of your particular videos almost made it sound like Protestants are the only ones that do this. So even though you clarify this in your videos people might come away from the title of it, thinking that Protestants do that.

Steve:

And the other issue was about sometimes arguments are based on the fringe of Protestants. Like you had brought up Chick tracts. And to be fair, Chick tracts isn’t a good representation of Protestants as a whole. It’d be sort of like using-

Trent:

They’re pretty common though. I think it’s the most popular comic book, like series, of all time. There’ve been like billions of them printed. So, I mean, especially for me, when I compare, when I go out places… I mean, it’s hard always to say, what is representative of Catholicism or Protestantism?

Steve:

Like Father Michael Manning or Bishop Robert Barron, if we were to use them as the all, all of Catholic beliefs. Obviously, they don’t represent Catholicism as a whole of beliefs.

Jeff:

Yeah. Let me step in here. So say like, I think a lot of the points where we agreed with you, it was just like, I think atheists and Protestants and Catholics sometimes just make the same… when they do make mistakes in arguing. It’s not so much we’re following atheists or atheists or following us [crosstalk 00:04:26] Catholic. It’s more like it’s a common human frailty sort of thing.

Trent:

Right. People can make fallacies, errors in reasoning. And that’s something that no particular person is immune from. Where I’ve noticed the similarities is that… I guess I would look at it this way. When atheists and Christians argue about the existence of God, I think this is how the debate kind of ends up happening. The atheists and the Christians will say, “You know what? We both agree that physical reality exists. Like we’re both committed, there is physical reality.” And atheists will tell Christians, “Look, you’re positing some other entity, God, to explain physical reality. When I think physical reality explains itself, that’s all we need. Let’s stick with what we both agree with. Let’s not go beyond that.” And then the Christians will come back and say, “Well, no, we agree physical reality exists, but it’s not self explanatory. It doesn’t get you everything just from that.”

Trent:

And so I think that carries over to the debate between Protestants and Christians, where… Sorry, Protestants and Catholics. Where we’ll say, “Okay, we both agree that scripture is inspired. We both agree it’s inspired of God.” And Catholics will say, “Well, that’s not the only thing. We also need sacred tradition and the magisterium.” And I think Protestants will say, “Well, no, no, no. We agree with scripture. You don’t need to posit all this other stuff. Scripture explains itself.” So that’s where I see sometimes the parallels that arise in the debate, because one side is arguing for what we both agree on. It explains itself. Let’s run with that. And the other side says, “No, no, no, it doesn’t explain itself. We need more to it.” And that’s where I see a parallel.

Jeff:

Okay. So let me explain. Yeah, let me-

Steve:

I’ll say so.

Jeff:

Oh, go ahead. You go, sorry.

Steve:

No, I was going to say, I didn’t know if, Trent, you wanted to jump in and talk about your first issue or Jeff.

Jeff:

Yeah. [crosstalk 00:06:11] let me set something up first just to explain for the audience. So the way we’ve structured this, so Trent has five things he wants to go over or five examples. So this is not a full fledged debate and the way it’s going to be structured is Trent’s going to go talk, one of us is going to respond and we’ll have a little bit of back and forth. Trent will have the last word. We’re not going to go down every rabbit trail because that might take forever. And that’s not the purpose of this.

Jeff:

And then the second one, which was in terms of biblical inerrancy. That, we’ve had a little bit back and forth on Twitter and YouTube. You’ve mentioned us or mentioned Steve. So, we might camp out a little bit more on that and then that’s it. So if you want… So you’ve already kind of done a brief introduction.

Trent:

Yeah-

Jeff:

And if there’s anything else you want to say, and then we can just get into the points.

Trent:

No, I think that covers it well, and I do apologize, that I’m still getting over a cold that won’t go away. I don’t know if it’s COVID or what the heck it is, but that’s just how it is. Yeah, so I think what I talked about earlier actually kind of segues well into the first issue, which would be a burden of proof. And I end, defining like what Protestantism is. And I’ve watched a review of my previous videos and I actually think I found a lot of common ground with you guys on some of the things that you said.

Trent:

So what I was saying, atheists and Christians, sometimes a debate happens there where an atheist say, “Look, prove to me God exists, prove Christianity is true.” A Christian will put forward arguments and an atheist will say, “Well, I’m not convinced by these arguments. So I’m still going to be an atheist. Atheism is true. It’s the default position.” And I think many of us would say, “Well, no, you can’t just say that’s the default.” Your default could be, I don’t know if there’s a God or not. But the position there is no God, or that reality is all material, that is a position. That goes beyond just the default, I don’t know, and would require a defense.

Trent:

And sometimes I see it just informally when Catholics and Protestants discuss things. I think what ends up happening is a Protestant will ask a Catholic, “Well, where is that in the Bible or where is that in church history? Prove this.” And the Catholic will offer evidence and it either is convincing or it’s not convincing. And a Protestant might say, “Well, it’s not convincing to me. So I’m fine just remaining as a Protestant.”

Trent:

But as I said, in my previous episode, I don’t believe that is the default. Just as atheism is not just a lack of belief in God, like it has positive beliefs to it. Protestantism is the same way. And I’m really interested to get your thoughts on this, because you guys don’t seem to share the same views I see with other people, like, let’s say like a William Lane Craig or a Cameron Bertuzzi. I think the default is really, like as a Christian, “All right, well, God exists. And it looks like he raised Jesus from the dead and he manifested himself and Christianity is true, but where do I go from there?”

Trent:

I think that you have like kind of three options. You could go with Protestantism, which has positive views, a 66 book Canon of inspired, inerrant scripture, sola scriptura being the authority. Scripture and sacred tradition, which would be orthodoxy. Or scripture, sacred tradition and the magisterium, which you have in Catholicism. Each one carries a burden. And if all three of them kind of fail with their burden, you could always just stay at, “Well, I just believe in God and Jesus rose from the dead,” and have kind of like a mere Christian theism.

Trent:

So I’m really interested to see what your guys’ thoughts are on that, your problems in mere Christian theism. But I don’t see it, how it’s listed, that Protestantism can just be the starting place when it makes particular positive claims, if that makes sense.

Jeff:

Yeah. I think you have some validity in that but again, I don’t take a mere Christian sort of view. I’m more of a presuppositionalist myself.

Trent:

Yeah, I’m interested to just… Well, yeah, I guess this is-

Jeff:

I’m not an expert in presuppositionalism.

Trent:

Sure, and I don’t want to debate that, but.

Jeff:

Yeah, so someone who’s more of an expert. So the way I come at it is like obviously I hold some things are primary and secondary and I’m a paedobaptist because I’m Presbyterian and Steve’s a reformed Baptist, so some things are not on the same level as say justification by faith alone or the Trinity or things like that.

Jeff:

So to me, and I was thinking what our friend, the other Paul, was saying a lot of the times, at least with atheists, I get tired of the burden of proof stuff where I’m just like, “Please, just everybody just make the case and let’s move on.”

Trent:

Well, I like how Jimmy Akin has described before, that if you’re trying to change someone’s mind, you have the burden of proof.

Jeff:

Right, yeah.

Trent:

Basically.

Steve:

Yeah. And that’s the thing that I was going to make a comment. That the person who is making the positive claim has the burden of proof. I mean, I don’t have to prove a negative when an atheist is saying like prove to me this, or prove to me that. The burden of proof, whether it’s the Protestant, it’s the Catholic, it’s the atheist, they’re the ones that have the demand to try to prove it.

Jeff:

Yeah. But I understand what you’re saying with the atheist. For the atheist, it’s almost like a cynical sort of default, and nothing counts as evidence because God doesn’t exist and God doesn’t exist because there’s no-

Trent:

Well, it’s dishonest if they’re saying, “I just lack a belief in God,” but what they really mean and then they say something like, “Well, God is like Harry Potter.” I’m like, “Well, you don’t just lack a belief in Harry Potter. Like you think Harry Potter doesn’t exist.” So like just, just come right out and say it, “God doesn’t exist. Here’s my position. Here are my arguments.” So yeah.

Trent:

Well, I’m really fascinated. I mean, I find presuppositionalism really interesting, to be sure, because I don’t believe presuppositionalism works. And I think sometimes Catholics, just as Protestants might shirk the burden of proof here and say, “Well, I’m just starting with scripture, which has a lot of assumptions built into it.” I do think Catholics can do this as well sometimes. And it’s this particular kind of argument, “Well, you cannot have any certainty in your Protestant doctrines because you rely on your fallible interpretation of scripture. Whereas I rely on the infallible teaching of the magisterium so I have certainty and you don’t.”

Jeff:

We might have heard of that before. Yeah.

Trent:

Yeah. And I’ve heard that argument and I don’t find that to be a very good argument because-

Jeff:

No, it’s not.

Trent:

No, it isn’t because there is no escape from making a fallible judgment. I had to make a fallible judgment in believing that the current Catholic magisterium has historical continuity to the apostles. It’s probabilistic reasoning. Now for me, I think I can get to the bedrock of faith that there’s more evidence there than for Protestantism’s authority, but it’s not the case of infallible versus fallible. So I think sometimes Catholics, when they just say, “Well, you have fallible, it doesn’t work. I have the infallible.” You have to make the decision at the end of the day to trust the evidence.

Jeff:

Well, that type of argument inevitably would lead to an infinite regression.

Trent:

Regress.

Jeff:

A regress.

Trent:

Yeah.

Jeff:

One of the things I wanted to kind of ask from a Catholic perspective was, so when someone says, “This is an apostolic tradition,” or something, would it be valid for me to say like, “Can you please trace this to an apostle, like in a verifiable way.”

Trent:

Now, you mean finding… When you say trace it to an apostle, like showing from an apostolic writing that it was believed?

Jeff:

It doesn’t have to be an apostolic. Well, say the Muslims have like a isnad chains where their outside traditions get traced from a source in a chain. Like Frank told Sally told Ibinabad told Abdul who talked to Muhammad’s wife who told him this is what Muhammad did.

Trent:

Yeah. And I think you and I are both going to be very incredulous about the historical reliability of those kinds of exchanges. I see what you’re saying and, I guess, let me process it through and let it all come out and see if it [crosstalk 00:15:28].

Jeff:

I know. If this is the first time you’re hearing it-

Trent:

No.

Jeff:

It’s just more like first thoughts and-

Trent:

Yes.

Jeff:

Maybe a later date, you can think about it more.

Trent:

Well, one thing would be, I don’t think that asking for, well, here is the direct apostolic witness, because we don’t have that for a lot of doctrines that Catholics and Protestants share. Like the ending of divine… cessation of divine revelation in the first century, things like that. I think it’s inferred from scripture, but not explicitly stated.

Trent:

Number two, you might say, “Well, where is that?” You have things like you have Origen, for example, saying that we receive from the apostles the tradition of baptizing infants. So it’s like, does that count as here’s someone from the third century saying we got this from the apostles? Some people might say, “Well, yeah, look here. He’s saying this came from the apostles.” Other people might say, “Well, other fathers might say they got something from the apostles when they actually didn’t.” And that’s where I think the role of the magisterium is necessary to make that distinction.

Trent:

Number two, just my first thoughts running off this, even if we had something like that… You have the succession list for the successor of Rome from Irenaeus. Here they are and even if he said, “I got this from Polycarp. Polycarp got this from John,” I think people might still be skeptical, even if people outlined the chains in the early church.

Trent:

And then number three, I don’t think that that’s necessary because we have to deal with the evidence that we have rather than the evidence we wish we had. I think one study said that 99% of ancient writings have been lost to us. So like for example, we know that the Didache, for example, wasn’t discovered until the 19th century. Papias, the Bishop of Hierapolis, did a five volume work, like exposition on the logia of the Lord or something like that. That is lost, we only have fragments of it in Eusebius. So it’s like we might discover it one day, that’d be crazy if we did.

Trent:

So we don’t have as much detail as we would like for a lot of different doctrines that we might want to have. So I think that, for me, that’s where I see the role of the magisterium in helping us to sift through what belongs to tradition and other things like that. I know people like to harp on, they’re like, “Ah, that’s sola ecclesia.” But at the end of the day, we’re going to pick an authority that sifts through the evidence as to what’s valid.

Steve:

So, your pick of authority, and correct me if I’m wrong and if I’m misrepresenting you, Trent. But your pick for your authority is the magisterium. So would you say that the magisterium is falsifiable or non falsifiable? Because as Jeff is pointing out that certain things that the magisterium has said, that goes to the time of the apostles, or goes back to the first century, if you can only go back so far, like back to the time of Origen, isn’t that a bit of a circular reasoning because you’ve already made the decision that the magisterium is the ultimate authority, because the magisterium defines what scripture is, defines what books are in there, how to interpret and what traditions are valid and how to interpret those?

Trent:

Well, I think this goes back more to the question of, “Is my foundational belief falsifiable?” And I think that’s a problem that each of us is going to have to confront. And that’s where I really would like to get your guys, especially Jeff’s, thoughts on the mere Christian theism stuff. Like, how do we come to believe Protestantism is true? Like for me, and I think that a lot of Christians go through this route, you believe God exists or the arguments of natural theology work. Then I do a historical investigation. I see Jesus rose from the dead. And a lot of people after that, then they just go to, “Well, then I’m just going to believe the Bible, because it talks about Jesus.” But I think that’s too far of a gap to cross. For me [crosstalk 00:19:43]. Well, let me finish and then I’ll get your thoughts.

Steve:

Sorry. I thought you were done.

Trent:

No, no, let me get in… So we’ll get to an ultimate… For me, my foundational beliefs, are they falsifiable? It starts with the existence of God. I think that could be falsified based on if God is a logical contradiction or something like that. Then it’s the historicity of the resurrection, which could be falsified if you had enough testimony to show the apostles recanted or something like that. Then after that, it would be the establishment and enduring of the magisterium. And then maybe if you found other historical documents that weren’t just an absence of, let’s say, testimony of the church’s authority in the apostolic times, but something that directly contradicts it, then maybe that could be falsified.

Trent:

But if I’m moving through with this and I think I’ve got my crux, to look through the different kinds of evidence, and I think what ends up happening is it’s not so much, “Well, here’s something that shows that something like the assumption of Mary is not apostolic.” Rather, it’s, well, we can trace it back and then we kind of have a lack of testimony or attestation after that, which could mean it’s not apostolic or it could mean that it is apostolic, but we just don’t have access to materials written during that time. So since it doesn’t refute it, I can still go with the magisterium taking the, “Well, it is apostolic route.” There’s no direct contradiction to it. So, that’s-

Steve:

Jeff, could I-

Trent:

I’ll stop there and get your thoughts.

Steve:

Yeah. Yeah. Jeff, I think Trent wants you to address these things and there’s a lot of things on the table. I want to quickly, if I could, comment on the last comment that he made, like about the assumption of Mary. That it may be things that have been lost to history. But one thing I’ve heard Trent use a lot of times is absence of evidence is not evidence of absence and, or what we like to call argument from silence.

Jeff:

I think that’s a point he’s… You have a-

Trent:

Maybe we should save that. I was-

Jeff:

We should save that. [crosstalk 00:21:42]

Trent:

… for later.

Steve:

Let’s save that for later. Okay. And I had some other things, but Jeff, you go first and then I’ll bounce off you.

Jeff:

Yeah. Well, Trent, to be perfectly honest, this is something that I have like inchoate thoughts that I haven’t quite put together yet, or I have to ruminate on more.

Trent:

Oh, that’s fine.

Jeff:

Yeah. I mean, I’m just trying to be honest.

Trent:

[crosstalk 00:22:08] I love rumination. It’s right after letting thoughts marinate. Anything that marinates is always nice to me.

Jeff:

Yeah. Well, yeah. Slow and low. This is why I let you two debate and I don’t do debates. I’m not as quick on my feet, I guess. Well, to me, I do view, I did come to the conclusion that scripture was inspired and I do think intuitively we all have a presuppositional nature. So your presupposition is the magisterium and that may be valid.

Trent:

I did the staircase though because I start with God, the resurrection-

Jeff:

Well, I meant like once you come to that conclusion.

Trent:

Those would be, I would say they’re foundations.

Jeff:

Yeah. Okay.

Trent:

Because I’m more of a foundationalist in my epistemology.

Jeff:

So, what I’m saying is like I could come to the conclusion in that sort of way and then once I come to the conclusion, then I’m presupposing the Bible is scripture. I’ll let the people who have well thought out presuppositionalism go through that some more. Most presuppositionalists are not opposed to evidence.

Jeff:

So I think in terms of the way, I think, you can’t avoid… There’s a default position in terms of like how you enter things. Maybe you did enter through a mere Christian way. Maybe you were just evangelized by somebody from a particular tradition. Maybe you were born Catholic, maybe you’re born Protestant. Maybe you’re born neither. And then eventually it does involve, “I need to look at scripture. I need to look at history to kind of be settled.”

Jeff:

So if you’re just a Protestant and you encounter Catholic claims, from our point of view, yeah, we do… And for most people, the vast majority of people on all sides, aren’t thinking through, like aren’t sifting through 2000 years of church history. And that’s just the honest truth. I mean, the amount of us who have, like, we’ve come to our, and then we hash it out and maybe we change, right? I didn’t start out a reformed Presbyterian. I started out like a nominal Catholic who became a Pentecostal and now I’m reformed Presbyterian or something. I’ve been that way a while. So that’s kind of like my I first thoughts on it, is that you do have to look at history. You do have to sort everything out. And the best way to sort everything out is to interact with people of different positions and to use the best of everybody. Like I’m going to interact with Bellarmine and [Sturgeon 00:25:03], and Jack Chick and-

Trent:

Well, let me-

Jeff:

[crosstalk 00:25:08] Joe.

Trent:

I’d like to ask you about the mere Christian theism stuff. Why, just you’re not as big a fan of that direction?

Jeff:

Oh, because I-

Trent:

And what… Yeah, go ahead.

Jeff:

Yeah. I don’t go that apologetic route because that’s not the route I see in, say, the Acts of the Apostles or whatever. When you give a message… Now, I may, when I’m talking to an atheist and I have a very narrow down, but say, when I do, especially pre pandemic, have done street evangelism, my street evangelism is, I’m sharing the gospel. I’m not getting into ecclesiology and stuff like that. But I’m not trying to sell someone mere Christianity and then now I have to… I’m giving a packaged delivery message. Now, I’m not-

PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:26:04]

Jeff:

I’m giving a packaged delivery message. I don’t care about the distinctives of Calvinism, Lutheranism, Anglicanism.

Trent:

You’re talking about mere Protestantism.

Jeff:

Almost. When I’m evangelizing. I’m just being honest.

Trent:

Because you would still do sola scriptura solo fide?

Jeff:

Yes.

Trent:

The Bible, which would not just be mere Christian theism. I mean, I would call that mere Protestantism.

Jeff:

When I’m on the street, and I’m going over the Gospel. If I’m discipling someone, I’m entering into a relationship with them. Now, I might not care if they go to reformed Baptist or PCA or Lutheran, you know confessional Lutheran. I’d prefer them to be reformed Presbyterian, but to me-

Trent:

Well, this gets to another question, because I think we agree, and you were saying this earlier, it’s like-

Steve:

And I want to build on that too, because there’s a couple comments I want to make too.

Trent:

Yeah. That seems like we agree that there’s essential Christian beliefs and non-essential beliefs. You guys disagree about credo versus peto baptism, things like that. Where I have a hard time with that is the Bible does not seem to be very explicit on what is essential or non-essential. That is really important, but you’ll have, for example, Protestants disagreeing on whether Catholics have a false Gospel or Catholics are saved. You’ll have prominent Protestants that say Catholicism-

Jeff:

Yeah. I had a disagreement with Gavin Wertland about the-

Trent:

Yeah and that’s a huge thing. Whether I’m saved or not, that’s a huge thing, but I don’t think the Bible gives a lot of clarity on what’s essential or non-essential.

Jeff:

Well, I think you can-

Steve:

I would disagree on that. Now, when it comes to the non-essentials, I would agree with Trent that there isn’t a list of non-essentials necessarily in the Bible, but there are some things that are very essential. If you believe that Jesus died and rose again, you’ll be saved. There is no other name under heaven given amongst men by which you can be saved. And I think, Trent, you and I would actually agree, and please correct me if I’m wrong here, but Catholics and Protestants, and when I’m saying Protestants, I’m talking sola fide Protestants, going back to the reformers, they do not believe in the same Gospel. I mean the Council of Trent made it explicitly clear that anyone who believes in justification by faith alone is anathema. And that is something that has never been changed from the Council of Trent.

Steve:

And to piggyback on what Jeff was saying, as far as mere Christianity and what that actually is, mere Christianity doesn’t really explain everything what is actually Christian. And this is why Protestants look to sola scriptura. They look to scripture alone to define what Christianity is and what it’s not. And when you have Unitarians denying the Trinity or teaching basically universalism, not only is that not Christianity, that’s not even Protestantism.

Trent:

Are you saying that somebody who believes, take David Bentley Hart or other self-described Protestant Christians who just hold to universalism, that all will eventually be saved? You’re saying they’re not Christians?

Steve:

I would say they’re not Christians because that isn’t the Gospel. I mean, the Gospels clearly pointed out in passages like 1st Corinthians 15 by the Apostle Paul, and again, this might spill over a little bit into Calvinism, and I know we don’t want to go down that rabbit trail, but the Bible’s very clear. It is through Christ and through Christ alone and believing in his death and his resurrection, believing in that is what saves a person. And of course we can get into the fruits and everything else, but that’s another rabbit trail,

Trent:

But, I guess, well, I mean, I guess you can say who has the Gospel or not. One, I don’t think scripture is as clear on that. For example, there’s no Bible verse that says, that explicitly defines the Gospel. The closest, I think you have Romans saying it is the power of Jesus Christ, which I’m not ashamed of. But the [inaudible 00:30:29], there’s no verse says “The Gospel is X.” It has to be kind of inferred from different verses.

Jeff:

Well, I just looking at the time.

Trent:

Yeah. Sorry. We could go for a long time.

Jeff:

Yeah. So let me, I need to step in as moderator. The only thing I wanted to clarify of something I said, is that, not that I don’t view say Lutheran, Anglican, Presbyterian, Baptist things as unimportant. It’s just that my problem with mere Christianity besides is the lack of importance they give to sola fide and that they almost view almost everything as unimportant. Where I have more in common with the people of the White Horse Inn broadcast can sit around and we can say, “Hey, our differences are important. They’re not essential differences.”

Trent:

Well, are you saying, because I don’t know what you guys are on Calvinism.

Jeff:

Oh, we’re both Calvinists.

Steve:

We’re both Calvinists.

Trent:

Right, because when Protestants say Catholics have a false Gospel because they rely on works or things like that, some Calvinists say Armenians have a false Gospel because they rely on-

Jeff:

No, I would not go there.

Trent:

Okay. Some, I think, might do that.

Jeff:

Some-

Trent:

Because they’ll say that you’re a synergist and man is necessary for salvation and that kind of tuff.

Jeff:

I think they need to relax a little, but yes. Let’s go to number-

Trent:

Yeah. The number two, this will be interesting.

Steve:

Yeah. And, just real quick and I’ll just finish here. Regarding the Gospel, 1st Corinthians 15:1-3, it spells out what the Gospel is, but okay, go ahead, Trent. Continue.

Trent:

Oh yeah. So let’s go to number two, because this is one we’ve had a back and forth on for a little bit.

Jeff:

Yeah.

Trent:

And that’s just on the question of inerrancy. That atheists will try to say, “look, the Bible’s not the Word of God. Look, I’ve got 1,001 Bible contradictions.” And most Christians will reply saying, “Well, those aren’t actual contradictions. They’re apparent contradictions.”

Trent:

And this is the other key here, many Christian apologists will say, “You are justified in believing the Bible is inspired even if you, as an individual, cannot answer all of these Bible contradictions. And you’re justified in believing it’s inerrant, even if you can’t answer them.” Gleason Archer in his encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties says, “Be fully persuaded in your own mind that an adequate explanation exists, even though you have not yet found it.” Norm Geisler says something similar. He says, “No informed person would claim to be able to fully explain all Bible difficulties. However, it is a mistake for the critic to assume therefore that what has not yet been explained never will be explained.” And so he goes on saying, “Just because a scientist can’t explain something doesn’t mean there is no explanation. When the Christian encounters something he has no explanation like a contradiction allegation, he simply continues to do research believing one will eventually be found.” And that’s a position that I take in my book on Bible difficulties.

Trent:

I think, though, that trying to show that when some Protestants try to disprove the Deuterocanonical books of scripture and saying that they are not inspired because they contain errors, they borrow from the atheist playbook. And so they’ll just try to say, “Look, here’s a contradiction.” But I think a Catholic is fully justified in using the same move Geisler and Archer use, which is, “Well, we can’t determine if it’s divinely inerrant. Divinely protected from error unless we figure out inspiration first. So since I know it’s the Word of God, I could say it best, I don’t know how to resolve this particular difficulty. Though I think there are ways to resolve it.

Trent:

Now I will say that Catholics can also be guilty of this and Christians in general, because I think, Jeff, you brought this up on Twitter once. I think it’s a fair point. How can I criticize something like the Koran? It says the moon split. That’s an error. Yada, yada, how can I say that? Well, I do believe personally that it is not a great strategy to try to refute other holy books by saying there are contradictions in them. It’d have to be extremely different from anything that we are used to. So I prefer to go after the source.

Trent:

So to give you the examples like with the splitting of the moon in that video I did, I said, “Look, you could resolve that by saying it was a local miracle. It was misinterpreted natural phenomena. It’s a metaphorical description in the text.” I just don’t think it works if you say the moon actually split in half. Just like within the book of Joshua with the sun standing still. I think you’d have to go those similar routes and a Christian would have a very hard time defending that the earth stopped rotating for 24 hours and nobody else noticed that.

Trent:

But sometimes Catholics and all of us can do this. And then, Steve, I know I was watching when you were talking about it, you brought up, I think it’s almost 710 in the Book of Mormon that says, “Jesus was born in Jerusalem.” I just don’t think that’s a very fatal objection to the Book of Mormon because they could just say, “Well, it uses the reference to the land of Jerusalem and Bethlehem is only about six miles from Jerusalem.” It’s like if I say that I live in Dallas, I don’t really live in Dallas. I live in a suburb far away from Dallas. Now, could it also be a mistake? Sure. But there’s a plausible explanation. So my point is that we all need to be careful in trying to point out contradictions. If our standard is too narrow, it’ll come back to bite us.

Jeff:

You basically said, and I’ll let Steve take point on this, but I think we agreed in our video that you do want to use equal standards.

Trent:

Yeah. And so I think maybe we might disagree about how they’re applied, especially in the Book of Tobit and other things like that. But that is my concern with going after contradictions in texts you don’t accept. The measure with which you measure shall be measured against you, as the Lord would say.

Steve:

Yeah. And, regarding Jesus being born in Jerusalem, I mean, that’s just one of many issues. That’s just the popular or the common one that pops up.

Steve:

There is a group called Ex-Mormons for Christ and they actually have traveled to the land of Israel. And they’ve asked several people, Jews, Christians, whatever. And they said, “Would you ever describe Bethlehem as being the city of Jerusalem?” And they said, “No.” That is a clear unreconcilable error.

Trent:

I think Mormons have found an ancient Egyptian letter that uses the term, “the land of Jerusalem.” But my point is, I’m not trying to defend Mormonism. I’m just saying, the problem with making an argument from contradictions is as long as there is a possible explanation, the argument is-

Steve:

I agree. And I agree with that. And I would agree also with Jeff when he says that we need to use the same weights and measures, whether we’re talking about the Hebrew Bible, the Deuterocanon, the New Testament or anything else. And not to beat a dead horse, but one of the things that was brought up on our debate was about the Book of Tobit.

Trent:

Sure.

Steve:

And the issue with the Book of Tobit isn’t the fact that this could be a folk practice that was used very similar, like to the Book of Genesis. But when Tobit specifically asked the angel, “What is the medicinal purpose of using fish guts?” He says, “One of the medicinal purposes is to scare away demons.” Now, that might be a theological way of scaring away demons, but it’s not a medicinal purpose. I mean, I’ve been in healthcare I’ve been in healthcare for 25 years.

Trent:

I’m not aware of any that deals with demons.

Steve:

Huh?

Trent:

I’m not aware of any medicine that’ll… any journal of medicine-

Steve:

Exactly, and that would be an example of an irreconcilable error. And the example that you gave to try to correlate that in your post-debate interview with Gary and William was, you’re saying, “Well, how about atheist when they say Genesis one contradicts Genesis two?” And I would say, “Well, read Genesis one and Genesis two, and you’ll see they’re easily reconcilable because”….let me finish. “Each one of the six, in Genesis one, it talks about what happens on each one of the six days. Genesis two focuses specifically what happens on the sixth day in the garden of Eden. And by doing that, you’ll see that this Bible difficulty is easily reconcilable.”

Trent:

Right. I don’t recall bringing that up because that wouldn’t be a great parallel because the problem with Tobit is you’re claiming there’s….I think there’s three kinds of contradictions in the Bible. Internal, where the Bible seems to contradict itself. One gospel says Jesus did this. Another gospel says Jesus did that. External. It contradicts something outside the Bible. Like it contradicts a fact of history or it contradicts what we know from science, things like that. And the third would be moral contradiction. Like God commanding something evil, something like that.

Trent:

So the Tobit contradiction, I think, would fall under external. That the angel says using fish guts or applying fish balm to the eyes is medicinal. Science tells us that’s not true, so that’s an external contradiction.

Trent:

I think in the debate I had with you, actually, I brought up the example of Jacob peeling the popular rods to expose their streaks to overcome the fact that Laban took away the flocks that were striped and speckled, and he needed to change the genetic makeup of the flocks or breed particular kinds that didn’t seem possible.

Trent:

And I think a lot of biblical commentaries will say what’s happening here is Jacob is using a folk remedy of when cattle breed. If they look at something, when they’re breeding, it changes the offspring, which we know is not true. But then Genesis 31, we see what really happened is that God did a miracle to vindicate Jacob.

Trent:

And a lot of Protestant commentaries will say, “Look, he used a folk practice. The Bible describes this, but God worked through that.”

Steve:

Right. And I would give an example. Just to kind of piggyback, and I actually agree with you, Trent. An example where Jesus spits on the ground and he cures a man’s blindness. Now, if you and I were to spit on the ground and put mud on a person’s face, they’re not going to cure blindness. That was actually a miracle. But the issue again, to go back with Tobit is the fact that the medicinal purpose is to scare away demons. And let’s forget about the part about wiping the eyes, blowing on it and that cures blindness or cataracts or whatever. Which again is not scientific. But even if you were to chalk that up to a miracle, he’s saying that this is a medicinal purpose, both to cure blindness as well as to scare away demons. That is an example of not just a Bible difficulty, but it’s also an irreconcilable error.

Trent:

I’m not sure that it says that. If I look at Tobit 6:7, the angel says to him, “As for the heart and the liver, if a demon or evil spirit gives trouble to anyone, you make a smoke from these before the man or woman and that person will never be troubled again. And as for the gall anoint it with a man who has white films in his eyes and he will be cured.”

Steve:

You have to go back a few verses before that to see where he asks the angel though, what is the medicinal purposes of the fish guts?

Trent:

Right

Steve:

You have to go back a couple of verses.

Jeff:

Alright. Can I-

Steve:

Okay, go ahead. Yep.

Jeff:

I would like to-

Steve:

Advance.

Jeff:

Yeah. Let’s advance because-

Steve:

Okay.

Trent:

Well, I’d like to add just a thought on this-

Jeff:

Trent, get the last word on this point.

Steve:

Yep.

Trent:

Yeah. I’m even fine for one last quick exchange back, but to me, once again, I feel like this is such a small detail it does resemble some things that atheists will pick out and how Leviticus classifies things or things like that.

Trent:

I think though, one, the question of what it does with demons, whether medicine applies there or not, God can use anything He wants to tell people do this and it’ll affect the demons. The thing with the eyes though, I actually see evidence that this was an ancient medicinal practice. Pleni the Elder describes it. H.T. Swan in a 1995 article of the Royal Society of Medicine says this might have been a primitive way to remove cataracts. So I don’t think, because it reminds me, I guess, when atheists sometimes say, “Well, Jesus got it wrong when he said the mustard seed is the smallest of the seeds”, which is objectively speaking-

Steve:

Yeah. Can I respond to that?

Trent:

Sure. Go ahead.

Steve:

Because that is easily reconcilable, because if you look in Bible commentaries, what they will say is that the mustard seed was a small seed in that part of the world, not in the entire world. So that’s an example of a Bible difficulty which, if you research it a little bit more, it’s easily reconcilable and these are the type of Bible difficulties you see in Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, but you do not see in the Deuterocanon. Go ahead. Finish.

Trent:

I want to go to a more foundational question and it would be this: Is a Christian justified in believing the Bible is without error, even if he has not examined every alleged Bible contradiction?

Jeff:

Yes.

Trent:

Now why?

Steve:

Go ahead.

Jeff:

I would say presuppositionaly that the contents of the Bible are the ground of all knowledge. As the external, and also I would say in kind of an induction way is, just from personal experience, I’ve looked at hundreds of them. I’ve been able to resolve a lot of them. Almost all of them, with even years later, “Oh, okay. There’s a solution.” So, for me, from my own personal experience, it has the benefit of the doubt where even if there’s a few things I can’t understand. If that makes sense.

Jeff:

But if there was a legitimate thing that is a contradiction, I would hope I would have the intellectual….I believe with all my heart there never will be.

Trent:

Well, wouldn’t you just say you just don’t know how to resolve it?

Jeff:

That’s probably how it would happen at this point.

Steve:

But honestly, it goes beyond even the contradictions, because this is something I hear frequently from Catholic apologists about the whole contradiction issue. That’s just one of the many godly criteria that either qualify or disqualify a piece of literature as being God breathe. And you almost have to take a look at the Old Testament and New Testament separately. We agree on the same 27 New Testament books. And what does it say in the 27 New Testament book canon? That the Jews, not the Church, were entrusted by God with the Oracles of God. And even Catholic apologists will concede that there’s no Jew or Jewish sect that agreed on the identical 46 Old Testament books.

Jeff:

Well, I mean, we’ve already debated this-

Steve:

Yeah, but it’s directly related to your question, though and I want to take the time to finish because I won’t be long. Now, when it comes to the 27 New Testament books, have you ever read Michael Kruger’s book Canon Revisited?

Trent:

Yeah. I cite it in my book Case for Catholicism.

Steve:

Okay. All right. And you see that he takes a self-authenticated approach to scripture because it’s the one that is the most objective and least circular. And you find very early, as early as the First Century that these books that are in the New Testament were accepted as being God breathe and the reason is because the same godly criteria that’s used for the 27 New Testament book canon are also used for the books that are in the Hebrew Bible.

Trent:

Could you give me an example of something else besides the Bible? This epistemology, I’m trying to understand.

Steve:

Sure.

Trent:

Something else that we know it is true because it’s self-authenticating. I’m not sure what that means.

Jeff:

Well, no contradiction.

Steve:

Well, it’s self-authenticating. Non-contradiction is the one thing, but just because something that there’s not a contradiction in any particular piece of literature, obviously that doesn’t mean it’s God breathe. Rather it is a qualifying marker. If they have irreconcilable errors, then obviously it’s not God breathe. But again, that’s just one thing. They would have to be, self-authenticated, meaning it would have to be written by a particular individual or group of individuals that perform miracles to validate what they said and what they wrote was valid. And it would have to be written during a particular time that active prophecy or the apostles was still going on.

Steve:

And as we know, the New Testament says that the apostles and the prophets, meaning the New Testament prophets, were the foundation and the Church is to be built on top of that. Which means that after the First Century, there were no more apostles or prophets around. That was a first-century limitation.

Trent:

How do you know? I mean, the Bible doesn’t say that.

Steve:

Actually it says that in Ephesians 2:20.

Trent:

It says it’s built on the foundation of the apostles.

Jeff:

And the prophets, yes.

Steve:

And the prophets.

Trent:

Right. But it doesn’t mean that the office of apostle doesn’t continue.

Jeff:

Well, I mean, it’s implied by the word “foundation.”

Trent:

Right. But there were apostles that were existing at that time when Ephesians was written.

Steve:

Right. Because that was still during the apostolic age. The last apostle being the Apostle John at the end of the first century. Because otherwise you have another problem. And just real quick, because the problem is, if you do not have a limitation for when the apostles and prophets ended, then the New Testament is potentially still open. You could potentially add more books to it, like the Didache and First Clement and the Epistle of Barnabas, for instance. You could potentially-

Trent:

Well, my question was more, I’m trying to understand this idea that self-authenticating seems to mean that when I encounter this authority, it is able to directly communicate to me that it has a divine foundation.

Jeff:

Yes.

Trent:

And, so you’re applying this, although that word doesn’t necessarily have to be, maybe it’s only related to the divine, but it sounds like you’re using an adjective to describe the Bible, but there’s no other kind of parallel where I can understand how does self authentication work. If there’s nothing beyond the Bible where this works, it just sounds like the Bible is true because it says it’s true.

Jeff:

It’s probably better if you interview Michael Kruger on that.

Trent:

Yeah. And, maybe I’ll do that. I’ve interacted with his work.

Trent:

I guess I’d be curious. It seems to me like if I tried a similar move, where I say, “Well, the Catholic Magisterium self authenticates. When I see its teachings, it authenticates itself.” I just don’t think it would have as much traction.

Jeff:

Well, I think you can argue against self authentication. I need to move along.

Trent:

Yeah. I apologize.

Jeff:

I don’t want to go to the third point yet. I have apocryphal question for you.

Trent:

I’ll give you apocryphal answer.

Jeff:

I’m sorry I need to cut stuff off. And I know that people smarter than me are probably going to improve my answers or whatever.

Trent:

Sure, sure.

Jeff:

When I interact with some Catholics about errors on the apocryphal, they would say, “Yes and they’re basically pious fiction.” And I think when they were canonized, they were canonized as history.

Trent:

Right.

Jeff:

So I just want your thoughts on that, Trent. I don’t want to-

Trent:

Yeah, no, that’s fine. The solemn declaration of the cannon, like at the other Trent, the Church has not defined the genres of the books of scripture. It has just defined that they are scripture. It is left open the question of what particular genre they belong to or the different parts of them. For example, I think that Genesis has different genres within it. I think Chapters one through 11, have a different writing style to them than Chapters 12 through 50.

Steve:

Is that the position of the Magisterium or is that your personal opinion?

Trent:

Well, the position of the Magisterium would be that there is no magisterial text that says “This book belongs to the genre or theme of X.” The Church, there is no document that says in a defined way. Now, you may find Catholic Bible commentaries and things like that, that put it in that way. But the Church has just said just “These books and all of their parts are inspired.” But how we are to interpret them…the Church has only infallibly defined a handful of biblical passages to say, “They must mean X.” Like John 3:5 is water baptism, things like that.

Jeff:

Can I-

Steve:

Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead, Jeff.

Jeff:

I think we do need to move along.

Trent:

Oh, but your point though, with the examples of how to understand the difficulties there, I mean, there’s some Catholics who would say, “Well, with Judith or others, the words can mean different things, so it’s okay.” Or others, though. I think it’s quite open to pick a historical fiction route because many Protestant commentaries on these books believe that that is what the genre is.

Steve:

Because, just real quick, and I think I mentioned this in our debate, the New American Bible, which is a Catholic translation that’s approved by the Confraternity of Catholic Bishops categorized-

PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:52:04]

Steve:

… attorney of Catholic bishops categorizes books like Judith and Tobit as being historical books in that particular genre, even if the Magisterium has them. The other thing is you mentioned there’s about seven verses in the Catholic Bible, which is like 35,000 plus versus, and don’t you find that a bit odd that the Magisterium has only infallibly defined less than 1000th of 1% of all the verses in the Bible infallibly, I mean, over two millennia?

Trent:

No, I don’t find that odd at all because I think that you would run into… Because once again, how would you falsify what you believe? How would I falsify your Christianity? If you guys are firmly, firmly committed to biblical inerrancy, showing the Bible has an error would be a way to do that. Now, some people say you can be Christian and not believe in inerrancy, so you don’t have a problem. But for me, like within fallibility, that would be one way to falsify Catholicism, to show there is there’s an error in that regard.

Trent:

So I think that it would make sense to have a charism like infallibility, that presents, that provides many opportunities for falsification, that charism would be used. It would not be used frequently. It would only be used to settle and resolve disputes that are of incredible importance, like the necessity of baptism for salvation and what John 3:5 means and things like that. And being careful and understanding, as the church has understood, even for the past 2000 years, Peter says this in 2nd Peter 3:16. There’s things that are confusing in scripture. So we do have to be careful what we say what it means, because there are multiple senses to it and things like that.

Steve:

What about schismatics and heretics not inheriting the kingdom of God, because that’s something that is brought up at the Council of Florence and repeated at Vatican I and yet in Vatican II, were called separated brethrens. So, would Jeff and I inherit the kingdom of God or not, since we’re considered heretics and schismatics?

Trent:

Then that’s a further development on the meaning of the… Because the church still holds that schism and heresy are grave sins. The question is, what do those terms apply to? And the church will say that somebody who just grows up in a Protestant denomination, like Jeff said, most people have not sorted through the evidence for and against positions. And they’re just within that framework, it wouldn’t apply to them. Now, would it apply to someone who publicly argues against, especially someone who is Catholic, who then publicly argues against the faith and tries to lead people away from it? The term might very well apply. And so it could apply in the cases if you guys are making videos, you wanted…

Steve:

So then we’re condemned to Hell? And by the way, be honest. You’re not going to hurt our feelings.

Trent:

I didn’t say that. I said that-

Steve:

You can.

Trent:

No, because I cannot say what is the status of a person’s soul or their particular culpability. If someone knew, like if you guys knew the Catholic church is the church Christ established and you have some other purpose and you want to lead people away from it or something like that, or you’re just trying to ignore that belief you have, that would be extremely problematic.

Jeff:

One last question on the apart thing.

Trent:

All right.

Steve:

And we’ll come back to this.

Jeff:

It’s not so much the part, but this, is that, it’s my contention that your position here bolsters the case that Mark 7, Matthew 15 teaches souls for Torah, insofar that the tradition of the elders that shown in the mission is basically the oral Torah. And if the Pharisees were expected to recognize a contradiction between the oral and written Torah, then if their assumption was that the oral Torah came from Moses, then they would’ve harmonized. There was no way they… I agree with you that they would’ve harmonized that contradiction on the core bond rule or the washings, because while the washings aren’t contradicted, but they made binding what the Torah doesn’t make binding. So I think you bolster the case that Mark 7, Matthew 15, with your point here, it teaches souls for Torah. And I’ll let you have the last one.

Trent:

Yeah. I mean, now I think we’re moving further away from the note about the deuterocanon and then how it relates to identifying sacred tradition or sacred scripture, that I believe just as the existence of counterfeit traditions does not refute the existence of authentic, sacred tradition. I’m sorry, let me back that up. Just as the existence of counterfeit scripture does not refute the existence of authentic scripture, the existence of counterfeit tradition does not refute the existence of authentic tradition. And the core bond rule really, I think that more deals with the proper interpretation of things like in Numbers that say you can’t go against a vow and things like that, which dealt more with the interpretation of scripture than with just a hundred percent extra biblical knowledge being brought in. But that would be a subject for another of time, for sure. We could be camped out here for a bit.

Jeff:

All right, let’s move to the… Yeah, we could definitely camp out on that one. Let’s move to point number three then, your third of the five. And that’s number two, was the one we were going to camp out with more time.

Trent:

And we did, and we camped there and that’s fine. And I hate camping anyways. I don’t know. I mean, I feel like it’s…

Jeff:

I believe in the indoors, that’s-

Trent:

I consider it a kind of offensive homeless black face. You’re appropriating someone else’s culture and you shouldn’t.

Jeff:

The bugs, the bears.

Trent:

Yeah. Are people like… It’s just like, “No, I like my house.” I took my-

Jeff:

The comedian was like, “The bugs are always trying to get on the inside.”

Trent:

Jim Gaffigan.

Jeff:

Jim Gaffigan, yeah.

Trent:

It’s a tradition in my family. Tradition, everyone’s saying before we invented the house. Okay. Yeah. For this one, this might be to go a little bit briefer, but it was fun talking about the others and we’ll see how far we get. Yeah. This would be about more like skepticism. This is one I found really interesting. I’m not sure how to parse it all out yet. And it would go like this, I’ve seen people argue for the hysteresis of the resurrection by saying, “Look, if we have these eyewitnesses, and they have groups of people that see Jesus rose from the dead and groups don’t hallucinate,” and that’s Mike Licona’s route, this or that, Bill Craig. And I remember an atheist, his old Testament, scholar Hector Avalos, interesting guy. He made an argument saying, “Look, if you’re going to follow Craig’s methodology, then you also have to affirm Marian apparitions.” And they’re Marian apparitions… That’s to imitate these tests as well.

Trent:

And also you have reports of things like Catholic miracles. And this is something that actually, that the reformers had to deal with a bit, because people said to Luther, Calvin and others, “Where’s your miracles? We had miracles for all the church’s history, where are yours?” And their reply was basically, “Well, miracles are just for the inauguration of a covenant. We’re just trying to maintain the covenant that was made 2000 years ago with the apostles.” But then I think there was more of effort seeing, if the Catholic church has either saint miracles, there’s a lot of saint miracles that I don’t think are historical. And there’s a lot of Catholics who get mad at me when I burst their bubble about that. And it’s just how it goes.

Trent:

But there’s others, I’m pretty… The Miracle of the Sun at Fatima. I think other accounts of saintly miracles could have quite historical credence to them. I’ve noticed sometimes that, I think, Protestants will try to poke holes in those accounts, similar to how atheists will poke holes in Christian miracles. Not all though. I appreciate quote from Mike Licona actually in his book on Jesus’ Resurrection, because he kind of admits the evidence is strong for the apparitions. And he says, “For myself, I’m not prepared to adjudicate on the matter of Marian apparitions. Because I am Protestant, I carry a theological bias against an appearance of Mary. However, I am not predisposed to reject the reality of apparitions in general.” That’s all I have on that one, still working on it.

Jeff:

Tell me when you’re ready.

Steve:

Go for it, Jeff.

Jeff:

You ready, Trent?

Trent:

I’m ready.

Jeff:

Okay. Let me put my tin foil hat on now. Okay, before I go paranormal and weird on you.

Trent:

No, I watched a little bit of your videos on UFOs, it’s interesting.

Jeff:

Okay. Thank you. Yeah. How we know UFOs aren’t aliens, was one of my more popular videos. Now in terms of the miracles thing, historically, like the Jansenists, if I’m pronouncing that correctly, they had miracles and the Catholics of the time kind of had to explain that away, kind of like the Protestant reformers that you mentioned. And then I remember, I just watched, last fall or so… Last year, I watched Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind, where they’re… Essentially, it’s occultic practices to communicate with UFOs and stuff, and they recount miracles. And I’ve talked to Hindu fundamentalists where they were talking about their miracles. So, I think we’re all kind of in a-

Trent:

I agree with you that miracles, we may see, let’s call it signs and wonders to be more generic, outside of people who have authentic revelation. We may see that. And there’s explanations for that.

Jeff:

Now in terms of Fatima, I’m sorry, I have to just go here, but based on my UFO research, I think the Miracle of the Sun, if it happened, has a ton of links to UFO phenomenon, like the dull silvery disc, basically radiation, multiple colors, that sort of thing, which given my understanding of UFOs as being demonic, it would lead me to believe that Fatima was demonic.

Trent:

Interesting. So I have two thoughts on this. Well one, why do you think unidentified flying objects must be demo… Let me try this. Is it possible there are other intelligent beings in the universe who have advanced technology?

Jeff:

No, I don’t believe that.

Steve:

No.

Trent:

Why do you think that?

Jeff:

Well, that would be, I would go a creationist intelligent design route, plus the amount of time that would take the travel or the technic… The ability to travel given Einsteinian laws makes that incredibly improbable.

Steve:

Even if you assume an old age of the earth, and I’m assuming that you’ve probably watched a debate between Jimmy Akin and… I forgot what his name was-

Jeff:

Gideon Lazar. Yeah.

Steve:

Yeah. And I watched that and I found that to be very helpful, in support of me and Jeff’s position.

Trent:

I’m still not.

Jeff:

Also the UFOs have a… There’s a lot of links that Jack found to fair folklore. There’s a lot of connections to the occult, Aleister Crowley, Jack Parsons, that sort of thing. There’s also a history of deception within UFOs where their technology is a little… Probably you can see this most clearly starting in the mid 1800s, where their technology, or late 1800s, is a little bit advanced. And it keeps advancing as human inventions advance until you get to the space age where then they become space aliens where they weren’t space aliens.

Trent:

Oh, you mean people misidentify them before?

Jeff:

No, not that they’re misidentifying. My position would be that they present themselves deceptively based on the understanding of what’s possible to their people.

Trent:

Fascinating, indeed.

Steve:

And Jeff, did you also want to mention about the radiation at the-

Jeff:

Yeah. There’s a lot of things, like where their clothes dry at Fatima, that’s very… There’s also angel hair-type phenomenon at Fatima.

Steve:

Cars exploding, burning. And then, you mentioned about the fourth witness that a lot of people aren’t aware of.

Jeff:

Well, that gets far field, but just stuff that people know about like there’s a lot of familiar commonalities.

Trent:

So what do you do though, with atheists who say, “Well, I think that Jesus was just a space alien and he wanted to take a prank on people,” and that’s what happened. What do you do with the guys who say that kind of stuff?

Steve:

Well, both the biblical and historical record disputes that. I mean, like it says, take away, even if we don’t talk about the New Testament, it makes it crystal clear that this happens. Even non-Christians will acknowledge that these are historical texts that go back to the first century, but you have evidence of this from extra biblical texts in the first century. You have this from Clement of Rome, you have this from the early church fathers-

Trent:

Evidence of what? You have evidence of people…

Steve:

No, evidence of Jesus dying and rising from the dead, and that he wasn’t an angel. I mean, and he wasn’t an extra terrestrial.

Trent:

Well, how would you… And I agree with you that he wasn’t. But if Jeff says that extra terrestrials can disguise themselves to…

Jeff:

No, no, no. I don’t think they’re extra terrestrial. I think they’re demons.

Trent:

Okay. Well, what if someone said, “Jesus’ resurrection was, was a demonic conspiracy to lead people away from Judaism?”

Jeff:

Well, then, then given my army ministry, I’m on president on the board, given my background of Jewish ministry, I would point them to how it was prophesied in the old Testament.

Steve:

Yeah, exactly. The Old Testament actually prophesied about Jesus. As a matter of fact, in Jerusalem today, there are rabbis in synagogues who will not preach on Isaiah 53 because they acknowledge that this is too close to talking about Jesus fulfilling these prophecies. And even nonbelievers, like Celsus, acknowledged that the tomb was empty.

Jeff:

Trent, I hit you with a lot of weirdness, and I know you’re not… Speaking of rabbit trails, you haven’t gone down the rabbit hole like I have during the pandemic.

Trent:

No. Well, I mean-

Jeff:

On the weirdness.

Trent:

I’m kind of… Jimmy and I are-

Jeff:

Go watch my Bigfoot interviews.

Trent:

No, well, what’s funny is I actually have covered a lot of these things on my free-for-all-Fridays for Counsel of Trent. I think people like us, who will call ourselves apologists, that’s what we all are here. We’re apologists.

Jeff:

Yeah.

Trent:

And people who are capable of engaging other positions in a rigorous way, we have minds that are ordered towards accumulating knowledge, including eclectic and strange knowledge. So I’m actually not that surprised. I read up on the paranormal and the occult a lot and all the different, odd things that are out in the world. Jimmy does that, sounds like you do that as well. No, the alien thing, I mean, yeah. I mean, I think in your video, you reference John keel, his work, Operation Trojan Horse, his book, Operation Trojan horse, but he believes in ultra terrestrials. He thinks that there are extraterrestrial beings that go and do this.

Jeff:

Well, his term for ultra terrestrial is essentially the equivalent of like what we would call today inter-dimensional and from a Christian perspective, we would say heaven, angels, demons, or…

Trent:

But I guess that’s my… To go back, like to understanding with like Fatima or things like that. I guess this is when I look at things…

Jeff:

I guess we agree with you on this point.

Trent:

Well yeah, because you’re just hand waving it away, you’re trying to find an explanation that coheres with your theology. And I’d feel the same, like if I saw a Hindu do a miracle, I might think it was demonic or it’s possible that a benevolent God answers-

Jeff:

Condescended or something.

Trent:

Yeah. Answers a prayer, like a Hindu woman prays to Atman, “Heal my daughter,” and Yahweh takes pity and mercy on her and does that. Anyhow, so no, I think we’re actually in a lot of agreeing here, just to find the explanation. I guess to wrap it up, like I had my debate with Matt Dillahunty on resurrection and I use this epistemology, “Things are as they appear, unless evidence suggests otherwise.” So if it looks like Jesus rose from the dead, probably what happened. I don’t need to add aliens in there for that. Fatima, I think, along with the apparitions and then the messages, I think it is what it appears unless evidence suggests otherwise. So I think it’s interesting, our disagreement, it will go back to something foundational.

Trent:

I think the existence of apparitions and miracles in Catholicism is more of a problem for Protestants who believe Catholicism is just another Christian denomination like Lutherans or Methodists. Because then it’s like, “You got these different denominations. This one’s got a bunch of miracles and apparitions. Maybe that’s the one I should look at.” But if you truly believe Catholicism is anathema, it is a hell-bound heresy, the demons being in there would make more sense. So a demonic explanation make more sense if you have a very negative view of Catholic doctrine, than if you just have a more neutral view of it, which many protestants do have.

Steve:

And I can’t speak for Jeff here, but I’m very cautious as a former devout Catholic, as you know, I am Trent, about even, just as assuming that the Magisterium is correct about Marian apparitions, because as you know, throughout history, and you even mentioned this, that you’re skeptical about even canonized saints claiming apparitions of Mary. And as you know, for the Franciscans, there is a canonized saint that had a heavenly revelation that Mary was immaculately conceived, but the Dominicans, there was a canonized saint that said that happened three hours afterwards. So we have to be skeptical about this. And again, this goes back to a matter of authority, the Magisterium and the Pope, that these canonized saints were approved of versus the support from scripture.

Jeff:

To benefit Trent. Sorry, to benefit you, what I would say based on my paranormal research is not every Bigfoot citing is Bigfoot. Not every UFO citing is a UFO. Some people are lying, some people saw Venus, some people saw a demon, so you got to… Some people might be schizophrenic. Some people may have seen an apparition.

Trent:

Yeah. And I agree with all that. Yeah.

Jeff:

Yeah. So-

Trent:

I just want to ask you before we run out of time, because it seems like you both are convinced that the only intelligent creatures that exist are human beings and angels, fallen or not fallen, that there aren’t inter-dimensional or extraterrestrial, to me, I just don’t-

Jeff:

Well, I would count angels and demons as inter-dimensional.

Steve:

Inter-dimensional.

Trent:

All right. Let’s say corporal, inter-dimensional corporal beings.

Jeff:

Well, I would think can take on corporal form, like in Genesis or whatever.

Trent:

Yeah. So I’m just saying that another kind of creation another, like in C.S. Lewis’ The Space Trilogy, like there’s other intelligent…

Jeff:

Oh, is it possible? Yes, but I don’t think it happened. And if God did create something elsewhere, based on the laws of physics, I don’t think it could get here.

Steve:

Trent, how would you respond to Eve being the mother of all living?

Trent:

I would say that is a reference to all those who are living on earth. That it’s just a reference to all living human beings. That if a human being exists, they go back to Adam and Eve, and there’s different ways to understand. Now, some people might say, “That is more of a metaphorical reference.” That’s the debate about whether Adam and Eve were a pair, a group of people or a hybrid view, which would take us far afield from here. But I don’t think that that text would apply, that there are no other living beings on other planets or things like that.

Steve:

Would you agree with Jesus when he said, “From the beginning of creation, he made the male and female,” and he’s drawing back to Genesis 1. Using the same great words in Genesis 1:1, created and beginning.

Trent:

Yeah. But I would say that the context there, Jesus, just as when you said, “Jesus was not… When he said that the seed was the smallest, he’s talking about the mustard seed is the smallest in the land of Israel, not in the entire earth,” I would borrow that same explanation to say, Jesus is talking about the creation of male and female on earth, he’s not talking the whole universe and maybe other life that might exist.

Jeff:

All right. Steve has to go to bed. So let’s go to 0.4.

Steve:

I got to work tonight.

Trent:

Yeah. And also, I think I’m okay. I’m actually interviewing Jimmy about his date with Bart Ehrman here real soon.

Steve:

Yeah. I was going to say, how are you doing on time, Trent?

Trent:

Let’s go to Pascal’s Wager, a nice way to wrap it up. We made through four.

Jeff:

Can I just something about argument for silence, because I did want to get this out.

Trent:

Yeah, sure.

Jeff:

I think our position, we’ve talked about this with the Other Paul too, that’s his channel name, the Other Paul, is that some arguments for silence are invalid and some, where say you… Maybe it’s not definitive proof, but counts as evidence where the type of silence that you want to look for is that there are actually a valid argument from silence, is where you’re expecting to hear something in a particular context and it doesn’t come up, if that may makes sense. And I think that somewhat, historians-

Trent:

And, and I guess, well, briefly, I got sucked in. I couldn’t help it. What I would say here is like the argument from contradiction, we got to be careful with arguments from silence. They can quickly get out of hand with us.

Jeff:

Yes. I agree.

Trent:

They may deploy against Christianity. My feeling is to keep them from being deployed against Christianity in general, the bar would have to be raised so high. I don’t think that they would be as effective.

Jeff:

Well, maybe the better way to think of it is, it counts as evidence, but it might not be determinative.

Trent:

Sure. It’s a balance, because you can come up with these kinds of examples in Christianity itself. The classic one would be… Because in Catholicism, I think the argument protestants make is, “You can find Catholic doctrine X in later fathers or writers, but not in the earlier ones. That’s odd. We’d expect someone to write about it. Ya yada, yada.” But that’s what people say about the Virgin birth. They’ll say like, “Well look, we see it in Matthew and Luke, it’s kind of weird we don’t have it in Mark,” depending if you think Mark wrote first, “or Paul, who would be our earliest source.” That’s what they do with the Virgin birth.

Trent:

Another one would be Romans 13 and taxation. So mythicists will say, “Look, there was no historical Jesus who taught, because if he did, he taught about paying taxes, give to Caesar what is Caesar’s.” Paul tells Christians to pay taxes in Romans 13. But it’s really weird that Paul doesn’t just cite Jesus on this one and be a slam dunk argument. And I do think it’s kind of odd, but I don’t run from there to say that Jesus never existed or never preached on that or something like it. So you do find these odd silences, but where you go with them… You see what I mean?

Jeff:

I think we’re on the same page.

Trent:

Yeah.

Steve:

And just to respond quickly to Trent regarding the resurrection and taxes argument, like from atheist… What’s that?

Trent:

Romans and taxes.

Steve:

Yeah. Resurrection and taxes argument, because you talked about resurrection and taxes.

Trent:

I said the Virgin birth.

Steve:

Virgin, I’m sorry, the Virgin birth. Okay, the Virgin birth. Well, first of all, Paul does talk about the Virgin birth in Galatians. Second of all-

Trent:

Wait, I have to stop you there. Where does he say that Christ was born of a Virgin?

Steve:

It says that he was born of a woman, who was born under the law. And when you go back to Isaiah, a young maiden or a woman would be equivalent to a Virgin. But anyways, that’s not the point I’m trying to make. What I’m trying to say is that whether Paul says it, or Jesus says it, you as a Catholic and us as Protestants, we understand that the scripture isn’t just a bunch of individual writings. They’re all God breathe, they’re all inspired scripture. They’re not just secular texts. So if Paul says something that Jesus doesn’t say and vice versa, it only has to be said once in order for it to be true. The other thing-

Trent:

Yeah, the problem there though is a Catholic could say, “Well, so you’re not worried about the silences because all scripture is inspired and God’s providentially making things pop up, maybe an only one author.” Fine, but then a Catholic could do the same thing with sacred tradition and say, “God, providentially only has a pop up here or there.”

PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [01:18:04]

Trent:

The same thing with sacred tradition and say God, providentially only has a pop-up here or there. So we’re going back to our foundational beliefs to get…

Steve:

This builds on what Geoff was saying about argument of silence. I’m sure you’re familiar with Tertullian. Prior to him being a heretic, he was actually one of the most prolific writers and he was very Orthodox about the virgin birth. Yet in his work, The Resurrection of the Dead, he has 63 chapters and he mentions numerous people having near death experiences and were caught up to heaven that were resurrected. He mentions people like Enoch, Elijah, Daniel, Jonah, Jesus and Lazarus. But he doesn’t mention Mary being bodily assumed even once. He’s not the only one. Clement of Rome, Methiatus and Irenaeus, Hipolitus, a lot of other ones mention about other people being caught up, but they don’t mention anything. Here’s where the argument of silence works because knowing this, if Mary was bodily assumed to heaven, under these circumstances, these writers would have mentioned this if they had the same view of Mary that Roman Catholics do today.

Trent:

I would say that would depend on their context. Mythicists do this as well. They’ll talk about like First Clement will mention miracles and things like that done in the Old Testament, but they don’t mention things related to Jesus necessarily. A lot of early apostolic fathers are much more likely to cite from the Old Testament than even from things that are relevant in the New Testament that would make their case. But these other things would pop up for Protestants as well. Like if you believe in original sin, we don’t find explicit references to that until like the time of Augustine, similar with the canon.

Trent:

So I see what you’re saying and this would require a separate discussion to say, this particular argument from silence on the dogma of the assumption. Is it just some evidence? Is it case closed? Are there other doctrines we do agree with that are similarly absent that we don’t see. Now, I do think that doesn’t mean the arguments from silent are not useful. They can be. I just believe that they’re very powerful. They can undermine one’s own position, so they should be used judiciously is what I would say.

Steve:

We would agree.

Jeff:

We would agree. I do think there are arguments from silence that I deploy against Catholicism, but we’re not going to get into them, but it’s that they have to be used judiciously and not just like, well, “I demand that it says it in this specific spot.”

Trent:

Yeah, because there’re all kinds of weird. The more I’ve done studying on arguments from silence, there’s so much weirdness. I had an interview with Swansona and he brought up a recent book that was on Josephus and he mentions that Josephus never mentions Paul, which is a really weird thing. Paul would’ve been notorious. He would’ve been the biggest traitor among the Jews for being the founder of the Christian faith, a Pharisee among Pharisees, writing these letters, being one of the founders of the church at Rome. Josephus never mentions him being a part of this. There are weird silences. That’s why I think it’s kind of a hard argument.

Steve:

I think when we take a look at silences where we would expect people to be mentioned like in a particular work, we have to ask what they are actually writing about specifically. That’s why I brought up the thing about Tertullian. He’s specifically mentioning about people who are bodily rising from the dead and being assumed to heaven. In that particular situation, you would expect that if Mary was bodily assumed to heaven, out of 63 chapters and these dozens and dozens of people he mentioned that he would’ve mention it because he’s specifically talking about people being bodily assumed, but let’s move on. Geoff.

Trent:

Last one.

Jeff:

Pascal’s wager.

Trent:

This was a simple one. This is just basically when I was talking with Cameron Bertuzzi, because it’s kind of interesting. You see he’s publicly be talking about how, “Oh, Catholicism, it seems really appealing and intriguing to me. I want to investigate it.” It’s funny. I don’t really ever see too many public Catholics doing that. I think in Protestantism, there’s more of an understanding that you might shift your theological beliefs over time. I just watched a video with Doug Wilson on how he changed his view on baptism. In Protestantism, it’s a very big tent. There’s lots of theological discovery you’re going to be making. That might include Catholicism for some people.

Trent:

Cameron asked me, “Well, let’s say I really want to be Catholic, but there are certain dogmas that just I can’t get my head around. I want to be Catholic, but I’m not totally convinced yet. What should I do?” I said to Cameron, “Well Cameron, what would you tell an atheist who said, ‘Ah, I really want to believe in God and believe in Christianity, but I still have some of these problems. I’m just really torn. I don’t know what to do.'” I said, “What would you tell that atheist?” You should probably tell him, “Well, give Christianity a try. Live it out and see if it all comes together. You don’t have anything to lose if you do that.”

Trent:

Pascal’s wager, people misunderstand it. They think that you should bet on God, so you don’t go to hell. That was not Pascal’s wager at all. Rather, Pascal was saying you got nothing really to lose and much to gain. Just try out Christianity, you have nothing to lose. If you want it to be true, you’re going to try and see. You got nothing to lose. Worse comes to worse, you’re back to square one. I believe the same is true for Catholicism and for some Protestants, not all. Now, if a Protestant believes being Catholic will send them to hell, possibly. Then this is not going to be as persuasive to them. But if they see Catholicism as just another denomination, like Methodism, Calvinism, Lutheranism, then I think it might have more force. That’s just the point I would make.

Jeff:

That was kind of our thinking. The way I liken that to your point was like, “Try cheating on your wife and see how you like that.”

Trent:

Well, let me ask you, let’s say you’re evangelizing somebody. Have you ever come across someone who is on the fence, they would want Christianity to be true and they’re just still struggling with the evidence and they’re just still trying to figure it out.

Jeff:

Well, inviting them to church so that the Spirit of God might move on them or something like that or to get into a discipling relationship with them. But my problem with the that approach, as in Pascal’s wager in that context would be, it’s a message that you’re ordered to believe. It’s a command, not a try this on sort of thing.

Trent:

Oh, you mean the proclamation of the gospel?

Jeff:

Yeah.

Trent:

Well, yes.

Jeff:

There’s a difference in terms of a…

Trent:

I guess interesting. You want to have an apostolic faith, but does it follow that we have to emulate all of the things done in the time of the apostles. During that time Christians worshiped in houses. They didn’t worship in churches. They had house churches. It doesn’t mean we can’t have large churches assemblies today or things like that or all alter calls. It also says there’s a proclamation that was made, but also talks about Paul or Apollos reasoning with people in the synagogue and stuff like that. I’m trying to understand your objection. I get that I don’t want to water it down to it’s true if you happen to get a fancy for it. I would want to say “Yeah, believe in the gospel.” Then people will come back and say, “Well I don’t,” or “I’m having trouble.” Then I think it’s about then we kind of try to meet people where they’re at.

Jeff:

It’s different if I say like, “Why don’t you come to a Bible study and investigate this on your own.” It’s different. But it’s different from saying, “Try this out.” I think that’s almost blasphemous or is blasphemous.

Trent:

Would you tell an atheist like, “Hey, you want Christianity to be true? Why don’t you try praying to God for a week and just see what happens?” Like would that be elicit?

Steve:

Honestly, I would not word it that way and that’s why I would not use Pascal’s wager while I’m evangelizing. I would do all the same things that Geoff just brought up. Come to church. Go to Bible studies. Pray and all that. But I wouldn’t word it that way because it gives the impression to an atheist or somebody who’s on the fence that Christians believe that Christianity has the potential to be true rather than it actually being true. This is where I would use evangelizing. This is where I would use apologetics and where I would try to answer the individual’s question. Now of course, coming to church and everything that Geoff had said, yes, definitely end up doing that. But as far as the thing of having nothing to lose, are you familiar with the late RC Sproul’s books? Are we together?

Trent:

Sure. Of course. Classics. Yeah. I met his grandson, I think when I debated James White at G3.

Steve:

Nice. One of the things that he brings up and he cites Roman Catholic sources, official ones, that even individuals who have actually rejected Catholicism could still potentially end up making it into heaven because they don’t really know any better. See, I wouldn’t take that approach at all because I would defend that Christianity is actually real and I would use apologetics.

Trent:

I totally agree with that. I debate theists. I debate people on the resurrection. I do that all the time. But the thing you said that Pascal’s wager makes it seem like Christianity is only potentially true. I agree with you. I don’t want somebody to think that I think Christianity is only true relative to me, like it’s true for me. No, it’s true for everybody. At the same time, the truth of let’s say like Jesus rising from the dead, it’s not an analytic truth like two plus two equals four, or there are no married bachelors. Someone grappling with it, there’s going to be a probability that it’s true or not, at least for them, who’s not convinced yet. I’m sure you’ve had the experience where and it’s interesting, you just said to me, you might talk to somebody, give them apologetics. They’re not convinced and you might tell them to pray. Well, it sounds like kind of like when I’m saying they should do.

Steve:

Yeah. But I’m telling them pray because like I said, I’m convinced that Christianity is true. The other thing is that the argument about you not having anything to lose. Well, this goes back to what the gospel is and what the gospel isn’t. I’m coming at from this from a Protestant perspective, Trent, so I hope he can appreciate it because I do not believe that Rome has the gospel of Jesus Christ, but that it is a false gospel. If it’s a false gospel, then the Apostle Paul says that individual’s anathema. Saying you have nothing to lose, if the gospel of Rome really is true, they still have everything to lose.

Trent:

No and I…

Steve:

You see what I’m saying?

Trent:

Wait, if the gospel Rome is true or if it’s false?

Steve:

I’m sorry, if the gospel Rome is false, then you would have everything lose.

Trent:

Interestingly enough and you might feel the same way here, that you would probably prefer an antagonistic atheist to an apathetic nonreligious person.

Steve:

Oh yes.

Trent:

Because some of the most difficult people I might engage in the Catholic Protestant divide are not people like yourselves who would say that I have a false gospel, things like that. It’s someone who goes to the evangelical church that says Catholics are just like any…

Jeff:

You’re a Christian.

Trent:

Right. That it’s just like any other denomination and that we all believe in Jesus and that’s the only thing that matters. Why bother changing because as long as we believe in Jesus, nothing else matters.

Jeff:

That’s why I don’t believe in mere Christianity.

Trent:

That’s why I don’t believe in mere Christianity either. That’s where of the two kinds of Protestants I might engage, I’d prefer to have the one that says I’m going to hell because I have more to work with there. We see doctrine and denominational differences matter in that regard. So I agree with you. Like with Pascal’s wager, if you have an atheist who says, “Yeah, but I’m worried that if I become Christian, what if the Muslim God sends me to hell,” or something like that. They’re all concerned about that. It’s not going to be as helpful of an argument, but if they say, “Well, if I became Christian, I’ll lose sleep on Sundays. I might have to have more rigorous moral behavior, but I get a return of as Pascal argued, positive, natural benefits of the religious life, okay.” Then I think that this kind of approach can be helpful for someone who only sees Catholicism as just a different denomination.

Trent:

But if they believe it falls under the Galatians heresy or something like that, then you have to work through those issues more. That’s why we have these kind of dialogues and things like that.

Jeff:

Trent, if I can give an example, so I became a Christian and I guess maybe three or so years later, I didn’t even know Calvin still existed. This was pre major internet. When I encountered the claims of Calvinism, I looked it up in scripture and I eventually became convinced, but I didn’t like it. I didn’t like that it was true.

Trent:

That’s Calvinism’s main selling point. It doesn’t matter what you like.

Jeff:

My kind of approach to myself was like, “Well I need to get my emotions in line with scripture as opposed to…”

Trent:

What I’m saying is, and I agree, you got to be careful because there can be people who become Catholic because they like smells and bells. Now for me, if you come to something true through a bad reason, it doesn’t mean the thing is false. There’s people who become Christian for bad reasons. It doesn’t disprove Christianity.

Jeff:

Or they found friendship in the church and that opened them up.

Trent:

I am wary of someone who becomes Catholic, for especially like Latin mass or things like that, for smells and bells or for other Catholic benefits. Just like someone who becomes Protestant because they really love Protestant charismatics and they just feel the spirit in way that they never felt it before. It’s like, “Well be careful, you’ve built your house on a house of sand here.” You got to be careful.

Steve:

This is something that you had brought up in your podcast about saying, “Well, for your charismatics and Eastern Orthodox, we’ve got these rites and that you can come over. They’re very similar and everything.” But at the same time, even they would have things to lose because there are things that even like you would know, the Eastern Orthodox are in complete opposition. They don’t believe in the supremacy of the pope. They don’t believe in the filioque.

Trent:

Of course, you have to…

Steve:

Even in books, even in their council, they actually have quite a bit to lose and those are pretty important.

Trent:

Let me give you an example before we run out of time. Let’s say you’re evangelizing an atheist and said to you, Steve, “You know what? I believe in Jesus. I want to believe in God, but I cannot be a young earth creationist.” What would your response be?

Steve:

Okay, good question. This is something that Geoff and I think would agree on. Now I’m a young earth creationist and Geoff isn’t.

Jeff:

I’m an old earth creationist.

Steve:

I’m sorry, old earth creationist. That is not something in the Bible and that’s why the Bible is are ultimate authority. There’s nothing in the Bible that says that you must believe in a young earth or old earth to be a Christian, but you must believe that Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead. The Bible’s very explicit that Jesus is God. When he says before Abraham was, I am.

Trent:

I totally agree with that and that’s why when I was talking about, let’s say, I want to help an Eastern Orthodox person become Catholic. I would want to present to him a Catholicism that is as close to what he currently believes. It makes it easier for him to make that transition. Just like if you wanted to help an atheist to become Christian, you would want to pair away the non-essentials that are barriers for them and move them to…

Steve:

Like not believing God exists?

Trent:

No, but like young earth creationism would be a barrier non-essential.

Steve:

But Geoff is still a Christian and Geoff would still say, I’m a Christian, even though we disagree on this.

Trent:

No, my point is that if you want to help…

Steve:

This isn’t a change of worldview.

Jeff:

Let’s say it’s me and I really much don’t believe in theistic evolution, but I don’t think theistic evolution is a damnable heresy. So what do you do? That’s a good question because it’s not an essential of a faith, but I view it as very important.

Trent:

I’ll give you another example. Let’s say Steve, you were… Who knows what God does? God can do whatever. You want to become Catholic, but you say, “I can’t give up young creationism.” There I’d say, “Well, I don’t agree with younger creationism.”

Jeff:

It’s a big tent.

Trent:

But the church has left that an open question. You saw the debate with Jimmy with Gideon and he took that view. In that case, I would remove that as a non-essential barrier and just get to the essentials. So I think then that when we evangelize, whether we’re Catholic or Protestant though with Protestantism, it gets a bit more difficult. I think I’m going to do an episode on this sooner. I would actually enjoy maybe you guys and somebody else get a dialogue on how we determine what is essential.

Steve:

Trent, to be honest with you, that’s actually the same type of tactic that you see from Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons. I see them come to my door and they do all the same things. They talk about all the things that we have in common and the historicity. And they actually bring their New World Translation Bible, which I’ve actually used to show them that their translation proves the Trinity, which they don’t like. The thing is, if I be were to become a Jehovah’s Witness, I would have to give up a lot, including the deity of Christ and the Trinity. If I were become a Roman Catholic, I would have to give up sola scriptura. I would have to give up sola fide. The young earth creationist thing, the really a non-essential. It’s not something that would be a big deal for me, because I could keep it. But the things that are important that are significant to the gospel, I would have to give up.

Trent:

Sure. Just like if I became Protestant, I would have to give up my belief in the magisterium, my belief in the papacy.

Steve:

Right.

Trent:

You do have to debate and…

Steve:

Give up a lot.

Trent:

You do have to debate in dialogue about those essentials. But I’m saying there are some Protestants who they have reached a point where they’re not convinced of solo scriptura. They have a view on justification and maybe they follow the new perspective on Paul from NT Wright and others where they’re very, very close to Catholicism on that question. So the barriers have been lowered for them.

Jeff:

Yes. I would agree that is a lower barrier for people who would come to that conclusion.

Steve:

I can’t speak for Geoff, but for me personally, based on the reformers, the reformation, what a Protestant is, the two key things is soul scriptura and sola fide. So, if someone calls themselves a Protestant that does not believe in those things, they’re not a Protestant.

Trent:

Do you think NT Wright is Protestant?

Steve:

If NT Wright rejects soul scriptura and sola fide, then he’s not a Protestant because we have to understand what a Protestant is.

Jeff:

I guess you can use the phrase in different ways. I know NT Wright doesn’t believe in the inspiration of scripture. So I don’t know how you would hold to sola scriptura if you don’t believe in inspiration of scripture.

Trent:

On justification, when he debates James White on justification, he says the same things that I would probably say.

Steve:

Yeah and I would say he has more in common with you than you would with us.

Jeff:

NT Wright benefits from having a British accent and being Anglican. It’s like… [crosstalk 01:38:23]

Trent:

I just wish if I could just have my podcast, “Welcome to the Trent Horn podcast, I’m Trent Horn. The problem with Protestantism…”

Steve:

Actually, that was pretty good.

Trent:

You know who is really good at this, the Catholic apologist that can really stomp around, Peter D. Williams from England. When he debates White on the Marion dogma and it’s like, “The problem here that Mr. White is saying, is that you don’t understand what the probability of the evidence.” I sound like a Yokel. Why you should believe this.

Steve:

Well, Trent, if you’re going to have a British accent, one of the things you have to work on is instead of saying schedule you have to say schedule.

Trent:

Zed.

Jeff:

It has to be a particular…

Trent:

A to Zed. Schedule.

Jeff:

It has to be a particular British accent. If you go all Cockney or something, it’s going to backfire.

Trent:

Yeah, you don’t sound intelligent. I’m going to be a chimney sweep. Hey, Mary Poppins. Oh, shoot. I have to go interview Jimmy now. This was fun.

Steve:

And I got to go to bed.

Jeff:

All right. Sorry for all my errors for people who are going to correct me later.

Trent:

No, this is fine. My big thing is I really appreciate people who can sit down with the people they disagree with. There are certain Protestants. I’m not going to say who and then Catholics also. Here’s another one. There are Catholics who they create their little echo chamber, put out their material and, Protestant and Catholic and will not sit down with people on the other side. And I’m like, “Come on guys, come on.”

Jeff:

Does this have anything to do with [crosstalk 01:39:56].

Steve:

To be fair, I’m going to throw a Trent of bone. There are Protestants that are very rabidly anti-Catholic and I do not support them. I do not justify them. I’ve had Catholic apologists who have all me mentally challenged, because I don’t agree with them. So I won’t mention who it is out of respect.

Trent:

Don’t worry. I have plenty of Catholics on the right and left who say that to me. No worries there.

Jeff:

You can hate me for perfectly valid reasons. You don’t have to make stuff up.

Steve:

Just make sure that if you spell Geoff’s name, it’s with a G.

Trent:

That the that’s the British Geoff. Now you British have the accent.

Jeff:

I made fun of NT Wright and then I have a British spelling for name.

Trent:

Thank you guys. This was a lot of fun.

Steve:

I’ll see you on April 20th on Pints with Aquinas.

Trent:

Yes.

Jeff:

All the links are in the bio. Go see the GoFund me to help my friend. It explains it they’re. Thank you, Trent.

Trent:

Of course.

Steve:

Thank you, Trent.

Jeff:

You volunteered to come. I didn’t even reach out for this, but that was awesome.

Trent:

Very good.

Jeff:

Go, Say hi to Jimmy.

Trent:

Will do.

 

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