In this free-for-all-Friday, Trent sits down with non-religious Youtuber Potential Theism to answer his questions about Catholicism.
Transcript:
Trent Horn:
It is free-for-all Friday here in the Council of Trent podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. Monday and Wednesday we talk apologetics and theology. And today, on Friday, we’re also going to talk apologetics and theology. But actually what I want to share with you is an interview that I had on the YouTube channel, Potential Theism. The host is actually non-religious himself, but he’s fairly supportive of my work. I think he considers the apologetic work that I do worth looking at, reviewing, critiquing. I’ve even seen him on social media and have agreed with some of his posts, criticizing other individuals who offer stereotypical or not well-thought-out criticisms of atheism and agnosticism. So I really enjoyed going on his show. I talked about why be Catholic, differences between Catholics and Protestants, how sometimes Protestants argue like atheists. Check out my book on that if you want more. So without further ado, here is our interview.
Potential Theism:
And one of the things I like about your channel is there’s a little bit of everything. I never know what’s coming up. Sometimes you’ll cover one topic, and then the next it’ll be like, “Oh, here’s a debate review.” And I’m like, “Well, that’s totally different from your last stream.” So you’re always covering different things. So definitely check that out, the link’s in the description.
So what I wanted to ask you about today is folks who may be in a similar situation as me, maybe they’re ex-Protestants or ex-Evangelicals, and they’ve left the faith, they no longer believe in God, but now they’re open to the possibility of believing in God again and maybe they’re even open to returning to Christianity. So I guess a good starting place would be, why do you think they should be Catholic?
Trent Horn:
Well, I think they should be Catholic because I think Catholicism makes the most sense of the world around us. It makes the most sense of the physical and scientific facts of the world. It makes the most sense of human experience. It makes the most sense of our moral intuitions and moral frameworks once we put them together in a coherent way. So I think that that would be what would make the most sense.
Now, I would admit that if you are an atheist or an agnostic, there’s a fair number of steps one would have to go through before you would become Catholic. So different people have different ways of presenting the case, but the way I would look at it is that if you are an atheist or an agnostic, one should answer the question of who is Jesus of Nazareth? If He was not divine or did not rise from the dead, then that at least takes Christianity off the table.
There could be other religious belief systems that are true. You’d have to investigate those. But if Jesus wasn’t who He said He was, not who the apostles said He was, that takes that off the table. But if Jesus is who He claimed to be and who the disciples and the apostles and the leaders of the early church claimed Him to be the risen God incarnate, then that would make Christianity the true religion. And other religions would just be in varying degrees towards the truth, some closer than others. But that would give you a good reason to be Christian. And there I think Catholicism would make the most sense for someone because I think it has the best approach for crossing the gap. So the gap would be… All right, and I went through this myself when I was in high school. I was a deist. I was never an atheist, but I wasn’t Christian either.
I thought there was a God out there who started the universe, but that’s it. But then after being convicted to become Christian, I thought, “Okay, well now what do I do? I believe in Jesus. He rose from the dead. There’s the Bible. Okay, there’s these documents people call the Bible. There are all of these churches around. Why should I believe just because I believe Jesus rose from the dead, why should I believe that the letter to the Hebrews is the inspired word of God?” There’s a few steps one has to go through.
And I find that Protestantism has a harder time crossing the gap from Jesus rose from the dead, to 66 inspired books that is sole infallible rule of faith than Catholicism does, which Catholics would say, “Well, we believe Jesus rose from the dead. He created one church. He gave the Apostles the authority to establish that church. The Apostles gave their authority to their successors, and eventually their successors taught with divine authority, varying levels of authority I should say, that divine revelation can be found in what the church teaches and in this collection of sacred writings that we call the Bible.” So for me, I feel like it’s easier for me to cross that gap of understanding all of Christian revelation within this Catholic context than any other Protestant context.
Potential Theism:
So one of the things that I’ve noticed in my own journey is when I think about these topics, you wrote this book When Protestants Argue Like Atheists, but I find myself as an atheist arguing like a Protestant. So I’ll approach Catholic resources. I had a guy named Catholic Dad on social media send me a bunch of books including yours. And as I’m reading them, I’m sort of approaching these things like I’m still a Protestant. Have you noticed that? Atheists who still argue like Protestants?
Trent Horn:
Oh, absolutely. So for example, I’ve noticed that there are atheists who would say for example, well back when they were Protestants, they might have been more literalists when it came to interpreting the Book of Genesis. So they would hold this sort of framework that the Book of Genesis and modern science are incompatible. So what that means is that Genesis is right and science is wrong. And so you hold that particular young earth creationist Christian view.
But then eventually they come to a point where they say, “Oh, nevermind, I’ve looked at the evidence. I think modern science is correct about the age of the earth, common ancestry of living organisms. So if they’re incompatible and science is right, that means Genesis is wrong. If Genesis is wrong, the Bible is wrong. If the Bible is wrong, Christianity is wrong.” And so they keep that same limited framework that they might’ve had as a Protestant. They just switch out the if-then conditional so to speak. But they’re still operating within that similar kind of a framework.
Potential Theism:
Okay, so let’s talk about some of those objections that a ex-Protestant may have as they’re exploring these topics. So the doctrine of sola scriptura, for example, when you abandon that but you’re trying to investigate Catholicism, one of the things that Protestants hear in church often is that Catholics have a low view of the Bible. So maybe go over what is the Catholic view of the Bible?
Trent Horn:
Sure. So the Catholic view of the Bible is that it is the word of God. So it is inspired, it is authoritative, it is without error. So it is God’s word. However, as Catholics, we don’t believe that God’s word is confined to the written word alone. In the early church, for example, the word of God existed for 20 years before, sorry, the unwritten word of God existed for 20 years before the written word of God and the new covenant ever came into existence with probably the earliest of Paul’s letters, like first Thessalonians for example.
But in first Thessalonians, Paul talks about how the word of God was preached among you. So we do certainly believe that divine revelation comes to us in the form of God’s word. Ultimately, we would say that revelation comes in its most complete form in Jesus himself, that He just is the word of God, God’s single word.
However, we as human beings need things in propositional content in order to fully absorb them. So as Catholics, we’d say that both sacred scripture and sacred tradition are equally authoritative. They are God’s word in written and unwritten form. But we’d also say that Jesus gave us a church with a teaching office, what’s called a magisterium. And that provides a way, an authoritative means for understanding what divine revelation teaches. What does sacred scripture mean? What constitutes sacred scripture? What constitutes sacred tradition? So I would say that we certainly have a very high view of scripture and that the Catholics would say the church is not above the Bible, but the church is the faithful custodian of scripture and serves God’s word in its written in unwritten forms.
Potential Theism:
So obviously Catholic Bibles are bigger than Protestant Bibles.
Trent Horn:
Yes.
Potential Theism:
So are these other books equally as authoritative?
Trent Horn:
Yes. So what you’re referring to are the deuterocanonical books of scripture, while Protestants often call them apocrypha. So Sixtus of Siena, he was a late medieval Jewish convert to Catholicism, and he developed this three-tiered classification system for Catholics. There were the protocanonical books… That Catholics and Protestants have the same twenty-seven books of the New Testament. We differ about the content of the Old Testament. Protestant Bibles would have 30, let’s see, what would it be? 30…? Yeah, 39 books. Yeah, that’s right I think. No, we have 39 books. There’s 66 books in the Protestant Bible, and more in the Catholic Bible.
So the Catholic Bible would include these other books like Tobit, First and Second Maccabees, Baruch, the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach and longer forms of the Books of Esther and Daniel. So these longer works are called deuterocanonical. So protocanonical would be the books of the Bible that are the same in Catholic and Protestant Bibles. Catholics would say the deuterocanon are those books that are in Catholic Bibles, like the Old Testament books I just shared with you, but are not in Protestant Bibles. And apocrypha, we would say that refers to books that Catholics and Protestants agree are not divinely inspired, like the Book of Enoch, for example, or other early church writings like The Shepherd of Hermes or the Didache.
So they are different. But I would say that when you look at the Bible that Jesus and the Apostles quoted from, they primarily quoted from the Greek translation of the Old Testament, and that was a Septuagint that included these deuterocanonical books. You can also find these books being written in a special script reserved for… books that are considered inspired among the Dead Sea Scrolls. You see the church fathers quoting from them. You even see in Scripture, sorry, in the protocanonical books, you have for example, the Book of Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 11, referring to incidents in sacred history and quoting from the Book of the Maccabees describing martyrs as a part of sacred history, not just secular history, which would give evidence that the author letter of the Hebrews believed the deuterocanonical Book of Maccabees was inspired scripture.
And I think going through, when you look at the early church fathers, there is a growth in their citation of these books of scripture alongside the other protocanonical works. I have a chapter on that in my book Case for Catholicism. I’ve also debated the subject with Steve Christie, who is a Protestant apologist. He wrote a book called Why Protestant Bibles are Smaller. So if people want to see a nitty-gritty debate on some of the more technical issues. They can definitely check out that debate between him and I.
Potential Theism:
Yeah, and I definitely recommend this book if anyone has objections, maybe you come from a Protestant background, this would be a good book to look into those. So another subject that they may struggle with is the Marian doctrines. So can you clarify the Catholic view of Mary? Do Catholics worship Mary?
Trent Horn:
It depends on what you mean by the word worship. So the word worship has undergone a semantic shift, and this is important. When we talk about words and vocabulary, we have to remember that. The older use of the word worship just means to give one their worth-ship. So you have older, even older Protestant prayer books where the husband says to the wife, “I worship thee and I worship thy body, I worship thee.” But it doesn’t mean you worship in a divine way. It means you give one their worth-ship. It’s similar to how we address a judge. We might say, your Honor, for example. So worship in the sense of worth-ship. Catholics worship Mary by giving her the worth she is due. But lots of people even giving judges, magistrates, parents our due honor. We give honor and praise to all creatures in virtue of what they deserve.
With God, of course, being infinite goodness itself, the creator of all things, God deserves the highest honor, the highest worship. And so Catholics would say that the worship that is due to God alone like sacrifice, sacrifices can be only offered to God. There were heretics in the early church called the Collyridians who made sacrifices to Mary and this was condemned as heresy.
So we would say that the honor due to God unique to Him is something that cannot be given to Mary. But I would say for Protestants among all of the creatures that God made, which of those creatures should be held in the highest honor? That if God exists and God entered into the creation he made, and he chose to do that through another creature, because God could have just created a human body for Himself ex nihilo, but He chose not to do that. He chose to be born like human beings are born.
The fact that the second person of the Trinity became man and now for all eternity, God, the second person of the Trinity, God, the Son in His human nature will resemble another human being. He’ll bear a physical similarity to Mary. I find quite striking, and that would seem to make sense as to why of all the creatures God made, the one that should be held in the highest honor would be the creature who bore the Creator within her womb. So that makes that sense to me. And so I think that sometimes Protestants can confuse the fact that the highest honor among creatures is given to Mary, to mean that the highest of all honors is given to her. That is certainly not the case. Even St. Louis de Montfort who has very extravagant language of Mary in his writings says Mary is but a mere atom in comparison to God.
Potential Theism:
Okay, so JB asked why believe Mary was perpetual virgin?
Trent Horn:
Sure. I would say for the same reasons that we believe that Mary was a virgin before Christ was born. What is interesting is that Protestants will often say, “Well, I certainly believe in the Virgin birth,” and I think I might ask them, “Okay, do you agree then, do you believe that Joseph and Mary did not have sexual relations during her entire pregnancy?” Because many of them will quote passages in the Bible that teach that Mary and Joseph did not have sexual relations prior to the conception of Jesus. And we all agree on that point.
Now, why is this teaching so important? Because many Protestants say, “What’s the big deal if Mary was a perpetual virgin?” Well, for the same reason, it’s a big deal Mary was a virgin prior to the conception of Christ. It’s a miraculous sign to show that Jesus does not have a human father. He has no earthly father. He has a father who’s a legal guardian, a stepfather. But the miracle of the virgin birth of the perpetual virginity of Mary I would say. The fact that Mary did not have any sexual relations whatsoever, it is a miraculous sign, it is a wonderful sign of the uniqueness of her only child, that He has no earthly father.
So now why believe that Mary remained a virgin after the birth of Christ? Because interesting, as I said before, Protestants will affirm the virgin birth even though from Scripture, it’s not entirely clear that they abstained from sexual relations during the pregnancy. But most Protestants will say, “Yeah, of course.” Well, why do you believe that? I would say that there is evidence in Scripture that points to this. It points to Mary not having other children, like the fact that John is entrusted to Mary at the cross when Jesus’s brethren, his brothers would become believers shortly after that point, it would make more sense for them to care for his mother.
But I would say, and there’s also some evidence in Luke chapter one, Mary’s confusion about the angel Gabriel telling her that she will bear a son. She says, “How can this be since I know not man?” Some have argued that’s evidence that Mary took a vow of virginity and that Joseph was more of a custodial guardian. People say, “Well, all that means is they were engaged, they weren’t married yet.” So she’s confused like, “How am I going to have a child? I’m only engaged to Joseph. I’m not married to him yet.” But that’s a misunderstanding. Joseph and Mary were never engaged like we talk about modern engagement in American customs. In Hebrew, in biblical Jewish betrothal ceremonies, there were two parts. There was the initial betrothal, which made you husband and wife. You could have sexual union lawfully. And then there was a period that lasted up to a year where the marriage wasn’t complete because you had not moved in together.
Because often during this time, once you were married, then the husband would leave his parents’ home and he would go out and create, build a home from scratch or create or acquire a home for his new bride. It’s a lot harder than what we have today. And so there was this interim period, and that appears to be the interim period when Jesus’s conception takes place. So they were lawfully wedded, they were allowed to engage in sexual union at this time. So it just seems odd for Mary to give this phrase. Now you might say, “Well, there’s nothing [inaudible 00:18:45] in the text that talks about her having a vow of virginity and then Joseph a custodial guardian.” You’re correct. So the other reason that I would give is that historically, the view of Mary not having other children seems to be what has been received among the early church as a historical evidence.
No one. Now there’s different, you might say, “Wait a minute, Trent, you undermined your case. Earlier you talked about the brothers of the Lord. You can’t be a perpetual virgin if you have other children.” Some have argued the brethren of the Lord in Scripture are cousins. That’s one view. It’s not the view that I hold. I hold the older view that was common in the Eastern church that the brethren of the Lord were children of Joseph from Joseph’s previous marriage. I’ll wrap up here. I know there’s a lot here, but it’s a big issue.
I find there’s a lot of evidence actually for this [inaudible 00:19:32] historically and biblically in Mark chapter six, Jesus is referred to as the son of Mary rather than the son of Joseph, which was an odd term in the ancient world. Normally the son of your father, not the son of your mother, unless your mother was a really famous queen or something. Not the case of Mary.
But Richard Bauckham, a Protestant author, says, “Referring to Jesus as the son of Mary in Nazareth would make sense to distinguish Him from Joseph’s other children that were the sons and daughters of his first wife.” So this was an early view. The Protoevangelium of James refers to the brethren in this way and talks about Mary being raised in the temple and making this vow, and Joseph being a spouse to her to protect her after she had left the temple. That the view that the brethren of the Lord were step siblings, they were adoptive siblings. That was actually the view that was held.
No one believed that. That was the view that was held until the fourth century. No one who held office in the early church believed otherwise. Tertullian yeah, but he was already heretic by that point. So I think there’s good reasons biblically and historically to show that in God choosing to become man, Mary’s virginity was perpetual in nature to be an awe-inspiring sign to point to the fact that Jesus was special. He had no earthly father. That was a lot have a chapter out in my book. I hope that was a sufficient place to begin with that.
Potential Theism:
So JB says, Catholics support mythicism. No brothers of Jesus. But I would say actually somebody like Carrier would say that James was the brother of the Lord in a spiritual sense. That’s not what you’re saying.
Trent Horn:
No, it’s not. Now this is interesting. I remember reading Richard Price-
Potential Theism:
Robert Price.
Trent Horn:
… Robert Price. Robert Price, what am I thinking? Robert Price. Yes, he’s a hilarious guy. I love when certain atheists, when they get old enough, they just stop caring what other people think and just tell it how they see it. We’re seeing this more with Dawkins and Bill Marr. I think Robert Price has also done this. He’ll just say stuff even as politically incorrect, and I think he’s a hilarious guy. And he wrote a book a while back called The Christ Myth Theory and Problems or something like that. I’ve got it on my shelf over here somewhere. And in there he talks about the most difficult evidences against the mythicist view that Jesus never existed. And he makes a note. He opines there. He says, Catholics have always been embarrassed about Galatians one 19, talks about James the brother of the Lord. You believe Mary’s perpetual virgin. How can Jesus have brothers? You got to explain this away.
And he says, “Likewise, mythicists like us have to explain this away as well because if Jesus had flesh and blood relatives, well then he can’t be a mythical figure.” So you have mythicists explain that he’s the brother of the Lord in more of a spiritual sense. But I find those explanations to be very unlikely, because James is being distinguished from other Christians who would also have been considered brothers in the Lord or brothers and sisters of the Lord. I find Price and Carrier’s explanation of that not workable. I do think though that the step sibling explanation does work because if you are an adoptive sibling, you’re a brother like any other, you’re treated in the same way. And the term brother is used in Scripture whether you have the same mother or the same father.
So for example, if you go in the New Testament, you remember that John the Baptist lost his head over protesting Herod marrying his wife’s brother. “You cannot have your brother’s wife,” is what John protested to Herod. Now, if you look at Herod and his brother in the Herodian family tree, they actually, the text refers to Herod’s brother, I think his brother Philip. But if you look at the Herodian tree, they do not come from the same mother. They were both children of Herod, but they had the same father, but they had different mothers actually. But the term brother was still used there even though they did not come from the same mother. And I would say the same can be true of brother used, the James brother of the Lord versus Jesus that they have the same legal adoptive father, but they had different mothers.
Potential Theism:
Okay, so let’s talk about Marian apparitions.
Trent Horn:
Sure.
Potential Theism:
So one of the things that I’ve noticed, and I have your book here when Protestants argue like atheists, is that when it comes to Marian apparitions that sometimes Protestants sound like online skeptics.
Trent Horn:
Totally.
Potential Theism:
Yeah. Have you noticed that? And do you think it has the potential to undercut their arguments for the resurrection?
Trent Horn:
Oh, I think it does. To say, to write off the fact, oh, these people never saw post-mortem Mary. Because the idea here is that skeptics will say there are natural explanations for the claim that Jesus’s disciples saw the post-mortem Jesus. Jesus after He died. Now, Catholics, it’s an open question whether Mary died, we believe she was assumed into heaven, but that may have happened. The majority of theologians say that happened after she died. But it’s possible she was assumed alive into heaven. Let’s just say that she died for simplicity’s sake.
I’ve noticed an intriguing parallel between online skeptics who will make arguments against the claims of seeing the post-mortem Jesus. This is hallucination, contagious belief system. These are legendary appearances that never actually happened, suggestion, things like that. And then seeing Protestants who will take numerous examples of apparitions of Mary and say, “Oh, well these are hallucinations, contagion, priming, some of these are legends that didn’t happen.”
I think, okay, if you’re going to argue that hard about people seeing the post-mortem Mary, it’s going to undercut your own claim saying, we should believe the apostles really did see the post-mortem Jesus. This is a claim both Hector Avalos and Bart Ehrman. Avalos is an atheist, Ehrman’s more of an agnostic I think. They make these arguments we believe, because a lot of times they were engaging Protestant apologists like William Lane Craig, Mike Licona, Gary Habermas. And they oftentimes I find in the… I will say this, I do feel lonely when I’m out doing the resurrection arguments and I’m doing this kind of stuff. I feel like I’m surrounded by a sea of Protestants doing a lot of this research and work on these arguments. And then I’m like the one Catholic like, “Hey, why aren’t we out here doing some of this stuff?”
And so I feel like it’s geared towards them. And so Avalos and Ehrman will say to the Protestants, if the same reasons you don’t believe in Marian apparitions, that’s why I don’t believe in the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus. And I could try to split the middle and say, “No, I think they’re both.” Now that doesn’t mean I think every single claim, every time somebody sees Mary in a piece of toast or Jesus in a piece of toast it’s legitimate, but certainly my world view allows it to be more open.
So I think there are many Protestants, they kind of have to bite the bullet and they’ll say, “Yeah, you’re right. The same standards I use to affirm that people really did see the post-mortem Jesus, I’ve got to affirm these people saw the post-mortem Mary.” Well, now what do I do with that? If you have Mary appearing to people and saying, “I am the immaculate conception,” like she did in the 19th century. There is a wonderful argument. It’s a philosophical paper called by Tyler McNabb and Joseph Blado called A Modest C-Inductive Argument for Catholicism, just saying that these kinds of Marian apparitions, it’s the kind of evidence we would expect if Catholicism were true. And so it makes the posterior evidence more likely to raise for the true claims of Catholicism.
Potential Theism:
Well, since you name-dropped Tyler McNabb, I will point out that last week he was supposed to be on the channel. We had to postpone it. He should be on sometime early next year, so stay tuned for that.
Trent Horn:
He’s great. You’ll definitely stay tuned for that interview. He’s solid.
Potential Theism:
And so I had Dale Allison on recently and he seemed to suggest some of the evidence for the Marian apparitions, he doesn’t seem to know what to do with it, but or he seems more open-minded. But then there’s somebody like Mike Licona who I’ve seen imply that the Marian apparitions may be due to demonic activity. And I asked Dale about that and Dale said he’s not comfortable doing that just because they attributed the demonic activity to Jesus. So why would he do that with the Marian apparitions? What do you make of that?
Trent Horn:
I think Dale’s being very honest here in that regard. I do talk about that when I say some Protestants, I think Mike is right when he says, “Look, if I’m using the same historiographical principles and I’m looking at these people have made this claim, they were in a position to know, it’s true.” You have groups of people who claim to have seen Mary at the same time, like the children of Fatima, for example. And this is something that I’ve put forward. I’m going to do more research on this to really nail it down about the unlikelihood of groups hallucinating the same thing. To say, it seems like if you were an honest Protestant that you would have to agree that in several Marian apparition cases, these are veridical experiences that people at least saw something. It was not a purely private religious experience they had.
So you might say, fine, it just appeared to be Mary, but it was actually a demonic impersonation. And I think Dale makes a good point here. If you’re going to say, “Well, it’s demonic,” why would you say it’s demonic? Well, because these Marian apparitions are teaching false doctrines, for example, like veneration of the saints and seeking intercessory prayer, and if they’re teaching false doctrines, then they have to be demonic.
Okay, well then that gets you a little bit problematic there. How do you know that the doctrines are false? Maybe it’s just the case that you’re incorrect about the falsehood of these particular doctrines and that the apparitions actually are genuine. So I think that you’re right, that Jesus people said of Jesus, “Oh, well, he casts out demons by the prince of demons.” And Jesus’s reply was, “Okay, how does that make sense?” I mean, that’s my dynamic translation. Why is Satan undermining himself? Why would the devil choose to impersonate Mary to encourage people to become Catholic?
I do find that this explanation sort of puts you, it’s kind of funny, it kind of separates you into one of two camps, because I think many Protestants today who don’t engage in polemics against Catholicism, see Catholics as just fellow Christians. We work together. We’re both engaging secularism. And I know many Protestant apologists who would say Catholics are Christians, Catholicism, it’s just another denomination that I don’t agree with. You might have an evangelical Protestant who says, “Yeah, I’m not Catholic, but I’m not a Calvinist. It is just theology I disagree with.” But I find that it’s very hard to slot Catholicism into that point because if these apparitions are the case, the devil doesn’t just pull out all the stops to get people to join a mistaken theological belief.
It would seem like that only two groups could be right at this point. Either Catholics are right, that the Marian apparitions that are proved, are genuine, or extremely anti-Catholic Protestants who say Catholicism is not Christian. It is demonic. It is diabolical. So I think this argument is interesting because it separates you. Now you got to pick one of the two. Do you think it’s diabolical and demonic? And if you’re not willing to say that of Catholicism, it seems like you have to be pushed a little bit more towards that. It just actually is genuine. You don’t have a nice middle ground between the two.
Potential Theism:
So I know I saw a clip once that I think Pine Creek Doug tried to use to get under the skin of Protestants. I think it was you, you said something along the lines of that you think that there’s better evidence for some of the Marian apparitions than the resurrection. Can you clarify that?
Trent Horn:
Yeah. So that was when Doug and I had a debate on the resurrection. And by the way, I do want to say that among my list of non-theists people that I enjoy watching, I will put Doug in Pine Creek very high up there. I do find him to be pretty humorous, but he doesn’t take himself too seriously and he’s willing to push back against atheists when they’re being ridiculous. And that he holds actually conservative positions on several issues. So I do actually appreciate that.
But yeah, so we were having a debate on the resurrection of Jesus, and I think he has brought up this point before with Protestants. So I think it has more of an effect on them than it would on me because I’m Catholic saying, if you believe in that Jesus rose, then why not believe in the Miracle of the Sun of Fatima, the idea that thousands of Portuguese Catholics assembled and saw the sun moving in erratic ways in the sky and people was wet, it was raining outside people’s clothes dried almost instantaneously, things like that.
What I said in the debate with Doug was that I said, there’s more evidence for Fatima in the resurrection, and then immediately after I qualified it to say, in some respects. So in some respects. When we look at the evidence for Jesus’s resurrection, the earliest, so let’s say the event happened in the year AD 33. The first, the earliest attestation of that event, if you’re being generous, would be five years later when you have the writing down of a creed discussing the resurrection appearances that would later be quoted in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, first Corinthians 15. So even the most generous people would say the earliest attestation of the post resurrection appearances was five years after the fact. Now the miracle of the Son of Fatima was recorded in newspapers like the next day. So we have better evidence in that respect in that the attestation of the event is really, really close to the event itself.
Nobody doubts the veridicality of the event. No, sorry, nobody doubts that the event happened and requires explanation. It’s not like saying that the Miracle of the Sun took place in medieval Europe in the year 840 and the first person to write about it was a monk in the year 1100. Something like that you could say there’s good reason to think that it never really happened in the first place. You can’t really do that with Fatima.
Now there’s other evidence of the resurrection. You don’t have a Fatima, you have the sincerity of the apostles, their willingness to risk martyrdom. You don’t have that element in the Fatima appearances. So there are different elements, but I do think that if you are moved by the evidence for the resurrection, I think the evidence for various Catholic miracles should also move you.
Now an objection one might raise here, you might say, “Fine, but Trent, there are Protestants who do miracles. There are Protestants who miraculously heal people it’s claimed or have done certain things. So there are claims of Protestant miracles. Doesn’t that undercut Catholicism?” I don’t think so, because if a Protestant were to perform a miracle in the post apostolic age, that could just be God affirming theology that Catholics agree with, like Jesus is Lord, Jesus has commissioned people to do His will. But if you have things like the Fatima miracles, Eucharistic miracles, that’s affirming very specific theology that I would say is incompatible with Protestantism.
Potential Theism:
All right, so let’s move on from Marian apparitions. One of the things that I’ve noticed online with philosophically-minded atheists that I know you’re familiar with is they seem to have an interest in Christian universalism. So can somebody be a faithful Catholic and be a Christian universalist?
Trent Horn:
It depends what you mean by a universalist. If you mean that it is definite that all people, all creatures will be in heaven for all eternity if it’s definite that all creatures go to heaven eventually I would say that that view would not be possible for Catholics. Early ecumenical councils condemned pretty similar views held by the ecclesial writer Origen. So I would say that universalism in the definite sense of saying that all human beings will definitely go to heaven. It’s a fact. I would say that that’s a view that Catholics would not be able to hold. You could hold a view. It’s been called hopeful universalism, but I know people who hold it. They don’t prefer that descriptor. They might call it the dare we hope view. It’s based on the writings of the Lake Cardinal. Sorry, he didn’t become a cardinal, actually, he was not nominated to it.
Hans Urs von Balthasar. And this view has also been popular among people like Bishop Robert Barron. And it’s the idea that it’s theoretically possible because the church only infallibly teaches who’s in heaven, not who’s in hell. It is possible, though incredibly unlikely, it’s possible that not everyone died in mortal sin that everyone was, people are invincibly ignorant or God’s able to purify them of sin. They don’t die in a way that precludes them. God gives them sufficient grace. There’s a way God has made it so all people can be saved even if we don’t understand it. I would say that’s a view that has very low probability, but it is one that has bare possibility. And so, one could hold out for that view. If you say, “Well, I don’t see how I could be Christian, unless there is this minuscule possibility out there for God to make right what I think has been wrong.” I think that they could be Christian as long as they consign it to that level, to a lower level of probability, not a definite level of foreseeability.
Potential Theism:
So what about annihilationism? Can you be an annihilationist and be a faithful Catholic?
Trent Horn:
I would say that the weight of the tradition is very heavily against annihilationism. What is difficult here is that, so annihilationism would be the view that the damned, some people do not go to heaven, but their fate in hell is, it’s eternal, but not conscious. So they have an unending fate, if you will, or at least they will not have a unending conscious torment. They will not have an unending conscious fate in hell. That they will experience hell and then they will cease to exist. They will be annihilated.
I am not aware of a magisterial statement that has condemned annihilationism. It’s a fairly newer view. I actually read, there was an anthology put out called a Catholic Eye to Annihilationism that attempted to argue for some of it among the church fathers. It’s somewhat of a newer view. It was made popular by a Protestant pastor named Edward Fudge.
There’s actually a movie based on him called, I think it’s called Hell and Mr. Fudge, I think Sean Astin might play Mr. Fudge. And he put forward this annihilationist view, I think he was writing about it back in the sixties, and he’s probably done the most definitive treatment of it. So it’s a newer view. The church has a lot of statements on hell, and I feel like if you squint really hard, you can cohere them with annihilationism, like saying that the fate of the damned is that they are eternally separated from God, which is kind of true for the annihilated. But I feel like it’s, when you look at the tradition and the magisterial statements teaching about hell, I would say it leans heavily against, there’s no infallible teaching against that view. And I’m not aware of a specific magisterial teaching confronting it because it is somewhat new among Protestants. But I would say it would be a difficult one to hold as a Catholic, but not necessarily impossible.
Potential Theism:
Okay. So let’s talk about a hot button issue, LGBTQ rights.
Trent Horn:
Sure.
Potential Theism:
So you obviously are coming at this from a conservative stance, where somebody like me who maybe has liberal views, they may struggle with the Catholic position on LGBTQ issues, maybe they’re gay, or they’re trans, or they have friends or family who are, this is a major stumbling block for them. What would you say to them?
Trent Horn:
Well, what I would say is that when you look at what the Catholic Church teaches, you look at paragraphs 23, 57 and 23, 58. You have to make a distinction between persons who have various orientations or identities, various attractions and identities, and particular sexual acts. And it’s important to make a distinction between the two. For example, take when it comes to the sin of sodomy, for example, when it comes to the sin of engaging in intentional ejaculation orally or anally, the people who commit that sin the most are people who have opposite sex, numerically I should say.
The people who would commit that sin the most are people who have opposite sex attractions, not same-sex attractions. So the teachings about the ordering of our sexuality, it is not meant to designate a particular group of people as others, or less than human, or worthy of particular scorn and other people as just fine and dandy in whatever they do. Numerically, the people that misuse sexuality the most are going to be those with opposite sex attractions and acting like that doesn’t happen. It’s not good that all of us are called to use our sexual powers in an ordered way. We’re also called to treat one another with respect, compassion, and sensitivity.
So the Catechism of the Catholic Church says that, “Those with these attractions must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.” So for example, I remember back in the 1980s, back east, I think it was outside of Washington, there were a group of nuns who were running a hospice for men who were dying of AIDS during the AIDS epidemic. What’s interesting actually was AIDS was first called GRIDS. It was called Gay-Related Immune Deficiency Syndrome, GRIDS. Then later it was called AIDS. And people weren’t sure exactly how it was spread. So there was this concern, like any close contact you could get AIDS and a lot of stigma.
And so people with AIDS, especially at that time were treated like lepers. And many of them who were acquiring this were self-identified gay men. And so these nuns were caring for these gay men as a hospice for many who were abandoned by their families. And you had people who were protesting nuns doing this in their residential neighborhood, calling it a public health hazard. And I would say that’s a beautiful example of treating someone with respect, compassion, and sensitivity, exactly how Christ would treat someone. And not that to deny medical care for someone because of their sexual orientation, that to me would certainly be an example of what could be called homophobia.
Now that being said, when we address the issue saying, “Well, isn’t it homophobic to say sexual acts between persons of the same sex or wrong?” Here, I would just challenge people. I understand that it’s a contentious issue for me when I look at it philosophically, I need to take a step back. And I did this once, actually, I was at a college and I was giving a talk on homosexuality, and some atheists came up to me and said, “We don’t like your…” Well, actually what they said was, “We liked your talk, we were going to protest. And during Q and A, we had all these questions about Leviticus, but you didn’t bring up the Bible once. You just talked philosophy.” And I said, “Yeah, that’s right. It’s a philosophical issue for me.”
So what I did with them was I took two pieces of paper and I said, “Let’s write down sexual acts.” Sex between a married couple, sex between a same-sex, couple sex between an adult and a child, non-consensual sex. And then we start writing other things. What about incestual acts? What about acts with humans and animals, or humans and robots? And we’re writing it all down. And I said, “All right, so we’ve got all these sexual acts here on this paper. I think our goal is to draw a fence around the acts that are permissible, and the acts that are forbidden, and we’re going to disagree about where we draw those circles.”
But I said to them, “For me, it seems like you and I agree especially on these more disordered acts; animals, non-humans, incest.” And also talking about when sex is just bad as a virtue beyond just consent. I think many people, if their sexual morality is just consenting adults, that’s just bare minimum that I think a lot of people see that a committed sexual relationship is morally better than, it is more virtuous than just a one-night stand. But how do we explain these things? And I said to them, “For me, if sex makes sense is that which unites men and women to each other, and that’s when it’s ordered because it’s ordered towards procreation and unity of the spouses. That really gives me a good handle to understand why these other sexual behaviors are disordered beyond just a yuck factor.”
Now I’m being very clear. I’m not saying sexual relations between two men or two women are morally on par or of the same kind of thing as some other sexually disordered acts. I’m not saying that. What I am saying is that when you take a step back, it becomes difficult to draw a wider circle of permissible sexuality without including things that are fairly disordered. This came up actually in my discussion with Destiny and Jasmine Jafar on the Whatever podcast a few days ago, and they had to bite the bullet on bestiality, incest and other things. But if you’re seeking another way to see sexuality as ordered, I think we’re going to see it confined to the context of men and women.
And it’s not just the sexual act too. There was a couple recently, two men, I forget their names off the top of my head, but they were showing holding two babies, two twin boys that they had adopted through surrogates. And that just really breaks my heart, because I believe that children have a right to their mother and their father, and a child should only be deprived of their biological mother and father in extreme situations, like the mother and father are just unfit to care for them.
But when you separate sex from the male-female union and dynamic, I think it leads to many of these other disordered things. That to me is where one can start the dialogue on those who are not religious and are looking at Catholicism. I think it’s about taking that larger step back. When is sex ordered? When is it disordered? Because both sides have to answer that question. So I know that was a lot there and it’s controversial, but I hope that’s at least a decent starting point.
Potential Theism:
Okay, so I’m going to bring up a tweet that I posted recently.
Trent Horn:
Sure.
Potential Theism:
So just for context, I work at a Catholic hospital, and so I said, “Look, what’s hanging in our department’s office at the Catholic hospital I work at.” So one of the things that I’ve noticed is there’s a perception that say, Pope Francis has softened the church’s stance on same-sex issues. And a lot of the Catholics that I know aren’t as conservative as say you are, or even the church’s historic teaching.
Trent Horn:
Real life, real life is a lot different than Catholic Twitter.
Potential Theism:
Yeah. So what would you say to the folks who think that actually the church is becoming softer on these issues?
Trent Horn:
Yeah, I do think it’s no secret that many people identify as Catholics who reject some of the church’s teachings on morality or sexual morality or other teachings. Human beings are imperfect for a variety of reasons. We have cognitive imperfections. We are susceptible to irrationality, for believing things without great reasons, for believing things because we want to be empathetic, for example. Believing things for emotional reasons. There’s a whole host of psychological biases you can describe why people will believe something that is just not true because they have an emotional bias towards it or something else like that.
So you’re right, you’re going to have people identify as Catholic who see nothing wrong with same-sex behavior, who think abortion is morally permissible. And here with those individuals, I challenge them like, “What is your ultimate framework for ethics, philosophically and theologically? Is it what God told us? Is it what we can know from reason rather than just emotional appeals?” And I think many times we have conversations with these people, they start to see the incoherence of rejecting their reasonable inferences or the inference from divine revelation and just going from purely emotional experiences.
And that’s very difficult because throughout human history, even in the modern age, you have had people, they have defended things that were immoral because they had an emotional bias. In the 20th century, for example, it was legal in this country, the Supreme Court in Buck vs. Bell upheld the right of the state to forcibly sterilize people against their will. And even if the church spoke out against bioethical wrongs, the wrongness of sterilization, whether it’s voluntary or involuntary, you would have people just saying, “Yeah, but I just can’t. Why would we have a world with these imbeciles in it? And it’s just better for society overall.”
And of course, things like segregation or racial segregation, other issues related to antebellum slavery. You had people who get caught up in the zeitgeist. And even some people within the church who get caught up in it. So I do think that Pope Francis, what he’s trying very hard to do is to move away from just the discourse about sexual activity being just about sexual acts, and looking at the person in all of their psychological complexity, their social complexity, understanding different levels of culpability that people have for sexual acts, and understanding where they’re coming from, how they could have been… A lot of times Pope Francis, he’ll get, he’ll say something to be compassionate and it gets taken the wrong way. I think he said once, for example, that same-sex people, children have a right to a family. And they think he’s saying, “Oh, he’s talking about surrogacy and these kinds of surrogate adoptions.”
No, he has condemned things. He says gender ideology is an evil form of colonialism. He has repeatedly affirmed marriage is a union of a man and a woman. In that context when he said People have same-sex people with attractions of right to a family, what he’s saying is like, “Don’t kick out your child and put them on the street.” And many people who, many teens who are homeless, many of them identify as LGBT, and they’re homeless because their parents forcibly kicked them out of the home. Which I would say that a child should never be kicked out of the home and put on the street. They should only be removed from the home if they are a danger to other people at the home, whether a moral or physical danger.
So if you have a child who is, “I’m going to sell drugs and I don’t care, or I’m going to have sex with opposite sex or same sex and I don’t care,” and they’re a bad example of their siblings, maybe they need to go and stay with their grandparents for a bit or another relative, not just be put out on the streets or something like that.
So I think that the Pope is really trying to reach out to people on that human level and get past just the sniping and the stereotypes. But you’re right, there are Catholics who don’t hold to this church teaching, but whether the teaching is true is not dependent on how many people believe it. It’s dependent on just whether it is true, and are there good reasons to believe it’s true? And I do think there are.
Potential Theism:
Okay, so we got a question from JB. He says, as a philosopher, if moral intuitions disagree with the biblical church teachings, are the church or intuitions wrong?
Trent Horn:
Sure. And I think that in order to answer this question, we have to look at how church teachings have different levels of authority. So things that Catholics believe at the lowest level of authority would be permissible. So there are some things that the church has not said no on, at least not yet, but allows it to be permissible. So for example, the church allows, at this point, it allows people to adopt human embryos who have been abandoned. These are called snowflake babies. So human embryos that have been abandoned by their parents and left in cryopreservation, the church does not have a teaching about what are the only appropriate ways for helping these children? Must they remain in cryopreservation, or can they be adopted not as a means just to treat infertility, but for the good of the embryo so they don’t have to be in cryopreservation indefinite forever.
And some people might have a moral intuition, “Well, look, if surrogacy is wrong, this isn’t that different than surrogacy. I just have an intuition this is wrong. We shouldn’t be intervening in this way.” And in that case, they might even think that the church allowing this permissible, they might have a moral objection to. And that’s okay for them to have. This is something that’s permissible. It might change later. That’s the lowest level of church authority.
But as you get higher within the church’s teachings, your ability to dissent and disagree based on your moral intuitions gets lower and lower. So you have, for example, doctrine, things that are taught that require the religious submission of mind and will. These are teachings that Catholics must obey, but they are not morally at fault if they privately are unable to accept it. So for example, the church’s prohibition on in vitro fertilization, this is taught at the level of doctrine.
And so what it requires of the faithful is that they cannot engage in the act or publicly dissent against the teaching, but they can privately hold their doubts about whether they can dissent to think this is wrong. Say, “I don’t agree, but I’m going to respect what the church has taught, and I’m not going to do this. I’m not going to argue against it. But in my own heart, I don’t agree with that.”
Then the highest level of the teaching would be infallible teachings, especially those that are dogma, ones that the church infallibly teaches as being a part of divine revelation. That’s something one must believe or you’re held morally accountable. One must believe Jesus is the Son of God. So if you have a moral intuition that, for example, a good God would never create a world like this, so God must not be perfectly good. You cannot as a Catholic hold that moral intuition because the church infallibly teaches as part of divine revelation that God is good. God created a good world, and God permits or allows evil for good reasons.
So your level of… So it’s important to remember that moral intuitions are also, I am not an infallibilist of moral intuitions. They’re a decent guide to get the discussion started. They’re necessary for many moral disagreements and discussions, but moral intuitions themselves are not infallible. They can be defeated. We just have to make sure we have sufficient evidence in order to defeat them.
But if the evidence against the intuition is infallibly defined teaching of the church, including moral teaching. So for example, I would say the church infallibly teaches that prostitution is immoral. Now there’s a dispute about whether it should be legal or not. Augustine and Aquinas said, “Maybe it should be legal so the world isn’t convulsing with lust.” I think that’s an imprudential judgment that doesn’t hold up today because prostitution is linked with increased sex trafficking, abuse and exploitation of women and children. That if they saw the stats today, they’d agree it should be illegal. But the morality of the act, that’s something that’s infallibly taught to be wrong. Sex is not something, it’s wrong to sell sex among people. It’s a gift between men and women. No moral intuition contrary could ever tell you that it’s good. So it’s going to depend in that regard.
Potential Theism:
Okay. So final question. What advice would you give to the potential theists out there like myself?
Trent Horn:
Well, I would say continue being open-minded. I guess what advice? Just in general or what do you…?
Potential Theism:
Yeah, just in general.
Trent Horn:
I would say be careful about this mindset. I think some people are more worried about believing something that’s false than failing to believe something that’s true. So I remember once I was debating Matt Dillahunty, and I think he said something like, “My belief system. What I try to do in my epistemology is,” he said, “I try to maximize my true beliefs, and minimize my false beliefs.” The problem with that approach is that those are actually exclusive. They’re goals that tend away from each other. So for example, you could maximize your true beliefs by just believing every single thing that’s told you. You will probably have the most number of true beliefs if you just believe everything people tell you. The problem with that approach is that your life’s going to be very unwieldy because you have a ton of false beliefs also mixed in there. And then conversely, if you want to minimize false beliefs, you could just say, “I’m never going to believe anything people tell me.”
Now you’re going to have very few false beliefs. You’re hardly going to have any beliefs at all, and you’re going to miss out on many good things. And I think for many non-theists, there’s a concern that becoming Christian, well, what if I believe something that’s false? Yeah, there are problems with that. But there’s also the problem of failing to believe something that’s true that has very good and important consequences for you.
So I would just say to remain open-minded, to not think that in order to make a decision for atheism or Christianity you have to comprehensively be able to answer every objection to each side. Nobody can do that. But I would recommend, especially if you are potential and you’re on the fence, if you are on the fence and you emotionally want Christianity to be true, then I might recommend Pascal’s wager.
So a lot of times atheists rail against Pascal’s wager, and I get it if it’s used to just avoid hell, if it’s just, “Hey, believe in God because if you’re wrong, well you’ll never know. It’s just oblivion. If you’re right, you get heaven. But if you don’t believe God and you’re wrong, if you’re right, you won’t know. And if you’re wrong about atheism, well you’re going to go to hell forever. What’s the safe bet?” I don’t like that approach. It has all kinds of philosophical problems. Pascal’s wager only works for this very limited person. If for you, the only live options are atheism and Christianity, other religions don’t make sense. If the only live options are atheism and Christianity, one. Two, you are on the fence, it’s 50/50 either way. And three, you want Christianity to be true, it makes you happy. Live as if it were true.
Give it a try and just believe that. To make an analogy, it might be similar to somebody… Imagine a philosophical atheist who struggles with nihilism, and is nihilism true? Is the world purposeless or is there purpose or is antinatalism true? To say is, should I have children or not have children? I’m really on the fence. Is it good or bad? Let’s stick with, I guess maybe nihilism. To say, “Look, if you’re on the fence and you want life to have purpose, live as if it does.” You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by living such a good way. Even if you can’t philosophically refute the nihilists. I think there’s something similar to Christianity. If you want to be true, you’re on the fence. It’s the only live options. Live as if it were true. Pray. Don’t worry if you don’t get a call back.
I don’t hear audible voices when I pray, but continue the exploration and pray and live as it were true. And you have nothing to lose because there are sacrifices involved. But there are also many benefits. There’s practical benefits to religion, there are emotional benefits. I think in that case, it’s good to live in that way. And even if you don’t go that full route, continue to be honest, explore and be open to the evidence, but realize there is a danger in being agnostic forever.
It’s like the man who wants to get married and he thinks, “Yeah, but what if I marry the wrong one? And it’s safer if I never marry anybody.” Yeah, but there’s also a cost if you stay a bachelor your whole life and you live in your dingy studio apartment and you never married the wrong person, maybe you also missed out on many people who are right or satisfactory. And missing out on things that are true, good and beautiful is also a harm, and I wouldn’t want any potential theists to do that.
Potential Theism:
All right, Trent, thank you so much for joining me on Potential Theism today.
Trent Horn:
Thank you guys so much for listening, and if you want more great content, definitely consider supporting us here at trenthornpodcast.com.