In this episode Trent shares some highlights from the live Q+A panel at the Catholic Answers 2021 Conference.
Welcome to the Counsel of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Hey everyone. Welcome to the Counsel of Trent Podcast. I’m your host Catholic Answers, apologist and speaker Trent Horn. And today I want to share with you highlights from the live Q and A panel at the Catholic Answers Conference. So the conference is something we do every year in San Diego. We might branch out to other cities in the future. We’re not sure, but for now we do it at the last weekend of September, every year in San Diego. It’s a lot of fun. I love just hanging out, meeting people, and being able to be on stage with people like Tim Staples, Karlo Broussard, Joe Heschmeyer. And in fact, that’s what we did for one of the events. We’ve done this every year and a lot of people really enjoy it, where we just do a live Q and A panel. People can ask us questions and since we’re all on stage, we take turns answering, but we also chime in on each other’s answers and you just have a lot of fun and that the conference is just a lot of fun.
Trent Horn:
So by the way, if you want to attend next year’s conference, registration is available. The theme is going to be on the Eucharist. So we’re going to do Eucharistic apologetics, spirituality. You’re not going to want to miss it. Definitely go and check it out at Catholic answers conference dot com. So without further ado here is the live Q and A panel with my Catholic Answers colleagues at the Annual Catholic Answers Conference.
Christopher Check:
The question for Trent, I think I heard Trent Horn, whom I very much admire say that-
Trent Horn:
It always goes downhill after that.
Christopher Check:
Say that it was not correct. What we’ll see after you answered this question, right? Yeah. Say that it was not correct to say that Jesus is our personal Lord and Savior. As a convert is it okay to say that we have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ? And is it okay to say if I were the only person alive Jesus would have died for me?
Trent Horn:
Well, in my talk, I did not say that it is incorrect to say that. The point I was making was that Protestant theology that reduces to sola fide, salvation by faith alone, commonly says all we must do to be saved is accept Jesus to be our personal Lord and Savior. So in the talk, I actually didn’t say that notion is incorrect. I said, the term personal Lord and Savior is not found in the Bible. So that was what I said in my talk.
Trent Horn:
Second, is that term correct? Well, we have the traditional theological answer for everything is it depends. It’s if by personal Lord and Savior, you mean that Christ loves you. He died for you and he wants you to go to heaven. Then that would mirror what Saint Paul says in Galatians 2:20, when he says Christ died for me. So if that’s what you mean, that Jesus loves you, desires a personal relationship with you, wants you to go to heaven. It’s not just like Jesus says, oh all those people I’ll take him. He loves each of us individually, but he also loves us corporately as a body, as the church. So it’s correct if that’s what you mean, but if you mean sola fide, if you mean you only have to accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior and there’s nothing else, then that’s incorrect.
Christopher Check:
Trent. My in-laws who are here at the conference and are non-Catholic protestant Christians.
Trent Horn:
Pass, pass, pass. I have a strict, no in-laws dispute resolution, but go ahead.
Christopher Check:
Joe. My in-laws…
Joe Heschmeyer:
This is what it looks like to be the low man on the totem pole.
Christopher Check:
Trent here we go. Some people I know, believe that ultimately God will bring everyone to him in heaven, that he has the power to bring out of hell. In one sense, they believe that there is no hell they cite passages that say it’s God’s will that all be drawn to him and that his will must be accomplished. They say God’s love is so powerful that even those who are obstinately resistant to his grace can be taken to him even after death. What is the Catholic response to this?
Joe Heschmeyer:
All right, we’ll take this one, actually, if you’re cool with the Trent.
Trent Horn:
Go right ahead.
Joe Heschmeyer:
All right. So I think a few things. Number one, like on what basis do we believe in heaven? It’s not because we have direct evidence for it from our own immediate experience. It’s because God reveals heaven to us. And the chief way heaven is revealed to us is in the person of Jesus Christ. Colossians 1. This is the image of the invisible God Hebrews 1 to 2-
Tim Staples:
You haven’t tasted my wife’s cooking, man. That is proof that we experience heaven…
Joe Heschmeyer:
I got to take marriage tips from this guy.
Joe Heschmeyer:
So Hebrews 1 to 2, the fullness of revelation isn’t the Bible. It’s not even the Bible plus tradition. The fullness of revelation is the person of Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ comes and reveals heaven to us and is totally explicit about the reality and eternal duration of hell in the judgment of the nations, the separation of the sheep and goats. At the end of Matthew, almost the end of Matthew’s gospel. He talks about the goats and says depart from me into the everlasting fires, prepared for the devil and his angels. Now two things there, the devil and his angels are spiritual beings that have no natural death, right? Like they don’t have mortality in a bodily sense. So it makes sense that is of an eternal duration. But second, if… To take the view that God’s just going to overwhelm someone’s free will and somehow change it in… Like that’s a form of annihilation of the individual.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Like someone says no, when God just says, I disregard your no to the devil, to his angels. Why don’t you start there? Like, why don’t you say Satan and the demons are in heaven. Likewise, we can also make that free rejection of God that they make. And it is unfortunate, right? But the point is God does desire the salvation of all, we should pray for the salvation of every individual. It’s totally a Christian thing to do 1 Timothy 2. Right? But at the same time, Christ says, I stand at the door and knock. He doesn’t say, I’m going to kick the door in when you tell me no. He respects the choices that we make. And he gives us the graces to say, yes, but if we refuse those graces, if we refuse all of the overtures he makes, it’s like this, your heart is made for nothing other than the infinite goodness and truth of God.
Joe Heschmeyer:
It’s like nothing on Earth satisfies it. Even with all due respect to your wife’s cooking, nothing comes close to satisfying. Everything leaves us dry. Right? We were talking this morning in the green room to show you the heightened level of theological conversation in the back. Someone had tried a doughnut sandwich and they said, it’s like, instead of bread, it was replaced with donuts. And they said, how was it? And he said, disappointing.
Trent Horn:
Wait, was it, was it a sandwich or a burger? Cause I have had a doughnut burger.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Okay.
Trent Horn:
No donut burgers are either like heaven or they will quickly get you there. It’s quite all right.
Conference Attendee:
I wish it did.
Joe Heschmeyer:
I want to get into the debate about what constitutes a burger versus a sandwich when we’ve got donuts as the buns. But the point is all the earthly joys that we have, they fall short, right? They always do. The duration is never as long as they could go. And even the Greek philosophers notice this. Aristotle realize all these earthly joys, whether it’s lowly pleasures or heightened ones, they always fall short of what we want. We’re made for nothing other than God. God cannot satisfy us with anything other than himself. And so to imagine we could be eternally happy in the midst of a note to God is to try to imagine a foresighted triangle. It’s an impossibility.
Trent Horn:
And I guess I’ll… To briefly answer the question. The in-laws are endorsing a heresy called universalism that was condemned at the council of orange in the sixth century. That goes back to an ecclesial writer, named Origin who proposed a view called apocatastasis a $64 word there. They’re saying that everything would be reconciled to God. If he had just stopped at that stuff, maybe he could have been a church father. And now he’s our ecclesial writer. We like to cite these guys. He’s right on a lot of other things, but this not so much. So the universalism, but the arguments presented aren’t good ones saying, well it’s God’s will that everybody be saved. Well, just because anybody can be saved. It doesn’t follow everybody will be saved. That’s the error that’s being made here. Of course, God wants everyone to be saved. I could say, but I would also ask them, does God want me to stop sinning. Does God, of course it’s God’s will that I stop sinning. Am I going to keep sinning? Unfortunately.
Trent Horn:
So there are things that God wills that will certainly come to pass, but other things that he does desire or things that he permits as a part of his will. So God wants everyone to come to heaven. But as Joe said, he’s not going to force them. And it gets very clear when Jesus talks about hell, he’s not talking about some kind of temporary process here. Augusta made that point about the sheep and the goats that are being divided. That if hell is temporary, if, they’ll say, oh well its just temporary into everlasting fire. If the fate of the goats is temporary in hell, then the fate of the sheep are temporary in heaven. But if it’s permanent, the sheep stay in heaven as permanent for the goats. And some people say, that’s not fair. There’s different ways to think, to answer that. But one of my favorite ways to resolve it is to say, I think one reason that hell is permanent is that the people there keep sinning and rebelling against God and they make their state permanent and that they continue to incur through their constant rebellion.
Christopher Check:
Why can’t women be priests based on this idea? Where does their role as disciples end?
Trent Horn:
Very good question.
Christopher Check:
Oh, this is a rule you’re not allowed to say good question.
Trent Horn:
Okay. It was a bad question! Horrible!
Tim Staples:
No, I don’t think that works folks. But again, as Carlos mentioned, we’re not talking about play-acting. The priest is Christ for us in his consecration ordination as a priest. He so radically configured to Christ. He becomes Christ for us in that mystical sense. He says, this is my body. He doesn’t say this is Jesus’ body. When he hears your confession, he doesn’t say, Jesus forgives your sins. He says, I forgive. So it’s absolutely unthinkable, right? From a Catholic perspective that we would have Julia Roberts be a priest. No, no, it’s got to be a man.
Joe Heschmeyer:
If everybody else is jumping out.
Christopher Check:
You don’t have to add Joe.
Joe Heschmeyer:
No, I have a couple of things I might add. I think these are all great answers. I would add two things.
Joe Heschmeyer:
One, let’s start with the idea that men and women are equal, but not interchangeable. So if you were to name like one thing a man can’t be, wife and mother would be a pretty good starting list. If the priesthood was something like being a doctor or a lawyer, of course there are great female doctors and lawyers. There aren’t great female fathers. And so one of the things the male only priesthood reveals is that the priesthood isn’t about a job. It’s about a relationship to the people of God. CS Lewis actually talks about this, even within Anglicanism. He said, back at that time Anglicans often prayed ad orientem. And he said a female priest could pray on behalf of the people towards God representing the church, which is often depicted as the bride of Christ.
Joe Heschmeyer:
But to turn around, is she the bridegroom or does the church become the bride? It inverts that role, that Christ the bridegroom comes to the church and we receive him. All of that kind of signification is lost.
Trent Horn:
The other, another point on that. No, this is another point that isn’t brought up. If-
Joe Heschmeyer:
We’re only taking this question.
Trent Horn:
If you give a mouse a cookie because I read an article talking about the female priests movement and these groups. And the fact of the matter is their theology. You look at Mary Daley from Boston College. They say even the concept of a priest represents patriarchy. And so for them, even if women were priests, that would not be good enough because the idea there are priests and laypeople, that there are people who have authority over others is patriarchy and it’s evil. So the fact of the matter is, and you listen to these people, like I said, don’t buy what they’re selling. They don’t want equality. They want to destroy the institution from the inside out.
Christopher Check:
Trent, what can we do for all the babies created in IVF?
Trent Horn:
The ones, wait, which-
Christopher Check:
Fertilized embryos here that are-
Trent Horn:
Right because there are lots of babies created in IVF that are around us, that have grown up.
Christopher Check:
Yeah right, yeah, so maybe a distinction there.
Trent Horn:
What can we do for them? It depends which moral theologian you ask, what can we do for them? The church has left it an open question as to the liceity, the lawfulness of what is called embryo adoption. You go back to Dignitas Personae from the CDF. It makes it very clear. You could not do things like adopt them for the purpose of a couple who is struggling with infertility, for example.
Tim Staples:
That is kind of leaning toward an answer, at least in part.
Trent Horn:
In part, but if the church has left it open. What about, suppose a married couple that could have children through natural relations chooses for the sake of the embryos alone, to adopt them, to have them implanted in the wife’s womb and then to carry them term, give birth and adopt them. The church has left that an open question.
Trent Horn:
So what we can do is pray for them that no more of these children be created. That would be a big thing to educate people, to focus on not making the problem worse, for those that exist to pray for them, for their souls, but morally speaking what you can or can’t do, actually, I’m glad you asked me this question. The National Catholic Bioethics Center has asked me to be the co editor of a second edition of an anthology on human embryo adoption. So I got my master’s in science and bioethics from UMary. And they called me up and said, we’re going to rerelease this anthology. There’s new articles, new research on this. You want to be apart? So I’m actually going to be engaged because right now I’m… I lean towards one particular view, but I don’t have a settled view of my own on this question, but I might, I actually, I really should.
Trent Horn:
After I finish editing this anthology that should hopefully come out in the next year. But another thing we might approach in the second edition of the anthology from NCBC is the question. Would it be lawful to take those children from a cryogenic storage and place them in an artificial womb? And then they developed with, because most of the father Tad’s and other arguments is, well, you shouldn’t, only a husband should initiate a pregnancy, not a lab technician, is a big argument against adopting human embryos. So if that’s the case. Well then could we continue to place them from a cryotank into an artificial womb and allow them to grow and develop? And then they’re born. I mean, is that right? Or is that wrong? Those are questions and others, we will address in this volume from NCBC. So check that out.
Tim Staples:
It appears that they have that would violate their right of… In other words, we don’t have the right to take those children and raise them apart from the way that they have a right.
Trent Horn:
So you, well, I’m talking about the cryotank and going to an embryo, a surrogate, like an artificial womb.
Tim Staples:
Yeah.
Trent Horn:
So you, what do you, do you lean against or for?
Tim Staples:
Before that document I was in, honestly, I was in favor before, but when I read that document from the CDF, it seems to me that the church is leaning against it.
Trent Horn:
Well, that the idea that they should be in their mother’s body so they shouldn’t, there’s no other place to put them. Yeah. I don’t know, because if we had a child in a pregnant woman mother’s body, and there’s some kind of a disastrous scenario, and the child could be delivered early, but not die because they’re placed in an artificial womb. I wouldn’t see the moral hazard in that situation. So if that applied there, it could fly to the cryo case. This is what we do all the time in the office, [inaudible 00:17:02]. I miss it a lot, actually.
Trent Horn:
Hey everyone, thank you so much for watching. And remember, if you want to take part in next year’s conference in San Diego, it’s the last weekend of September, and the theme is going to be the Eucharist. For more information, go to Catholic answers conference dot com. So thank you so much and hope you all have a very blessed day.
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