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In this episode Trent shares not only how anyone can learn apologetics and but how they can turn this passion into a full-time career.
Welcome to the Council of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
The harvest is plenty, but the laborers are few, so ask the master of the harvest to send laborers into the field, and that’s what I do. I asked the master for that, but I’m also asking that of you. We need more apologists. We need more people who are willing to explain, to share, and to defend the Catholic faith, and I think you’re up to that task. So welcome to the Council of Trent podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. Some people who watch this channel are actually not Catholic, and I’m glad that you’re here.
Trent Horn:
You might agree with me on some things, disagree with me on other things. Maybe you disagree with everything that I say, or almost everything I say, but you want to hear me out. That’s fine too. I’m glad that you’ve stopped by and you’re willing to do that, but statistically speaking, a lot of you who are visiting this channel or listening to this podcast, you are Catholic, and you want to share the faith that you love with other people, and be able to answer the questions that they have, or refute the arguments that they put forward against the Catholic faith. And how do you do that? How do you become an apologist?
Trent Horn:
That’s what I want to talk about on today’s episode, how to become full-time, part-time, anytime, or all time. There’s all different kinds of apologists out there, and don’t think for a second that to be an apologies you got to be Trent Horn with a YouTube channel speaking at the conference. No, but if you want to start a YouTube channel, if you want to go speak at conferences, that’s great too. I want to expand. I want to see so many people out there who are doing Catholic apologetics well, that one day people go, “Oh, yeah. I remember Trent Horn. He was great back in the day, but have you watched so and so?”
Trent Horn:
I’m serious. That is really what I want. I don’t want to do this just like, “Oh, get attention, look at me.” I would be thrilled. I mean, you want to know the reason why I do this? It’s because I’ll go on YouTube, or I’ll read media articles, I’ll go on the internet, and I’ll see… And this is why I started. This is why I started over 10 years ago doing apologetics, is I saw so many errors, so many lies, and I’m thinking, “Well, who’s going to respond to this?” And I go, and I search online, and I hardly see anything.
Trent Horn:
That’s how I got involved in pro-life apologetics, by the way. I was a history major at Arizona State University, and I saw Justice for All, a pro-life organization, visiting campus, and I saw a huge crowd of pro-choice protestors. They were doing a die-in. They were all lying on the sidewalk pretending they were dead to symbolize the argument from illegal abortions, because it should be legal, so that it’s safer for bigger people to kill smaller people. I guess that’s the argument. I don’t know.
Trent Horn:
And I’m watching this, and I was talking to a friend of mine, and I said, “Somebody needs to show these people they’re wrong.” There was an open microphone, where you could say whatever you wanted. I said, “Somebody has got to get up there and show why they’re wrong.” And she said, “Why don’t you do it?” “Yeah, maybe I should.” And that’s how it got started. That was back in 2006, actually, about 2006, 2007. ’07 is when I graduated from Arizona State University.
Trent Horn:
From there I did pro-life apologetics, and then Catholic apologetics. I wanted to learn. I wanted to teach, and I wanted to help others, especially it was just killing me to see there weren’t other people doing this stuff. There were other people though. I was learning from them. In fact, in my conversion experience, the reason I became Catholic was going to Catholic.com. I read Tim Staples. I read Jimmy Akin. These guys were and are my heroes, people to learn from, but even still, I would look out there and see, “Well, yeah, but what about atheism? We have the new atheist, and there’s hardly any Catholic material on atheism. Maybe I’ll write a book on atheism.”
Trent Horn:
And then I was invited to join Justice for All. I’m sorry, to join Catholic Answers in 2012, and I took my half completed manuscript on atheism and it became my first book. So really that’s always what’s motivated me. I usually pick books to write, especially if it’s a subject I love, but nobody else has really approached, and people really need. So I want to serve, but I’d love to equip other people. II Timothy 2:2 always springs to my mind, that Paul tells Timothy, “Take what you have learned and entrust it to faithful men, who will teach it to others.” That’s the essence of II Timothy 2:2, “What you have been given teach to faithful men or entrust to faithful men, who will teach others,” and that’s what I want to do. I want to help other people learn to do this.
Trent Horn:
Whether you do apologetics as a part-time endeavor, a full-time endeavor, or even just in your own time, I hope that you will do that. So how do you do that? How do you become an apologist? First, the apologetics is a tool. It’s not the whole thing. The most important thing we can be is saints, living our Catholic faith joyfully and authentically. That’s the number one thing. You do that, focus on that. If that’s all you can do, that’s amazing, but do that, be joyful, be authentic, and love your faith, and people will see that. And I’m always every day struggling to make sure that, hey, I want to… This isn’t just something I do. It’s who I am. So go and do that, and then place yourself in a position to talk with others and evangelize. Evangelize is just sharing the good news.
Trent Horn:
I think maybe it’s this Friday or last free for all Friday. I haven’t scheduled it. I don’t know. The scheduling comes later, but I had a super fun time watching Top Gun: Maverick. It’s an awesome movie, and I will just tell people, “It’s an awesome movie. You need to go see it.” Why? Because it’s brought me joy, and I just want to share that. That’s evangelism. We joyfully share what Christ has done in our lives. “Well, how do you even know Jesus existed, or it’s all made up?” “Well, here’s how I know he existed.” That’s apologetics. Apologetics and evangelism are not the same thing, but they need each other.
Trent Horn:
If you only evangelize, but you don’t have apologetics, then that can help some people, but for a lot of other people, they can’t get over the intellectual hurdle. If you only do apologetics without evangelism, that can help some people, but it lacks the warmth and the joy that comes from our faith, that it’s a living relationship with God, and we’re not just memorizing a set of facts. So the key to if you’re going to do apologetics… And everyone is called to this. I Peter 3:15, “Always be ready to give a reason for the hope within you, but do so with gentleness and with reverence.” So we want to do that.
Trent Horn:
How do we grow as an apologist? Let’s say just the most basic level that everyone should be able to do. Here, I would say 80% of it, maybe 90, 80% of it is just knowing what the faith actually teaches. Archbishop Fulton Sheen once said, “There are maybe 100 people who hate the Catholic faith for what it is, and millions of people who hate the faith for what they think it is.” Indulgences are a way to buy your way into heaven. That’s not an indulgence at all. I’ve covered that on the show before. Go to Catholic.com for a full explanation. My point is, an indulgence is not a ticket where you pay money to get into heaven. No.
Trent Horn:
Purgatory is not a second chance to get into heaven. We don’t worship Mary as if she is a goddess or something like that. Correcting misunderstandings. At the mass, we do not recrucify Jesus on the altar. We present the one bloody sacrifice of Christ on Calvary under the unbloody formed bread and wine. Just correcting misunderstandings of the faith, that’s the majority of apologetics people need to do. So that means just learning your faith. So the two sources I’d recommend are the New Testament and the Catechism. Read a chapter of the New Testament each night, read 10 paragraphs of the catechism. In a year, Monday… You can even take weekends off. You’ll have it, then keep doing that. Do Bible in a year podcasts. Soon, Father Schmitz is going to do Catechism in a year.
Trent Horn:
If you do that, you’ll know it really well, and you’ll be able to reference it. So just start with the basics there, no excuses. If you have an internet connection, you can find the New Testament and the Catechism, and you can start reading it, read it on your phone. I do all kinds of stuff on my phone to waste time. I can look at the Bible and look at the Catechism while I’m there. All right? Here’s the next one though I would recommend. If you want just a basic introduction to apologetics, we have started a school of apologetics. All right? This is at the very creatively named Schoolofapologetics.com. So we’ve got a lot of courses here I would highly recommend.
Trent Horn:
The first one I’d recommend starting out with is Jimmy Akin’s course, A Beginners Guide to Apologetics, but for a lot of us, people say, “Well, is there a school I can go to there?” There’s not a formal school yet. Holy Apostles College, where I am a professor there of apologetics, it has a track in theology. It has apologetics courses you can take, but myself, Jimmy Akin, Tim staples, Karlo, Joe Heschmeyer, we learned primarily through independent study. Now, I have master’s degrees in theology and philosophy, but in my academic studies, there was not a lot of apologetics. I had to do that on my own.
Trent Horn:
So we started the School of Apologetics to help people to learn how to do apologetics without having to go through all the leg work that we did, and it’ll give you a framework that you go through this, you take the classes, you learn, and then you know what I often do is that when I go through a book, when I read a book on apologetics… Here it is right here, actually, Beginning Apologetics. This is by Jimmy Akin. Does it have a picture? There you go. Look at this right here. Good reasoning, good data, solid defense. Just wish I had an awesome beard when I do apologetics, but that’s that’s Jimmy. He gets to be awesome in that way. Maybe I get to be awesome in other ways. I don’t know.
Trent Horn:
But what Jimmy and I would want for people is to be able to go and take these courses, learn what we’ve learned without having to do all the work we’ve done, and then when I read a book on apologetics, I’ll go to the back. I’ll look at the books they cite, and I’ll go, and I’ll read those books, or at least parts of those books to get a deeper understanding of the field. So I would say that if you are a lay person, and you want to get started in apologetics, just do a lot of reading, and listen, watch, and then go and engage others in conversations online or in person, and ask questions. Ask questions, listen, and find common ground, and if you get stumped, say, “Hey, that’s a good question. Can I get back to you on that?” And you’re free. You’re not in a debate. You’re just trying to share, and you’re trying to learn. So I definitely recommend if you want a good start on just doing apologetics anywhere, whoever you are, you can learn, Schoolofapologetics.com I would highly recommend.
Trent Horn:
The next step though, what if you want to go further? What if you want to do this full time? Now, not everyone is called to do this and for good reason. This is a spiritually dangerous job. I don’t recommend it for a lot of people. Some of the people that I debate, who are the fiercest critics of Catholicism are former Christian and Catholic apologists. They’re Mavericks. They’ve fully gone the other way to be an apologist for the opposing worldview, and it’s sad to see someone who once defended the truth fall from it, and it’s hard.
Trent Horn:
- S. Lewis has The Apologist’s Prayer, and he talks about how… And I really should have memorized this before I shared it, but look up The Apologist Prayer by C. S. Lewis. He talks about how the angels weep while I make the audience laugh, and he talks about how you never feel as weak as you do after a debate, as if the faith relies on you. I think a lot of apologists lose their faith because they think that if they don’t have the answer, there is no answer, because they’re so smart. If they didn’t find it, it must not be there. Maybe you’re just not smart enough to find it. Maybe other people have found it, and you got to humbly listen to them, other people who’ve gone before you perhaps.
Trent Horn:
It’s been around for 2000 years. I’m somebody has thought of the objection that you’re dealing with, unless it’s with some brand new thing in biotech or something like that. So it’s spiritually dangerous. The Bible warns about teachers being held to a higher standard. If you want to do apologetics, just be forewarned, but if you’re called to it, that’s great. So what are my recommendations?
Trent Horn:
First, make sure you get educated in theology. You don’t want to go off the wrong path, and get it from a good place, a master’s degree in theology from Augustan Institute, Franciscan University of Steubenville, Holy Apostles College. It’s a great fundamental framework, and it’ll help open doors for you. People will say, “Hey, this person, they know stuff.” And I would recommend if you do a distance learning like I did, it’s a great way to get learning and degrees without going into debt. It’s very manageable if it’s remote learning. You can work full time and go to school. It’s rough, but it can be done.
Trent Horn:
So I’d recommend doing that, following recommended reading from those courses, like you do our Beginning Apologetics. We recommend books and things like that. Continue that. To do apologetics you also want to study languages. Number one is probably Ancient Greek. You don’t need to become affluent, but just understanding basics of Biblical Greek. There actually is a textbook called Basics of Biblical Greek. That will be extremely helpful, but if you want to go and do that, all right, well, how do I become a full-time apologist? How do I do this? I want to do this my whole life. I feel called to this.
Trent Horn:
Well, there’s really three paths that you can go down to do that, but before I talk about what those paths are, I do want to offer this advice. What we need are expert apologists. So there are some people, like I engage a lot of different subjects. I do atheism, Protestantism, moral issues, historical theology, church fathers. Jimmy Akin covers a wide array of topics, but that can be difficult. It can be difficult to get to that level, and you cannot be an expert in everything. I routinely email experts in these different fields to make sure I’m on track, and to seek help in articulating and formulating arguments, and it can be overwhelming.
Trent Horn:
You think, “Well, if I don’t know everything…” If I waited to do apologetics until I knew everything Jimmy Akin knows, I would still be waiting. It would take me 500 years to get there, and that’s okay, because Jimmy didn’t wait until he… Think about it. Jimmy Akin didn’t wait to do apologetics until he knew 30 years ago what Jimmy Akin knows now. He didn’t do that. You just have to go, and you have to learn, and you start subject by subject. So you can start with a very narrow subject like the crusades, or the assumption of Mary, or the moral argument for God you can start with, or even one particular moral argument, one particular premise in an argument. Start with a narrow subject, learn it a ton, study it, study it, study it, then move on to another subject.
Trent Horn:
So that’s one way to learn, but honestly, what we really need are apologists who are experts in one particular subject, even though they know many other subjects. So we need people like Suan Sonna, who is just an expert in the papacy. He does that well. Gary Michuta, go-to man in the Deuterocanonical books. Michael Lofton, Erick Ybarra, they are experts at Eastern orthodoxy. Stephanie Gray, she knows bioethics, abortion, IVF, assistant suicide, and euthanasia inside and out, and that’s a lot easier to learn one subject very well. And you become the go-to person on that subject. People know, “Hey, if you need to know about this subject, go to that guy. He knows it inside and out,” because we all help each other. Galatians 6, “We bear one another’s burdens. The body of Christ rejoices amongst each other.”
Trent Horn:
That if we each know something really, really, we have a bunch of people who know stuff really well, suddenly we have a body of Christ that knows everything really well, and we work and play off each other’s strengths. So that’d be my recommendation. If you want to become a full-time apologist, focus on one particular necessary doctrine or subject, know it inside and out, and go for it, and then become the expert in that field. If it’s something that you love studying, people need to know about, and especially if we don’t have a lot of people working on it, seriously consider, seriously consider that.
Trent Horn:
So what are the options then? There’s really three options to becoming a full-time Catholic apologist, right? Option number one is the professor route. People can know you for apologetics, and if you get a job as a professor, then you can write and research, and you teach classes, but you can also publish books and articles defending the faith. You can’t always do that. You give up some of your freedom, because you got to work for the university, unless you become like William Lane Craig, and you are a research professor.
Trent Horn:
Dr. Craig has a great deal. He teaches, I think, two weeks out of the year, and the rest of the time, he just writes books, but he proved himself by writing a ton of… He got two PhDs and wrote a ton of academic books to get to that point. So the professor route is hard, because you’ll need to get a PhD. That’s not easy. It can be very difficult. I didn’t end up getting one, because I have a family. It’s hard. Maybe I’ll get one in the future. I don’t know, but if you want to be a professor, you’re going to need a PhD. Even then, the job market is tough to get into academia. It is tough, but people like Brant Pitre, Scott Hahn would be an example of apologist who took the professor route.
Trent Horn:
Now, they’re known more as theologians than apologists, but they can do apologetics as part of their professorial duties. Another example would be Tyler McNabb. Here, I got a picture up here. Look at this guy, look at him here. He’s here with Alvin Plantinga, Properly Basic. Oh look, look at him here, William Lane Craig. Look at this. That is great. I love it. And he teaches at Houston Baptist University. Ooh, the smolder. I like it. Good headshot there. And he’s got [inaudible 00:17:59]. I just emailed him actually for a paper of his, because I’m studying up on something. We always want to help one another out.
Trent Horn:
So the professor route can be difficult though, so just keep that in mind. That’s option number one. Option number two is the unicorn option. It worked for me. It wouldn’t be hard for anybody else. Option number two is just get hired by a Catholic apologetics organization. In 2012, I was touring Catholic Answers. I was leading a group of students, who were visiting San Diego, and they said they were going to hire an apologist. I threw my hat into the ring. I had a master’s degree in theology. I had a manuscript answering atheism unpublished, but more than that, I had a portfolio. This will get to the route number three, which is the more practical route, but I showed them videos of me on college campuses debating students, and that’s what pushed it over the edge.
Trent Horn:
They said, “Yeah, there’s something here. We like him,” because honestly, if someone wanted to be an apologist at Catholic Answers, I don’t care where they got their degree. There’s lots of people who are theologians. They are brilliant theologians. They’re just not very good apologists. They’re not good at communicating. They’re not charitable. They’re too jargony. The degree is a helpful thing, but it’s not necessary, but merely having a degree, that’s not enough for me to show this person has the makings to be a great full-time apologist. I got to see more. I need a portfolio. So I was able to show that to them, and I was in the right place, right time, and they took a chance on me. Take a chance on me.
Trent Horn:
And I think it’s worked out decent, but it’s hard, and I don’t think in the future, if we were to… And we just recently hired a new apologist, super excited about it too. Mr. Joe Heschmeyer. He’s awesome, but I think in the future, you would need more than what I showed them in 2012. I got lucky. Okay? So if you want to be full-time, I think the real route is to go part-time on your own, full-time on your own, and then maybe joining an organization later, whether it’s Catholic Answers or Augustine Institute. You’ll have to do it that way.
Trent Horn:
So you don’t necessarily have to do things part-time, but you have to have a portfolio. So I’ll give you an example with Mr. Joe Heschmeyer. So Joe has his website, Shameless Popery. Here’s a little pick of him right here, and he’s written on it for a long time. Let me go to the archives here. So Joe, bringing him on, people say, “Well, why don’t you bring this person on? This person should be an apologist. He or she should work for you.” Okay, can you show me what they’ve done? I need to see a portfolio, and it could be in a variety of mediums.
Trent Horn:
So you have Joe Joe Heschmeyer here. You scroll back on Shameless Popery, his website. It goes all the way back to 2009. He’s got hundreds of posts here talking about all different kinds of arguments, things on the papacy, and you could tell from his writing that he’s well read. He understands the arguments, and the proof is in the pudding. You’ve got it all right here. Let’s see, I’m going to go to… I love this one. It goes back to 2011. The Dog That Didn’t Bark: Eucharistic Theology in the Early Church, and he makes an argument. He quotes Sherlock Holmes, then shows the church believed in the real presence. It’s really good stuff. You got to check it out.
Trent Horn:
But in seeing that, saying, “Yeah, he’s got it,” and there’s videos of him dialoguing with people. If I’m going to ever hire someone in… I got to see them dialogue with people who disagree in real time, whether it’s on radio, whether it’s in a debate. I’d want to see if they’re going to be a full-time apologist, they got to be able to do that, or at least engage people in written debates, something where you have the clash of ideas, but that’s the thing. Seeing here, Joe, the proof was in the pudding, and he did this part-time. I think Joe was going to go into seminary and then law school. I think he is a lawyer by trade, but he was doing apologetics part-time in his chosen medium, and that would be writing.
Trent Horn:
You have to pick the medium. So I would say the best route, if you want to become a full-time apologist, do this part-time, and I did that too. I worked full-time, and at night, I read, and studied, and tried to create an apologetics website. I created apologetics training manuals. I did that at night on my own outside of work time. It’s a hard route, but it’s worth it if you put in the time, and the hard work at the beginning, and all the extra hours. So Joe did this with a writing format, and it’s really paid off, because now we go to… I’m going to zoom up here all the way up to the top. Let’s see.
Trent Horn:
Now we have this. You have Shameless Popery here, and it shows that Joe really knows his stuff, and it was well worth it, and I’m so happy he’s with us at Catholic Answers, but there’s other medium that you can take part in to give you YouTube or podcasting. Prime example of that’s going to be Reason and Theology, Michael Lofton and crew. Michael has put out tons of videos, and so he has some writing, but he has a lot of video content, and we see here, he does great interviews. He breaks down subjects. He does rebuttal videos. Proof is in the pudding. I can see it right here. He knows his stuff. I can go and watch it. He has a portfolio. All right?
Trent Horn:
And he does this part-time, and now I think he’s actually built up his own platform to be able to do this full-time. So a lot of the stepping stones is you do it part-time, and people say, “Hey, I love this. This is good. Keep doing this.” People will support you financially even, maybe even enough to do it full-time. It’s always baby steps though. Don’t just quit your job today and start your apologetics YouTube channel tomorrow. A lot of times it’s you do full-time at the widget factory. Nights and weekends, you do the apologetics blog, YouTube channel, and then it grows, and people see you’re filling a need, and you’re doing a good job, and then it gets big enough. People will want to support you in doing that, and so please support Michael Lofton. Subscribe to Reason and Theology. He’s awesome. Always happy to cooperate with him.
Trent Horn:
And lots of people do this. Here’s a channel from thatonecatholicgirl. Her name is Vanessa, and she just goes and posts videos right here, and she’s going and doing it, and I would just commend anyone and say, “Look, nowadays…” When I first started this, all right? When I first started doing apologetics, I tried to record apologetic videos on a giant Cannon XL2 camera. It was so difficult to try to do it by myself, set up the tripod, and do everything. Oh, it was a mess. Now you got a phone. You could record it right here, and you could just do videos, and it doesn’t even have to be YouTube. Go to Catholic Answers TikTok. All right?
Trent Horn:
Thomas, our social media guy, I guess that’s his title. I’m sure he’d be okay with that. He does a Good job. Now, I kind of worry about TikTok, and that the communist will take over, but whatever. He understands it, and these videos can get tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of views. I on here there’s some of these have 200,000 views. Google African Jesus, follow him. I don’t know everything about that video, but it’s got 200,000 views, and it must be good, because Thomas is still employed with us. So it’s all good, but that’s the portfolio is what I’m saying. If you’re going to do this part-time until you get to full time, either doing it yourself, managing it, and pay attention to your income, pay your taxes, that kind of stuff doing it on your own, and then maybe you’ll be invited into part of a larger organization to do that, but find the subject you care about.
Trent Horn:
So I guess that would be my recommendation. Find the subject you care about, narrow it, learn Catholic apologetics and theology at the bare minimum, Catechism and New Testament, find a subject you really love, become an expert in it, or at least learn a lot about it, put yourself out there, make a YouTube video, TikTok, blog post, and just keep at it. Alright? I went to my second jujitsu class. My first jujitsu class, I threw up. I took four months off. I went to my second. I didn’t throw up. That’s an improvement.
Trent Horn:
And a friend of mine said, “Look, a black belt is a white belt who kept showing up,” and that’s the thing. If you want to become an apologist, you have to keep writing, producing, interacting, receive fine mentors, people who want shepherd you on this journey, and you keep working at it, not for your glory, not to feel awesome, for his glory, and for the good of others to bring them into Christ’s church. So I hope you’ll do that. At the very least, check out School of Apologetics, learn this stuff, have good conversations with people, but if you feel the call, make that TikTok video, make a YouTube video, do a blog post, share it, and don’t be discouraged if only four people saw it. When I used to give apologetic talks, only four people came. You got to just keep showing up, and God will glorify it, and he’ll give you… But listen to him. Maybe he’ll say “I needed you to do apologetics for this season. Now I need you to do something else,” and listen to his will.
Trent Horn:
He’ll let you know, but it could be, “I need you to do it for a season in this small thing. Those who are trusted with small things can then be trusted with larger things.” All right? So I hope this was helpful for you all. I wrote an article about this. I’ll try to post it in the description if I get it at Catholic.com soon, otherwise, hopefully it’ll show up there, but I hope this is helpful for everybody, and I just hope that you have a very [inaudible 00:27:10].
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