In this episode Trent shares an excerpt of his latest rebuttal video. This time he takes on Servus Christi’s video The Catholic Church: Masterpiece of Deception.
Welcome to The Counsel of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Hey, thanks for stopping by the Council of Trent podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. And today I’m sharing with you an excerpt of my newest rebuttal video. It’s a reply to Servus Christi’s video, The Catholic Church: A Masterpiece Of Deception. So it’s even just part one of the video. The whole video will probably be like three or four hours long, so I put part one up so far. So this is an excerpt of an excerpt of a whole video. I mean, it takes me hours and hours to reply, because his original video was about 90 minutes long. And when I rebut videos on YouTube that are critical of the Catholic faith, it usually takes me about twice as long to rebut a video. It always takes longer to correct someone than to just spout things that are not true or falsehoods or bad arguments.
So in my videos, I mean, you hear people make the arguments against the faith and then I break them down. And so, I’ve really enjoyed making them. And I’m so grateful to our supporters at trenthornpodcast.com. Your guys’ support makes it possible for me not just to do three podcast episodes a week, but to do these multi-hour rebuttal videos. So be sure to go to YouTube, just search Counsel of Trent, click the subscribe button so you can always see when new rebuttal videos go up, and consider supporting us at trenthornpodcast.com so we can do more podcasts, more debates, more rebuttal videos.
There’s really no other Catholic apologists out there doing these kinds of debates, rebuttal videos. I think it’s so helpful for people to see that the truth is something to be reckoned with. The truth can stand on its own, and when wielded properly, can refute falsehoods, lies, distortions and misrepresentations of our Catholic faith. So just big thanks to everyone who has supported us. And now here’s an excerpt from my reply to Servus Christi’s video, The Catholic Church: A Masterpiece Of Deception.
Josh:
What does the Bible say? What does the Apostle Paul say? 2 Thessalonians 2 says this, verse 15, “Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by word or our epistle.” So it very clearly says that there’s a written tradition and then there’s a spoken tradition. And that would seem compelling on the surface if not for verse 5 of the same book, where the tradition he’s referring to is also written. Keep this in mind, any oral tradition referred to was temporary and was eventually written down. There is no good reason whatsoever to believe that the apostles failed to write down any tradition that was necessary. Every tradition that they passed on orally first was also transcribed in writing, every one. There’s not a good argument that has ever been furnished to believe otherwise.
And even the two verses that are appealed to as some substantiation of oral tradition are refuted within the same paragraphs. So Paul mentions this oral tradition, but verse 5 says, “Do you not remember that when I was with you still, I told you these things?” What things? The next 10 verses he reiterates what he had told them. So that oral tradition that he had given them is found here written in 2 Thessalonians. So the natural progression of things, obviously, is to say it first before it’s written. Jesus spoke the Sermon on the Mount before it was transcribed, but it was eventually transcribed during the time of the apostles.
Trent Horn:
Okay. So this is an assumption that everything Jesus and the apostles taught was eventually transcribed and written down in the New Testament. And it’s one that’s contradicted by scripture. Go to the end of John’s gospel, John 21:25. There are also many other things which Jesus did, were every one of them to be written, which would include Jesus teaching or saying things to the apostles, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.
Let’s go to 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. Josh claims, okay, well, yeah. Paul did tell the Thessalonians stuff by oral tradition, but then he later wrote it down in his letter to the Thessalonians so we don’t have to worry about that. Well, what did he actually say? He said, “Do you not remember that when I was still with you, I told you this?” Told us what? And you know what is restraining him, which is the man of lawlessness, the mystery of lawlessness.
Paul says in 2 Thessalonians 2:4, “The man of lawlessness will come before Christ coming. He’ll take his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.” And he said that something is restraining the man of lawlessness so that he won’t do that. And he says, “I told you what is restraining him.” Who or what is restraining the man of lawlessness? He says, “You know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time, for the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way.”
That’s all well and good, but guess what? In 2 Thessalonians, Paul never tells us who the restrainer actually is. G.K. Beale and Benjamin Gladd, in their commentary in Thessalonians … Look at any commentary on Thessalonians and it will tell you, we don’t know who the restrainer is. Beale and Gladd say it could be God, angels, the Roman empire, the Jewish nation. It could even be Satan who is restraining the man of lawlessness. We don’t know.
Thomas Schreiner, who is an excellent Reformed Protestant scholar, this is what he says about this passage in Thessalonians. “Only the Thessalonians and Paul know the identity of the restrainer, since it was part of their oral communication. And thus, Paul feels no need to be specific. He never informs us about the identity of the restrainer, since he had already communicated the matter orally to the Thessalonians.” So Josh is just wrong when he says, “Oh, Paul spoke to them in person, but then he wrote it all down later for us to read.” He did not.
Now this particular truth was not a part of the deposit of faith, so it’s not a part of sacred tradition. And that’s not the point I’m making here. My point is just that Josh is incorrect when he says everything that the apostles preached was eventually written down for us to read in the Bible, because a clear counter example in second Thessalonians chapter two of a tradition given to believers orally, that was not written down later. And the claim that everything we need to believe as Christians, well, maybe we don’t need to believe that. Maybe we don’t need that, Josh would say.
Okay, well, where is your evidence for the claim, everything that we need to believe, everything that is the fullness of revelation for the church as a whole to accept, is confined to the written word of God. Where’s the evidence for that? You won’t be able to find it, because it’s doctrine of Sola Scriptura is not biblical. It’s the greatest irony of that doctrine.
Josh:
In Thessalonians, we go to Acts, chapter 17. It says this. “When they came to Thessaloniki, right, the church of the Thessalonians, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. Then Paul, as was his custom, went into them and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the scriptures, from the written word of God, explaining and demonstrating that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead and saying, this Jesus whom I preach to you is the Christ.” So Paul’s tradition and his custom with the Thessalonians was rooted in reasoning from the scriptures, from the written word of God. Shortly after this, they go to Berea and note that the Bereans received what Paul said orally. And then they went to the written word of God to confirm it.
Trent Horn:
And, of course, this contradicts what Paul says to the Thessalonians themselves, as if the word of God could only come in a written form. Because he said to the Thessalonians, “We also thank God constantly for this, that when you receive the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.”
Because Paul would say, look, here’s the old Testament. Here’s how it shows Jesus as the Messiah. And the Jews in Paul’s time would say, Nope, it doesn’t say he’s going to be crucified. Nope. It doesn’t say he’ll rise bodily from the dead three days later. You’re reading that into the text, Paul. We’re going to stick with our written word, thank you very much. We don’t need your splinter sect.
But Paul was thankful. No, I am giving you the revelation of God, which tells you, this is what the Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh, this is what it teaches in regards to Jesus. You’re not able to fully see this. But we now have a revelation from Paul himself to say that God’s word is preached to them through his very preaching to say, no, this is what the Old Testament means. This is how it predicts and naturally moves towards the fullness of Jesus Christ.
Trent Horn:
So it’s just so funny that this same stubborn argument about, it is written, it is written. I’m going with what the Bible says. I don’t care what your unwritten tradition is. This argument that Protestants make today was the same argument that Jews in the first century made against Paul and the apostles when they said, we have our written tradition. We’ve had it for centuries. We don’t need your unwritten tradition.
At this time, that contradicts what we’ve already received in the written word from God. They were not willing to be open, to see the word of God could come to them in another form, such as through Paul’s preaching. That is why Paul was grateful that his preaching was accepted, not as the word of men, but as the very word of God that is at work in believers. And so, it’s a tragedy when those who accept Sola Scriptura today have cut themselves off from God’s divine revelation through this manmade doctrine.
Josh:
And in 1 Corinthians 11, Paul says, “I praise you that you remember me in all things and that you hold the traditions just as I delivered them to you.” And in the very same chapter, he explains what he delivered to them. And so, there’s no tradition that was spoken that wasn’t also written down. It was all written down. And we have it preserved right here.
The Bible says, as I said, not to think beyond what is written. Paul says to the Corinthians in chapter 14, he says, “The things which I write to you are the commandments of the Lord.” But here’s where it gets tricky for the Catholic church. Listen.
Trent Horn:
So notice how 1 Corinthians 14 and four are taken out of context, only briefly alluded to, and used the support of conclusion, Sola Scriptura, that they don’t actually support. The same thing is about to happen with his exegesis of 2 Peter.
Josh:
2 Peter chapter one, “His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us by glory and virtue. All things that pertain to life and godliness given to us through a knowledge of Jesus.” And where is the knowledge of Jesus found? Right here. All of his teachings are found here and the expounding upon those teachings by his apostles found right here. All things given that pertain to life and godliness found in a knowledge of Jesus. But wait.
Trent Horn:
Now here’s the big problem with this argument. It’s either going to truncate divine revelation and cut out the word of God, or it’s going to be broadened to include sacred tradition and the teachings of the Catholic church. Let me show you how.
So here’s my basic reply. If all things that pertain to life and godliness come through the knowledge of Jesus Christ, as Josh is saying in his reading of 1 Peter 1:3, then why do I need the teachings of the other apostles? If all things that pertain to life and godliness, where is that found? Through knowledge of him, knowledge of Jesus Christ. Where do I get knowledge of Jesus Christ? Well, maybe I just need the red letter Bible. I just need all the collection of Jesus’s sayings, and if I have that, then I have all things that pertain to life and godliness. So not just Sola Scriptura, but Sola words of Jesus. I just need the words of Jesus. That’s it.
So then you would lose the writings of Paul, the writings of Peter, the writings of the other evangelists who are describing what’s happening. You just have the words of Jesus. Now, I’m sure Josh would say, “Well, no, it’s not just that that gives us a knowledge of Jesus. It’s not just the words of Jesus, but it’s the words of the apostles writing about him.” Well are there are other things that give us knowledge of Jesus, like a sacred tradition about Jesus? Well, no, there’s no such thing. It’s all been written down.
I don’t buy that. I think there’s a knowledge that Jesus did not call anyone else to be an apostle. There are no more living apostles. Is that written down in scripture? No. Are there people who believe there are living apostles today? Yes. There’s some charismatics who think that. The Mormon church would be a prime example of that. Mormons believe their president is a living apostle, essentially. We believe that all divine revelation ceased with the death of the last apostle or last apostolic man, like Mark or Luke. It’s not explicitly described in scripture. We believe Jesus teaches this, yet it doesn’t come from scripture itself.
So the problem here, you either truncate it. You either get rid of the writings of the apostles, because if it’s just Jesus, the knowledge of him who pertains to life and godliness, we just need a subset of the Bible. But then if you say, well, it’s not just in Jesus’s words, you can learn about Jesus through other means. So if there are other means, like the writings of the apostles, the proclamation of the apostles, the sacred tradition handed down to the history of the church, or the teaching of the Magisterium, it now becomes much broader.
And it’s clear when you look at this actual verse, it’s not what it’s teaching at all. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence. So the knowledge of Jesus. That all the things that pertain to life and godliness ultimately come to us through the knowledge of Jesus we receive by faith through God’s grace. By which he granted to us his precious and very great promises, that through these, you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion and become partakers of the divine nature.
But then it says for this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith. Wait, I thought all we needed for life and godliness comes from reading the written word about Jesus? Supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self control, and self control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, which I thought we got from just reading the Bible about Jesus. And godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.
So what’s clear here is that in 2 Peter, Peter is not talking about Sola Scriptura. He’s talking about divine election. God calls us and brings us to a knowledge of Jesus. Through that knowledge, we have all things that pertain to life and godliness. But that doesn’t mean that that knowledge is restricted to what is written in sacred scripture alone, or Sola Scriptura.
Josh:
2 Timothy chapter three, verse 15, listen, very carefully. The Holy scriptures, the written word, graphe in Greek, are able to make you wise for salvation through faith, faith alone, which is in Christ.
Trent Horn:
No, no, no, no. The Bible only says faith alone in James 2:24, when it says a man is justified by works and not by faith alone. So don’t add words that are not there. Josh has a habit of this in the video of adding parenthetical comments, which are not an accurate way to represent the texts you’re talking about.
Josh:
Christ Jesus. The Holy scriptures are able to make you wise for salvation. Now, if the Holy scriptures are able to make you wise for salvation, then they are sufficient to make you wise for salvation. And therefore, tradition is unnecessary. Here is a massive problem for the-
Trent Horn:
All right. Now let’s do what Paul actually said. He said, sorry, let’s go down to 2 Timothy. What did he actually say? “And how from childhood, you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to instruct you,” or make you wise for, as Josh says in his translation, “able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” So his argument is, if the Bible is able to instruct me for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus, then the Bible is the only thing that I need, the only authority I need.
This argument backfires, however, because what is Paul talking about in 2 Timothy 3:15? “And how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” So Josh’s argument is that reading the Bible, he interprets as here graphe, and the principal does eventually apply to all sacred scripture, we see in 2 Timothy 3:16 through 17. But in verse 15 that he’s appealing to, he has a serious problem. If he’s saying from his argument that if the Bible can instruct me in salvation through faith in Christ Jesus, therefore, the Bible is all I need.
What Paul is telling Timothy is that the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, that is sufficient to instruct him for salvation in Christ Jesus, because the Old Testament has messianic prophecies. The Old Testament has virtue and teachings about God and about following God, and the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. It has things that will naturally lead you to the person of Jesus Christ. But just because something will lead you to Jesus Christ, that doesn’t mean it is the only thing that you need. So Josh is trading here on an ambiguous understanding of sufficient.
So Paul would say, Yeah, the Old Testament can instruct you in faith in Jesus Christ. It gets you to Jesus, but it’s not the only thing you need, because there’s many other elements of divine revelation in the New Testament. And the Catholic would say, the same as true for the Old and New Testaments. You need more than that. What has been given to us in sacred tradition and what Christ’s church teaches that inherits the authority of the apostles to lead and guide us.
So are the scriptures sufficient to lead us to salvation? Yes, in an important sense. There’s sufficient, because you’ll see church fathers will say this all the time, the scriptures are sufficient. The scriptures contain that which we need to be saved. Believe in Jesus Christ, have faith in him. Jesus is fully God. He Rose from the dead. You have to be baptized to be saved. Christ is truly present in the Eucharist. You can lose your salvation and need to be reconciled to God if you ever commit a mortal sin. All of that is found in scripture. And yet someone like Josh won’t find it there. He’ll reject a lot of those teachings. Not necessarily teachings of Christ’s divinity, but the teaching on the Eucharist. Probably the teaching on that you can’t lose your salvation or infant baptism, baptismal regeneration.
So those truths are found in scripture, but they’re found there not in an organized form. It’s like how a Home Depot … Is home Depot sufficient to build a house? Yes, in that it has the materials I need to build a house. All the materials I need are there. Could I build a house with this stuff at Home Depot? No, I’m terrible at building things. I am horrible at putting things together. It took me five months to build my kid’s playhouse I bought from Costco. I’m awful at it. I need something formally sufficient. I need it all put together, because I don’t know how to put it together.
Acts chapter eight, the Ethiopian eunuch is looking at Isaiah 53. He’s looking at Isaiah 53, which has scripture that can instruct him in salvation in Jesus Christ. Why? Because Isaiah 53 is talking about Jesus, the suffering servant. That’s a messianic prophecy. But the unit doesn’t know that until Philip the evangelist comes and tells him that’s what it means. And we need the same thing, for the church to be able to lead and guide us, because 2 Peter 3:16 says that the ignorant and unstable take what is in scripture and twist it to their own destruction. So this argument doesn’t undermine tradition, it actually shows why we need sacred tradition and the Magisterium of the church.
Josh:
Well the Catholic church officially taught, listen, Christ the Lord in whom the entire revelation of the most high God is summed up. That’s a big statement all by itself. We know that the entire revelation of God is summed up in Jesus, and all we know about Jesus is found right here. Therefore, the entire revelation of God is found in your Bible.
Trent Horn:
That’s just a circular argument. He’s already assuming what he’s trying to prove in that second premise, and saying everything we know about Jesus can be found here in the Bible. Jesus is the fullness of God’s revelation, so the fullness of God’s revelation can be found here in the Bible. But as I said earlier, there’s things that we do know about Jesus that are not found in the Bible, like that Jesus inspired a certain set of books for us to understand his scripture. Jesus closed divine revelation. He no longer called any other living apostles. These are things we know that are not directly found in the Bible.
And it also doesn’t follow that if Jesus is the fullness that sums up all of God’s revelation, Jesus is the unsurpassing word, the perfect revelation of the father, it doesn’t follow that because we have a source of revelation that describes Jesus, that automatically this source is the fullness of divine revelation, just because it describes Jesus who is the fullness of divine revelation. Just because a source describes that which is the fullness does not automatically mean that this thing is the fullness of divine revelation. Because otherwise, the apostles’ apostolic preaching, which happened before the New Testament was written, while it was written and continued after it was written, would then contain the fullness of divine revelation as well.
So this very argument he’s making for Sola Scriptura, that if something contains the fullness of divine revelation or description of Jesus Christ, then it would justify not just Sola Scriptura, but Sola Traditio, just tradition by itself, because apostolic preaching and tradition also contains Jesus. So he’s making an illicit argument here to go from Jesus being the full revelation of the father to saying that anything that describes Jesus, even scripture, is the fullness of divine revelation and there’s no other revelation outside of the source. You can’t make that inference.
Josh:
Commanded the apostles to preach the gospel, which had been promised beforehand by the prophets in the written word of God. Okay. In the written word of God was my parents’ medical commentary. And-
Trent Horn:
Just stick to what it says, please. Because you’ll notice that in this passage, it doesn’t talk about anyone writing down divine revelation anywhere. It talks about them preaching it. So it just fascinates me that Josh is trying to take the catechism of the Catholic church and get it to say that the catechism teaches Sola Scriptura, even though it rebukes Sola Scriptura explicitly. So this shows me this is an argument for the need of a Magisterium, that if he can take the catechism and get it to say Sola Scriptura, then he could get the Bible to say anything he wants, honestly. So this shows the need of having a living, teaching office of the church to guide us, to prevent us from twisting scripture to our own destruction.
Josh:
Which he fulfilled in his own person and promulgated with his own lips. In preaching the gospel, they were to communicate the gifts of God to all men. Listen. This gospel was to be the source of all saving truth and moral discipline. This is official Catholic teaching. The gospel is the source of all saving truth and moral discipline. Now, 2 Timothy 3 says what? The Holy scriptures are able to make you wise for salvation. Therefore, the gospel must be found in the Holy scriptures. And it is. Therefore, if within the Holy scriptures, I have the source of all saving truth and moral discipline, then tradition is irrelevant. Do you see then that tradition is disproven unwittingly by the Catholic catechism itself?
By admitting that the gospel is the source of all saving truth and moral discipline, and admitting that 2 Timothy 3:15 is God breathed, and we therefore know that the Holy scriptures are able to make us wise for salvation, then the gospel must be found in the Holy scriptures. And no wonder. If the Catholic church wishes to say the gospel is not found in the Holy scriptures, we have some peculiar things to overcome, such as the categorization of four books as the Gospels. Even the Catholic church refers to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as the Gospels. Are we to believe that the gospel is not found in the Gospels? If so, why are they referenced as the Gospels? Mark opens his gospel with those words, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, according to the prophets, and an immediate appeal to the written word of God.
Trent Horn:
Of course in Mark’s gospel, it says that Jesus went forth and proclaimed the gospel. He never told anyone to write it down. Here’s the major problem with Josh’s argument. He’s saying the catechism says that the gospel is the source of all saving truth. The gospel is the source of all saving truth. Absolutely right, but you’re confusing … He’s trying to say, it seems like, when he says the gospel is the source of all saving truth. He’s also trying to interpret from that as if the catechism are saying the gospel just is all saving truth.
Well, what is the gospel? Here’s what’s interesting. The Bible never systematically defines it. It talks about what the gospel is capable of, how the gospel is capable of effecting our salvation, but it doesn’t tell us, this is the gospel. It certainly doesn’t say, this is the gospel of Jesus Christ. That if you believe in Jesus Christ by faith alone, by grace alone, reading only what is in scriptures, you may have eternal life, which will never be forsaken. There is no description of it.
Because if I asked Josh what the gospel was, I’m sure he’d give me some kind of description like that. But the Bible doesn’t say that. The Bible never says what the gospel is. It just talks about the gospel, the good news. So what is the gospel? The gospel is the good news of our salvation that has been affected by the person of Jesus Christ in his life, death and resurrection. Romans 4:25 says he was raised for our justification. Not just that he died, but that he rose, and that he has given us the means to attain eternal life, the grace that he has given us.
And so what flows from that? That that is the source. So we ask, what’s the source and then what comes from the source? What comes from the source are the sacraments. Jesus said to be baptized, to receive the Eucharist, for example. To submit to our elders in the church. He gave the apostles the ability to forgive sins in John 20:23. So, of course, the gospel is the source of all saving truths, but it cannot be all saving truth, because I’m sure Josh would list many different saving truths that exist. It is the source. It is that which they all flow from. Jesus Christ’s death on the cross, just says blood and water flowed from the side of Christ on the cross, that he is the source that they flowed from him. From that comes the waters of baptism and the blood of Christ that we receive in the Eucharist.
And so, if he tries to take the gospel as just a gospel tract, it’s just this. A little tract you give, just believe in Jesus and you’re saved. That’s not what the Bible says. So he is confusing and taking the catechism and misinterpreting it, revealing how he’s taking written texts, including scripture, and misinterpreting it as well.
Josh:
In order to establish apostolic tradition to be regarded with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence, we have to make the apostles liars. At the end of John’s Gospel, chapter 20, we read this near the end. These things are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name. That is a saving truth. Now remember, the Catholic church says the gospel is the source of all saving truth and moral discipline. And John says, I’ve written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God. And that believing that, belief, faith, faith alone-
Trent Horn:
It doesn’t say faith alone. What it’s saying here is that when you come to believe in Jesus, you shall have life in his name. Not if you believed in Jesus once, you came to believe what? Also it doesn’t say there what to believe. Do I have to believe he’s Messiah? Believe he’s fully divine? Believe he’s Lord? Believe he’s savior? There’s the whole Lordship salvation controversy among Protestants. Some Protestants think you only have to believe Jesus is savior. You don’t actually have to believe he’s Lord. They actually have that dispute amongst themselves. So let’s continue here and then I’ll show where this argument goes off the rails, similar to the argument he’s made from 2 Peter.
Josh:
You might have life in his name. So if I have life in his name, then that’s a saving truth, which means the gospel must be found somewhere in the Gospel of John. And if the source of all-
Trent Horn:
Yeah, right. If I come to believe in Jesus, it’s not just, I believed and then I’m saved and it’s permanent, it’s a done deal. There’s a great book, I forget the Protestant author’s name, though I’ll probably do a podcast on it soon. He wrote a book called Salvation by Allegiance Alone. And he said that the Greek word pistes, meaning faith, to believe, it’s not just like the modern sense of belief. Like, Oh, I believe Jesus is savior. Oh, good. I’m saved. It’s more like allegiance. I believe you and so I shall follow you. And that, in believing Jesus, we have life in his name, because we would believe him and then we obey his teachings. Jesus said, “Show that you love me by obeying the teachings that I’ve given.”
And so, what’s going to happen here is he’s saying, well, John says if you believe in Jesus, you’ll have life in his name. Notice he can’t get here, the Gospel of John says, this is the gospel. He can’t even get, the gospel is a source of saving truth. Here is something in the Gospel of John that I, Josh, would say is the gospel, basically. Therefore, all we need is scripture. So here’s … well, I’ll play it and then I’ll just underscore the main problem.
Josh:
All truth, all saving truth and moral discipline, again, is found in the scriptures, then tradition is altogether irrelevant in terms of being necessary or to be regarded as holding equal weight with scripture. The notion is disproved by the Catholic catechism itself. And so, therefore, all saving truth and moral discipline is found in the scriptures. All of it, because we know the gospel is found in the scriptures, in the book of Romans, in the book of first Corinthians, in the book of Galatians, coupled with the Gospels themselves.
Trent Horn:
So here’s the problem. His argument is misinterpreting the catechism, which actually still underscores the argument and the necessity of the church, that the gospel is the source of all saving truth. Absolutely right. And so, where the gospel is, then we have divine revelation. So it’s where the gospel is, that’s where our authority is. So he tries to say, you can find the gospel in the Gospel of John. You can find it in Romans. You can find it in Corinthians. You can find it in all of these books of the Bible. And so, therefore, all we need is the Bible.
So there’s a few problems with this. First, you can find the gospel outside of the Bible. You can find it in a gospel tract from Ray Comfort’s Living Water Ministries. Does that make that gospel tract another gospel? No, it contains the gospel, but it’s not the inspired word of God, and certainly not the sole source or any source of divine revelation.
But you can find the gospel, of course, in the apostolic preaching, and the tradition and the teaching that was handed down in the church. Just as Saint Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15, “Brothers, what I have received before me, I hand on to you.” So that gospel, the saving gospel was found for a long time before the Bible was written, while the Bible was written, and after it was written. So that has just as much a candidate of being divine revelation as scripture in this argument he’s making.
And then, also, this argument doesn’t work. You’re saying, okay, so where you find the gospel, that’s where you find your authority in the fullness of divine revelation. Can you find the gospel in 3 John? Can you find the gospel in the Letter of Philemon? Can you find the gospel in Jude? Not adequately stated. And can you find it in all of John’s Gospel? Can you find it in all of the Gospels? No, that would mean then you either … Once again, the problem with Josh’s argument is he’s widening the scope so that it would include divine revelation being found in unwritten sources and within a living Magisterium, or it compresses it and restricts it so that divine revelation can only be found in written areas of the Bible that contained what he considers to be the gospel. Either way, his argument for Sola Scriptura doesn’t work. It either leads Catholicism or it leads to rejecting most of the Bible is being the written word of God.
Josh:
We know the gospel is found in the Holy scriptures, and therefore, these are the source of all saving truth and moral discipline.
Trent Horn:
No, the gospel is the source of all saving truth. And that source of divine revelation flows into the written word, but it doesn’t mean the written word is the only source. Because the written word is not what the gospel … The gospel did not come from the written word. The gospel came from the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which was recorded in the word of God that was preached, like 1 Thessalonians 2:13 says, and also written down.
Josh:
Tradition, therefore, is irrelevant. Now, the authority of the Catholic church must be rooted in the Magisterium. Now, they say apostolic preaching, real quick, was to be preserved in a continuous line of succession until the end of time. That is plucked right out of thin air. It has a basis in nothing. And they just declared, it’s an example of circular reasoning by the Catholic church. They merely assert that apostolic preaching was to continue in a line of succession until the end of time. But where’d they get that from? They didn’t get it from the Bible. So they’ll say, well, we got it from tradition.
How do we know this is part of tradition? Well, because according to the Magisterium, the teaching authority of the church, we validated that as tradition. Well, how do I know that the Magisterium of the church is valid? Well, because that’s also part of the tradition. So they just circularly go around, declaring things. By this standard, you can declare anything.
Trent Horn:
I would love for Josh to give me a defense of why I should believe the 66 books of his Protestant Bible are the inspired word of God without resorting to a similar kind of circularity. There’s no way he can do it. But the church can defend its own authority through a non-circular appeal to the Bible as evidence of Christian history, both the Bible and the writings of the church fathers.
So what did Paul say to Timothy? Did he say, Timothy, I want you to gather up all my letters, gather up the future gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, compile them together, and this will be the authority for the church henceforth moving forward? No. He says to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:2, “Well, you have heard from me before many witnesses and trust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.” 1 Timothy 5:22, and it’s not just any men. It’s not just, here’s the message and keep going. It says, do not be hasty in the laying on of hands to discern who you choose to succeed and carry on this important task of proclaiming the gospel, of leading the church, of being the elders, the presbyteros, the Greek word who’s contraction from which we get the word priest in English.
So there’s nothing in the Bible that ever says, Oh, if you want to become a pastor, just read the Bible and go to seminary and choose to pastor a church. It always says, to have that authority to lead God’s people, you have to receive it from those who came before you, specifically from those who have a connection to the apostles.
And we see this, the early church believed this, because in First Clement, written sometime between 60, 80 and 96 A.D., Clement, who is the successor of St. Peter, the third successor of St. Peter, says, our apostles knew through knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, knew there would be strife for the office of Bishop. And so they appointed those ministers already mentioned, and afterwards gave instructions that when these should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed them in their ministry. So there is evidence for an enduring, perpetual, visible church with a recognizable hierarchy to provide authority for believers. There is evidence for that. There is only circular evidence for Sola Scriptura and some kind of self-attesting Protestant canon of scripture.
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