Audio only:
In this episode Trent compares how Mel Gibson and Wes Huff both engaged the topic of Christ’s resurrection on the Joe Rogan Experience.
Transcription:
Trent:
On Monday, I reviewed Wesley Huff’s defensive Christianity on the Joe Rogan podcast. But after finishing that episode, I saw that Rogan interviewed Mel Gibson, who also talked about Christ Resurrection. So in today’s episode, I want to compare both of these men’s approaches and talk about how a lot of people misunderstand what it means to engage in evangelism. What’s interesting is that both Huff and Gibson criticize the Catholic church, and in a few weeks I’ll address Huff’s recent comments on the canon of scripture along with comments from other protestants who think the canon isn’t a big problem, it still is for them, but if you can’t wait for that, check out Jimmy Akin and Joe Heschmeyer’s response to Huff on Capturing Christianity. And Mel Gibson, he said stuff like this.
CLIP:
There’s a guy called Bishop Vigano who says it’s a counterfeit parallel church and it’s running an entirely different religion. I actually don’t, I don’t adhere to a post conciliary church. I mean, we got a pope that brought a South American idol into the church. The worship really, he did the pama, that’s called apostasy.
That’s
A falling away from it. And the very nature of apostasy means that you have to be part of it to fall away from it. So it’s an inside job.
Trent:
I’m not sure if Gibson subscribes to full blown set of aism, a variant called set a Privation, or it’s just a kind of Catholic fundamentalism that uses hyperbolic language. But regardless if you want to share the Catholic faith to a largely non-religious audience, you probably shouldn’t lead with stuff like this. I get that you should not ignore the church’s warts. I totally agree with that, but dwelling on intramural Catholic disputes isn’t really that helpful when we want to focus on the main issues at hand. And if you’d like to hear a rebuttal of Mel Gibson’s attacks on the church, check out Joe Heschmeyer’s recent episode on Shameless Popery that posted yesterday. I’ll link to it in the description below. Instead, I want to contrast on how Wesley Huff and Mel Gibson answered a similar question about why each of these men believes that Christ rose from the dead. I covered this on Monday’s show, but here’s some of Huff’s answer for review.
CLIP:
So what is your personal belief when it comes to the resurrection? What do you think? Do you have a belief or do you just try to interpret the text and try to see what is the message?
Well, I think so as a historian, I do think it is a historical question. You have a guy who objectively lived, he objectively died, and then individuals close to his inner circle claim that they see him not dead. When we do history, it’s an inference to the best explanation.
And so there are probabilities of things that have happened in history where we can say, okay, there’s a higher probability of event A happening and a lower probability of event B happening. So the example I often give is Jonah being swallowed the fish that’s low probabilistically. Not that it didn’t happen, but that as a historian we got to say, well, there’s no independent cross-reference sources. You don’t have multiple attestation for this particular event. The interesting thing about Jesus is that we have more evidence from different writings in the ancient world than we probably should have for someone of his stature.
Trent:
And here’s Rogan asking a similar question to Mel Gibson
CLIP:
Who gets back up three days later after he gets murdered in public, who gets back up under his own power. Buddha didn’t do that.
You believe that was a real event?
Yeah, I do.
What brought you to that belief? Is this something that you’ve always had or is it something you studied it and you’ve come to this conclusion because of the historical accounts and
Yes, I think as a child, one accepts things on faith because you’re raised by people who are nice to you and they believe it. And my dad was a pretty smart guy. He was like Mensa smart, like real smart. Back in 1968, he won Jeopardy, right? Really? And then they brought all the Jeopardy winners back and he played all the winners and he beat all of them too. So he had a mind, like a steel trap, and his memory was practically photographic. My memory is pornographic, but his was like, I don’t have that kind of mind, but I’m more like he did math and I can’t add, but so as a child you learn these things and you accept them on faith, and I still have that faith, but as I got older, I came to it through intellect and through reading and putting things together in accounts and then occurrences in my own life.
Trent:
Rogan and Gibson then talk about the shroud of Turrin for several minutes as evidence for Jesus’s existence, crucifixion and possibly his resurrection before saying this,
CLIP:
I buy it, but that’s not the only reason I buy it. I mean, I think there’s other logical reasons why I believe. What are those? Oh, okay. Stuff that happens in your own life, the results you get from actually appealing to a power greater than yourself. And I mean, I don’t think it’s any secret. I am flawed in the fact that I am by nature born an alcoholic. I did drugs, I did alcohol, and there was nothing that could stop me from doing that, nothing. So I was really on, you’re on a downhill run. So I regard the that I was able to appeal to something greater than myself to help me and actually stop me doing that. I think that’s a miracle.
It is for me. It is. And for many, we are so flawed and I am more flawed than anyone, but it’s something that you, I think, and it’s pretty safe to say, I’m in the third act now you’re in act two, right? Good and tight, but I’m like, I’m in the third act, man. So you have to think about the other side. You have to think about what comes next. Is there a next? Yes, there is. I believe there is, and I think it depends on how you live now and the beauty of believing is that even for your transgressions, you can be forgiven and you can be redeemed, but it’s all up here,
Right? Is the true acceptance and understanding of what you’ve done
And
What you should do. Sure.
You have to look at yourself honestly. Yeah,
Absolutely. Honestly, you have to be able to accuse yourself and understand that there is, it’s a great deal of mercy involved in the fact that I believe that God sent his son down to tell us, okay, I’m going to ransom you people from your fallen nature and I’ll give you a roadmap on how to do it and people do it. There’s even people that do it that I’ve never even heard of it. Some guy in the jungle someplace, I’m sure, because the creator is above the law. It’s an interesting fact to note that the first canonized saint, do you know who it was? No. The first ever confirmed canonization as a saint was dismiss. You know who dismiss was? No. He was the thief on the cross next to Jesus and he says to him, you’re going to be okay. You this day you’ll be with me. I’m baptized, criminal, all that stuff. Wow. The lawmaker is above the law, so there’s a lot of mercy
Trent:
In watching their different styles. You can see that I can’t make a strict one-to-one comparison between Wesley Huff Andm, Mel Gibson. Huff is giving a more comprehensive apologetic defense with lots of answers and citations, which isn’t surprising because Huff does apologetics full time. However, Mel Gibson gave more gripping and engaging answers, which isn’t surprising because he tells gripping and engaging stories full time. These are just different approaches and we need both of them when it comes to sharing the gospel. This coheres with what St. Paul says about the body of Christ in one Corinthians 12, for just as the body is one and has many members and all the members of the body, though many are one body, so it is with Christ, God arranged the organs in the body, each one of them as he chose. If all were a single organ, where would the body be as it is, there are many parts, yet one body, the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you, nor again the head to the feet.
I have no need of you. On the contrary, the parts of the body, which seem to be weaker, are indispensable, and those parts of the body which we think less honorable, we invest with the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty. Some people need to hear someone like Wesley Huff give a rigorous historical argument for the resurrection, and other people just need to hear Mel Gibson say, Buddha didn’t do that, which would be a good contender for an acceptable rhetorical use of profanity that I mentioned in my previous episode on swearing. And someone like Mel Gibson might resonate more with a person who feels like a broken failed mess that God can’t love, which of course isn’t true, or they might think they’re the kind of person that’s too rough around the edges for God to love because Mel Gibson is kind of rough around the edges, but he’s a wonderful witness and testament to the love and mercy of God.
Also, in order to appreciate both of these approaches to sharing the faith, we need to distinguish between two concepts that often get conflated evangelism and apologetics. Evangelism is just sharing the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ. It involves telling people about how Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection have made it possible for them to be saved from their sins. Apologetics, however, is a subset of theology that provides a rational defense of the Christian faith. In many cases, these two things go hand in hand. You might tell someone the good news about Jesus Christ or evangelize him, but if that person thinks this good news is too good to be true, then you might consider it necessary to give good reasons for the person to think this good news is indeed true. But evangelism and apologetics don’t always go together. You might tell someone, Hey, your life is a mess, but no matter what you think about yourself, God loves you.
So go into that church and ask Jesus to change your heart in response to the person might say, you’re right, I will. That’s a case of evangelism and no apologetics were needed, but in other cases, a person who wants the gospel to be true might just have doubts and ask you to help their unbelief. So you might share apologetics with that person to clear away objections and errors that are keeping them from fully embracing the faith. We need both of these things, but I’ve noticed two errors that come up in this matter. More liberal Christians will say that we only need evangelism and the only defense we need to offer for the faith is our own holiness. If people saw how holy we were, then they would believe, and that might be true for some people, but if you only do good works like feed the poor and never tell them anything about Jesus Christ, then you aren’t doing evangelism.
Besides there are many non-Christian and even atheistic people who also do works of charity. So we need to share what makes our lives different beyond the good works that people see us do. And you might be at the soup kitchen telling a homeless person about Jesus and they might present an objection to you related to the problem of evil and say, how could there be a God when he lets such awful things happen? Or they might ask you about the story of Jesus and say they think the whole thing is made up. In those cases, you’ll need apologetics done correctly in order to help the person come to faith. On the other extreme though, more conservative Christians sometimes reduce evangelism and sharing the faith to just one apologetic debate after another. Now, I love doing apologetics and clearing away errors to help people see Christianity as true.
But sometimes amid debates, debunking videos and the cheering and jeering on each side of an issue, apologetics can turn into something that takes away from faith. It can become at best a distracting game or sport. And at worst, a sinful idol. People who fall victim to pride sometimes become addicted to being the best AP apologist who wins debates and owns people they relish making those who disagree with them feel dumb and small, and that hurts the overarching mission of sharing the gospel. CS Lewis summarized this danger in his famous apologist evening prayer. It goes like this from all my lame defeats and oh much more from all the victories that I seem to score from cleverness shot forth on thy behalf, at which while angels weep the audience laugh from all my proofs of thy divinity, thou who whats give no sign, deliver me. Thoughts are but coins let me not trust instead of the their thin worn image of thy head.
From all my thoughts, even from my thoughts of thee, oh thou fair silence fall and set me free Lord of the narrow gate and the needle’s eye take from me all my trumpery lest I die. You also get Christians who become so obsessed with apologetics that they think the faith is just something that has to be logically proved to every person, and that’s all evangelism is. The psychologist Abraham Maslow once said, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and if all you have are apologetic sound bites, then everything looks like a theological debate. And that might be true if people were all Vulcans who only analyze the logical element of an issue.
But human beings also relate to storytelling, aesthetics, and personal testimony. I remember one woman at an event, I’ll call her Barbara. She came up to me and said, I wish you could be in my pocket so I could always pull out when someone needed to be convinced of the faith. I told her, but what if those people don’t need Trent Horn? Maybe they don’t like Trent Horn. What if that person needs to hear Barbara’s story instead, I want to help people with this channel, and I’m grateful for the people who have been helped, but there is no single human person who is the best ambassador for Jesus Christ. Christ himself chose 12 disciples as well as St. Paul and others to share the gospel to the ends of the earth. I’m sure there were people who resonated more with St. Peter in the first century and some who resonated more with St. Paul or St. John, and it’s by God’s providence that each of these men evangelize the right people in the ancient world. So that from those few first followers, Christianity became the largest religion in the world. Today, I tell Barbara that maybe your friends won’t be helped if they hear me because they might find me annoying. Since they have a relationship with you, maybe they would benefit best from hearing your sincere testimony about Jesus Christ and what he’s done in your life. If you want to sprinkle a few arguments in that testimony that you’ve heard from this channel, that’s fine too. So when I hear people debate about who should go on Joe Rogan’s podcast to represent Catholicism or Christianity, I want those people to know that it is important to have a solid defense of the faith on such a large platform, but you and I don’t have control over that.
What we do have control over is going out in the one platform that God will judge us on our own lives and sharing the faith with people we actually know and we might use different arguments and different approaches, and that’s okay as long as those approaches are not scandalous or objectively bad or mistaken, since it’s never good to have a falsehood blow up in your face when you’re trying to talk to someone. In some cases, we should be open to different kinds of evidence. For example, Mel Gibson stressed the evidential value of the shroud of Turin for showing that Jesus rose from the dead, and that can be helpful for some people, but we need to be careful not to put all of our eggs in one basket or cloth. Since, as I noted in my previous episode and what Jesus looked like, there are issues people bring up with things like recent evidence that the shroud is 2000 years old.
There are assumptions that call that evidence into question. So we should be open to a wide variety of passable evidence and arguments, and we also shouldn’t place heavy burdens on people. This would be similar to what I mentioned before about the imprudence of dwelling on intra Catholic disputes and drama when trying to share the faith with non-Catholics. There’s a time and a place for that, but we should follow St. Paul’s milk before meat principle. He outlines in one Corinthians three, he writes, but I brethren could not address you as spiritual men, but as men of the flesh, as babes in Christ, I fed you with milk. Not solid food for you are not ready for it, and even yet, you are not ready. Finally, I’m really optimistic about Christians being able to share the gospel to a wider world. In the past 20 years, we’ve seen the rise and also the decline of so-called new atheism. Here’s a clip from inspiring philosophy showing what Joe Rogan said about Christianity just a few years ago, and notice the change in his attitude today.
CLIP:
Christianity at the end of the day with no proof, everything is mythology. If you have some proof that there was a God, that this God had one son and he made this son come down and get the feet out of him and nailed to a board so that we could all have no sin, can you show me some studies? Do you have a box of evidence that you could pull out and we can examine all the different pieces?
Trent:
Many secular people thought that rejecting religion would lead to a more rational world, but as the world becomes more irrational and perverted, some of these people are gravitating towards the ancient foundations and traditions of Christendom as a return to sanity. This cultural decline reminds me of the following quote from Frank. She’s book Theology and sanity written in 1947 that’s become quite prophetic. Whether this is grasped or not, a moral code must be founded on something. A society can accept a moral code without any conscious awareness of its foundation provided the code is of longstanding and not question. But in a generation like ours where everything is questioned, the foundation must be clearly seen and apart from God, the foundation cannot be clearly seen. The practical result for the average man of our generation is that when he is faced with what his grandparents would’ve called a temptation, he has nothing to judge it by.
His first reaction is, why shouldn’t I? This simple principle, I don’t see why I shouldn’t. Soane so reasonable begins by justifying divorce and birth control. It has already gone on to justify all sorts of abomination. It has not ended yet, yet in the absence of a moral law explicitly forbidding them. Why should the will fight against the things which promise pleasure? The few might be willing to impose a discipline upon their own desires, not in the interest of morality, but in the interests of spiritual fitness, of well tone, spiritual muscles, but not the mass of men for them, unless there is the clearest and most compelling reason against, there can be only the following of inclination, the avoidance of effort, flabbiness and muscularity of soul. The mission field is well populated and all of us need to go out beyond our comfort zone and be willing to have those awkward conversations that God could use to save someone’s soul.
Matthew 9 35 through 38 says this, when Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. And that’s a prayer I hope we can all say. If you’d like to learn more about how to avoid the dangers of apologetics, I recommend Mark Brum Lee’s book, the Seven Deadly Sins of Apologetics. Thank you all so much and I hope you have a very blessed a day.