In this “open mailbag episode” Trent answers his patron’s questions about a wide variety of subjects from why the angels fell, what it means to be human, and where we get our souls.
Welcome to The Council of Trent Podcast, a production of Catholic answers.
Trent Horn:
Hey everyone. Welcome to The Council of Trent Podcast. I’m your host, Catholic answer’s, apologist and speaker Trent Horn. Last week, we did questions from our patrons or supporters at trenthornpodcast.com and I wasn’t able to get through all the ones that I selected that I thought were really interesting so I thought, why not dive into some more of those questions. Because I haven’t done an open mailbag episode, well I mean, I did one last week, but before that, it felt like several months had gone by before I had done and an open mail bag. And we’ve been covering a lot here at the podcast and I’m really grateful. I really want to give a shout out to our patrons at trenthornpodcast.com. We’re really growing here. We’re able to do more interviews, debates, and dialogues. I love doing four episodes a week, and I want to be able to keep it that way.
Trent Horn:
I’m kind of praying right now and if you could pray for me I would appreciate this. Just to find balance in a lot of things that I’m doing because I want to get back into writing. I’m finishing up a book right now and I want to really put out more books, including higher level content books on specific apologetic content. I think what I’m struggling with is you can’t do everything. So, something’s going to have to give. I don’t want it to have to be the podcast ever. At worst, I might dial back an episode each week, maybe only three episodes a week instead of four. But I like the routine that we have with four a week and as long as I’m producing good content that is edifying people, helping them to grow in their faith and also to help people better understand the Catholic faith and to answer objections to it.
Trent Horn:
I want to find that that sort of balance, I love writing. Debating is probably my number one favorite thing, writing is probably number two. That’s why I think the thing I’m probably going to be dialing back a little bit more is speaking. I love going out and speaking and meeting and seeing people, but it’s just hard. Travel and going places, it kind of throws a monkey wrench into the production schedule I have each week of doing four episodes. I want to do more rebuttal videos, more public dialogues and debates. All those things, they take a lot of time and travel, going to the airport. Time is just to very finite and precious thing that I have and the thing I really want to focus on are doing the podcasts and writing more books.
Trent Horn:
I’m really grateful to our supporters because you’re making all this possible to help The Council of Trent Podcast really grow. We’ve gotten a lot of reviews on iTunes, Google Play. Leave a review there if you have a chance, that’s always really helpful. And by word of mouth. People are hearing more about the podcast and I say, praise be to God. Especially if you can build up someone’s faith or introduce a non-Catholic to the Catholic faith. So thanks to our patrons at trenthornpodcast.com. If you want to support the podcast, get access to our Catechism video study series, New Testament video study series, and get to submit questions to episodes like these, then definitely check out trenthornpodcast.com.
Trent Horn:
All right, here are the questions I didn’t get to in the last open mail bag. Let’s have some fun with them here. By the way, philosophy jargon alert, but I’ll dial it down a little. Here’s the question. How do we distinguish a substance Sortal, S-O-R-T-A-L, from a phase Sortal, S-O-R-T-A-L.
Trent Horn:
For instance, if someone claims that being a sperm and/or egg is just a phase Sortal of the substance human being, how do we refute that claim and instead establish that a new substance comes into being at conception, keeping in mind that sperm and egg to are ordered to becoming adult human beings in a sense, right? So what’s going on here? The question is when we undergo change, we’ll leave the word Sortal out of this so it’s not as confusing. When we undergo change, there’s two different kinds of changes that we can undergo. We can undergo accidental change or substantial change, okay? So, if I cut off the top of my hair, I’m going to undergo an accidental change. I’m still Trent Horn. I still exist. If I cut off my curly locks, I will just be Trent Horn with a buzz cut. And I’m not sure that would work for me. So if I cut off the top of my hair, that would be an accidental change. Trent Horn still exists.
Trent Horn:
If I cut off my head, the top of my head, top of my body, my head right in my neck. Given the technology we currently possess, I would undergo a substantial change. Trent Horn, the person would no longer exist. Instead, what would happen is I would die. My soul would leave my body and instead of the person Trent Horn who is a compositive soul and body, you would have the body of Trent Horn and the soul of Trent Horn separated from one another. And so the human person, the human being who is a compositive soul and body would cease to exist if I cut my head off and then died. That would be a substantial change.
Trent Horn:
So the question is, how do we know sperm and egg undergo a substantial change at conception rather than an accidental change. And what I would say is, well look at the properties of the entities that are involved. What does it mean to be a sperm or an egg? What are the essential features of sperm and egg and what are the essential features of being a human being? And if you gain or lose essential features, IE things you have to have in order to exist, then that’s a substantial change or a substance Sortal, if you will.
Trent Horn:
So what does it mean to be a sperm or an egg? It means that you have approximately 23 chromosomes and that you exist as long as you are in a nutrient rich environment, but you are incapable of growth on your own. What does it mean to be a human being, to be a zygote, to be a blastocyst, an embryo, a fetus? Well, it means you have approximately 46 chromosomes. And then in my pro-life classes, I give this acronym, the NET test. What does it mean to be an organism rather than an organ? Why is a zygote, an organism, but a sperm and an egg, they’re not organisms.
Trent Horn:
An organism is an individual living thing and it is that if it passes the NET test. What that means is, if I give this living thing Nutrients, Environment, the right environment and Time, does it have the capacity to develop into a mature member of a species. Puppies, kittens, infants, embryos, bacterium, fungi. These things, if I give them nutrients, the correct environment. Plants got to grow in the ground, humans need air, a mixture of nitrogen and oxygen, or at least has to have oxygen. Well, 21% I think is ideal, but I think you can go as low as 16, maybe? I don’t know, that would be a question for a doctor or a chemist to answer.
Trent Horn:
Right Environment, Nutrients and Time. But sperm, egg, cancer cells, skin cells, you give them any nutrients, put them in any environment, give them any amount of time they will always be the same thing. They do not have the capacity. The only substantial change they undergo is when their cellular components break apart and they die. Their cell walls rupture, and they’re internal organelles, they’re the little parts within the organs themselves dissolve and resolve away.
Trent Horn:
So, I cover this a little bit more on my book, Persuasive Pro-Life, but I hope that’s helpful to see that the change that sperm and egg undergo, that sperm cannot become a human being. It does not develop into a mature human being because it’s not a human being. It needs the egg and vice versa. My skin cells cannot become a human being unless they undergo a substantial change by taking the DNA out of the skin cell and putting it into a human egg that has been denucleated or has had the genetic material taken out of it, okay? So either way you cannot get a human being with just nutrients, environment, time. You would need a substantial change to the thing’s identity.
Trent Horn:
All right, here’s the next one. Since you don’t have the ability to sin in heaven, how did the angels fall? Well, it’s commonly believed that the angels did not possess the beatific vision, did not possess the full and complete communion with God. This is something so that God would allow them to make a single choice at their creation, whether to serve him or to not serve him. Now angels, because they don’t have bodies, they’re not tempted to corporal sins like lust or something like that, but they would have intellectual sins, chief among them, the sin of pride. So this is what Aquinas says, “I answer that without doubt, the angel Lucifer,” the Devil, “Sinned by seeking to be as God.” But this can be understood in one of two ways. First by equality, secondly by likeness. “The Devil could not be as God in the first way. By natural knowledge, he knew that this was impossible,” and he goes on.
Trent Horn:
So the point is, how could you be as God? Well you could literally be God, except that even the Devil knows he’ll never be all knowing, he’ll never be all powerful. He’ll never have those infinite qualities, because he is a finite creature. But you could be as God in the likeness of God and that could act in ways similar to God and try to use SIRP, attributes that are only proper to him. So, the Devil tempted Adam and Eve saying, “Oh, eat the fruit. You’ll be like God, knowing good and evil.” They’re not the standard of good and evil, but they want to try to determine good and evil for themselves in the same way that God determines good and evil in virtue of his perfect nature.
Trent Horn:
Or, the Devil might want to be worshiped and be the source of adoration for people. So in that sense, he would be in the likeness of God, by illicitly, use SIRPing or unlawfully taking something that doesn’t belong to him, namely having complete devotion and obedience, adoration above all things. That belongs to God alone and the Devil might have wanted that. That’s why it’s interesting in Philippians 2:6-11 that great hymn that Paul shares it’s also called the Kenosis Hymn, the Outpouring Hymn.
Trent Horn:
It says that Jesus though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as a thing to be grasped. Jesus was in the form of God, but he wasn’t hanging onto it as if he didn’t rightfully own it because it was his. He set aside what was lawfully his to become like us to take the form of a slave, to rescue us from sin.
Trent Horn:
Let’s see here. Is it an intellectual cop out to say, God always existed and has no creator? Perhaps he is the creator of one universe, among many, all of which have their own gods. Perhaps his power seems unlimited relative to ours, but at his scale it is not? Well you’re right, there could be the case that our universe was the product of a finite, but extremely powerful creator. Problem is, this just kicks the can down the road. You are going to eventually when you ask what caused X, you only have really three options. Either there’s an infinite series of causes. There is a final cause or there is no cause whatsoever, okay? It’s kind of like our discussion on Agrippa’s Trilemma and epistemology in the dire debate debrief, if you think about it. Infinite, no explanation, AKA not… I mean you could add maybe circular, but really that ends up being no explanation at all. Or a final ultimate explanation.
Trent Horn:
So if the creator of the universe say, “Well, our universe is just a simulation and we are in a box in another universe in somebody’s lab, who made that lab, who made that universe. It’s another simulation.” Infinite simulations don’t explain anything any more than infinite links in a chain don’t why a chandelier is hanging above me if the links in the chain aren’t connected to anything. So it’s not a cop out to say, look, it can’t be infinite. Can’t be no explanation, has to be final and then we would try to discern the divine attributes of this final creator, final cause if you will.
Trent Horn:
Would the children of baptized parents be born without the stain of original sin? Why or why not? They would be born with the stain of original sin because even though their parents have been baptized and so their parents have received sanctifying grace to be restored in friendship with God that Adam and Eve lost, baptism does not undo the flaws in human nature. It does not undo the effects of original sin in human nature. And those effects are still passed on. The other problem is that, so those effects are still passed on in the body. And the other reason is that our souls don’t come from our parents, they come from God. There is a view in theology that’s popular among Protestant theologians called Traducianism, T-R-A-D-U-C-I-A-N-I-S-M, Traducianism.
Trent Horn:
It means branching. The idea is that your soul, parts of your soul come from your parents and people say that has to be that way because otherwise God gives you your soul and then how does your soul have original sin if the soul comes straight from God? Well, first your soul doesn’t come from your parents because souls don’t have parts. I can’t have half in immaterial soul from dad and half from mom because well, souls don’t have parts. That’s why souls don’t die. That’s why the soul is immortal. However, the soul is directly created by God, that’s what the catechism says, but the moment the soul is infused into the body however, it is stained if you will, or it’s infected by the absence of grace that is present in the human nature that is received, the human body that is received from one’s parents, because we still have the effects of original sin. Even though we are baptized, we’re going to die. That is an undone.
Trent Horn:
So, while the souls of your parents through baptism are United to God, they cannot pass. They do not have the ability to pass that on through physical generation, to their children. That’s why we baptize infants, that they’re given a soul from God, but because they have a body that has come through a process stained by human nature and sin. Original sin is present and baptism is necessary to remove it unless God undertakes some kind of miraculous intervention to prevent that from happening like we see with Christ’s conception in his womb, obviously, and the immaculate conception of Mary in the womb of her mother, Saint Anne, that Christ intervenes there to prevent what naturally would be the origination original sin by preemptively giving Grace’s mother at the moment that she was conceived.
Trent Horn:
Let’s see, if a married Catholic got a vasectomy in order to prevent having more children, what would need to happen if later he and his wife wanted to get back in line with church teaching? They would need to go to, well he, depending on who was involved in the decision, would need to go to the sacrament of reconciliation and seek reconciliation with God and go to confession basically. You would not be morally obligated though, to undergo a reversal vasectomy. You certainly could, that would be very praiseworthy. However, it’s not guaranteed that even a reversal of a vasectomy, there are risks that are involved in the procedure. It’s not a guarantee that it’ll be successful either. You’d have a similar analogy to a wife who got a tubal litigation, AKA having one’s fallopian tubes tied. So you wouldn’t be morally obligated to undergo a vasectomy reversal in order to be forgiven or anything like that.
Trent Horn:
It would be praiseworthy, but you wouldn’t be obligated to undergo some kind of an extraordinary procedure like that. But, it’s something to consider. That’s why it’s also something considered not to do these things in the first place to physically alter one’s body. I remember when my book Made This Way, my co-author Leila Miller, talked to an air conditioning repair man about having kids and she had I think like six or seven at the time, and he said, “Oh, I’m glad I got fixed.” And she asked him, “What were you broken?” And it kind of stuck with him. Yeah, maybe I shouldn’t have done that to me. I actually did break myself rather than… Fertility is the one thing in the modern world that we consider an illness that stands in need of treatment versus anything else.
Trent Horn:
Do you think dreams are inherently meaningful or just neurostatic? It could be both. Sleeps kind of a mystery. We don’t really understand why we sleep, why we need it, what it does. But I think dreams are just a way that sometimes the synapses in our brain need to fire to stay healthy and they don’t have to fire in any particular direction to keep them healthy.
Trent Horn:
Our brain can’t randomly fire while we’re awake because I’m waving our arms around. That would be weird if my brain did that, you know and so that would be bad. But maybe when I’m sleeping, my synapses just have to fire a bunch to stay healthy and that’s kind of why when you fall into a sleep state, your body undergoes a kind of paralysis. You switch over, I’m going to fail bio here. I think you switch over from the sympathetic nervous system to the parasympathetic nervous system, or maybe it’s vice versa, I can’t remember. But that’s why what’s scary is sometimes you can awake, you can become conscious, but still be on the other nervous system and that’s called sleep paralysis. You’re awake, but you can’t move and that’s scary.
Trent Horn:
So I think it makes sense, our body undergoes a natural paralysis, so the synapsis fire. So even if we would be jerking all around, we normally wouldn’t be. So, I think that dreams when we look in scripture, well one personal experience in scripture, I think sometimes, you eat McDonald’s too late at night like some people who shall remain nameless that host this podcast, and you get weird dreams after that. It’s like static, chemicals in your body working together.
Trent Horn:
Sometimes though scripture talks about… Paul says that he saw a vision of a man from Macedonia calling him to go to Macedonia. He called it a vision the night and that’d be a dream. Joseph had a dream. Both St. Joseph, most chased spouse of Mary and the patriarch Joseph. He didn’t have the dreams, the patriarch Joseph was the interpreter of Pharaoh’s dreams. So, I do believe that God can send us messages in dreams. Take it with a grain of salt though because it’s very easy to have McDonald’s dreams, not dreams about McDonald’s, maybe you do. But it’s always… Don’t go overboard. I think a lot of times it’s just your brain firing to get at the synapse is working right. Take it all with a grain of salt or just don’t take it at all. But sometimes God can use dreams to really inspire us. That’s where we have to have a deep prayer life to see if and discern if this is from God and it’s helping us go in the right direction.
Trent Horn:
Let’s see what else we have here. “Hello, Trent. I just recently bought David Boonin’s, A Defensive Abortion. I plan to read it after I finish the book. I’m currently on. Any suggestions how to analyze Boonin’s work from the other side of the issue?” David Boonin is one of the premier philosophers that is defended legal abortion. He has a newer book called Beyond Roe, hopefully I’ll review it for the podcast here soon. He and I debated several years ago at Stanford University. I would just say to engage Boonin’s… Defensive Abortion is old, it’s almost 20 years old. I can’t believe it’s almost 20 years old. It just feels like yesterday I bought the book and it just come out a few years ago. That was in 2003. But since then, there have been a lot of great rebuttals to Boonin in the work of Patrick Lee, Christopher Kaczor, K-A-C-Z-O-R, frank Beckwith. Their books have all engaged Boonin, his earlier work very, very well. I think my debate in my book, Persuasive Pro-Life also do that. Check those out. I’m not familiar with as newer critiques of his bodily rights argument in Beyond Roe. But if I find them, I’ll share them on the podcast or I might share my thoughts on that.
Trent Horn:
Let’s see, do we have any others? Take this, one last one. Hey Trent, I want to start studying philosophy. Are there any good books you recommend for beginners, particularly on logical fallacies? When it comes to logic, Peter Kreeft has a wonderful book called Socratic Logic. He also has, I think Socrates Meets the Philosopher, Introduction to Philosophy with Socrates. Kreeft does wonderful stuff on that. I will confess to you, I’m not really aware of just a really solid Catholic introduction to philosophy. There was a book by, I think it was Daniel Sullivan, it was written many, many decades ago. Catholic Introduction to Philosophy I think is what it was called. And it’s fine, it’s serviceable. It’s very hard to write a good introduction of philosophy for a layperson to understand. It’s either boring or technical or not health full or doesn’t go deep enough or goes too deep.
Trent Horn:
So I think Socratic Logic and the stuff by Kreeft is a great introduction. A lot of my philosophical work when reading, I took philosophy 101 in college and read more secular introductions to philosophy. I think if you look up the great courses or sorry, the Great Books program and read a lot of the books there, Plato, Socrates, Augustine, Cicero. You’re like, “Well, am I going to have to read the whole Summa Aquinas,” no.
Trent Horn:
I’ve always hoped and have thought about maybe writing an introduction to philosophy, but I have a unique way of doing it different from how the other people have done that. But otherwise, I know there was an Anthology of Catholic, Catholic Works of Philosophy. Pat Lee might have been one of the editors of that anthology. I’m going to have to go and check that out, but Kreeft’s Socratic Logic is good, at least for fallacies and basic thinking. And then for the other stuff, check regular primers, just regular anthologies of philosophy. It’s a good thing to get familiar with the basic terms and people then cross reference it with really solid Catholic philosophers. David Oderberg, Alex Pruss, Rob Koons, Ed Feser. Lots of great people out there for you to consider. Ed Feser has a wonderful blog actually, that I would highly recommend.
Trent Horn:
All right, well thank you guys. I hope that was all very helpful for you all. It was great to finish out the questions. So many questions I could not get to. Sorry if I didn’t get to your question, hopefully we’ll be able to maybe get to it in a future episode. But yeah, thank you guys so much. And I hope that you all have a very blessed of it.
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