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In this episode, Trent examines Protestant views of salvation and shows why they don’t make sense apart from one Catholic doctrine about sin.
Narrator:
Welcome to the Counsel of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Counsel of Trent podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers apologist and speaker Trent Horn. And today, I want to talk to you about one Catholic doctrine, or at least one Catholic understanding of sin, that I think every Protestant or almost every Protestant, if they’re going to be consistent, they should accept and understand this and shouldn’t have a problem with this Catholic understanding of sin.
So what is it I’m talking about? Well, I want to talk about mortal sin. So, as Catholics, we’re pretty familiar with two types of sins. There are venial sins that damage our relationship with God but don’t destroy charity in the soul. They don’t destroy our relationship with God. And then there are mortal sins. There are more serious sins that if we commit these sins, it destroys charity in the soul and it ruptures, it breaks our relationship with God.
Let me actually show you here from the Catechism so I can just spell it right out what the Catechism says. So if you go to paragraph 1854 and read on through that section, it talks about the gravity of sin, in particular mortal and venial sin. So this is in paragraph 1854. “Sins are rightly evaluated according to their gravity.” I’m sorry, I don’t have the whole thing in here because I have some videos I want to show you. So I’ve just got it set up it can only show part of the Catechism. But I’ll read it.
It says, “The distinction between mortal and venial sin is in Scripture, became part of the tradition of the Church, and it is corroborated by human experience.” And I think this is absolutely right that when I talk with Protestant friends, I feel like… Now, for some of them, they will agree with this distinction. There are Protestants who believe you can lose your salvation.
And so they believe there are two types of sins. There are sins that Christians commit and sins that Christians cannot commit. And if a Christian commits those sins and is unrepentant, they will lose their salvation.
So not every Protestant believes in eternal security. I remember I debated James White on eternal security about five years ago. And someone messaged me saying, “Thank you for defending the traditional Lutheran view on salvation.” Because I didn’t really quote the Catechism. I quoted Luther, not the Catechism, in that debate with James White.
So there are Protestants who will agree with me right off the bat and say, “Yeah, I agree with you. There are…” Now, they may disagree about how mortal sin, the fine elements of how it destroys our relationship with God, related to their view of justification, but they’ll agree with the big picture that there are big sins that can cause us to lose salvation and there are lesser sins that are a part of the Christian life that might damage our relationship with God, but they don’t make our life with God… Don’t make it incompatible to have life with God. They’re not going to cause us to lose our salvation. Big sins, little sins.
So there are Protestants who would agree with that. There are also Protestants who can be consistent and still believe there is only one kind of sin. So there are Protestants… Charles Stanley would be one example. “Once saved, always saved” people, who believe that once you’re saved, it does not matter what sin you commit. You could become an atheistic abortionist and die unrepentant, and you will still go to heaven. Now, they’ll say you could lose out on a lot of rewards, but they will say you could still go to heaven.
I’ve heard of this view, but I don’t meet very many people who hold to this view. I find most people who defend the view that you have assurance, you have eternal security, a person cannot lose the salvation, most of them would say that if you became an atheistic abortionist… That’s just my worst example I can think of right there. Apostacy, atheism, abortion. The big As, right? Adulterous. An adulterous atheistic abortionist. And you were unrepentant that all that would show is that you were never saved in the first place.
I hear that all the time, “Oh, well, it shows you were never saved in the first place, and that just means your salvation wasn’t genuine.” But I find that this explanation doesn’t make sense biblically. That’s what I showed in my debate with James White. But it also… I like what the Catechism says here, to go back to that. It’s really not corroborated by human experience. Like, if we commit a really grave sin, we’ve done something really bad, a mortal sin, or at least Protestants say a major sin, and we ask God for forgiveness, it really feels like deep down, we’ve been separated from God in some way.
The first thing you’d think of is not, “Oh, I wasn’t really saved 20 years ago when I gave my life to Christ.” I don’t really think people immediately doubt that moment. They just think, “I was saved. I was in a good relationship with God. And now I’ve done something to harm that relationship.” I really think deep down, we do understand this, and we have to use a lot of theological gerrymandering to try to overcome just what seems to be common sense in our relationship with God.
So let me read a little bit more about mortal and venial sin. And I’m going to show you a few videos from Protestants. And I’ll also talk about, before I do that as well, my major concerns with Protestants who would say, “You can’t lose your salvation. Once you’re saved, there’s no distinction between sins. There are no major and minor sins. You can’t lose your salvation.”
But they don’t really believe that, right? Because they believe you could commit minor sins and you’re still saved. But if you became an atheistic abortionist, if you were unrepentant of major sins, that would prove you were never saved in the first place. So there has to be a certain threshold from sins that… Not just the regular sins we commit.
James 3:2 says, “We all stumble in many small ways.” So there has to be a threshold that’s passed to show yes, you were never saved in the first place. Because what if you said, “Oh no, Father, I wasn’t as kind to my brother as I could…” It’s not Father. They’d say “pastor.” So, “Pastor so-and-so, I wasn’t as kind to my brother.” Or, “I didn’t give to the extra charity collection, and I feel like God wanted me to do that. Was I never saved in the first place?” No, they’re not going to say that.
But if somebody left the faith… Now, it’s interesting. It gets a little bit hard for Protestants. If someone left the faith and they’ve been an apostate for 10 years, you might say, “Yeah, they were never saved in the first place.” And then they come back to the faith, you would say, “Oh, well, they were saved.” Okay, did they have to do anything while they’ve been away for 10 years? Do they have to ask God for forgiveness?
Because this would be my question for Protestants who say, “You cannot lose your salvation. You can’t lose your salvation. If you did become an unrepentant grave sinner, that would prove you were never saved in the first place.” Well, let’s say you were an apostate for 10 years, and then you come back to the Church. Do you have to confess that? Do you have to ask God for forgiveness?
And they might say, “Well, you do ask God for forgiveness, but that’s not what brings you back. That just proves you were saved in the first place. You were willing to do that, but it doesn’t do anything.” To me, it seems like you’re still saying a person has to do something to maintain their salvation. You’re just redescribing it in an awkward way.
So these would be my two questions then to Protestants who say, “Yeah, you can’t lose your salvation,” who are the eternal security type people. Number one, after I’m saved, I can’t lose my salvation, but should I confess… Should I ask God for forgiveness of my sins? If I sin after being saved, should I ask God for forgiveness? Most will probably say, “Yeah, you should. You should still confess your sins and ask God for forgiveness.”
So I have two questions on that. One, which of my sins should I confess to God? Which ones should I confess? Do I have to confess to God individually every single sin I commit? That’s going to be a very long undertaking. And if I don’t do that, by the way, if I don’t do that, if I don’t confess every single sin to God, no matter how minor, does that mean I was never saved in the first place because I’m not demonstrating a fruit of the spirit I should have if I am saved?
So that would be, do I confess, and do I have to confess every single one individually, no matter how minor? Then they might say, “No, you don’t have to do that. You just confess your sins generally. You’d say, ‘Lord, forgive me for my sins.’ You say the Our Father, ‘Our Father, Who art in heaven, forgive us our trespasses.'” That’s my second then.
Okay, so then, if I don’t have to confess every individual one, on the other hand, do I have to confess any individual sin? So imagine that apostate comes back, being away from God for 10 years, has done terrible things. What does he need to say to God to ask for forgiveness? Can he just say the Our Father, “Forgive us our trespasses”? So if you have someone who commits minor sins, they say the Our Father each morning, that’s a proof of the spirit.
Is that the same as someone who commits adultery or robbery or something really bad, murder, and then just says the Our Father and just asks God for a general forgiveness of sins? They don’t have to specifically pick out and ask for forgiveness for the major ones? Because if you’re a Protestant who believes in eternal security, “You can’t lose your salvation, but if you do become unrepentant, that just proves you weren’t saved in the first place.”
If that is your view, then you reject the idea that there are major and minor sins, major ones that could cause you to lose your salvation. If you reject that, then you really have a dilemma here. When it comes to saying, “What sins should I ask God for forgiveness?” Either it has to be you confess every single one, which would be impractical and… What’s the word? Not ritualistic, but legalistic, maybe, is what Protestants would say.
Even Catholics don’t require that. We don’t require that. You just have to confess your mortal sins, the ones that destroy charity in the heart. I’ll read from the Catechism here in a second. That require a new initiative of mercy on God’s end to restore our relationship with Him. It’s either confess every single one, or you just have to confess generally, and you never have to confess individual sins that are of a grave nature because you don’t believe in mortal or venial sin.
So which ones do… What do I confess after salvation? Every individual or just general, or is there a difference between major and minor sins? And then why? Why am I asking God to forgive my sins when according to your theology, He’s already forgiven them?
It would be like if my father paid for all of my dinners at college. He bought me the greatest meal plan ever, paid for all my dinners. And every time I got a dinner, I asked my dad, “Dad, can you pay for this dinner? Dad, can you pay for this dinner? Dad, can you pay for this dinner? Can you please pay for this dinner?” And he’d say, “Son, I’ve already paid for all of them. You don’t have to keep asking. I’ve paid for all of them.”
So if Jesus has paid for all of our sins, why do we have to keep asking God for forgiveness? Because you could just say, as a Protestant who believes Jesus has paid for all of your sins, when you sin, “I have sinned. Lord, thank you for forgiving me of this sin.” Why wouldn’t you just say that instead of, “Lord, please forgive me of this sin”?
I feel like… Once again, corroborated by the Catechism here, corroborated by human experience, why should I doubt that when I ask God for forgiveness for committing a grave sin, why should I doubt the mediate perception I am being forgiven by God? I am asking and seeking that permission. Now, a Protestant who might watch this might say, “Well, you can’t have that. You didn’t go to confession.”
Well, the Church teaches that it’s possible to receive God’s forgiveness outside of the sacrament of confession. You can always ask God for forgiveness. And then, if you get hit by a bus on the way to confession, you’ve sought Him out. But God has given us ordinary means to receive forgiveness, and one of those means is confession. So I’m not going to get into a defense of the sacrament of confession in this episode. That’s not what this is about. I’m happy to talk about confession in another episode.
But my point is that even Protestants deep down know… Because I’ll play this here shortly, this video from American Gospel. I’ve talked about it before. But sometimes, I feel like that Protestants will say, “Catholics have this bad view of salvation,” when if you looked at appearances to a Protestant and a Catholic, like through a security camera, looked at how they behaved, it’d be almost identical. Come to faith in Christ, believe in Jesus, commit grave sin, ask God for forgiveness. Seems like they do the same thing, but whose explanation of why they do that makes more sense?
So what does it say here? “Mortal sin destroys charity in the heart of man by a grave violation of God’s law. It turns man away from God, who is His ultimate end and beatitude. Venial sin allows charity to subsist even though it offends it and wounds it. Mortal sin,” paragraph 1856, “by attacking the vital principle within us, that is, charity, necessitates a new initiative of God’s mercy and a conversion of heart which is normally accomplished…” Normally. Not always, but normally “accomplished within the setting of the sacrament of reconciliation.”
Finally, this is important as I’ll look at some of these videos to comment on. It says, “For a sin to be mortal, three conditions must be met.” So it’s grave matter, full knowledge, deliberate consent. This is important because you’ll listen to some Protestants talk about, “Well, what kind of sins are compatible with the Christian life, and what kind of sins show that you’re not really saved?” And they’ll hit some of these elements right but not get all of them.
So let’s go to American Gospel, this documentary. I rebutted this on the channel a while back, but I just want to play a short clip of it to show how they’ll try to make this distinction, and in doing so, they’ll get the Catholic view of salvation wrong. And the Protestant view is not as different, related to the things that they’re worried about. So let’s take a look.
Mike Gendron:
… of salvation. It is a salvation of works and sacraments.
Nate Pickowicz:
In the Roman Catholic plan of salvation, baptism cleanses an infant from original sin.
Mike Gendron:
And that is the sacrament of regeneration as well as justification.
Trent Horn:
I would also say, once again, this is not just the Catholic view. Lutherans, Anglicans, some Presbyterians also believe in baptism regeneration. This was a historic view of baptism. Believer’s baptism is a relative novelty in Church history. So just to call it the Catholic view to denigrate it… Just say it’s the non-reformed view, it’s the non-believer’s baptism view.
Nate Pickowicz:
That it starts them off on this plan, on this track. Along the way, however, they can commit these small sins, venial sins-
Trent Horn:
Oh no, the baby fell down and sinned. Oh, goodness.
Nate Pickowicz:
… which plunges them back down. And heaven forbid they commit a mortal sin which knocks them completely off the plan of salvation.
Mike Gendron:
And he must now receive sacraments. He must confess his sins to a priest.
Trent Horn:
Well, “receive sacraments.” So now, if you have destroyed charity in the heart, if you are now separated from God, you still have the indelible mark of baptism. But if you’ve committed a moral sin, you don’t receive sacraments. You go and seek reconciliation with God and His Church. You seek to be reconciled with God, and you go to confession or reconciliation.
Mike Gendron:
… which is the sacramental penance. And then, he must be rejustified by doing good works, by doing penance. And once he is rejustified-
Trent Horn:
No, that’s not true. So this diagram here is misleading. I don’t totally understand because it says “unrighteous” and “righteous,” and there’s this gap in between. When you’re baptized, you are righteous, you’re in God’s friendship, and venial sins can take you down to this gray area between? What is this area between “righteous” and “unrighteous?” You either are, or you aren’t. It’s like being pregnant or not pregnant. You either are in a state of friendship with God, or you’re not in a state of friendship.
So this gap here is very confusing. As well as this idea here that, “Well, now to get back up here to being righteous, to being in communion with God, you have to do all of these works, and it’s really difficult.” No, you go to confession. You have your sins absolved. Now, there still may be temporal punishments related to sin, but you are in a state of grace after you go to confession. There’s nothing to inhibit you from going to heaven after that point. You don’t have to go up this weird slippery slidey staircase. So they’re just getting that wrong.
Mike Gendron:
Then he must maintain his salvation through sacraments.
Nate Pickowicz:
And if-
Trent Horn:
Well, maintain it through obedience to God. John 3:36 says, “The wrath of God is on him who does not obey the Son.” “We all have to obey,” I tell Pastor Mike Gendron. You and I just disagree about what we have to obey and what that obedience shows, whether it is our free cooperation with God or it’s some sign we were saved, and we’re just kind of automatically doing it.
Nate Pickowicz:
If, in the end, if they have enough people praying for them and if they do enough time in purgatory, they might possibly get to heaven.
Trent Horn:
That is probably one of the most inaccurate parts of the documentary. I’m just amazed. And this guy, Nate Pickowicz, he’s a pastor. He wrote a book on why you should be Protestant. I’d love to have a debate with him or a dialogue with him. He wrote a whole book on why you should be Protestant, and he gets this fundamentally wrong, like, “Well, if enough people pray for you and you go to purgatory, maybe you’ll get to heaven.”
That’s not true at all. The Catechism is very clear that for those who die in God’s friendship but are imperfectly purified, they’ll be purified after death. You’re still assured, if you die in the state of friendship of God and you go to… Anyone who goes to purgatory will go to heaven automatically, no doubt about that. So they’re just wrong about that.
So they get the Catholic view of salvation incorrect to make it look like it’s all these ups and downs and you have to work your way back and, “Maybe after you commit a mortal sin. Maybe you’ll go to heaven after you do a bunch of stuff. Well, we don’t know.” And they try to make the Protestant view seem oh so much better and cleaner than that.
Mike Gendron:
How they get to heaven is based on what they do rather than what Christ has done.
Nate Pickowicz:
But the Bible-
Trent Horn:
So the idea here is they’re saying, “Catholics get to heaven. We have to do certain things.” And that’s right because we have to say yes to God’s offer of salvation. We can always say no to it in word or deed. We’re free. And honestly, what they’re presenting here is you also… They’re trying to say Catholics have to do things… Under our view, only person who does something is Christ. But watch how they describe their view.
Nate Pickowicz:
… teaches. “There is, therefore, now no condemnation for those who are in Christ.” That when you put your faith in Jesus Christ, the work has been done. He saves you totally, completely, perfectly. And even though yes, we sin and can repent, the sacrifice of Christ has paid for those sins.
Trent Horn:
So, we sin and repent. This is kind of weird to me. So you sin… Protestants admit that you’re saved in Christ, and you sin, you don’t have to go under the line. Now, I guess maybe they would say, “Well, nothing changes about you.” They don’t believe in infused justification. Okay. And he says, “And we can repent.” So I wonder here, I’d ask Nate Pickowicz, “Do you have to repent?” If you sin… He really quickly jumps over that. “Yeah, yeah, we sin and repent.” Let me play, and then I’ll…
Nate Pickowicz:
And so, there is assurance that He has saved you, He has plucked you out of the world-
Mike Gendron:
Christ has died-
Trent Horn:
All right, let’s go back.
Nate Pickowicz:
But the Bible-
Trent Horn:
Okay, I want to go back because he… Notice how their view literally hopping over the difficulty.
Nate Pickowicz:
“There is, therefore, now no condemnation for those who are in Christ that when you put your faith in Jesus Christ.” The work has been done.
Trent Horn:
Okay, so he quotes Romans 8:1, “There is now therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” So, there is no condemnation, so what he-
Nate Pickowicz:
He saves you totally, completely, perfectly.
Trent Horn:
So, there’s no condemnation. What happens when we sin? What’s going on here?
Nate Pickowicz:
And even though yes we sin and can repent, the sacrifice of Christ has paid for those sins. And so, there is assurance that He has saved-
Trent Horn:
They even put here “no condemnation.” Okay. “We sin and can repent.” Now, I don’t know if he means we’re able to and we have to, or we’re able to, and we don’t have to. That’s not clear. But it seems like if you commit a sin, a grave sin… I would ask him, “Do you have to repent?” If the answer is no, well, you’re going to get more laxity there for sure. And it doesn’t seem to correspond to what the Bible teaches about the need for repentance, including after we are saved.
1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, He is just and will forgive us.” Though the confession in that context is to other people, actually, if you read the passage. It never says, “Confess your sins to God.” The context is actually to other people. James 5:16 says “to confess your sins to one another.” The New Testament never says “to confess your sins to the risen Jesus,” for example. It never says to do that.
But if it says, “Well, you do need to repent, but there’s no condemnation. But you do need to repent because that’s a sign you were saved in the first place.” Well, then it’s basically… I would say you have to repent of your sins because you are in a state of mortal sin, and you need to repent and seek reconciliation with God in order to be restored to God. That just makes more sense of describing what the actual situation is and how we experience it.
This view’s saying, “You need to repent. And it seems like you’re being restored to God, but you’re not. It’s just a way to show you’ve already been saved.” That, once again, it’s like my example with asking dad to pay for my perpetually paid for meal plan. It doesn’t make sense.
So let’s go here. I’m going to go to three other videos to try to see the example, “Okay, well, why?” When I sin… So this is from The John Ankerberg Show, a Protestant. He’s interviewing another Protestant, Erwin Lutzer. He’s asking him, “All right, well, if I sin after being saved, what do I do? Do I ask for forgiveness? Why do I do that?” Here’s Lutzer’s answer.
Erwin Lutzer:
Because all of us sin. I mean, we sin, okay? In thought, in word, often in deed. The simple fact is you confess your sin. And that confession is needed to maintain fellowship. By the way, this-
Trent Horn:
And notice, whenever I hear these explanations, they’re always so brief. Well, wait, wait, wait, that’s important. What do you mean “fellowship”? With who? With other believers? I think he means fellowship with God, but only in a relational sense. I’ve heard Protestants say this, that, “We are justified positionally. We can never lose our salvation, but we can lose our relationship with God and not have as good a relationship.”
And yeah, I mean, we talk about that as Catholics. We have mortal and venial sin, so, you know, you have venial sin, and that wounds charity in the soul. It damages our relationship with God. But can something kill our relationship with God? And I don’t know if they’d be able to say that. So let’s continue.
Erwin Lutzer:
This is a good point to make, John. Luther was not saved in the monastery in Erfurt when he confessed his sins six hours at a time. There’s some people confessing their sins regularly in churches today who are not saved. You don’t get saved through the confession of your sins. You get saved by receiving Jesus Christ as your sin-bearer, the one whom you trust to reconcile you to God. That’s how you get saved.
But having been saved, we confess our sins. I confessed my sins this morning. So that’s a part of the Christian life. To confess means that we agree with God. We agree with God that we have sinned. We agree with Him that He has a right to take the sin out of our lives. And therefore, just like I have to confess to my parents as a child so that we can be reconciled, re-reconciled, in the very same way, Christians do that.
Trent Horn:
And this is what I hear, and we’ll see this analogy also. This is Dr. Stephen Wellum from Southern Seminary. I think Southern Evangelical Seminary, SES. The analogy is, “Well, if I sin against my parents, I ask them for forgiveness, but I’m always going to be their child. Nothing is ever going to change that. Likewise, if I sin against God, I ask for forgiveness, but I’m always going to be God’s child. Nothing is ever going to change that.”
Of course, that’s an assumption. Yes, you’ll always be… A child will always be the biological child of his or her parents, but they can be disinherited, they can be thrown out of the house. Look to the example of the prodigal son in Scripture. The father says to the prodigal son, “My son once was dead and is now alive.” That he had been restored. He was always the father’s son, but he had been separated from the father, from his love. He had basically been dead to him.
And that can be our relationship with God. That we stand to have a heavenly inheritance, but you can be disinherited. You can lose your inheritance if you forsake God, if you forsake the new covenant community that we’ve been brought into as adopted brothers and sisters in Christ. So I would say the analogy doesn’t work.
And this idea that, well… Because once again, “Well, we ask for forgiveness because we have been saved.” No, no, no. Why wouldn’t you just say, “When you sin…” Why bother confessing? Say, “Lord, thank you for forgiving me of these sins that I committed.” Because He’s already done it, right? Why do you have to ask? See, it doesn’t really work, does it? So I’ll play a little bit of… While I’m here.
Dr. Stephen Wellum:
Our asking for forgiveness is not a justification, but it’s the application of what Christ has done for us. We don’t just take a timeless declaration and eliminate it from our daily lives. As we do sin. We are in relationship to God. We must repent. He’s not a stone. When we sin, He is grieved. I mean, all of that’s taking place, and there is a breakage of the full communion that we have in the Spirit. So that that forgiveness of sin restores us to that relation. And we’re in the family. We’re not cast out of the covenant.
Trent Horn:
So I think it’s interesting here that Wellum’s answer in this video… Earlier, he says that, “God’s decree of our salvation is a timeless decree. All of our sins, past, present, and future are forgiven. God acts in this timeless way.” But then, he seems to double back on himself, “Well, God’s not a stone. Every time we sin, it grieves Him, and we have to seek forgiveness.”
Well, wait, which one is it? Is God timeless? And so He’s aware of past, present, and future, and so forgives all of our sins or is God temporal and passible, I would say, mutable, He can be grieved, like, “Oh no, why would you do this to me?” God already knows every sin I’m going to commit, and He’s forgiven all of them. So I feel like you’re trying to have your cake and eat it too here and to use the faulty analogy. Once again, it does not make sense.
Here’s the last one I’ll leave you with. This is an interview between Alisa Childers and Allen Parr talking about… They’re answering the question in this video, “Can you live in sin and still be saved?” You have someone who claims to be a Christian. And essentially, there are people who claim to be Christians who have very bad theology. What about Christians who are in homosexual relationships who believe homosexuality is not a sin?
I guess a Protestant might say, “Well, they’ve deceived themselves, and so, they’re not real Christians.” Okay. Then, where are you going to draw the line in your theology between real and not real, which are sins and which are not? That’s a whole other problem. But to say here, I think that Parr and Childers, as you’ll see, they start to grasp some of the nature of the difference between mortal and venial sin.
They’re trying to say, “Look…” Because here’s the question. If someone says, “All right, if I was a really grave habitual sinner… I believe in Jesus, but I’m a drunk. I am an adulterer. I’m doing all these grave things. Can I really be saved if I’m still living in sin?” And I think they would say, “Well, no.” If you’re continually living in that and you’re not repenting of it, they’d probably say, “No, you’re not saved.”
But then it’d be weird if you gave it up 10 years later, asked God for forgiveness. Were you saved again, or did it just show you really… See, it’s all confusing. It’s all very confusing when we root our salvation completely in one past moment instead of recognizing our salvation begins in a past moment but continues. So, in any case, let me just play it, and I’ll show you what I mean.
Allen Parr:
Can a Christian struggle with sin? Yes, I believe that we can because Paul said in Romans 7 that he struggled with sin personally, and Jesus talks about that as well. Now, the question is also, how do we know if we’re living in sin or not? And this is a deeper question. I think whenever we start to commit a sin-
Trent Horn:
So notice they’re saying, “Yeah, you struggle. We all struggle with sin.” And I agree with that. James 3:2, “We all stumble in many small ways.” But I think what Allen’s going to want to say is, “Christians struggle with sin, but they don’t live in sin. They struggle with sin, but they don’t live in sin.” So what is the difference? And I agree that you cannot be in a state of grace of God if you have committed mortal sin, and especially if you persist in mortal sin.
So they’re going to try to find the difference. So what’s the difference between struggling with sin and living with sin? And that would be like engaging in venial sin versus enduring in mortal sin. So they’re trying to find the difference here.
Allen Parr:
… without any sort of remorse or if we are making plans for sin… For instance, living together before marriage, purposely giving ourselves into a homosexual relationship. That is an example of somebody who is making plans to sin. We’re already saying in advance, “I’m going to stay in this situation, and, therefore, I don’t care what the Bible says.” That, to me, is a much more dangerous place for a professing Christian to be than just simply a Christian who’s struggling with sin.
Trent Horn:
So yeah, what makes it dangerous? Dangerous in the sense that it will reveal that they weren’t really saved in the first place. Now, Parr is close to understand that, well, what is one element that makes a sin… Like, the difference between mortal and venal sin. One element is full knowledge and also deliberate consent.
So if you’re not consenting, if you’re coerced by someone else, if it happens in the heat of the moment, you might do something, and you didn’t fully intend to do it, or maybe it’s a sin that you commit if you’re in a state of semi-consciousness, like right as you’re falling asleep, right as you’re waking up, whatever it may be, if you don’t deliberately consent, that’s one thing.
But Parr is saying, “If you’re planning to do it, that would be living in sin.” Okay, that’s a part of it, but it’s not the whole thing. So, mortal sin requires full knowledge and deliberate consent, but you have to have all three elements. Has to be grave matter. Because you could have full knowledge something is wrong. You could deliberately consent to the act, but you still have not committed a mortal sin because it’s just not grave matter.
For example, suppose you have a friend who constantly asks you an opinion about something, and you don’t want to hurt their feelings. And you don’t have a mental reservation for it, so you tell a white lie constantly to keep this friend happy. And you know it is a lie. You tell a white lie. But it doesn’t cause really anyone harm. You’re just sparing their feelings. That’s a sin. It’s a venial sin, but… If you are telling a legitimate lie, it’s sinful, but it’s not a mortal sin if it doesn’t cause harm to others.
I’m talking about just like a little thing where you’re fibbing about something to please somebody about how they did in something, whatever it may be. Even if you’re not happy with that example, you can think of a lot of other examples. Like, if you always plan when you go to the supermarket, when you shop for food, and you always take one little free… What do you call it? Dark chocolate covered almond out of the thing.
And you eat it, and you didn’t pay for it. And you always do that, and you plan to do that, and you say, “Ah, it’s stealing, but it’s my little treat. It’s not that big a deal.” That’s stealing. That is a sin. And you’re intentional there, but it’s not a mortal sin because it’s not grave matter. It’s not grave matter.
But there are sins that are grave matter based on the circumstance and the object of the act and other things like that. So here, what I would say for him that it can’t just be that, that you intended because… And also, there’s other sins where our intention window is very thin. Like, you blurt out something really hurtful to somebody. So, a lot of times, we have like a half second to retreat from that, and we choose to go ahead anyways.
So we’re still basically intending to do that. And we can still do something terrible. Even if we’re not planning it, we still do something really bad. And we knew it was wrong at the moment, but we went ahead anyways. Do you need to confess that? If so, why? I thought God already forgave all of our sins.
Allen Parr:
And then I’ll make this last point. Even though we may struggle with sin, and it’s possible for Christians to struggle with repetitive sin, we have to understand that there’s going to be major consequences for our sin. Even though we may be forgiven, we can’t escape the discipline of God and the consequences that may come along with our decision to stay in a particular sin.
Trent Horn:
Allen, we have a word for that. It’s called the temporal punishment related to sin. And if you believe temporal punishment for sin exists, you’ve suddenly opened the door to a lot of things you might not have been as comfortable with before.
Because think about this. You’re saying, “Okay, if we sin, we’re still saved, but God’s going to punish us for the sins that we’ve committed.” He just said that, people. That, “We are saved. If you live in sin in this way, it’ll catch up to us. There will be consequences. There’ll be judgment. God’s going to punish us. We won’t lose our salvation, but you will be punished.”
Okay, then my question to Allen is, let’s say we commit these sins, and then we die. Is God going to punish us? If we die, if He didn’t punish us in this life, is He going to punish us after death? Are we going to experience… If we die in a state of salvation, as Allen would call it, will we experience temporal punishment before we enter into heaven? If the answer is yes, that’s purgatory. Allen, that’s purgatory.
If you believe… Unless he says, “No, God will find a way to punish us in this life definitely. Nothing like that will happen after death.” How do you know that? How do you know? You’re really confident He’s going to punish us. Hebrews 12:10 talks about this, “For we have had earthly fathers who have disciplined us, would we not accept discipline from our heavenly Father?”
Finally, let me address a Bible verse that some Protestants will propose to say that shows there is no difference between mortal and venial sin. There are no major or minor sins. Every sin is equal in the eyes of God. And what they’ll often quote is James 2:10, where James says, “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.”
James is not saying here that all sins are equal. He’s not saying that whether you murder somebody or steal one dark chocolate-covered almond, it’s the same. You’re guilty of the entire law. So if you’re a saved Christian, then there is no difference between murdering someone and stealing one dark chocolate-covered almond or cashew. I don’t like almonds. I like dark chocolate-covered cashews. Now you know my temptation that I face every time at the store. There’s no difference there.
That’s not what James is saying. In the context, James is talking about partiality. So he’s saying here, “Look, don’t show partiality. Don’t treat a poor person in a crummy way, and you treat a rich person well. You don’t get to pick and choose who you love. Instead, you have to love everyone. And in doing so, you will fulfill the royal law of scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor. You will do well.’ If you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.”
The point is you don’t get to pick and choose, according to James. You don’t get to pick and choose what neighbor you love. You don’t get to pick and choose which laws you obey. So he says, “Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it. For he who said ‘Do not commit adultery’ said also, ‘Do not kill.’ If you do not commit adultery but do kill, you have become a transgressor of the law.”
So the example already really counts against the idea that James is saying, “There’s no difference between major and minor sins.” Because his comparison is between two major sins, adultery and murder. He’s saying, “You can’t get to pick and choose which commandments you get to follow. You don’t get to pick and choose.” That’s the point of what James is saying here. He is not saying, “If you commit adultery, you committed every other single sin.” He’s not saying that.
And the fact that there are differences in sins can be seen in our Lord. He talks about this in the Sermon on the Mount. Look in Matthew chapter five, where Jesus says in Matthew 5:19, “Whoever then relaxes…” Although in Greek, it’s breaks. [foreign language 00:37:44] Greek. It’s breaks, but… I’m going to say breaks. Relaxes is another way just to translate it.
But to get the point across, “Whoever then breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”
So he’s saying here that you can break a commandment, and you will still be the least in the kingdom of heaven. But then he goes on to say that there are certain sins, so there are some sins you commit, you will not be as rewarded in heaven. They’re minor sins.
But then he says that there are major sins. He talks about being angry with your brother. “If you say ‘You fool,’ you should be liable to the hell of fire.” In Matthew 5:22. So he’s talking to people, the same audience, that there are some sins that are not as serious that will result in lesser punishments and other serious sins that can result in the worst punishments for people.
So I hope that’s helpful for you all. A good book I would recommend is by Michael Barber. I talked about this, I think, briefly in my 50-book episode. And the book is Salvation: What Every Catholic Should Know. So if you want a good book to follow up on this, Michael Barber, I highly recommend.
But yeah, thank you, guys. I hope this is helpful. And also, you can check out my book, Case for Catholicism. I have a whole chapter on the issue of eternal security. But just to summarize, I think that Protestants who believe you cannot lose your salvation have a really difficult time explaining our common sense understanding that there are major sins incompatible with the Christian life and minor sins that are compatible with it and a hard time explaining what do we do when we commit these major sins.
That it seems to make sense to us. We asked for forgiveness, not because we have been forgiven but because we have done something to rupture that relationship with God, and now we must do something to restore it, or we will die apart from God for all eternity.
And I think that the Catholic view, or the more traditional view of salvation even other Protestants hold, just makes so much more sense of this. If you’re a Protestant who disagrees, that’s fine. Let me know. I’d love to find a Protestant YouTuber to sit down and chat about this particular element with. I’d be happy to do that. But thank you, guys, and I hope you have a very blessed day.
Narrator:
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