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In this episode Trent rebuts arguments from Living Waters evangelist Ray Comfort in his recent video “This Will Make You Think Differently About Catholicism…”.
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’m going to be doing a rebuttal to Living Waters. They are a Protestant Evangelical organization. They’re headed up by Ray Comfort, who is a Protestant evangelist. He often works with Kirk Cameron, who you might remember was Mike Seaver on Growing Pains. He’s done a lot of other Christian films since then. But in this video, Ray Comfort talks about Catholicism and he essentially makes a few different arguments against the Catholic faith. And these are not new arguments. These are not the most intellectual objections to the Catholic faith, but they’re very popular. I think the video’s only been up for a week now and it’s gotten over a quarter of a million views. So I thought it was important to address it. And a lot of people actually asked me to address it.
Trent Horn:
So I’m going to do that. But before I do that, be sure to support us at trenthornpodcast.com. I’m really grateful for all of our supporters at trenthornpodcast.com. You help move us into the new office, which in our new studio, I’m hoping to upgrade soon and make it look all spiffy and nice. Right now, though, I’m doing the classic Catholic podcaster redecoration. I got my bookcase behind me. That’s the best I can do. I’m not great at this. I do apologetics, I do evangelism, I like free-for-all Fridays. I’m not an interior designer. I’m not a set designer. So hopefully, we’ll get it real spiffy here soon. Spiffy, there’s a word. All right, without further ado, let’s jump into Ray Comfort’s video and what he thinks will cause us to think differently about Catholicism.
Ray Comfort:
It’s been said that there are only two things in life that are sure, death and taxes, but that’s not true. The two things in life that are sure are death, and the fact that if I share the gospel with a Roman Catholic, there are going to be lots of comments in the comment section like this. You really hate Catholics, don’t you? The truth is I love Roman Catholics. And when I meet someone who says they’re not born again, that is according to the Bible, they’re unsaved.
Trent Horn:
Hmm. How does the Bible say we’re born again? Oh yeah. I remember. It says in John 3:5. “Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born of water and the spirit or baptism, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.”
Ray Comfort:
And if you watch our videos, you’ll know that I stay with the gospel. Very rarely do I bring up the fact that according to the New Testament, Mary had at least six other children, which means that she was no longer a Virgin. Is this not the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary and his brothers, James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? And his sisters, are they not all with us?
Trent Horn:
These children are not called sons or daughters of Mary. So they could be cousins or step siblings, or more appropriately called adoptive siblings. In fact, the only person ever called a son of Mary is Jesus in Mark 6:3. Now this phrase is odd and the Protestant scholar, Richard Bauckham, has noted that it makes sense if Joseph had children from a previous marriage. So the phrase “son of Mary” would indicate that Jesus was born to Joseph’s second wife rather than his first. And that’s just one possibility. The brethren, the Lord could also be Jesus’ cousins or other extended relatives.
Richard Bauckham:
Mary said, “My soul exalts the Lord. My spirit has rejoiced in God, my savior.” The reason she rejoices is because God has sent “My savior,” she says. She rejoiced in God, her savior. May come as a surprise to many people, but Mary knew she needed a savior because she was a sinner, and she knew it. And her joy comes because God has sent her savior, the save her from her sins.
Trent Horn:
See, where does Mary say she’s been saved from sin? In Luke 1:47-48, Mary says, “My spirit rejoices in God, my savior, for he has regarded the lowest state of his handmaiden.” Mary then describes how God saves people from threats in this life by “exalting the lowly or feeding the hungry”, in verse 52 and 53. So in that respect, Mary’s praise of God, it mirrors what Hannah says in the book of Samuel. She said, “My heart exalts in the Lord. My strength is exalted in the Lord. My mouth derides my enemies because I rejoice in your salvation” for Samuel 2:1.
Trent Horn:
In both prayers, the women praise God for casting down the proud and exalting the weak and the humble. Neither Hannah or Mary talks about salvation from sin. But even if Mary is talking about salvation from sin and not just dangers in this life, that doesn’t mean she’s saying she committed any sins. That she could be praising God for giving her grace that kept her from sinning, just as a man might say that a doctor saved him from a disease through a vaccine that prevented illness instead of a treatment that cured it.
Ray Comfort:
Neither do I bring up the fact that the disciples were married and that Peter had a wife that used to travel with him. This is the teaching of the new Testament. Now when Jesus had come into Peter’s house, he saw his wife’s mother lying sick with a fever.
Trent Horn:
First, what Comfort is doing here is called apophasis. It’s a rhetorical device where you get to bring up something while also denying you brought it up.
Ray Comfort:
And if you watch our videos, you’ll know that I stay with the gospel. Very rarely do I bring up the fact that according to the New Testament, Mary had at least six other children, neither do I bring up the fact that the disciples were married and that Peter had a wife that used to travel with him.
Trent Horn:
For example, if I said in a political debate, following, “I’m going to the issues and not bring up the fact that my opponent cheated on his wife, because we need to take the high road and focus on the issues that politicians deal with in office.” Well, what happened? I did bring up the cheating scandal. But I can also act like I took the high road because I said I didn’t bring it up, even though really did. This is a way to bring up an argument without having to follow through and defend the argument since you weren’t bringing it up anyways. And that’s what Comfort is doing here by noting these Catholic objections.
Trent Horn:
Second, what Comfort’s bringing up, it’s not that big of a deal. When it comes to Peter’s wife, that’s fine, because priests being unmarried is not a dogma God made a part of divine revelation. It’s a discipline that can change over time. In the Eastern church, there are married priests. Though, the preference for unmarried priests, that goes all the way back to the apostles. We can see this in St. Paul in 1st Corinthians 7, where he wished that all could celibate like he was.
Ray Comfort:
… Nor do I bring up that the scriptures say, “Call no man ‘father’.” Do not call anyone on earth your father, for one is your father, he who is in heaven.
Trent Horn:
If this command in Matthew 23:9 were taken literally, then Christians couldn’t even call their own biological father’s “father”. That’s why a lot of Protestants who cite this verse, they’ll say, “Well, Jesus is not saying every father. He’s just saying you can’t call someone a spiritual father, a spiritual leader father.” But that doesn’t work. In 1st Corinthians 4:15, Paul calls himself a spiritual father. 1st John 2:12-13, John says, “I am writing to you little children because your sins are forgiven for his sake. I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning.” In this passage, John is not addressing literal children and biological fathers. He’s talking to believers who differed in their levels of maturity and leadership, new Christians and spiritual fathers who led the community. Finally, the verse right before Matthew 23:9 says this, “You are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher and you are all brethren.”
Trent Horn:
The Hebrew word “rabbi” means my teacher or my master. It describes someone who had mastered the meaning of the Torah. Jesus says, “No one should be called rabbi.” Not because Christians have only one master, that gets addressed in verse 10, but because Christians have only one teacher or in Greek, [foreign language 00:08:58] a teacher, but the English word “doctor” comes from the Latin word [foreign language 00:09:05], which means “teach”. It’s just another word for teacher. And in the modern sense of the word, it refers to someone, a doctor of something refers to someone who mastered a certain discipline. That’s why they get a doctoral degree.
Trent Horn:
So that means if Matthew 23:9 says we can’t give someone the spiritual title of father, then Matthew 23:8 would mean we can’t give someone the spiritual title of teacher, including Protestant theologians who’ve earn doctoral degrees. So clearly what Jesus is saying here, he’s not prohibiting there being spiritual fathers or spiritual teachers. What he’s saying is, don’t inflate the pride of the Pharisees who love this particular title and Lord it over others. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be given to other people. As I said, St. Paul says, 1st Corinthians 4:15, he said, “I became a father to you.” Just because some people abuse a title doesn’t mean you can’t legitimately refer to someone as a spiritual father.
Interviewee:
I was raised in a Catholic church. As I became an adult, I didn’t feel fed. So I moved from Catholicism into Christianity and went to a Christian Church where I was fed.
Ray Comfort:
Did you read the Bible as a Catholic?
Interviewee:
Not really. I went to catechism and was trained by them and there really wasn’t the Bible.
Ray Comfort:
Do you remember the catechism, the 10 commandments?
Interviewee:
Yes.
Ray Comfort:
The Catholic catechism actually skips over the second commandment. They took it out and they divided the 10th. The second commandment, if you look at Exodus 20, 1st is is, “I am the Lord, your God, you should have no other gods before me.” The second is “You shall not make yourself a graven image of any likeness, anything on the earth, under the earth or in heaven or in the sea, you shall bow down to them.” That one’s disappeared from the Catholic catechism and they split the 10th, so there’s still 10 in there.
Trent Horn:
The Catholic church did not remove any of the 10 commandments. They’re all in scripture in every Catholic Bible. But Christians throughout history have adopted different ways to enumerate the commands that God gave Moses on Mount Sinai. The Bible does say there are 10 commandments, but it doesn’t tell us what falls under each commandment. That means you can arrive at 10 commandments in different ways, depending on how you group the approximately 14 “thou shalls” and “thou shall nots” that are in Exodus 20. So that means that some Christians will list the commandments differently. And there’s nothing wrong with how Catholics list the 10 commandments.
Trent Horn:
Here’s how the catechism of the Catholic church puts it. It says, “The division and numbering of the commandments have varied in the course of history. The present catechism follows the division of the commandments established by Saint Augustine, which has become traditional in the Catholic church. It is also that of the Lutheran confessions. The Greek fathers worked out a slightly different division, which is found in the Orthodox churches and reformed communities.” So notice that this isn’t a strict Catholic Protestant issue. Martin Luther’s small catechism lists the second commandment as “Thou shall not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” And it doesn’t say anything about grave and images. And Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic writers list the commandments in the same way that reformed Protestants do. But they obviously see nothing wrong with images since they venerate icons, as long as you don’t treat those images like idles.
Ray Comfort:
So when I ask a Catholic, “What’s the second commandment?” They say, “Oh, we should not take God’s name in vain,” which is the third, because they don’t know the second is missing. Here is comedian George Carlin saying that he was raised in Irish Catholic.
Trent Horn:
Ray, seriously? You’re going to use George Carlin as your example for being Catholic. The guy who starred in Dogma, one of the most blasphemous movies of all time. I can’t even, but go on.
George Carlin:
I used to be Irish Catholic, now I’m an American. You know, you grow.
Ray Comfort:
Listen closely as he mentions the sixth commandment, “Thou shall not kill”, believing erroneously that it’s the fifth commandment, clearly taking that belief from the Roman Catholic catechism.
George Carlin:
And the one we haven’t talked about yet, “Thou shall not kill.” Murder, the fifth commandment.
Ray Comfort:
When this woman said that she was a Roman Catholic and that she was into the ark hold, someone left this comment, “That one lady who was a Wiccan is not a Roman Catholic at all. And these should be the actual 10 commandments.” And then she quoted them, clearly taken directly from the Roman Catholic catechism. “I am the Lord, your God, you shall have no strange gods before me.” That’s the first of the 10 commandments. But then she misses out the second commandment, the one that forbids the baring down to images and goes straight to the third commandment about taking God’s name in vain. That’s because the second commandment has been removed and the 10th split in two, so that no one would notice it had been removed.
Trent Horn:
Okay, let’s break all this down. Here is the beginning of the 10 commandments in Exodus chapter 20. It says, “I am the Lord, your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a graven image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them for I the Lord, your God am a jealous God, visiting the in inequity of the fathers, upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.” The whole point of this commandment is to just not worship other gods. Believers are to only worship the God who brought Israel out of slavery in Egypt.
Trent Horn:
So the prohibition on idolatry is already covered in the Augustinian rendering of the first commandment, because it says, “Have no other gods before me,” which would mean, don’t bow down and worship before idols. If you only made Exodus chapter 20, verse four the second commandment, it would be inaccurate, because it would make it seem like God does not allow us to make “A graven image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”
Trent Horn:
But that can’t be right because God himself, in scripture, commanded that graven images be made. So they can’t be intrinsically evil like adultery. This includes angels on the Ark of the Covenant commanding that a bronze serpent be made so that people could look at it to be healed in Numbers, chapter 21, as well as the angels and other earthly objects that are carved into the walls of Solomon’s temple, as described in 1st Kings chapter six. Living waters even releases a children’s set of the 10 commandments and it summarizes the second commandment as “Thou shall not make any idols, not just any graven images.” In fact, here’s Ray Comfort’s longtime partner Kirk Cameron, talking about how great nativity scenes are, which are religious graven images that some Protestants bow and kneel before when they’re praying during Christmas.
Kirk Cameron:
If you had to pick one valuable thing in all of the decorations around your house at Christmas time, it would probably be your nativity set.
Trent Horn:
So it makes sense to group the commandment against worshiping idols as being part of the general command to not worship other gods, but what about the 10th commandment? The Augustinian rendering of the 10 commandments doesn’t split this commandment simply to make 10 items. It makes a distinction between coveting your neighbor’s goods and coveting your neighbor’s wife or spouse. Because your neighbor’s spouse isn’t just some possession your neighbor owns. The ninth commandment refers to coveting persons, like your neighbor’s spouse, and identifies this coveting as the root of lust and adultery. The 10th commandment refers to coveting things your neighbor has, like their cattle, or today, their car, their home. It identifies this kind of coveting as the root of greed and theft. So there’s nothing wrong with making religious images. It’s just wrong to treat those images like idols and worship them as if they were miniature gods that rival the true God.
Reporter:
Whenever he is before an image of the Virgin, he always devotes affectionate glances. And before the image of Fatima, he asked for the care of the poor and those excluded in the beginning of his pontificate.
Trent Horn:
Okay, so Comfort is saying, “Look, the Bible says not to make images. And see, Catholics have images and they venerate Mary,” but I’ve already shown that the Bible allows for the creation of religious images. I mean, if you took Exodus 20:4 literally, you couldn’t make an image of any animal or person ever. But clearly, it doesn’t mean that. It means don’t serve these images as if they were gods. What about bowing or kneeling? Once again, the Bible doesn’t say that you can only bow or kneel before God. In the Old Testament, Bathsheba bowed before King David. And in Revelation 3:9, Jesus says that he will make the enemies of the church “come and bow down before your feet and learn that I have loved you.”
Trent Horn:
So, it’s not just any bowing or kneeling. It’s worshiping with the intent of treating something as an idol, as if it were a deity itself in opposition to God. In fact, the same scare tactics that Comfort uses in this clip could also be used against Protestants who bow before or pray while kneeling in front of a wooden cross. Some Protestants even talk about how the cross of Christ saved them, which, if interpreted uncharitably, could mean that they’ve turned the cross into an idol. But a charitable interpretation is not that Protestants worship the cross as if it were a God or an idol, but that they venerate the cross. It reminds them of what Jesus has done. And the cross itself is worthy of veneration because of the role it played in our salvation as being the means through which Christ died for us.
Trent Horn:
And the same argument applied to Mary when we venerate her, because of her unique role in salvation history as being the person who brought our savior into the world and helped prepare a body for him as Hebrews 10:5 says. And because Mary is a person and not an object, like the cross, it’s appropriate to ask her to pray for us, because we believe that those who have left this world in faith are alive in Christ and they want to lead us to Christ through their prayers.
Carlos:
Yes, I’m a Roman Catholic. I’ve always been a Christian. I’m not what you call a born again Christian. No, I’ve always had Christian values.
Ray Comfort:
When something superfluous, do you know what that means?
Carlos:
Superfluous? Superfluous means something extra.
Ray Comfort:
If someone’s born again, they’re a Christian. If they’re a Christian, they’ve been born again. So to say “born again Christian”, is like saying “I’m a doctor, medical physician.” It’s not needed from a doctor, “I’m a medical physician.” So Carlos, you need to be born again to be saved, Jesus said that in John chapter three.
Carlos:
I don’t believe in the philosophy that if you’re not born again, you’re not going to a heaven to a better place. I do not believe that.
Ray Comfort:
So Jesus was lying?
Carlos:
And I believe in Jesus, but I don’t necessarily believe that statement.
Trent Horn:
First, this guy just might be biblically illiterate, and he doesn’t know that you need to be born again. And that being born again, refers to baptism. But there’s also a deeper problem and miscommunication that can occur in dialogues like these. The problem with this whole encounter is that in present day America, the phrase “born again”, can refer to a type of Christian denomination rather than just being spiritually regenerated. It’s like saying “evangelical Christian is redundant.” I mean, aren’t all Christians supposed to evangelize? But of course they are, but there is a denomination that calls itself “evangelical” or “born again” that has unique theology other Christians don’t share.
Trent Horn:
And so in that sense, you don’t have to belong to that born again denomination to be saved. And obviously that’s true because God’s plan for salvation is that we be born again through baptism. And while Comfort’s video shows John 3:3 saying we need to be “born again”, it doesn’t show John 3:5, where it says we “must be born of water and spirit.” Or as I said earlier, “be baptized”. And after being baptized, we need to be “in full communion with the one universal church that Jesus established to give us our salvation”. Next, Comfort does something he often does where he uses the 10 commandments as a way to convict people of sin and then to evangelize them. So I’m going to skip to the interesting part and offer my thoughts.
Ray Comfort:
How many lies have you told in your life?
Isabella:
Oh, I couldn’t tell you that.
Ray Comfort:
So quite a few?
Isabella:
Quite a few.
Ray Comfort:
So what do you call someone who tells lies?
Isabella:
A liar.
Ray Comfort:
So, have you ever stolen something in your whole life, even it’s small?
Isabella:
I have.
Ray Comfort:
What do you call someone who steals?
Isabella:
A thief.
Ray Comfort:
So what are you?
Isabella:
A thief.
Ray Comfort:
No, you’re not. You’re a lying thief.
Isabella:
Yes.
Ray Comfort:
Going to go a little personal here. I hope you can handle it. Jesus said, “If you look with lust, you commit adultery in the heart.” Have you ever looked with lust?
Isabella:
I have, yeah.
Ray Comfort:
Have you had sex before marriage?
Isabella:
I have.
Ray Comfort:
So Isabella, here’s a summation. This is for you, it’s not for me. I wouldn’t judge you. I don’t have that right. But you have told me you’re a lying, thieving, blasphemous, fornicating adulterer at heart. So if you face God on judgment day and he judges you by those commandments, which the Bible says he will, will you be innocent or guilty?
Isabella:
I would be guilty.
Ray Comfort:
Heaven or hell?
Isabella:
It would be hell.
Ray Comfort:
Now, does that concern you?
Isabella:
It does. Yes.
Ray Comfort:
It concerns me. It breaks my heart. The thought of you ending up in hell. Do you know what the Bible says death actually is?
Isabella:
What is it?
Ray Comfort:
Wages.
Isabella:
Wages. Hmm.
Ray Comfort:
You ever heard of the Bible verse, “The wages of sin is death.”
Isabella:
I have.
Ray Comfort:
Death is wages. It’s like a judge in a court of law, looks at a heinous criminal that’s raped three girls and murder them. And he says, “You have earned the death sentence. This is your wages. This is what is due to you. This is what we’re paying you.” And sin is so serious in the eyes of a holy God, he’s given us the death sentence.
Trent Horn:
I’ll reluctantly give Comfort a little bit of credit here. People can’t appreciate the good news of the gospel until they appreciate the bad news of sin. If we don’t preach judgment and the possibility of dying apart from God in hell, then Christianity becomes just another self-help program. “Hey, be Christian, because you can be the best version of yourself.” No, they call it “salvation” for a reason. But where Ray Comfort goes wrong, is that he gets people scared. They start thinking, “Oh no, I’m a liar. I’m a thief. What do I do?” And then they’re in this kind of panic state and then Comfort rushes in with an incomplete solution. “Just have faith. Jesus Christ died for you on the cross. And that’s it.” That’s a part of it, but it’s not the whole thing. And it’s not what the Bible teaches when it comes to salvation.
Trent Horn:
The Bible teaches that to be saved, we have to do four things. Repent, believe, receive and remain. We have to repent of our sins, believe in the gospel, receive the holy spirit in baptism and remain in Christ by obeying his commands. That’s it. John 3:36 puts it well. “He who believes in the son has eternal life. He who does not obey the son shall not see life, but the wrath of God rests upon on him.” And it doesn’t have to always be in the order, repent, believe, receive, remain. You can receive Christ in baptism as an infant. And then when you reach the age of reason, repent, believe and remain in Christ through obedience to him. So, Comfort is right, that “we must repent”. We must, as we say, in our baptismal promises, reject Satan and all his empty promises. We have to turn away from a life that sees nothing wrong with sin and flee from sin.
Trent Horn:
We then need to believe in the gospel and that Christ is able to save us. But then Ray Comfort cuts it short. He neglects the sacraments God gave us so that we’re spiritually strengthened to not lie, to not steal, to not lust after others. Jesus made this part of salvation clear when he says, “Unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you,” or receive Eucharist. And, “If a man does not abide or remain in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers, and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned,” John 15:6.
Ray Comfort:
“The soul that sins shall die.” He’s given us capital punishment. So we think lightly of sin. A little blasphemy, we can’t help it. Taking God’s name in vain, a few lies here and there, stealing. The second part of that verse is, “But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord.” What did God do for guilty sinners so we wouldn’t have to go to hell? Do you know?
Isabella:
I don’t.
Ray Comfort:
God did something wonderful, but you don’t really understand it. You don’t know what it is?
Isabella:
He sacrifices… You’re talking about God, right?
Ray Comfort:
Yes.
Isabella:
He sacrificed his son.
Ray Comfort:
Do you understand the legal implications of that?
Isabella:
Yeah.
Ray Comfort:
Tell me, what are they?
Isabella:
He loves us for that.
Ray Comfort:
Yeah, but there’s a reason that happened.
Isabella:
To have life on earth.
Ray Comfort:
Well, let me put it this way and get your thoughts. The 10 commandments, that’s what we’ve looked at, it’s called the moral law. You and I broke the law. Jesus paid the fine.
Isabella:
He paid the fine.
Ray Comfort:
That’s what happened on the cross. That’s why he said, “It is finished.”
Trent Horn:
We need to make some distinctions here. First, we are judged for breaking the moral law, but more so the judgment is that we were conceived in a state of original sin. Because of Adam and Eve’s sin, they lost the preternatural gifts that God gave them. As a result, they couldn’t pass those to their children or any of their descendants. So today, we lack the grace that is necessary to have friendship with God for eternity. We’ve been conceived in a state of spiritual death and we need the grace of God to be brought to not just spiritual life, but to life as adopted sons and daughters of God.
Trent Horn:
This is important because even after we’re baptized, we still break the commandments, tell white lies, for example. Sometimes we break the commandments in a serious way. So we’re still liars and thieves as Ray Comfort would say, even after getting saved. And if liars and thieves can’t enter the kingdom of God, then we’re in big trouble. So what do we do? Well, we can’t just get a free pass because we’re born again, and that our sins don’t matter.
Trent Horn:
There was a heresy that arose during the Protestant reformation called antinomianism, which said Christians aren’t even obligated to obey the 10 commandments. Breaking the moral law might cause God to pity us, but God will never judge us or take away our salvation because salvation can’t be lost. But it’s not true that Christians can commit any sins after being saved and they’ll automatically go to heaven. And it also doesn’t make sense to say that Christians who do end up breaking the commandments in serious way, and don’t repent, are really saved in the first place. This would make it impossible to know if you ever were really saved because your salvation in the present would depend on whether you commit grave, unrepented sin in the future that you can’t know in the present.
Trent Horn:
Instead, we need some other way to understand our really relationship to God. For example, I’d ask Ray Comfort, how many lies, even white lies, has he told since being saved? I’m sure he’d say he has no idea, but that wouldn’t keep him from going to heaven. And then I’d ask him, “Well, Ray, how many people have you murdered since getting saved?” If you had murdered so many people, you couldn’t keep track since getting saved, would you still go to heaven? And if the answer is no, then this shows that some of our sins are lesser, they’re venial sins that for saved people, they damage our relationship with God, but don’t take away our salvation. Other sins are greater, they’re mortal sins. They’re grave violations of the 10 commandments that destroy our relationship with God that require the sacrament of penance to restore that relationship with him and his church.
Trent Horn:
So it doesn’t make sense to say that it’s just damnation for those who have not accepted Christ as their personal Lord and savior, and salvation for everyone who did get saved, because then you get all these problems from a biblical and even a logical perspective. Finally, in one sense, Jesus did a tone for our salvation on the cross, but that doesn’t mean every aspect of our salvation was completed on the cross, and there’s nothing else involving us.
Trent Horn:
Hebrews 10:26-27 says, “For if we sin deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful prospect of judgment and a fury of fire, which will consume the adversaries.” This means that Christ atoned or paid for our sins. And even after we are saved, though, we can reject that payment through disobedience to Christ. We can make it so that his sacrifice for us no longer applies to our souls. And if we do that, then we have to approach God through the sacrament he gave us, of penance, to have forgiveness. So why Jesus said in John 20:23 to the apostles, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
Ray Comfort:
Isabel, if you’re in court and someone pays your fine, like your speeding fines, the judge can legally let you go. He can say, “There are serious fines, but you’re out of here because someone paid them.” And God can legally let us live, can take the death sentence off us because Jesus paid the fine in his life’s blood. And then he rose from the dead and defeated death, and all you have to do to find everlasting life, turn from sin, perpetually. Don’t play the hypocrite and say, “I’m a Christian,” but you lie, steal, fornicate in blasphemy. That’s just deceiving yourself, you’ve got to be genuine. And then trust in Jesus, like you’d the parachute.
Trent Horn:
In one sense, we can talk about Jesus paying a price for our sins. In the Bible, sin is often compared to debt. And when we sin, we owe a debt to God as a result, a debt we cannot pay. That’s why Jesus told the parable in Matthew 18 about the unforgiving servant, whose debts are forgiven by the king, but then the servant refuses to forgive a much smaller debt another servant owes him, which causes the debt to be unforgiven. So what this means is that God forgives us for our sins, our debts, our trespasses, but if we continue to go on gravely sinning, God can revoke that forgiveness. He can pay our debts, but then choose to have them unpaid and be our responsibility until we come back to him in sorrow and repentance for the sins that we’ve committed.
Trent Horn:
So this means Jesus’ death pays for the debts incurred through all of our sins. And it does this by being a sacrifice of love that is better or has more goodness that outweighs all of humanity’s sins put together. Now this doesn’t mean everyone is going to heaven, since, as we saw in the letter to the Hebrews, our very actions can cause us to choose to never have Christ’s sacrifice apply to our debt before God. We can choose, or we can choose to reject this sacrifice even after we’ve been saved.
Trent Horn:
This kind of language is better than the one of fines and laws because Comfort is making it sound like there is this law that goes even above God that he has to obey, otherwise, we can’t be forgiven. He’s following a legal principle. God is now legally allowed to forgive us. But there is no law above God. God’s omnipotent. He can forgive our sins in any way he chooses, including just through a divine decree. Instead, we are forgiven because Jesus became a sacrifice of love for our sake. He became the new Passover lamb, who allows us to have spiritual life because of his sacrifice.
Trent Horn:
Now let me focus on what Ray Comfort does get right. Let’s go back to the four steps of salvation. Step one, repent. He’s got that right. And notice Comfort says to this woman, “You have to live a certain way after repenting. You must have true repentance.” Well, what happens if you plan to live that way, but you fall back into your old sinful habits? I doubt Comfort would say you lost your salvation. Though, he’d probably say, “You still have to ask God for forgiveness,” which doesn’t make sense if you can’t lose your salvation. I mean, I don’t have to keep asking for money from someone who has already agreed to pay for everything I need, to borrow Ray Comfort’s analogy. And step two is right. Trust in Jesus or have faith in God through Christ for salvation. But then Comfort starts to deviate from the biblical plan of salvation when he offers a highly abbreviated version of it.
Ray Comfort:
Do you know what the fear of God is?
Isabella:
What is it?
Ray Comfort:
Well, the Bible’s says, “Jesus was heard by God in that he feared.” The Bible says, “The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. Through the fear of the Lord, men depart from sin.” And what I’ve tried to do, and I’ll qualify this, is put the fear of God on you. If you’re going to jump out of a plane and you’re going to jump without a parachute because you thought you’d be all right, I’d hang you out the plane for two minutes by your ankle so you come back in and say, “This is scary. I got to put on a parachute.” Fear is your friend if that happens, it’s not your enemy. And the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.
Ray Comfort:
And I trust today, that you’ll see the fear of God that which I’ve tried to put in you, as your friend, not your enemy, because it’s going to drive you to the cross where you say, “God, I’ve been lying and blaspheming and fornicating and doing things I know are wrong. Please forgive me. And today, I put my trust in Jesus once and for all to have my sins forgiven.” And the minute you do that, you’ve got a promise from the God who cannot lie. He’ll grant you everlasting life instantly as a free gift. You don’t have to earn it, you don’t deserve, it comes because he’s good, not because we are good. That’s called Amazing Grace. God’s unmarried favor towards us, because he loves us. He’s the love of our soul.
Trent Horn:
So Ray Comfort gets “repent” and “believe” right in the stages of salvation. What he misses is “receive” and “remain”. The Bible is crystal clear, “We must be baptized.” And then we must obey Christ in order to remain in friendship with God. This means not doing bad things, like adultery or murder, and doing the good things Jesus commanded us to do. Honor our parents, keep the Sabbath day holy, receive Christ in the Eucharist. Now the catechism agrees with Comfort that there is nothing we can do to merit our initial salvation in baptism. We just accept it. In this case, we are agreeing to be baptized for ourselves or for our children. And this is especially true for little babies. They can’t do anything for themselves. So they’re definitely saved by grace alone and not by any work.
Trent Horn:
But salvation doesn’t stop there. Paul says, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” And Jesus says, “He who endures to the end, shall be saved.” But Comfort boils all of this down to a single moment of saying the sinner’s prayer to guarantee salvation, which is ironic because the sinner’s prayer is not in the Bible. The Protestant apologist Matt Slick, for example, says, “There is not a single verse or passage in scripture, whether in a narrative account or in prescriptive or descriptive text, regarding the use of a sinner’s prayer in evangelism. Not one.” Now some people say that because we did nothing to receive the gift of salvation, we can’t do anything to lose it. “It’s a free gift,” as Comfort says. And it’s eternal life, so obviously we can’t lose it. But this doesn’t mean we have eternal life in heaven right now in a way that we can’t possibly reject.
Trent Horn:
I mean, you’ve probably gotten a present like a Christmas or birthday present that you lost or gave away. You can give away a gift or lose it. Adam and Eve did nothing to receive the gift of God’s grace and friendship in the Garden of Eden, but they certainly did something to lose it, and so could we. And when it comes to the gift of eternal life, the late Baptist scholar, Dale Moody says people like Ray Comfort, “Work with the false assumption that the adjective ‘eternal’ is an adverb, as if it says the brother eternally has life. It is the life that is eternal. Not one’s possession of it. Eternal life is the life of God and Christ, the son of God. And this life is lost when one departs from Christ.”
Trent Horn:
So this means that Ray Comfort is right. God gives us the free unmerited gift of eternal life to anyone who seeks God in faith. But he’s wrong when he divorces the free gift from baptism, which 1st Peter 3:21 says “now saves us”. He also gets it wrong when he treats salvation as something that happens in an instant that is permanent and irrevocable, instead of as something that takes place as a process where we must faithfully endure and be faithful to God, to the end. But God has not abandoned us, because he gave us things like the sacraments, he gave us the church that he established to help us stay in communion and friendship with him.
Ray Comfort:
People say to me, “If you could speak to the Catholic church or talk with the Pope, what would you say?” And I’d say, “Let me on your balcony for 10 minutes. Let me preach the gospel to the crowds,” because you never hear him say, “You must be born again”, as Jesus said. Never hear him move open the word in…
Trent Horn:
How about when Pope Francis said, “The only one that justifies you, the only one that makes you born again is Jesus Christ, no one else.” Or when Pope Francis said, “Born again by water and the holy spirit, we become God’s children and begin a journey of faith and growth and holiness in union with Jesus.” So no, Pope Francis does break open the word, and he does talk about being born again, the biblical way.
Ray Comfort:
And I’m not anti-Catholic, I love Roman Catholics and I want to see them in heaven. Catholicism says that Roman Catholic church is the only means of salvation and you have to go through the Catholic church, but the Bible says “God’s far bigger than that, and whosoever will make harm…”
Trent Horn:
First, the church has a nuanced teaching saying that “God gave us the church for salvation”, but it is possible for people to be saved, even if they aren’t fully united to God’s church. Now I’m not going to get into all of that here, but this isn’t a very strong objection. This is just Ray Comfort’s opinion that God is bigger than that. It’s not anything from the Bible. The verse he seems to be quoting is revelation 22:17, which says, “The spirit and the bride say ‘come’, and let him who hears say ‘come’, and let him who is thirsty, come. Let him who desires, take the water of life without price.”
Trent Horn:
Right. Come to the water of baptism to be saved, to accept the free gift of salvation and notice it is in revelation, the spirit and the bride. “The bride” in the new Testament repeatedly refers Christ’s bride as the church. And the church is not just an invisible bond between Christians. Since the Bible talks about the church having authority, it’s an enduring body that is, as Ephesians 2:20 says “built on the foundation of the apostles”. It guides believers to salvation because as 1st Timothy 3:15 says, “The church is the pillar and foundation or bull work of the truth.”
Ray Comfort:
… works but by grace, and that’s the message we say to Catholics, “Hey, you don’t have to earn salvation. You just trust in Jesus.” It’s that simple. A child can do it.
Trent Horn:
I’ve already shown in lots of other videos that Catholics don’t earn salvation and we are saved by grace, but that doesn’t mean that works or obeying Jesus and not dying in unrepented mortal sin has nothing to do with our salvation. It most certainly does. Instead, I’d rather engage Ray Comfort directly. So if he’d like to debate me on the question of whether Catholics have a false gospel, I’d be happy to do that. And hopefully, we can set up an engagement soon to do that.
Trent Horn:
But Hey, I just want to thank you guys so much for watching. I hope this cleared up a few elements of church teaching, hope you better understand the 10 commandments. And yeah, thank you guys so much. I hope you’ll keep supporting us. And I just hope that you have a very pleasant day.
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