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In this episode Trent catches up with Jon Steingard, the former front man for the Christian band Hawk Nelson who has since left the Christian faith and discusses his continuing investigation of Christianity.
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. This is the most relaxed interview setting I have ever been in. Rocking chairs on the porch in Southern California. It cannot be beat. Joining me, Jon Steingard, former frontman for Hawk Nelson.
Jon Steingard:
Yeah. Thank you, Trent.
Trent Horn:
We chatted before, a few months ago, about your deconversion from the Christian faith.
Jon Steingard:
Sure.
Trent Horn:
I figured since I was going to be in town for the Catholic Answers Conference, hence why I’m dressed so spiffy by the way.
Jon Steingard:
Yeah. When Trent showed up, I was like, “Oh, man, I’m not wearing my suit right now.”
Trent Horn:
No, you’re way cooler. I always feel like such a dork sometimes in these things.
Jon Steingard:
No, I actually got a suit recently. I’m really excited about it.
Trent Horn:
Wearing a suit and going out to fancy restaurants. I like feeling like a grown-up.
Jon Steingard:
Yeah. There’s a difference between wearing what feels like your dad’s suit and then a suit.
Trent Horn:
Right. One that’s tailored nice for you.
Jon Steingard:
This is a suit.
Trent Horn:
Oh, yeah. Makes me happy. At least don’t feel like a kid anymore. So yeah, I don’t know, I just wanted to keep this pretty informal.
Jon Steingard:
Sure.
Trent Horn:
I thought we had a good chat last time. You’ve been involved on social media, you’re still investigating the Christian faith.
Jon Steingard:
Yeah.
Trent Horn:
I did have a question though, before we talk about that.
Jon Steingard:
Sure.
Trent Horn:
It was going around in my mind thinking about you, and there are other Christian musicians who have had deconstruction, deconversion…
Jon Steingard:
Sure, yeah.
Trent Horn:
… Do you think that people who get into music ministry, Christian musicians, whether they’re Catholic or Protestant, that maybe some of them are not as formed in theology as maybe they should be? It’s like you’re involved in really bringing people to a deep spiritual life, but maybe you haven’t done as much of the academic theology work so when this stuff comes up, it can… I don’t know. Why worry about that?
Jon Steingard:
No, I think that’s fair to say. Speaking for myself, my background, the tradition I come from is very charismatic evangelical Protestantism, so it’s very heavy on the Holy Spirit, signs and wonders, praying for healing and those things. Probably light on theology. I wouldn’t have understood what you’re talking about if you had said, “Okay, let’s talk about atonement theory.”
Trent Horn:
Right. But it’s hard because you’re up there, you, collectively, Christian musicians, and you’re singing about the atonement. “Jesus died for me.” Because you would think if a pastor’s talking about it, we’d expect him to know some of the deeper stuff related to it.
Jon Steingard:
You would hope. Again, this is going to sound like a criticism of the tradition I come from, but I think there’s plenty of pastors in the circles that I grew up in that maybe don’t have that. Some of them have plenty of training but not all.
Trent Horn:
Yeah.
Jon Steingard:
There’s this informality that I find some strains of evangelicalism cling to, where actually being informal is a good thing. I heard a lot growing up. It’s not religion, it’s relationship.
Trent Horn:
Yeah.
Jon Steingard:
Obviously, that phrase makes me feel all kinds of way now, but I think it’s this idea that all that stuff is stuffy religious stuff and we don’t want that, we just want Jesus. You know what I mean? You would hear that a lot in the places that I grew up in.
Trent Horn:
Right.
Jon Steingard:
I think you’re touching on something important. I do notice that when… I was the guitar player for the first eight years of my time in Hawk Nelson. And then for the second eight years, I was the singer. When I made that transition, I became the main songwriter as well. That’s actually what prompted me to start learning more about theology because I’m trying to write songs within the space of Christian music, and I also feel the responsibility of being on stage.
I noticed some of the other things I sometimes hear on stage rub me wrong and I’m like, “Why does that not feel right to me?” For me, at the time, being a Christian, my understanding of God doesn’t feel like what that person just said, so where am I getting my understanding? Where are they getting it? So that’s one of the things that prompted my becoming more curious about theology. Then discovering there’s this whole world, I’m like, “Oh, my gosh, people have been asking these questions and more for a long time.”
Trent Horn:
Right. To think it’s only something we’re talking about now-
Jon Steingard:
Right.
Trent Horn:
… For thousands of years and it can get complicated. I find it interesting you have this responsibility because in writing songs, you’re proposing ideas for people and you want to make sure they’re correct.
Jon Steingard:
One of the things that I really cared about is writing music that brought people hope and that could help be a part of people lifting themselves or God lifting them or whatever into a better place. I loved hearing stories of our music being involved in positive change in people’s lives. So if I’m going to write messages of hope, I want to know that I’m writing things that are true.
Trent Horn:
Right.
Jon Steingard:
I just noticed I would be comfortable sometimes. I was comfortable saying, “God.” I was less comfortable saying “Jesus.”
Trent Horn:
Interesting.
Jon Steingard:
I had to think for a long time, “Well, why is that?” And even less comfortable referring to God as King because that language felt really foreign to my life even though… Actually, I’m Canadian, so as of just a few days ago-
Trent Horn:
You had a queen.
Jon Steingard:
… I do have a king.
Trent Horn:
Yeah, and you have a king now.
Jon Steingard:
Yeah. I think you’re making a good point though. I think that within Christian music there’s a range of theological perspectives and theological depths. And there’s also something, this is not just Christian music, it’s pop music in general, in that, some stuff just doesn’t sing very well. So simple ideas sing better. “God loves you” is a more simple singable idea than “In the beginning, the word was life. The word, that’s Jesus…” And then-
Trent Horn:
It gets complex.
Jon Steingard:
Right. I actually love the conversations about complex theology, but they don’t often sing well.
Trent Horn:
Okay. Here’s what I got to do.
Jon Steingard:
Sure.
Trent Horn:
Next time I’m here visiting in town, I need you to come… Need you. I would love for you to come with me. There’s a Byzantine Catholic church here called Holy Angels. I went there for two years before I moved and I love our hymns. They’re very old hymns. They’re very theologically dense. We’ll sing things like, (singing), Theotokos and it’s… It’ll be very eye-opening, I think, interesting experience as a musician in talking about this. Seeing actually, these hymns have very complex elements to them, but they sing so well. I love it.
I want to ask you about what you’re investigating now. Did you say maybe online that you were going through the New Testament or you’re doing some biblical stuff? What are you working on?
Jon Steingard:
Yeah. I’ve been bouncing around a little bit. A couple of the ideas that have struck me recently are, the ability for religious communities to be cohesive and to form communities where people really have something to gather around is pretty hard to replace. What a church can be for a community, there aren’t a lot of really good secular versions of that. You get sports teams, I guess sometimes. Schools, AA, I think is a good example of… It’s actually probably the best example of a secular-
Trent Horn:
But that’s one you would prefer to get out of at some point.
Jon Steingard:
Well, alcoholics say that they’re always an alcoholic. But to your point, it’s like okay, so someone who doesn’t struggle with alcoholism-
Trent Horn:
But it is interesting it’s for people because church is a place where we all have struggles and we come together to seek refuge in God. So maybe that’s not as far off.
Jon Steingard:
Yeah. I guess I more just think that for the person who doesn’t find themselves religious and also doesn’t find themselves to struggle with alcoholism, what do they have to gather around? I actually have come to appreciate religious communities of all kinds going, “Well, there’s something going on there that’s very difficult to replace.” Starting there, that got me to a place where I’m like, “Okay, well, it’s doing something. Something that’s really meaningful to people so I should probably have a little humility about that.” And then-
Trent Horn:
So not as hard. Some people might be very antireligious instead of just nonreligious.
Jon Steingard:
Right. I don’t think I ever felt really antireligious, but whatever amount I was before, I think I’ve dialed back now, going, “Well, I see what it’s doing in some people’s lives.” I don’t think it’s without drawbacks depending on the belief system we’re talking about, but there’s definitely… I would never say there’s no negative. Sorry, there’s no positive rather. So that’s one shift.
Another one is just thinking about theism versus Christianity. Just taking Christianity off the table for a second and talking about simple theism like, “Actually, I think that’s really plausible.” And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that a lot of my objections to theism were specific to Christianity and maybe had to do with my experience. So I’m going, “Okay, if I’m able…” It’s difficult to do, but if I’m able to set my preconceived notions about theism because of Christianity aside, then just the idea that there might be some version of God actually seems fairly plausible to me.
Trent Horn:
That’s a big thing because there’s a lot of atheists who’ll talk about the idea of God as just being an inherently silly concept.
Jon Steingard:
Yeah. I don’t agree with that.
Trent Horn:
So what-
Jon Steingard:
You and Emerson Green talked about the common consent argument at one point.
Trent Horn:
Yes.
Jon Steingard:
I actually think that’s a really interesting argument.
Trent Horn:
It’s funny to me that it took a non-religious person because I always thought that was not a very good argument. To fill our listeners in, it’s the argument that we should believe in God because throughout the vast majority of human history, human beings believed in God or the divine or something like that. And I always thought, ” Well, lots of people also believed that the sun went around the earth.” So it’s like lots of people can be wrong. But Emerson pointed out, “True, lots of people have been wrong about things, but when lots of people agree, they’re usually right, not wrong.”
Jon Steingard:
The number of things that people in general have been right about over the years is much greater than the number of things that they’ve been wrong about.
Trent Horn:
So it’s not a silver bullet, it’s not a proof-
Jon Steingard:
No, certainly not.
Trent Horn:
… But it makes you think.
Jon Steingard:
What it makes me think though is that… The majority of people that have ever lived have believed in some sort of God or gods or divinity or supernatural beings, or something like that. But they’re not in agreement on who or what that is. So I would say that that argument is evidence of something and then the nature of which is a question. This is where I’ve been tinkering with scripture and bouncing back and forth between scripture and philosophy. Because I have this question that’s been informing a lot of my thoughts recently. It’s basically if you’re open to the idea that God might exist and you want to learn about God’s nature, what sources do you have?
As far as I can tell… This is just addressing theism, this is not Christianity yet. From the Christian point of view though, as far as I can tell, if you want to know about God, the three… And maybe poke some holes in this if you see some flaws here, but it seems to me there’s three sources of information. There’s personal revelation, there’s tradition and then there’s scripture. Tradition and scripture come together a little bit because there’s some interplay there.
Trent Horn:
Tradition is… The word it comes, tradere, from the Greek paradosis, which means that which is handed on.
Jon Steingard:
Okay. Yeah.
Trent Horn:
So scripture is almost tradition. You see them intermingling. We could say that which is handed on from those before us.
Jon Steingard:
Sure. Here’s where I think we get into problems. This is where I’ve started to feel like arguing for theism is one thing. Arguing for Christianity is much, much harder, I think. Because partially, of this problem.
If we start with personal revelation, if someone came up to me… If there was no Bible, there was no tradition of Christianity or whatever, if someone came up to me and said, God has revealed his nature to me and I would like to tell you about it, you’d have questions, right? And you’d be like, “Well, I can’t just believe this. I need to verify it somehow.” It’s weird that God revealed it to you and not to me. If there’s something God wants me to know, it would be weird for God to tell you to tell me.
Trent Horn:
Yeah. There was a lady, I was driving up here, she was screaming at me as I was driving that it’s beautiful here except for the more eccentric population. It just reminds me of that. I’m like, “Oh maybe… Yeah, why would you do that?” I guess for me, I would add, I think those are all valid. Public revelation, private revelation. I would also say general revelation or… For me, understanding what God’s… Logic is helpful for me but a lot of logic really tells me what God is not more than what God is.
Jon Steingard:
It’s sort of apathetic?
Trent Horn:
Yes. But it’s helpful. It helps you know what not to believe in. If I believe from the arguments for God that he’s infinite in being and he created everything from nothing, then I know that God’s not material. He’s not in time. He doesn’t change because he causes all change. He doesn’t have limits in things. If he’s not limited in any way, then he wouldn’t be limited in power or existence. These things at least give you a… They take finite things off the table so that’s helpful.
For me though, I think it’s like well, but we got more personal stuff. One thing that I’ve found helpful, and this is from an optimistic understanding of God, Thomas Aquinas. For me, if the arguments for God show that God… Because if you say what is God’s nature, that makes it sound like there’s all these different kinds of natures God could be. And you’re just like, “We’ve got to figure out which one is it.” It’s like what he belongs to.
But for me, created things have a nature they could change. In philosophy, we call that in essence. In essence is what something does, and existence is the fact that it is. So we have a rational human essence. There’s a bug around me, that’s bug essence.
Jon Steingard:
Yes. Sorry about that.
Trent Horn:
There’s a lizard essence over there. But existence is different. That lizard could have not existed. We could have not existed. So traditionally, what makes God God is just that his essence and existence are the same thing.
Jon Steingard:
So all of that is, you’re discovering with your intellect, right?
Trent Horn:
Right. I want to tease out one tiny thing from that, and then I want to hear your reply.
Jon Steingard:
Sure.
Trent Horn:
For me, if he’s infinite existence, I think goodness and badness are just having being or not having being. So if somebody is evil, it’s because they lack a human trait they ought to have, like empathy or kindness. Or a tree is bad. If there was a bad tree in your… There isn’t, it’s beautiful out here. If there was a bad one, I’d be like, “Oh, it lacks the water or nutrients in the soil it should have.” So badness is when it misses something, goodness is when it has what it’s supposed to have. So if God is just infinite being and he doesn’t lack anything, then he has to be good by definition.
Jon Steingard:
Okay. I would actually prefer there to be a God… If the fundamental basis of reality is something or someone good, I would prefer that to… I don’t know what-
Trent Horn:
Well, the alternatives would be bad or indifferent.
Jon Steingard:
Sure. The universe feels pretty indifferent to me so I don’t know. I just… Looking at life and I know we’ve had a lot of conversations about-
Trent Horn:
Sure. When you call something the universe, that just means everything. Most-
Jon Steingard:
I would define the universe as, sorry, I would say the observable universe.
Trent Horn:
Sure. But I guess for me, the only things in the universe that feel caring are other people. So I think though, for me, it’s, if I’m going to see God in the universe, it might only be directly in other… The things-
Jon Steingard:
In other people.
Trent Horn:
In other people, yeah.
Jon Steingard:
That’s interesting. There’s some non-Christian ways you could look at that too.
Trent Horn:
The other thing I might see in the universe might be… It’s weird, I agree with you if I just look at the cosmos, it might feel indifferent but the emotion it prompts for me is awe and wonder.
Jon Steingard:
Sure. I get that actually, a lot from Christians. It’s like, “Okay, so look out at the universe, look at your children. How could you not believe that this was created by God?” I’m like, “Okay, I get what you’re saying.” But then they’ll go, “Therefore Christianity.” And I’m like, “No, that doesn’t work.”
Trent Horn:
Yes, that’s a gap. I do think that if you have a belief in God that created the world and can do miracles, I think-
Jon Steingard:
I’m going to just get that mosquito for you.
Trent Horn:
Right. I think it makes it easier to wrap your head around God becoming man. So that’s why I think it’s a two-step process.
Jon Steingard:
Just to go back to my three sources…
Trent Horn:
Sure, sure.
Jon Steingard:
Sorry to derail your thought.
Trent Horn:
No, you’re fine. Go ahead.
Jon Steingard:
The way that I’ve been thinking about it is, okay, so we’d be skeptical of someone else saying they have some sort of personal revelation of God. And tradition and scripture are just more of that, but pushed back in time. It’s actually more distant-
Trent Horn:
But more people.
Jon Steingard:
More people, but more people that received it and believed it. You know what I mean?
Trent Horn:
Sure.
Jon Steingard:
Still at some point, it goes back to someone saying they have knowledge of something. But as far as I’m concerned, if we read a book that’s 2000 years old and it says something that happens a lot in life, then it’s not that difficult for me to go, “Hey, yeah, maybe that happened.” That seems totally plausible, but we don’t see people coming to life every day here, coming back from the death. We could get into all of that-
Trent Horn:
Yeah.
Jon Steingard:
… But that’s not the argument I’m trying to make. My point is that I can see, philosophically, getting to “Okay, there’s something godlike, potentially.” I also could see the value in joining religious communities. So there are some pieces there. But the Bible is where I start to go… And maybe this is a function of the way that I grew up thinking about the Bible and the Protestant, inerrantist way of thinking about it. Going, “Okay, we know that human beings wrote this stuff.” I don’t understand where you get the idea that this is God speaking to us or that these are God’s words because clearly, people wrote this stuff.
It’s almost like we’ve… The Christian community or maybe the Protestant community, because the Catholics think about this a little bit differently, just collectively decided we need something concrete. So we’re going to say this is concrete, and just decide that this is the word of God. You know what I mean?
Trent Horn:
Yeah. I think before you get… So it’s like there’s another gap here.
Jon Steingard:
Sure.
Trent Horn:
Bible, Christianity… Sorry. God, Christianity, Bible is the word of God. Because you could believe just that Jesus rose from the dead and he is God. And then try to figure out the Bible and the other stuff.
Jon Steingard:
Also, you could believe that and not believe that the Bible is inherent.
Trent Horn:
Right.
Jon Steingard:
Yes. I see what you’re saying.
Trent Horn:
So I think then the next step… Because we’re coming to a close, my schedule got backed up at the conference, but I felt it was worthwhile to at least do something short to check in. What’s nice too about San Diego is I’m here all the time so we can come back and have a longer discussion.
Jon Steingard:
Totally.
Trent Horn:
What I would recommend for you then is I see about the miracles, yeah, people come up with stories all the time. The question I find interesting is if Jesus did not rise from the dead, what did happen with these people to prompt this belief? It’s one thing to say, “I’m not convinced of the resurrection,” but I think it’s very interesting to say, “Okay, what did happen here?” Because I do think that the origin of Christianity is a lot different than other religions. Figuring out how Paul and skeptics get involved, and everyone who felt defeated… Trying to come up with an alternative to explore. And if it doesn’t feel satisfactory, might make Christianity… That could maybe help make that more plausible.
Jon Steingard:
Yeah, I’ve explored that before. My thoughts on that are that there’s any number of ways you could approach this that might not on the surface seem super plausible. Because it’s like, “Oh, that seems a little far fetched” but they’re more plausible than a person rising from the dead to me. For instance, I think the most reasonable one I’ve heard is that potentially, all that was required for these beliefs about these resurrection appearances to proliferate would be the experiences of probably Peter and Paul. You’ve probably heard this argument before, that maybe it’s a bereavement vision stuff. I don’t know if that’s what happened-
Trent Horn:
Here’s what I’d recommend since we’re coming low on time. I had a debate with Doug at Pine Creek about this and I actually asked him, “Can you give me an example of someone that we found the literature who had a bereavement hallucination and told it to other people and they started having that same hallucination?” He didn’t present one in the debate and I haven’t actually found one in the literature.
Jon Steingard:
I don’t know that that’s required. Because sometimes I’ll get people like, “He appeared to 500 people” and I’m like, “No, we have a story that says he appeared to 500 people.”
Trent Horn:
Sure. But I think there are other appearances beyond those we can have but that would take us-
Jon Steingard:
Into a textual-
Trent Horn:
But I appreciate… I think it’s really cool though that the existence of God has become plausible. I think though, you’re right. Just believing somebody says, “This is what God is like.” Well, I’ve got to establish our bonafides. So I think it is going to come down to, does Jesus have the bonafides or not? I think that’s what has to be explored.
Jon Steingard:
Right. And I think that’s a much more difficult argument to make than… One of the things I notice is, and we can finish with your thoughts on this. One of the things I notice is that you see a lot of debates online and it’s atheism versus theism, and it’s almost always a Christian defending theism. At least in the ones that I’ve… I’m sure there is… Islam-
Trent Horn:
There’s a few Muslim ones. Just a few, yeah.
Jon Steingard:
… Islamic apologist. What’s interesting about that to me is that the atheist is basically defending their actual entire perspective. And the Christian is generally defending a shard of their perspective. Because it’s like, “Well, this is the barest version of what I believe because if I had to defend all of it, it would be much more difficult.”
Trent Horn:
But I think that’s also true for atheism if you defend naturalism. Because many atheists are, let’s say they’re physicalists. They would say everything is material. So even my conscious experiences, how do you explain that?
Jon Steingard:
Yeah. I’m actually not a physicalist.
Trent Horn:
Right. Let’s say many people who are atheists are physicalists.
Jon Steingard:
Many are. You’re right. Yeah. Most, probably.
Trent Horn:
In a debate, they might only defend a shard of that which is, “Well, God doesn’t exist.”
Jon Steingard:
Fair. Yeah.
Trent Horn:
The question of whether everything else is physical, we can get into that another time. So I do think it cuts both ways.
Jon Steingard:
Yeah. I think that’s a good pushback. I think you’re right about that. I’ve recently, in the last year, become fairly persuaded by Panpsychism.
Trent Horn:
It’s, there’s more to mind than we realize.
Jon Steingard:
Yeah. And maybe idealism sometimes on… I wake up some days feeling like that’s plausible. But yeah, that’s probably a conversation for another time.
Trent Horn:
Another time. So once again, I know people will say it should have gone on longer, and you’re right. But my schedule is a tire end. It was worthwhile just to sit, have this chat. What’s nice is, we’ll do this again next time I’m out. What’s great is we can do outdoor interviews here all year round. We’ll do that. We’ll chat more.
But yeah, I think maybe we could look through and go through some things maybe next time. We could talk more about, is there more mind in reality? We could talk about more-
Jon Steingard:
I love that conversation.
Trent Horn:
… More than material. I think when your mind is open to more than material, that I think makes it a lot more plausible that there’s something supremely immaterial that’s the foundation of everything. And then I think-
Jon Steingard:
The nature of which is still up for debate.
Trent Horn:
It is up for debate, and we have to figure out what that is. I do think though you’re right for Christianity, we have to do a historical investigation. So maybe next time, and I think I’d love for you to continue doing this, is just to figure out what are the minimal facts we can know about Jesus and the origin of Christianity. How do they all fit together?
Jon Steingard:
Yeah. I have thoughts on that but we’ll get into that another time.
Trent Horn:
I think so. For now though, I think this is a good check in. I am super excited to sit down with you again for… And that’s how these conversations work. Just to have… Be more and all continual.
Jon Steingard:
Love it.
Trent Horn:
Thank you guys so much. Hopefully, we’ll do another conversation soon. I hope you all have a very blessed day.
Narrator:
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